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besides seemed very sturdy and solid and I could not flatter him with hopes of success. He did not however appear to be without hope. Certainly had he chosen to risk an assault with some trifling loss the place might have been in his possession; but boats were not at hand in sufficient numbers and besides such a proceeding might not have been popular with amateur soldiers. He asked me if I had brought any letters to him; I frankly owned I had not. ""Ah!"" he said ""you came from curiosity that you might talk in the gay circles of London of having seen the Vladika of Montenegro."" I did not say that were I to do so I should talk very unintelligibly to a great many of my hearers. After our collation was finished we rose and proceeded to the battery if it could be honoured with such a name. But had its power been as extensive as the view from it it would have amply sufficed. The day was now most beautiful and spring-like and various flowers with sportive butterflies and other insects enlivened the mountain side. The broad blue lake lay beneath and in the extreme distance the position of Scutari itself could be distinguished. Three ranges of mountains were visible rising one above the other till the snowy chains of Bosnia bounded the horizon. The cannonade as there was little to be apprehended added to the beauty and interest. The wreathing of the white smoke on the Turkish tower and the report borne along in the calm air and echoed a dozen times by the distant mountains--the gradual approach and whizzing of the balls and the shot from our guns as it hit the buildings or occasionally bounded along the water were all interesting novelties. I made a sketch to the best of my ability of every object of interest in the vicinity of this lovely spot. As regards matters purely military we had three guns in operation--short twelves as I have already mentioned; a rampart was before them formed of earth bound with stakes and about three feet thick. I was told this had only been struck four times. Few people were about. Nor could gunners of fame have been in plenty for I soon discovered Petrarca pointing the cannon. The shot also was of different sizes--any that could be got as Austria does not favour the importation of warlike materials into Montenegro; and to this disparity of metal may be ascribed the constant difficulty which the Montenegrian gunners experienced in hitting even the island. Still they kept the game alive the Turks not giving one shot for three. They appeared to have four guns but their biggest was on the platform of the chief tower a screen of masonry protecting it from lying entirely open to our position on the hill. They fired also several shells but they did no damage exploding high in the air. At length the Vladika approached the best cannon anxious to display his skill. He took a long aim and then fired exulting greatly when the ball struck the stone screenwork at top of the tower. This was just where he aimed and it was the best shot by far that I had seen. A little dust seemed to fly but no further damage. The reply of the Turks came promptly but his highness did not honour their skill by even ducking below the rampart. It lodged in the side of the hill several feet below us. We remained enjoying the interesting scene and beautiful day till about one o'clock when the Montenegrian batteries suspended operations from a temporary failure of ammunition. Being desirous of passing the night in less crowded quarters than the previous one we now took our leave of the Vladika and returned to the hamlet we had left in the morning; and having with some difficulty procured a pony we set off to get as far on our road to Cattaro as we could not returning by Cettigna which would have been round about but entering the Austrian territory above Budua and Castel Astua--Cattaro at present lying to the north-west of us. The boy who conducted this same pony (a little mare with a mule foal running beside her ) was the most unmitigated savage I have met with on my travels though not more than ten years old. He was the ugliest little urchin I ever saw--his only clothing was a piece of an old sack and ragged opunkas. After galloping some distance to meet us his mind misgave him as to his pistol and he returned and made his father who was working in the field exchange with him. He then undertook to lead the pony (the animals here do not go pleasantly unless led and also by some one they are acquainted with ) which he did in the most desperate manner walking at about seven miles an hour. No concern of his what became of the knees of the occupant or with what stones or thorns they might be brought into collision. When he came to a precipice in the road and there were many down he jumped tugging the beast after him and not looking behind once. All this time the foal kept jamming up against its mother. It was soon evident that the dismissal of this youth and his cattle was a _sine qua non_ as cautions were vain. But on a sum being offered which he considered less than his due having come about a mile he took his own part in a manner most edifying in one so young; and had the retainers of our party not been as well provided as he I believe he would have pistolled the whole of us. At length finding his efforts fruitless he sprang on the pony and putting her to her best pace was soon out of sight. About the same time we fell in with two monks from the convent of Bercelli who were on their way to pay their respects to the Vladika. This was fortunate as we had intended to sleep there. These were the only inmates and had the key of the place with them. After treating the party to brandy one of them turned back with us. He was an old man and he had to return a distance of twelve miles; but he never seemed to give this a thought. They were dressed in black gowns and high black caps. Our road lay through a populous district and many were the salutations Petrarca received coupled with enquiries respecting us--long conversations taking place over miles of intervening hill and dale. This time I believe I filled the part of the English ambassador. The outward appearance of our quarters when we arrived was not prepossessing; but the state of dirt of the best room could hardly have been anticipated. Its equal--I speak advisedly--could not be found out of the country we were in. The floors mouldy and rat-eaten--old shelves hanging about containing every kind of rubbish--crusts of bread a bit of tallow candle in a bottle--old cups and glasses in different directions with the remains of something in the bottom of every one. The only covering on the boards which formed the bed was a sheepskin blanket very old and dirty looking like the mother of fleas. It would take a page to mention the manifold horrors that presented themselves. At length after a late bad supper I felt repose desirable be it where it might. We had stipulated however for the sole possession of this melancholy dormitory and having made up the best bed I could turned in with loathing; but the cold made one less particular as it was hard frost and the windows had no shutter or fastening of any kind. I found however there was one exception to our sole right of tenure; no other than the old priest himself whom I had shortly to get up and let in. Poor man! he had nowhere else to go; and having given up his luxurious couch he proposed for himself to court slumber on the top of an old chest--it looked hard certainly and the poor old man seemed ill at ease. All night he rested none. He groaned much and was afflicted with a cough and its usual results; and in each result he laboured long and strenuously as though putting his whole soul in it till a severe shock on the opposite wall showed the successful issue of his exertions. We did not lie in bed next morning very long after waking and by six o'clock were on our road expressing a firm determination to reach Cattaro or perish sooner than pass another night in a Montenegrian homestead. There was no other mule to be procured to-day so it was a case of riding and tying with the portmanteau. When the latter walked it usually did so on the head of the poor woman who brought the mule. The remainder of our luggage consisted of two carpet-bags and Spiro and Melo slung one of these upon each of their guns and proceeded merrily. We entered the Austrian territory by the village of Braitsch. The people hereabouts are very poor and ill-off. Our way overlooked the sea; below us lay Budua. We halted to give ourselves and the mule a drink by the fort of Stanivitch. This was formerly a convent and under the dominion of Montenegro; but Austria has lately become possessor of it through I believe a pecuniary arrangement with the Vladika. His territory however at no time reached the sea in any part though this is not distant above two or three miles; it was now a military post. A Moravian captain was in command who most politely invited us to stay the night fearing we should be unable to reach Cattaro; however it was then only four o'clock the day was bright and the sight of the sea encouraged us. Besides I noticed a _flea_ on the collar of his coat. We thanked him for his kindness and persevered on our journey. Our road lay nearly all on the descent and while it was good and the daylight lasted we hurried forward with all speed. At length it became very rocky and precipitous; and as the light soon failed entirely it became necessary to mount the portmanteau as it was not possible for any biped to sustain it longer on their head and to maintain their equilibrium as well. From very bad things got to much worse. The track as well as the whole country was composed of angular grey rocks among which in the now total darkness it became nearly impossible to discern the path. These stones had a light appearance and it was desirable to avoid bringing one's shins in contact with them; but if a spot seemed dark and might be imagined to be soft ground it proved to be one of the villanous prickly bushes of the country. This shrub grows all over Albania and Dalmatia and I believe in Italy; it is low and bushy with abundance of flat round seed; the spines are set both ways up and down the twig and are the most malignant thorns I ever met with. Whatever part of your garments they catch hold of from that they have never been known to part. Presently our road became inhabited by a stream of water and every step that avoided the stones was ankle-deep in mud. How the mule could have got on as I could not see I cannot imagine but the box which it carried was not seriously damaged. The two guides in their opunkas walked firmly but the others were tumbling frequently. The female who had come with us now fairly ""compounded "" according to the sporting phrase and gave vent to her sufferings in tears and reproaches. This had however a reviving effect upon others of our party who were near compounding themselves--for I had rather been holding out the endurance of this poor woman who had walked most of the day with a portmanteau on her head as an example for imitation. The town of Cattaro at length became visible far below us after almost the longest three hours I ever passed. At other times I might have been tempted to derive amusement from the mishaps of my friends under similar circumstances; but at present some of the party had been reduced to such desperation that I began sometimes to doubt the favourable issue of our journey. By nine o'clock the land gates are closed and this we had heard already strike. The sea gate is open for another hour. It was not till after this that having gained the coast road which leads to Cattaro from the south we reached the town. There a boat was requisite to take us over the sea gate; but all the town boats had long since retired and it took us at least half an hour to awake somebody on board a trabacolo in the harbour. When at length we were conveyed to the gate a small gratuity to the sentinels gained us admission and a little before midnight we found ourselves once more in our favourite inn. We remained some days at Cattaro arranging for our departure. During this time we heard that the Vladika had at length found his task hopeless and abandoned hostilities. He had been however a week arriving at such a conclusion and the sound of the cannonade was heard during the whole of the time occupied by our return. It was a pity to see a worthy potentate of moderate means spending his pocket-money so fruitlessly. The philanthropist will be glad to learn that no lives were sacrificed during this protracted siege. The Montenegrians more modest than some of our own neighbours on a late occasion of very similar glory laid claim only to having wounded one man in the fort; but an Albanian bulletin might have denied even that. Before concluding a few further particulars concerning Montenegro will not be out of place. In former days as I have observed they were but a den of mountain thieves dangerous to each other and unapproachable by strangers. At the present time no country can boast superiority in either of these respects. Indeed in so small a community crime is rare from the greater certainty of detection. I speak nothing of course of border pastimes with their neighbours; and these possibly form a safety-valve to the pent-up propensities of the inhabitants. This important change has been brought about within fifty years but most of all during the twelve years that the present Vladika has reigned. But the Vladikas who have effected this change actuated by the desire of improving the condition of their people have been obliged to barter their independence in a manner for Russian gold in order to give them the means of effecting it. I am not able to say when the subsidizing system first commenced but at present the Vladika as well as all the officials and senators receive their stipends. That of the Vladika amounts I believe to about eight thousand pounds annually; but this may include a small tax of I think two shillings on each household which is paid by the Montenegrians themselves. Of the senators there are forty who are elected by the communes and paid by Russia. There is also a force of eight hundred men paid and residing in different districts which forms an executive police; but there is nothing in the shape of a standing army. The Vladikas are appointed by the emperor in nepotal succession from the family of Petrovitch. The present Vladika received his education at St Petersburg and several of his nephews are now there from whom his successor will be chosen. I am not acquainted with the amount of temporal power possessed by the Vladika but I should think it was subject to much restraint. I have heard that on more than one occasion in the senate he has been personally threatened during the stormy debates which have occurred. Though he is generally popular it would seem that here as elsewhere there exists a strong party opposed to all reform and pining for the good old days of general license. The demeanour of the Montenegrians to their Vladika though respectful is free and independent. On meeting him the hand is raised to the head or if near they offer to kiss his hand. This salutation is paid to any ordinary priest and occasionally through all Dalmatia to a stranger like myself. Russia it will be seen reigns as completely in Montenegro as though its passes were occupied by her soldiers. The supplies stopped all would be anarchy and confusion. Nor do the Montenegrians object to this in any way. Their personal independence is in no way compromised and their laws and usages remain unaltered. There is not a single Russian in Montenegro and only knowing them at distance they regard them at present with hearty good-will. The Vladika however who reaps the greatest benefits has it would appear to submit to a certain loss of freedom. During the past summer he visited Trieste and Vienna; and I was informed on good authority had desired to go to England but had been unable to obtain the permission of an emperor who seems determined no one shall travel but himself. The Vladika had certainly expressed to me a hope that he should visit England some time. There can be no doubt that it is well worth while thus to secure the alliance of the Montenegrians for they would prove a bitter thorn in any collision either with Turkey or Austria. The country is divided into twelve military jurisdictions under so many captains and every man is bound to serve though by what power except inclination I am sure I do not know. I do not imagine that this has been particularly provided for so willing are they to serve uncalled. The population of Montenegro is at the present time not short of one hundred and twenty thousand souls. Of these more than half would be serviceable were their own territory invaded; for every boy of eight years old and upwards carries a gun and there is no reason he should not point it as straight as an older person presenting at the same time a smaller mark to the enemy. The women even occasionally assist and at all times carry the ammunition and supplies. I used sometimes to think when meeting one of these armed urchins how ignominious it would be to be robbed by him; and yet were he only cunning enough to keep out of arm's-length I don't exactly know how it could be helped. The arms of the Montenegrians consist of a long gun usually very elegantly mounted the stock short and curved like a horse's neck; round his waist is a belt with cartouch-boxes containing the spare ammunition the cartridges for immediate use being in the pistol-belt in front. Here in a leather case is a mass of arms which occupy the same relative position to the wearer as the youthful kangaroo to its parent; here are a brace of pistols with a pointed pommel and a yataghan which is used in these countries to the entire exclusion of the sword and which from its position in the belt does not get in the way when walking--the ramrod for the pistols also which in the East is a separate arm containing sometimes a dagger or a pair of tongs for adjusting the never-absent pipe and a smaller knife is often slung on behind. In ordinary times a yataghan or pistol may be dispensed with; but whatever may be the occupation of man or boy the gun is never left behind whether ploughing or cutting wood or carrying the heaviest burdens. It is almost extraordinary that they should thus encumber themselves as within their own boundary none are so safe and their mountains seldom afford them a living mark. I believe it arises very much from a fondness for the weapon. The greatest care is taken of it and it undergoes a complete cleaning after every shot. The arms of the people in general present a striking contrast to their dress. On the former they spend most of their spare money and they are kept in great order and cleanliness. The warriors when they take the field fight more for plunder than for honour and glory. The spoils of houses and farm-steads or the arms or heads of their enemies (a prisoner is never spared ) all form desirable prizes. It must be remembered their service is chiefly voluntary and they receive no pay. It is not their tactics to expose themselves much in battle. The grey rocks which suit well the colour of their dress afford a shelter from behind which they take well-directed aim. Every man acts to the best of his judgment--usually acute where self-preservation is the law; and their great activity and powers of endurance enable them in their difficult country to contend with many advantages against regular troops. In 1838 during a temporary collision with Austria they gave as good as they received to say the least; and perhaps it was owing to this that peace was so soon concluded. In such a country cavalry is out of the question and horses are seldom used. The Vladika himself possesses a considerable stud. The dress of the people--at all seasons the same--consists of a white coat of coarse cloth with generally a blue edging open in front and reaching nearly to the knee. This has no buttons but is fastened round the waist by a red sash. They are usually shirtless and their hardy bosoms brave the storm in all weathers. Around their shoulders is thrown a description of plaid generally of a brown colour about three feet wide and six feet long; and from keeping this in its proper position a slight stoop becomes habitual. They have wide drawers of blue serge or sometimes of the material of their coats which is thicker; of this also are their leggings formed. Under the opunkas is worn a thick woollen sock; but in wet weather the men and women usually go barefooted. On their head is a small round cap of scarlet or black cloth. Their custom is to shave the whole of the face excepting the mustaches as well as the sides and crown of the head; but from long neglect it is often difficult to distinguish the favoured localities. Petrarca in his avocation of barber was in the greatest request. The costume of the women does not differ widely but the coat is longer and a petticoat replaces the blue drawers--round their waist is a belt of great weight about three inches wide and of the thickest leather set with cornelians and other coarse stones mounted in brass. The red cap is usual and the hair is often prettily braided. I have seen some head-dresses composed of silver coins. None of the people seem to be in the habit of bathing or washing and they do not remove their garments at night. The children have often nothing but a shirt. As a nation they are healthy and robust though fevers occur at certain times in some districts. Among the men two casts of features are general; the one known among us as the ""Jack Sheppard face""--the lower parts rather prominent and the nose short and somewhat turned up the complexion and hair very dark. The other is very different a bright colour and high handsome features; yet nearly every person one meets belongs to one of these two varieties. The latter is commonest among the tallest men. They have all very good teeth and their expression is intelligent and good-humoured. As in feature so in stature considerable uniformity appears. Their height averages about five feet ten with great development of muscle. The women are relatively inferior in looks--they are broad and short seeming to possess great strength; but the labour they undergo and the burdens they carry appear inimical to beauty. They have often pleasant countenances and good brick-dust complexions. The Servian or Naski here spoken is considered among the purest dialects of Sclavonic--it has a very pleasing sound being softer and more melodious than the Russian. My stay was unfortunately not long enough to obtain much knowledge of it and this want will sufficiently account for any errors that may appear in my descriptions of what I did not personally witness; for it prevented that free intercourse with the people by which a true insight to their manners can alone be acquired. Their laws seem very simple; he who kills is killed--shooting being the mode of execution. He who robs must make good; and as few of the people are in abject poverty this is usually done. Should they fail a summary flogging is inflicted. At Cettigna is a small prison; I believe there is no other. When any one is there confined he trusts entirely to his friends for subsistence. They are good-humoured obliging and extremely loquacious; but their continued spitting is very disagreeable. I witnessed no games or diversions among them except the one-stringed fiddle; but I understood that they have a few athletic sports such as wrestling and putting the stone. They often go to sea. I encountered two among the crew of an Austrian packet. They all profess the Greek faith and are in their way very religious. When passing a church they bow and cross themselves and perform all sorts of pious movements which sometimes border on the ludicrous. Before going to sleep they make long prayers. Previous to visiting the Vladika an armed Montenegrian entered in the morning the house where we slept and casting aside his gun and cloak commenced reading mass to the assembled party. This was the priest of the parish. The older members of the community are not usually very enlightened; but through the schools established by the Vladika where instruction is dispensed gratuitously most of the rising generation can read and write their native language and a sufficiency of neatly printed books are issued from the press he keeps employed at Cettigna. No social distinctions are yet known among them and the most perfect equality prevails--even the sons address their father by his Christian name. The only exception is in the person of the Vladika--his lot on the whole is not an enviable one. The only educated mind among the many--the only polished gentleman among simple peasants; he is indeed an isolated being. Handsome and in the prime of life yet there must be none to cheer his lot or lighten his solitude nor any to whom he would love to transmit his mountain throne. In this respect the laws of his order are stringent and the breath of scandal has never yet sullied his fair name though it is quite true that whilst in his native land the temptations are not very severe. I should not be surprised if a report I heard current should prove true that he intended at no very distant period to relinquish the government of Montenegro and spend the remainder of his days among a people more congenial to the habits of a man of education. Were he an absolute potentate an extended field for benefiting his countrymen might be obtained; but with his more constitutional power the attempts he has been able to make have been constantly thwarted by prejudice and ignorance. Had he the privileges or the ties of an ordinary man then as we all know the barrener the rocks the dearer seems the love of the native land; but situated as he is he can hardly be accused of want of patriotism if his stay in Montenegro should not extend beyond the time required in saving sufficient of his income to quit it. Our voyage from Cattaro to Corfu was accomplished in a small trabacolo--the San Marco of Spalatro--having on board three men and a boy. These boats though not fast are very safe and the Dalmatians in general manage small craft well. The north wind is scarce at this time of the year but a beautiful _tramontana_ blew during the time we were working out of the Bocca. This we lost entirely and not a breath moved its calm waters. We had also to wait some hours at Port Rosa situated at the entrance of the Bocca for our papers. By the time we were out at sea the wind had nearly died away and the next day found us employed gathering wild pomegranates on the desolate shores near Antiversi in Albania. Again a beautiful tramontana sprang up and in a vessel of first-rate sailing powers would almost have brought us in. All day we went gallantly along. The heads of Ducazzo--Dyrrichium of old--began to appear and soon we passed it in a foam. All night we held on and in the morning were beside the ""_infames scopulos Acroceraunia_ "" and in sight of the island of Sassina near the harbour of Avlona. On we went still till at length there appeared the land of the Phoeacians ""like a shield upon the sea;"" but there was a cloud over it which portended ill. It advanced towards us and extended rapidly. It was soon evident to the most sanguine that the wind was changing and there was shortly no mistake about the matter. I implored our skipper to keep on though he tacked to the coast of Apulia; but he knew his trade too well--the trade of a trabacolo consisting in never losing sight of shore. So we were obliged to put in to Avlona harbour deeply lamenting. Two days were spent here not daring to land for fear of putting ourselves in quarantine. Above the town rises the fortress of Canina but all wears a ruined appearance. The people of the neighbourhood called Chimariots have the worst reputation of all the Albanians. The coast of Albania between this and Corfu has a very barren and inhospitable appearance. The snowy peaks of the Pindus rise directly from the sea. A few bushes were visible on the mountains but timber of any size is scarce. Villages and houses are seldom seen. A glad contrast was presented when on the tenth day of our voyage we approached the beautiful shores of Corfu; and it was no small comfort after so long an imprisonment in this little tub with holes to creep in about the size of a dog-kennel and in the roughest possible weather to find ourselves in one of the most comfortable hotels in Europe and surrounded by old friends. Since my visit to Montenegro the Vladika went to Vienna--I believe to gain the mediation of Austria concerning the disputed territory of Lessandro. After his return I understand he was visited by Lord Clarence Paget commanding her Majesty's frigate L'Aigle who had been sent to gain some information regarding his territory; so that perhaps a more accurate account may be obtained than what is to be found in these rough notes. ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS. A CASE OF HATS. Of all the follies that can be fairly placed to the charge of the human race--and Heaven knows they are thick as gnats in a summer sunbeam--none can be laid at more people's doors than the fickleness and vagaries of the judgment in adorning to say nothing of covering man's outer scaffolding--the body. And the worst of it is that this folly-cap fits all men from the Red Indian of America to the sallow-faced eye-slitted Chinese; and through all the robed pomp of the solemn Turk to the chattering and capering monkeyism of the Parisian exquisite--there are fops every where. As Mr Catlin will tell you one of his lanky Ojibbeway or Ioway or Cutaway or Anyotherkindo'way Indians varies the feathers in his head-dress and sticks new tinsel on his buffalo-mantle whenever he can get them; spending as much time in be-painting his cheeks on a summer morning as Beau Brummell of departed memory ever wasted in tying his cravat. And so it has ever been--so it will ever be; man is not only a two-legged unfledged animal but he is also a vain imitative ape fond of his own dear visage blind to his deformities and ever desirous of setting himself off to the best advantage. It is of no use quarrelling with ourselves for this physiological fact--for we presume it to be one of the best ascertained phenomena connected with the genus _homo_--it is better to take it as we find it; and if we cannot hope to cure man of the absurdity any time this side of the millennium let us try if we cannot turn the failing to some account and make it useful as well as ornamental. The chief quarrel to be picked with man for his dressing propensities is on the ground that he not only hides and disfigures the fair proportions bestowed on him by his Maker but that he ever and anon loads himself with such masses of useless incongruities that the very end and object of his care are stultified. Instead of making himself smart pretty becoming beautiful--or any other word that you can find in the dandy's dictionary--he frequently succeeds in making himself positively ugly--frightful in the pure abstract sense of the term--or detestable in the lingo of the Stultzean tribe--and relapses as a Frenchman would say from civism to brutism: _Ah! quel animal que l'homme!_ But let it not be supposed that we speak of man only as applied to that great branch of the species designated by the most experienced naturalists as _homo vir_; it is quite as true of the other moiety the _homo femina_. If it be possible that a woman should ever be made frightful by any thing except age then it is surely by dress; if a woman never does a foolish thing in any other way yet at least she errs in her habiliments; if she be fickle at all (and speak to the fact ye disappointed bachelors and ye complaisant husbands!) in what is she more fickle than in dress? We might waste a life in finding a suitable simile for her volatility in this matter: rainbows with changing colours water on a windy day the wind itself in the month of March the much-desiderated perpetual motion; all are feeble similes to describe a woman's fickleness in dress. Shall we liken it to her tongue's untiring play? or shall we not rather say that it is a psychological fact standing _per se_? the concomitant effect and consequence of her beauty? But dear creatures! we are not going to quarrel with them for what gives us so much unconscious pleasure (we do not mean milliners' bills gentle reader;) we glory in living under a petticoat government and in essentially petticoatian times. All we shall do is to give a word of advice; and in trying on their caps for them we
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will show them the _rationale_ of their bows and their lace if they will only have the patience to sit still for the experiment. Before embarking on such an important project allow us to say that we are not going to quiz old Whang-Fong for his pig-tail and peacock feathers nor his Cannibalean majesty for his obstinate refusal to wear a decent pair of inexpressibles; it is a stiff subject to meddle with the dressing propensities of people that live ""in many a place that's underneath the world."" For all we care Abd el Kader and his Arabs may stifle themselves up in their greasy blankets swarming with ancestral vermin under a nearly tropical sun; and the good people of Igloolik may bedeck themselves with the spoils of fish flesh and fowl to set the fashions of the Arctic circle. We are going to speak merely of our home acquaintances and our European friends; if these only would be reasonable in their dress what a new thing it would be in the world--_quel progrés! quel évènement!_ The fundamental rule of dress we take to be the following--utility in all cases ornament when practicable. The first should ever precede and serve as the basis to the second; and it is the inversion of their due positions that causes so many applications of the _utile_ and the _dulce_ to end in sheer absurdity. The _usefulness_ of any article or system of dress depends entirely upon climate modified of course by the occupation or pursuits of the wearer; the _beauty_ of it or the suitableness of the ornament to the character of the vestment. We defy all the editors of the _Recueils des Modes Petits Courriers des Dames Belles Assemblées_ &c. with even the poet-laureates of Moses and Son Hyam and Co. with the whole host of Israelitish schneiders to find out a better æsthetic definition of the law of dress than this. Who would have the effrontery to maintain that an Englishman the very type of the useful at Calcutta in his cotton jacket and nankeens would in the same habiliments be a suitably dressed man at St Petersburg? and however much a well-set ring may ornament an aristocratic finger (though aristocratic fingers like aristocratic hands as Byron observes need no ornament to tell their origin ) who but an Otaheitan would admire the application of them to the gouty toes of some ""fine old English gentleman?"" Usefulness first then and ornament afterwards; think first of what you actually want for your health or comfort; cut your coat upon that pattern clap on your lace afterwards; but enrich it only to improve its appearance not to interfere with to conceal or to alter its original destination. To begin however methodically let us take what are commonly understood by well-dressed English people of the present day and let us criticise them from top to toe. And first then of a gentleman's head--_le chef_ as the French call it--and the _chapeau_ its present gear. What a covering! what a termination to the capital of that pillar of the creation Man! what an ungraceful mis-shapen useless and uncomfortable appendage to the seat of reason--the brain-box! Does it protect the head from either heat cold or wet? Does it set off any of natural beauty of the human cranium? Are its lines in harmony with or in becoming contrast to the expressive features of the face? Is it comfortable portable durable or cheap? What qualities either of use or ornament has it in its favour that it should be the crowning point of a well-dressed man's toilet? The hat is beyond all doubt one of the strangest vestimental anomalies of the nineteenth century. The history of the hat is this:--The simplest covering for a man's head after his own unshorn locks--(do not remind us of the matted and _living_ locks of the Indians or Hottentots)--must have been something like the Greek skull-cap. This we hold to have been the root or nucleus of the hat; and yet even this cap had a fault in point of utility for it failed to shadow the eyes: and on the earliest Greek monuments we find a cap with a wide brim appended or a flattish straw-hat following close upon the Phrygian bonnet. A light flattish hat has its recommendation in a warm country but it will not do for the winds and storms of a northern clime; and hence all the old Gauls the northern nations the Tartars and the peasants of Europe for many a long century wore a modified cap--sometimes swelling out into ornamental proportions at others shrinking into the primitive simplicity of the Phrygian or Greek cap. Shall we confess it fastidious reader?--we strongly suspect the cap worn by that idle fellow Paris when he so impudently ogled the goddesses on Mount Ida to have been very similar to the good old _bonnet de nuit_ of our grandfathers--(shall we whisper it of ourselves?) Yes that little cocked-up corner at the top looks like a budding tassel; he never had such bad taste as to tie it with a riband round his brows; and we do not read in Homer that Helen though a capital workwoman ever gave him one; but we are inclined to believe that the old punty-dunty pudding-bag-shaped cap which is still worn by the French peasantry in their field occupations and is still patronized by a large portion of Queen Victoria's loving subjects is of the highest antiquity and based we have no doubt on utility. We must be candid enough to say that we give up the argument as to the intrinsic beauty of this species of cap--truly we think it the very type of all that is slovenly; but for use there is not a more comfortable portable pliable buyable and washable a commodity than your--nightcap are we to say? no--than your _bonnet Grec_. Hats properly so called whether of cloth or fur were evidently the invention of some out-of-door people; but then they were not the brimless pyramidal canisters of the present fashion but were either caps with dependent brims or else broad and flexible Spanish _sombreros_. The very idea of a hat is that of utility--something to keep off the sun and the rain--any thing will do for warmth that will aid the hair in keeping in the natural caloric of a man's head; and hence we much doubt whether the Irish that hot-headed nation ever wore hats in early times. From the want of shade being early felt by civilized nations more than shelter from rain and from hat-shapes being found on early southern monuments we are inclined to think that the hat was more extensively worn in Southern than in Northern Europe; more as it is in Southern England than in Northern Scotland. Hence although we find many iron skull-caps like hats used by the military in the fifteenth century; and although we find traces of hats even in the plebeian costumes of the middle ages--yet we look upon the Spanish and Italian hat of the sixteenth century as the more immediate origin of its degenerate successor the actual _chapeau_. We need not trace the variations of its form through the seventeenth century from the high-crowned things of Henry III. of France and James I. of England to the graceful beavers of Louis XIII. Philip III. and Charles I. of England; the change was all in favour of the beaver; and certainly the hat reached its culminating point of excellence during the reign of our martyr king. Who has studied the splendid portraits of Vandyke or the heads of Rubens and has not perceived the uncommon grace given to them by the well-proportioned and not excessive hat? Who does not remember the fine portrait of Rubens himself with his black Spanish hat turned up in front the very perfection of that style of head-dress? Put a modern hat by the side of this hat of Rubens and say which bears off the palm; there can hardly be two opinions upon the subject. The great change of this hat took place as is well known in Louis XIV.'s court where first of all feathers were laid all round upon the flat of the brim and next the brim was edged with lace and pinched or cocked up for greater use in military service. It might have been useful for a military man especially one who had to handle a bayoneted musket; but it was a fatal invasion of the principle of beauty to adopt a permanent cock. There is no doubt that the flat cocked hat the small three-cornered pinched hat of the days of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. gave much smartness to the soldier and much neatness to the civilian; the change too corresponded with other alterations of dress from the loose and flowing to the tight and succinct principle; but picturesque effect was entirely lost; all the sentimentality all the romance of the hat evaporated in the formal cock. But this small flat hat of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was perfection and beauty itself compared with the outrageous and elevated cocked hat which came into fashion sometime before 1750 and which is the immediate prototype of the present military cocked hat. Here the principle of utility was entirely abandoned; it was sacrificed to the display of an unnatural brim. The hat was no longer formed by the pinching up of a circular brim of moderate dimensions; but three enormous flaps were made to rear their unwieldy height in the air and were strengthened stiffened and supported against the envious winds to the torment of the wearer and to the disfigurement of his person. All through the first half of the tasteless reign of good old George III. did this horrible covering disguise the beau's head; and the effect of it may still be judged of by his grandchildren when they contemplate not without awe the rubicund figure of some metropolitan church-beadle with his large-caped coat silver-headed cane and monstrous three-cornered hat. Our modern great ladies strange to say seem to have an especial affection for this hat since they take particular care to have a couple of footmen behind their carriage glorying in this capital atrocity while on the coach-box they encourage the older form of the flat cocked hat of Louis XV. All cocked hats be it observed are glorious rain-traps; the only improvement they are capable of is one not yet patented namely the appending of neat flexible spouts say of Macintosh cloth from each corner so as to convey the water in pleasant meanderings over the back and coat-tails. In dry weather these spouts might be tied up and would form graceful curves either before behind or on one side of the cocked flaps while in a shower they would add dignity to utility as they hung all adown the back of the wearer. One kind of utility however the old cocked hat certainly had; it served in some degree maugre the looping up of the brim to shelter the face from the sun; not indeed when worn full front as it was in Dr Johnson's time and as we remember the household troops used to wear it--but when by a daring innovation of revolutionary times it came to be turned round on its human pivot and lay gently athwart the line of vision. Thus it is that our generals wear it in this nineteenth century; thus it was that the Great Duke got all through Spain with it; though Napoleon who greatly reduced its dimensions always kept to the orthodox full-front; and in all positions except the latter it certainly does shade some portion of the face from the sun. But while for example the projection of one peak shades the nose the ears and cheeks are left to fish for themselves; or else if the hat wheels round again to the front the ears come under its benignant shade but the tip of the proboscis suffers awfully. The cocked hat has always been a two-horned dilemna ever since the third peak moved up in the world from its original position of horizontal equality and aspired to be a near neighbour of the cockade or towering plume. It was that wicked revolution of France or rather that dissolute time preceding it which produced the most mischief in the hat line. Look at any of the pictures of that day--look at the portraits of the Conventionalists--look at the old prints of country gentlemen hunting or riding races at Newmarket--remember the Sir Joshuas in many a noble gallery; and you will not fail to remark that the choice spirits of the day the go-ahead lads of that time had let down the flaps of their cocked hats into slouching and we must say most slovenly circular brims. There was a sort of free-and-easy look affected in that day about the head totally at enmity with the prim rigidity of the cocked beaver; you might have taken off your _chapeau rond_ as it then came to be called and you might have sat on it--it would have been never the worse; but not so with its stiff old father--no liberties were to be taken with him; once sit upon him and you would have crushed him forever. This very difference of hats marked a difference of politics--at least in France. There the old _chapeau à trois cornes_ was the badge of the aristocracy: the _chapeau rond_ and the _bonnet rouge_ were sworn brothers in the cause of democracy. The times were getting unhinged; all fashions were relaxing; so were public morals; so were private morals; so were men's hats: hats and heads seemed to have a sympathy and to have gone wrong together. And what has been the history of the hat since that day?--the civilian's hat we mean. Who remembers the overlapping crowns which came into fashion soon after the great peace at a time when Frenchmen wore their brims extravagantly pinched up at the sides and deeply pulled down fore and aft? Sometimes the hat rose up in pyramidal majesty; sometimes it was shut in like a telescope wanting to be pulled out. And then every kind of fancy man had a fancy hat: there was the Neck-or-nothing hat the Bang-up the Corinthian the Jerry and the Logic; or else distinguished leaders of _ton_ lent their names to it and we had the Petershams the Barringtons &c. Through every degree of absurdity has the _chapeau rond_ passed until it seems to have settled down into that quiescent state of mediocrity which marks the decline of empires and of hats. The brim is no longer only half an inch broad as it was once nor four inches broad as we also remember it: it seems to vary between the limits of one inch and two--a breadth just sufficient to let the line of shade when the head is erect come upon the eye-lids and just sufficient to clear the ears. But if the head be moved ever so little or if the rain come down ever so slantingly the services of the hat are at an end: it is well enough to intercept any thing coming down perpendicularly but ""slantendicularly "" as friend Slick says--no. Its present height is just enough to prevent your wearing it in a carriage and such too as to give a moderate wind a good purchase upon it: the substance is such that the least exposure to wet ruins it whether of beaver or silk; a moderate blow will crack or break its form; and for the first week if you have any thing like a sensitive head or any bosses of unknown qualities protruding from your cranium you are doomed to incessant headache from hat-pinchings. It has no properties of usefulness to recommend it and none of ornament saving this--if it can be called such--the being an invaluable appendage for a little man to make himself appear tall. What a wide interval from the simplicity of its Phrygian original! Having therefore criticized our present head-gear and condemned our hats without pulling them to pieces let us enquire what a proper covering for the head should be: first of all in point of usefulness and next in point of comely appearance. But let no man vainly imagine that we expect to suit the fancies of all the creatures privileged to wear hats or even to cover their heads; we do not pretend to invent or decide upon any one given type or form of head-dress. So many are the wants of a man in covering his head so widely differing from each other are the exigencies of different people that uniformity in hats is to be given up as a bad job: to attempt it would foil the strength of a Hercules: the utmost we can hope to effect is to lay down certain limits for the variations of this apex of human pride. For us then who live in a climate rainy windy hot and cold all within any twenty-four hours of the year just as the case may be it is plain that we want for general use something that will be proof against the atmospherical accidents that may befall any man who goes abroad to take the air. And here let it be observed that in reasoning about hats all thoughts about that effeminate invention the umbrella are to be laid aside. This utensil is truly a disgrace to the manhood of the times; and its existence by allowing people to dispense with warm cloaks and other anti-rain appliances has caused more disease in letting them catch cold than any thing else we know of. Our stalwart ancestors did admirably well without umbrellas; they wore good cloaks or coats and broad beavers to keep the rain out of their necks faring not a jot the worse for it. Umbrellas are only fit for men-milliners Cockney travellers and women. The nature of a hat we flatter ourselves is something independent of cotton and whalebone; and instead of the umbrella claiming precedence over the hat the hat we take it should be above the umbrella. An Englishman's hat then should be something that will keep the rain off his face and neck when the weather is bad and shield his eyes from the glare of the sun on the few days when sunlight is oppressive--and these two requirements settle at once on all principles of common sense that a man if he has only one kind of covering for the head should have a hat with a broad brim. This is the very foundation of the definition of an useful hat providing that a hat is really to be the thing worn for protecting a man's upper story. Usefulness will also decide against height in the crown. _Cui bono_ this same high crown of ours that looks more like a watering-pot deprived of its spout and handle than a reasonable article of human apparel? Down with the crowns say we! If you will wear a hat down with your crown. You may put down your half-sovereign or sovereign or whatever you please for your new hat first of all but down with your crown too. Here gentle reader you will exclaim against our taste and will protest that we would sacrifice every thing to that horrid utilitarian principle which opposes all ideas of beauty and poetry. We are free to confess that in our opinion there is not much poetry to be made about such a subject--unless some obsolete verses ""All round my hat "" may be alleged to the contrary; but as for the beauty of the head-piece we protest that we admit its existence and think that it should be consulted by whomsoever would pay proper attention to his own outward appearance. The merely useful may possibly make the shape approximate to that of a Quaker's or a jarvey's but the beautiful has to elevate and modify it into the mystical proportions fit for a man of taste. One other quality however which is intimately connected with the useful has to be noticed. The substance should not be hard and unyielding. Witness ye reminiscences--ye painful images of bygone headachs even yet flitting through our brain like Titanic thunderbolts!--accursed be the memory of that fellow Tightfit in Old Bond Street who used to screw his hats on our cranium when we were young and ere London had awakened us! As you value your comfort dear reader never purchase a hard hat. A hard heart may be borne with but a hard hat--never! And last of all a hat should be light--yes the lighter the better--light as a gossamer web though 'tis a simile that will not bear stretching. You may have the misfortune to be a heavy-headed man but do not add to it that of being heavy-hatted. Avoid the extremity of suffering; and observe the climax of ill from which we would shield your head--a narrow-brimmed hard heavy high-crowned hat-- ""tode gar brotois megiston êlthet' ek theôn kakon."" The covering of the head then must have its usefulness made ornamental if not beautiful; and the due ornamentation of it will depend principally upon its form but also upon its colour and material. Now form is the principal thing; every one that has half an eye for art will tell you this--'tis an admitted axiom. Either then the shape of the covering should conform to that of the head or it should not and we take our ground in support of the latter position. The natural form of the head is determined by the rotundity of the cranium beautifully modified by the waving curls of the hair--we speak of the abstract well-formed head; and nothing that approaches to the same shape will ever do more than give a bad substitute for the outline of the head as nature framed it. Any covering conceals the hair; and if you remove from sight this intrinsically beautiful integument it is a principle of bad taste to put in its place only a poor copy of the same contour. If you cover the head cover it with something that forms lines not curving like the skull nor yet so angular as to create too striking an opposition of ideas in the mind of the beholder. A close-fitting untasseled skull-cap does not improve the form of the head for it is not half so graceful as the hair; but a square hat or pyramidal cap is truly detestable. This is the reason why the common nightcap is ugly; it fits the head too closely and its upper end conveys the ludicrous idea of something made to be pulled at. On the other hand the double nightcap pulled out and allowed to hang down on one shoulder Spanish fashion is less ugly--though far removed from our own ideas of beauty--because it introduces a new system of curves and acts as a kind of dependent drapery to compensate for the concealment of the hair. Here is also the reason why the common hat is so frightful; it gives us straight or nearly straight lines going upwards like tangents from the oval of the face and cut off above by another straight line (the section of the crown) at right angles: all such lines and angles are foreign to the face and head. The common nightcap is too familiar the common hat too stiff. Observe the lines of the face and head; the projection of the nose the rounded angularity of the chin; the vertical section of the head affording curves with decided yet harmonious irregularities; the horizontal section producing a nearly regular contour. Well it is upon principles of this kind that the covering of the head should be beautified. Now we profess ourselves unable to make any better reconciliation of the useful with the beautiful for this purpose than in the small flexible light and broad-brimmed hat which is still to be found in some Spanish and Italian pictures; a hat not quite so large as that worn in the reign of Charles I. yet with all its freedom and capability of assuming a variety of graceful forms; not so stiff as the beaux of the Spanish court and the rakes of our own merry monarch's palace made it; not so formal as we know James I. and Lord Bacon used to wear; but something between all these three types. The prevalence of straight lines in it should be avoided without its appearing slovenly and its dimensions should be such as to consult convenience without relapsing into a homely vulgarity. Such a kind of hat admits of any further ornament which the fancy of the wearer may induce him to add; a feather a band a buckle or even a plain button for occasionally looping up the brim on one side or other (not two sides for it would return to the old cocked hat )--any of these extraneous additions would harmonize and would be in due character with its shape. Such a hat would certainly be useful; and that it would be ornamental we have only to decide by consulting our eyes and by looking at our ancestors' portraits of the seventeenth century. But there is another kind of covering for the head which for its peculiar purposes seems to us more useful and more ornamental even than this hat; we allude to the common round travelling cap the officers' undress cap in the British army. Are you going a journey? have you any rough work to do? have you got a headach and want something light? would you put on something that will not spoil by being pulled about sat on slept on and stood on? something handy useful comfortable and withal good-looking?--What do you do? you get a foraging cap. Every man looks well in a foraging cap; it harmonizes with every body's face: it makes the old look young and the young look smart: it is without pretence plain in detail and yet elegant in outline: it has no straight lines in it and yet its curves are in contrast with those of the head; they run in opposite directions: and the shade of the cap if it has one emulates the decisiveness of the nose and gives character to the profile of the head just as the nose gives point and force to the face. Nothing so easily admits of suitable ornament: a plain band--a golden one--or even a coloured one--makes it suitable to the various ranks and occupations of men: while its material admitting of infinite variety according to the taste of the wearer never injures the source of its beauty its form. The cap fails in only one thing; it is unfit for rainy weather; it will only do for dry days. Do not attempt to put a flap behind it and tie it under your chin--you at once convert it into an ugly nightcap; its curves then imitate those of the head and the ridiculous takes the place of the becoming. For three hundred days however out of the three hundred and sixty-five such a cap may be worn with the greatest comfort and advantage: while for simplicity and elegance it has no rival. We exclude most vigorously all other kinds of caps; we admit nothing but the common round foraging cap with a small shade over the eyes; we especially set our faces against the little quirked Highland cap now revived and becoming popular among the southrons. This cap has part of its curves--those behind the head approximating too closely to the curve of the skull: in fact at the hinder part it is a skull-cap; whereas the other part of the curves in front are too much in opposition to the outline of the face: they bend over and form an unpleasant contrast with the nose and chin: they are deficient in the shade or visor and there is not one man in a thousand whose face they suit. All fancy-caps with whalebone falling tops angular projections &c. are utterly abominate; we pin our faith to the quiet unsophisticated gentlemanlike cap worn by our officers: it beats almost any other head-dress in the world. The prevailing tendency of the age is to avoid distinctions of dress except in the value of the material and then only between the two great divisions of society--the affluent and the poor. Hence all ornament seems to be a superfluity except upon occasions of public display or military service; and men will not now listen to any one who advises them to put feathers and gold lace on their hats and caps: they would as soon think of returning to the embroidered coats of their grandfathers. The principle is a good one: in the palmy days of Rome the differences of dress bore no proportion to the differences of station; distinction in dress was the failing of the middle ages a consequence of some lurking seeds of northern barbarism which are only now ceasing to be propagated. We seem like the great men of the Eternal City eighteen hundred years ago to be looking more at the inward worth and influence of a man than at his outward state and dress; and it is a good sign of the times; it is a reasonable inclination of the mind; but it confines the exercise of taste in dress. Men of the present day are determined to be plain about the head as well as about the body; all ornament of head-dress they have left to soldiers and to the fairer half of the creation:--_sed hæc hactenus_--we reserve our remarks on the _coiffures_ of these two classes for another occasion. H. L. J. THE THREE GUARDSMEN. Guardsmen have at all periods been a racketing rollicking set of fellows. Whether ancients or moderns infidels or Christians prætorians or janissaries the _mousquetaires_ and Scottish archers of the French Louises or the lifeguards of ""bonnie Dundee's"" own regiment they have always claimed and usually enjoyed a greater degree of license than is accorded to the more unpretending soldiery of the line. The first in the field and the last out of it they have sometimes seemed to think that by thrashing the king's enemies they acquired a right to baton his subjects that captured cities atoned for the wrongs of deluded damsels and that each extra blow struck in the fight entitled them to an extra bottle in the barrack-room. On duty discipline--off duty dissipation--seems to have been the motto of these gentlemen; and if it be the case that they occasionally forgot the former part of their device it on the other hand is no where upon record that they were oblivious of its latter portion. Fighting hard and drinking hard living hard and dying hard the bravest men and most desperate debauchees of all countries have worn the uniform of guardsmen. Our old friend M. Alexandre Dumas who if we may believe one of his biographers passes twelve hours a-day in driving a goosequill for the entertainment and particular edification of his countrymen found himself one fine morning desperately at a loss for something to write about. He is perhaps not the first writer of fiction who has been in a like predicament; and even if he were it would be neither wonderful nor unpardonable seeing that his average rate of production is about three volumes per month. There is a limit to all things even to the imagination of a French romance writer; and M. Dumas without exception the most prolific of modern scribblers was for once hard up for a subject. _L'hôpital n'est pas pour les chiens_ says the French proverb. It occurred to M. Dumas that the league or two of books in the Bibliothèque Royale were not placed there for the mere purpose of astonishing provincials or causing English tourists to stare and lift up their hands in admiration; but that one of the objects of their preservation might well be that they should afford suggestions to any distinguished _littérateur_ who happened to be like himself in want of an idea. Emerging therefore from his comfortable abode in the Chaussée d'Antin he turned his steps in the direction of the royal library and was soon up to his ears in dusty tomes and jaundiced parchments. After much research he discovered a folio manuscript numbered as he tells us in his preface 4772 or 4773 and purporting to be a memoir by a certain Count de la Fère of events that occurred in France towards the latter part of the reign of Louis the Thirteenth. Upon perusal he found this MS. so interesting that he applied for and obtained permission to publish it; and the memoir in question saw the light under the title of _Les Trois Mousquetaires_. The piquant and interesting matter contained in this book caused it to be much read and numerous persons were curious to see the original manuscript. To their infinite surprise however they could obtain no account whatever of such a document; and what was still more provoking the librarians seemed to look upon them as insane when they asked for it. There was much running up and down the library stairs much mounting upon step-ladders and tumbling of paper and parchment much grumbling of puzzled librarians and disappointed applicants until at last the most obstinate became convinced that the aforesaid MS. had no existence save in the imagination of M. Dumas who had as it is vulgarly styled ""taken a rise"" out of the public. In the spring of the year 1625 a young Gascon gentleman named D'Artagnan left his home to seek fortune at Paris. He was mounted on an ill-looking cob some fourteen years of age--that is to say within four years as old as its rider; the sword which his father buckled on him at parting was more remarkable for its length than its elegance; his purse contained fifteen crowns and his valise a couple of shirts. To compensate for this meagre equipment he rode like a Tartar and fenced like a St George; and was moreover possessed of three qualifications invaluable to a man who has his way to make in the world--a clear head a light heart and a courage that nothing could daunt. One thing more he had; a letter of recommendation from his father to Monsieur de Treville captain of the mousquetaires or body-guards of his Majesty Louis the Thirteenth. Nearly the last words of the worthy old Gascon who was compelled by his poverty to send his son forth into the world thus slenderly provided were an injunction to honour the King and Cardinal Richelieu then in the zenith of his power and to fight as often as he could get an opportunity. With such counsels yet ringing in his ears it is not surprising that before reaching Paris young D'Artagnan gets into a very pretty quarrel against overpowering odds
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is somewhat maltreated and while senseless from the blows he has received has his letter stolen from him by an emissary of the Cardinal among whose political enemies M. de Treville stands in the foremost rank. The young adventurer however consoles himself for his loss shakes his feathers and arrives at Paris without further accident. Before entering the capital he disposes of his horse of whose uncouth appearance he is heartily ashamed; and after improving his toilet as well as his scanty wardrobe will allow he proceeds to the hotel of Monsieur de Treville where he falls in with the three mousquetaires who give a title to the book in which however D'Artagnan plays the most conspicuous and important part. He finds the hotel Treville throned with applicants for an audience petitioners mousquetaires and lackeys bearing letters from persons of the first importance. He sends in his name and after some delay is admitted. Here is M. Dumas' account of the interview. ""Monsieur de Treville was that day in a particularly bad humour; nevertheless he returned D'Artagnan's profound bow with a polite inclination of the head and smiled at the strong Gascon accent in which the young man uttered his compliments. The sound recalled to his mind his own youth and his native country two things of which the recollection is apt to make most men smile. He then waved his hand to D'Artagnan as if requesting him to have a moment's patience and approaching the door leading to the anteroom he called out in an imperious and angry tone-- ""'Athos! Porthos! Aramis!' ""Two mousquetaires who had already attracted D'Artagnan's attention left the groups of which they formed a part and entered the audience chamber of which the door was immediately closed behind them. ""There was a remarkable contrast in the appearance of these two guardsmen. One was a man of gigantic stature loud-voiced and of stern and haughty countenance; the other on the contrary was of gentle and _naïve_ physiognomy with smooth rosy cheeks a soft expression in his black eye a delicate mustache on his upper lip white hands and a voice and smile remarkable for their mildness. The bearing of these two gentlemen upon entering the presence of their captain showed a happy mixture of submission and dignity which excited the admiration of D'Artagnan who was already disposed to look upon the mousquetaires as demigods and upon their chief as an Olympic Jupiter armed with all his thunders. ""Monsieur de Treville took two or three turns up and down the apartment silent and with a contracted brow passing each time before Porthos and Aramis who remained mute and immoveable as if upon the parade ground. Suddenly he stopped and measured them from head to foot with an angry glance. ""'Do you know what the King told me gentlemen and that no longer ago than yesternight? Do you know I say what his Majesty told me?' ""'No ' replied the two guardsmen after a moment's silence. 'No sir we do not know it.' ""'But I hope you will do us the honour to inform us ' said Aramis in his most polite tone and with his most graceful bow. ""'He told me that henceforward he would recruit his mousquetaires from among the guards of Monsieur le Cardinal.' ""'Among the guards of Monsieur le Cardinal! And why so?' demanded Porthos abruptly. ""'Because he finds that his own sour wine requires to be improved by the admixture of some more generous liquor.' ""The two guardsmen coloured up to the eyes. D'Artagnan felt uncertain whether he was standing on his head or his heels. ""'Yes ' continued Monsieur de Treville with increased vivacity 'and his Majesty is right; for by my honour the mousquetaires cut a sorry figure at the court! Monsieur le Cardinal was relating yesterday at the King's card-table in a tone of condolence that displeased me no little how those infernal mousquetaires those _sabreurs_ as he ironically called them had forgotten themselves over their bottle at a tavern in the Rue Ferou and how a patrol of his guards had found it necessary to arrest them. I thought he was going to laugh in my face as he said the words looking at me all the time with his tiger-cat eyes. _Morbleu!_ you ought to know something about it. You were amongst them; the cardinal named you. Mousquetaires indeed who allow themselves to be arrested! But it is my fault for not choosing my men better. What the devil possessed you Aramis to ask me for a guardsman's uniform when a priest's surplice would have fitted you better? And you Porthos what is the use of your wearing that magnificent embroidered sword-belt if the weapon it supports is of such small service to you? And Athos I do not see Athos. Where is he?' ""'Sir ' replied Aramis gravely 'he is ill--very ill.' ""'Ill say you? And of what disease?' ""'It is feared that it is the small-pox sir ' replied Porthos who was desirous of putting in a word. 'It would be a great pity for it would assuredly spoil his appearance.' ""'The small-pox! A fine story indeed! The small-pox at his age! Not so! But wounded I suppose--killed perhaps. _Sangdieu!_ Messieurs les Mousquetaires I insist upon your ceasing to frequent taverns and places of bad repute. I will have no more brawling and sword-playing in the public streets. I will not have my regiment made a laughing-stock to the Cardinal's guards who are brave fellows prudent and quiet--who do not get themselves into trouble and if they did would not allow themselves to be arrested. Not they! They would sooner die upon the spot than recede an inch. It is only the King's mousquetaires who run away or are taken prisoners.' ""Porthos and Aramis trembled with rage. They would willingly have strangled their chief if they had not felt that it was the great affection he bore them that induced him to speak thus harshly. They bit their lips till the blood came and clutched the hilts of their swords in silent fury. Several of the guardsmen in the anteroom who had heard Monsieur de Treville's summons to Athos Porthos and Aramis and suspected what was going on had applied their ears to the tapestry and lost not a word of their captain's reproaches which they repeated to those around them who in their turn repeated them to their comrades on the staircase and in the courtyard. In an instant from the anteroom to the street all was commotion. ""'Ha! his Majesty's mousquetaires allow themselves to be arrested by the Cardinal's guards!' continued Monsieur de Treville who was as furious as his soldiers. 'Aha! sirs six of his Eminence's guards arrest six of the King's! _Morbleu!_ I have made up my mind what to do. I will go at once to the Louvre resign my post as captain of mousquetaires and solicit a lieutenancy in the Cardinal's guards; and if I am refused _morbleu!_ I will turn priest!' ""At these words the murmur outside the audience chamber became an explosion. On all sides oaths and blasphemies were resounding. D'Artagnan looked about for a place to hide himself. He felt a strong inclination to get under the table. ""'Well captain ' said Porthos who was completely beside himself with rage and vexation 'the truth is that we were six against six; but they attacked us treacherously; and before we could draw a sword two of us were dead men and Athos desperately wounded and equally useless. You know Athos captain; well twice he tried to get up and twice he fell down again. Nevertheless we did not yield ourselves prisoners; we were taken off by main force and on the way to the guard-house we managed to break away from them. As to Athos they thought him dead and left him on the ground. That is the real truth of the matter. And what then captain! One cannot win every battle. The great Pompey lost that of Pharsalia and Francis I. who from what I have heard was no fool in the fighting way got roughly handled at Pavia.' ""'And I have the honour to assure you sir ' said Aramis 'that I killed one of the guards with his own sword for mine was broken at the first onset.' ""'I did not know that ' said Treville in a more gentle tone. 'I see that the Cardinal exaggerated matters.' ""'But for heaven's sake sir ' continued Aramis encouraged by the softened manner of his commander 'for heaven's sake do not mention that Athos is wounded: he would be in despair if the King heard of it; and as the wound is very serious having passed through the shoulder and entered the breast it is to be feared....' ""At this moment the tapestry that covered the door was raised and the head of a man of noble aspect and handsome features but fearfully pale appeared below the fringe. ""'Athos!' exclaimed the two guardsmen. ""'Athos!' repeated Monsieur de Treville himself. ""You asked for me sir ' said Athos to Monsieur de Treville in a calm but enfeebled voice--'my comrades told me that you asked for me and I hastened to obey your summons.' ""And so saying the mousquetaire entered the room with a tolerably firm step in full uniform and belted as usual. Monsieur de Treville touched to the soul by this proof of courage sprang to meet him. ""'I was telling these gentlemen ' said he 'that I forbid my mousquetaires to expose their lives without necessity; that brave men are very dear to the King and his Majesty knows that his mousquetaires are the bravest men upon the face of the earth. Your hand Athos!' ""And without waiting for the new comer to hold out his right hand Monsieur de Treville seized and pressed it energetically not observing that Athos in spite of his command over himself writhed with pain and grew each moment paler than before. The room-door had remained half open and a loud murmur of satisfaction from without replied to the words addressed to Athos by Monsieur de Treville. The heads of two or three mousquetaires who forgot themselves in the enthusiasm of the moment appeared at the opening of the tapestry. Doubtless Monsieur de Treville was about to check sharply this infraction of the laws of etiquette when he suddenly felt the hand of Athos contract in his and looking at the guardsman he saw that he was going to faint. At the same moment Athos who had summoned all his energies to struggle against the sufferings he endured was overcome by the torture of his wound and fell senseless to the ground. ""'A surgeon!' cried Monsieur de Treville. 'My surgeon--the King's--the best! A surgeon! or _sangdieu!_ my brave Athos will die!'"" The swoon of Athos had merely been occasioned by loss of blood. The surgeon declares there is no danger and D'Artagnan who has stood his ground with true Gascon tenacity at length obtains an audience. The loss of his letter of recommendation now proves a great disadvantage to him. In those days of court intrigue and espionage men were naturally suspicious of each other and the mingled _naïveté_ and shrewdness of the young Béarnais are causes for Monsieur de Treville at first suspecting him of being a spy of the Cardinal's. His suspicions however are wearing off and he is disposed to be useful to D'Artagnan although he cannot admit him into the mousquetaires--a noviciate of two years in some other regiment being the indispensable condition of admission into that favoured corps--when D'Artagnan happening to look out of the window starts reddens with anger and rushes to the door. He has recognised in a passer-by the person who had stolen his letter; and leaves Monsieur de Treville in doubt whether he has to do with a madman or with an emissary of the Cardinal's who fearing himself suspected takes this pretext for effecting a retreat. In his hurry to leave the hotel and pursue his robber D'Artagnan gets into all sorts of scrapes. On the landing-place he runs against Athos who is returning home after having his wound dressed. Some hasty words pass a challenge is the result and rendezvous is taken for noon in a field near the Carmelite convent then a favourite duelling ground. In the gateway of the courtyard Porthos is talking with one of his comrades and D'Artagnan in trying to pass between them gets entangled in the velvet cloak of the former and discovers what the guardsman had been most anxious to conceal that the front only of his embroidered shoulder-belt was gold and the back mere leather. Porthos not having sufficient pistoles to purchase a whole belt had gratified his vanity with half a one and wore his cloak to conceal the deficiency. The young Gascon finds himself with a second duel on his hands and sets himself down as a dead man. Meantime his robber has disappeared and as D'Artagnan is proceeding in the direction of his lodging he encounters Aramis standing in the middle of the street with some other gentlemen. Furious with himself for the follies he has been committing D'Artagnan has made a resolution to be all things to all men at least for the hour or two that he still has to live; and observing that Aramis has dropped a handkerchief and placed his foot upon it he hastens to drag it from under his boot and present it to him with a most gracious bow and smile. A coronet and cipher on the embroidered cambric attract notice and draw down a shower of raillery upon the head of the mousquetaire who in order to shield the honour of a lady is compelled to deny that the handkerchief is his. His companions walk away and Aramis reproaches D'Artagnan with his officiousness. The Gascon blood gets up good resolutions are forgotten and a third rendezvous is the result. M. Dumas is never more at home than in the description of duels. Himself an excellent swordsman he luxuriates and excels in the description of points and parries cartes and tierces and of the vigorous estocades which his heroes administer to each other. One of the good chapters of the book--and there are many such--is the one in which D'Artagnan encounters the three redoubtable champions whom he has so heedlessly provoked. We will endeavour by abridgement to lay it before our readers. ""D'Artagnan knew nobody at Paris and betook himself therefore to his first rendezvous without seconds intending to content himself with those whom his adversary should bring. Moreover his firm intention was to make all reasonable apologies to Athos fearing that there would result from this duel the usual consequence of an encounter between a young and vigorous man and a wounded and feeble one--if the former is conquered his antagonist's triumph is doubled; and if he conquers he is accused of taking an advantage or of being brave at small risk. Besides this either we have been unsuccessful in the exposition of our young adventurer's character or the reader will have already perceived that D'Artagnan was no ordinary man. Thus although he repeated to himself that his death was inevitable he by no means made up his mind to fall an easy sacrifice as one less cool and courageous than himself might perhaps have done. He reflected on the different characters of the three men with whom he had to fight and began to think that his case was not so desperate as it might have been. He hoped by the candid and loyal apology which he intended to offer to make himself a friend of Athos whose austere mien and noble air pleased him greatly. He flattered himself that he should be able to intimidate Porthos by the affair of the shoulder-belt which he could if not killed upon the spot relate to every body and which would cover the giant with ridicule. Finally he did not feel much afraid of Aramis and he resolved if he lived long enough either to kill him or at least to administer to him a wound in the face that would considerably impair the beauty of which he was evidently so proud. ""When D'Artagnan arrived in sight of the waste land adjoining the convent of barefooted Carmelites noon was striking and Athos was already on the ground. The guardsman who still suffered cruelly from his wound was seated on a post and awaiting his adversary with the calm countenance and dignified air that never abandoned him. Upon D'Artagnan's appearance he rose courteously and advanced a few steps to meet him. Our Gascon on his side made his approach hat in hand the plume trailing on the earth. ""'Sir ' said Athos 'I have given notice to two gentlemen to act as my seconds but they are not come. I am surprised at it for they are usually punctual.' ""'For my part sir ' returned D'Artagnan 'I have no seconds. I arrived in Paris yesterday and know no one but Monsieur de Treville to whom I was recommended by my father who has the honour to be a friend of his.' ""Athos glanced at the beardless chin and youthful mien of his adversary and seemed to reflect for a moment. ""'_Ah ça_!' said he at last speaking half to himself and half to D'Artagnan; '_ah ça_! but if I kill you it will be something very like child-murder.' ""'Not exactly sir ' replied D'Artagnan with a bow that was not without its dignity; 'not exactly sir since you do me the honour to meet me with a wound by which you must be greatly inconvenienced.' ""Inconvenienced certainly and you hurt me terribly I must acknowledge when you ran against me just now; but I will use my left hand according to my custom in such circumstances. Do not suppose on that account that I am sparing you; I fight decently with both hands and a left-handed swordsman is an awkward antagonist when one is not prepared for him. I am sorry I did not tell you of it sooner that you might have got your hand in accordingly.' ""'Truly sir ' said D'Artagnan with another bow 'I know not how to express my gratitude for such courtesy.' ""'You are too obliging to say so ' returned Athos with his princely air; 'let us talk of something else if not disagreeable to you. Ah _sangbleu_! you hurt me terribly! My shoulder burns.' ""'If you would permit me ' said D'Artagnan timidly. ""'What then sir?' ""'I have a balm that is wonderfully efficacious in the cure of wounds. I hold the recipe from my mother and have myself experienced its good effects.' ""'Well?' ""'Well I am sure that in less than three days it would heal your wound; and at the end of that time sir it would still be a great honour for me to meet you.' ""D'Artagnan said these words with a simplicity that did credit to his natural courtesy of feeling at the same time that it could not give rise to the slightest doubt of his courage. ""'_Pardieu_ sir!' said Athos 'your proposition pleases me not that I can accept it but because it is that of a chivalrous gentleman. It is thus that spoke and acted those heroes of Charlemagne's days on whom every cavalier should strive to model himself. Unfortunately we do not live in the times of the great emperor but in those of Cardinal Richelieu; and however well we might keep our secret it would be known before three days had elapsed that we intended to fight and our duel would be prevented. _Ah ça_! where can those idlers be?' ""'If you are in haste sir ' resumed D'Artagnan with the same simplicity with which he had a moment before proposed to put off the duel for three days--'if you are pressed for time and that it pleases you to finish with me at once let me beg of you to do so.' ""'Another proposal that I like ' said Athos with an approving nod of the head; 'it is that of a man lacking neither wit nor valour. Sir I like men of your stamp; and I see that if we do not kill one another I shall hereafter have much pleasure in your society. But let us wait for these gentlemen I beg of you. I have plenty of time and it will be more according to rule. Ha! here comes one of them.' ""At that moment the gigantic form of Porthos appeared at the extremity of the Rue Vaugirard. ""'What!' cried D'Artagnan 'Monsieur Porthos is one of your seconds?' ""'Yes; is it disagreeable to you?' ""'By no means.' ""'And here is the other.' ""D'Artagnan turned his head and recognised Aramis. ""'What!' he exclaimed in still greater astonishment 'Monsieur Aramis is the other?' ""'Certainly; do you not know that we are never seen asunder and are known in court camp and city as Athos Porthos and Aramis or the three inseparables? But you are just arrived from Gascony which accounts for your being unacquainted with these circumstances.' ""Meanwhile Porthos who had abandoned his cloak and changed his shoulder-belt approached nodded to Athos but on beholding D'Artagnan remained struck with astonishment. ""'This is the gentleman I am to fight with ' said Athos indicating D'Artagnan with his hand at the same time bowing to him. ""'It is with him that I am to fight ' said Porthos. ""'Not till one o'clock ' said D'Artagnan. ""'And I also ' said Aramis who just then came up. ""'Our appointment was for two o'clock ' said D'Artagnan with perfect composure. ""'What are you going to fight about Athos?' asked Aramis. ""'Faith I can hardly tell you. He hurt my shoulder. And you Porthos?' ""'I fight because I am so minded ' replied Porthos colouring. ""Athos whom nothing escaped saw a slight smile curling D'Artagnan's lip. ""'We had a dispute about dress ' said the young Gascon. ""'And you Aramis?' asked Athos. ""'A theological difference ' replied Aramis making a sign to D'Artagnan that he wished the cause of their duel to remain a secret. ""'Indeed!' said Athos looking at D'Artagnan. ""'Yes a point of St Augustin on which we are not agreed ' said the latter. ""'Decidedly he is a man of wit and sense ' muttered Athos to himself. ""'And now that you are all assembled gentlemen ' said D'Artagnan 'allow me to apologise to you.' ""At the word apologise a cloud passed across the features of Athos Porthos smiled contemptuously Aramis made a negative sign. ""'You do not understand me gentlemen ' said D'Artagnan raising his head proudly. 'I only apologise in case I should not be able to pay my debt to all of you; for Monsieur Athos has the right to kill me the first which greatly diminishes the value of my debt to you Monsieur Porthos and renders that to Monsieur Aramis nearly worthless. And now gentlemen I say again accept my apologies but on that account only--and to work!' ""And so saying he drew his sword with the most fearless and gallant mien possible to be seen. His blood was up and at that moment he would have fought not only Athos Porthos and Aramis but the whole regiment of mousquetaires. ""'When you please sir ' said Athos putting himself on guard. ""'I was waiting your orders ' returned D'Artagnan. ""But the two rapiers had scarcely clashed together when five of the Cardinal's guards commanded by Monsieur de Jussac appeared from behind a corner of the convent. ""'The Cardinal's guards!' exclaimed Porthos and Aramis. 'Sheath your swords gentlemen!' ""But it was too late. The combatants had been seen in an attitude that left no doubt as to their pugnacious intentions. ""'Hola!' cried Jussac advancing towards them followed by his men. 'Hola mousquetaires! fighting here? And the edicts. We have forgotten them eh?' ""'Your generosity is really remarkable gentlemen of the guards ' said Athos bitterly for Jussac had been one of the aggressors in the recent affray. 'I promise you that if we saw you fighting we would not interrupt you. Leave us alone then and you will have your amusement for nothing.' ""'Gentlemen ' said Jussac 'I am grieved to tell you that the thing is impossible. Duty before every thing. Be pleased to sheath your swords and follow us.' ""'Sir ' replied Aramis parodying Jussac's manner 'we should have the greatest pleasure in accepting your polite invitation if it depended upon us so to do but unfortunately the thing is impossible; Monsieur de Treville has forbidden it. Move on therefore; it is the best thing you can do.' ""This bantering exasperated Jussac. 'We will charge you ' said he 'if you disobey.' ""'They are five ' said Athos in a low voice 'and we are but three; we shall be beaten again and we must die here; for I swear not to reappear before the captain if conquered.' ""Athos Porthos and Aramis drew closer to each other. Jussac was arranging his men in line. This single moment of delay was sufficient for D'Artagnan to make up his mind; it was one of those moments that decide a man's whole life. The choice was to be made between King and Cardinal and once made it must be persevered in. If he fought he disobeyed the law risked his head and made an enemy of a minister more powerful than the king himself. All these considerations passed like lightning through the mind of the young Gascon; but be it said to his honour he did not hesitate an instant. Turning towards Athos and his friends. ""'Gentlemen ' said he 'allow me to amend the words last spoken. You said you were only three but to my thinking we are four.' ""'But you are not one of us ' said Porthos. ""'True ' replied D'Artagnan 'I have not the coat; but I have the spirit. In my heart I am a mousquetaire--I feel it and that leads me on.' ""'You may retire young man ' cried Jussac who doubtless guessed D'Artagnan's intentions by his gestures and the expression of his face. 'You may retire we permit it. Be-gone then and quickly.' ""D'Artagnan did not stir. ""'Decidedly you are a fine fellow ' said Athos pressing the young man's hand. ""But the three mousquetaires thought of D'Artagnan's youth and distrusted his inexperience. ""'We should only be three of whom one wounded and a child ' said Athos; 'but they will say all the same that there were four of us.' ""'Gentlemen ' said D'Artagnan 'only try me and I swear by my honour that if we are conquered I will not leave the ground alive.' ""'What is your name my brave fellow?' said Athos. ""'D'Artagnan sir.' ""'Well then Athos Porthos Aramis and D'Artagnan forwards!' cried Athos. ""'What do you decide to do?' cried Jussac. ""'We are going to have the honour of charging you ' said Aramis raising his hat with one hand and drawing his sword with the other. ""And the nine combatants precipitated themselves on each other with a fury that did not exclude a certain degree of method. Athos took one Cahusac a favourite of the Cardinal's; Porthos had Bicarat; and Aramis found himself opposed to two adversaries. As to D'Artagnan he encountered Jussac himself. ""The heart of the young Gascon beat high not with fear there was no shadow of it but with emulation; he fought like an enraged tiger turning about his enemy changing each moment his ground and his guard. Jussac was one of the good blades of the day and had had much practice; but he had nevertheless all the difficulty in the world to defend himself against a supple and active antagonist who was constantly deviating from the received rules of fencing attacking him on all sides at once and parrying at the same time like a man who had the greatest regard for his epidermis. At last Jussac lost patience. Furious at being thus kept at bay by one whom he looked upon as a child his _sang-froid_ abandoned him and he began to commit blunders. D'Artagnan who although lacking practice was perfect in theory redoubled his agility. Jussac with the design of finishing him at once delivered a terrible thrust which D'Artagnan parried adroitly and before his opponent could raise himself he glided like a serpent under his guard and passed his sword through his body. Jussac fell heavily to the earth. ""D'Artagnan now cast an uneasy and rapid glance over the field of battle. Aramis had already killed one of his adversaries. The other gave him plenty to do but Aramis was able to take care of himself. Bicarat and Porthos were wounded; Porthos in the arm and Bicarat in the thigh. But neither wound was serious and the sight of their blood made them fight all the better. There was no need to interfere there. Athos wounded again by Cahusac was growing each moment paler but he did not give way an inch. He had changed his sword to his left hand. D'Artagnan caught his eye as he was looking to see who most required his aid. The look of the wounded mousquetaire was most eloquent; he would have died sooner than call for assistance but his glance said how much he stood in need of it. With a single bound D'Artagnan was upon Cahusac's flank. ""'Have a care sir guardsman ' cried he 'or I slay you on the spot.' ""Cahusac turned to face his new opponent. It was high time for Athos who had only been sustained by his extreme courage sank upon one knee. ""'_Sangdieu!_' cried he to D'Artagnan 'do not kill him young man I beg of you; I have an old quarrel to terminate with him when my wound is healed. Disarm him only--So--Well done!' ""This last exclamation was caused by Cahusac's sword which flew from his hand to a distance of twenty paces. D'Artagnan and Cahusac rushed to pick it up but D'Artagnan reached it first and put his foot upon it. Cahusac ran to the guardsman whom Aramis had killed took his rapier and was returning to D'Artagnan; but on his road he met Athos who had taken breath during the moment's respite which the latter had procured him and now recommenced the fight fearing that the Gascon would kill his enemy. D'Artagnan saw that he should disoblige him by again interfering. A few seconds later Cahusac fell with a wound through the throat. At the same moment Aramis placed his sword's point on the breast of his prostrate adversary and forced him to sue for mercy. ""Porthos and Bicarat alone remained. Porthos while fighting indulged in all sorts of fanfarronades asking Bicarat what time of day it was and complimenting him on the company which his brother had just attained in the regiment of Navarre. In spite of his jests however he did not gain ground. Bicarat was a stubborn and skilful opponent. It was time to bring matters to a conclusion before some patrol should arrive and take both royalists and cardinalists into custody. Athos Aramis and D'Artagnan surrounded Bicarat and summoned him to surrender. Although alone against four and with a wound through the thigh he would not give in though Jussac who had raised himself on his elbow called out to him to yield. Bicarat was a Gascon like D'Artagnan; he only laughed and pretended not to hear at the same time pointing to the ground at his feet. 'Here will die Bicarat ' said he 'the last of those who are with him.' ""'But they are four against you ' cried Jussac; 'I order you to desist.' ""'Ah if you order me it is another affair!' said Bicarat; 'you are my superior and I must obey.' ""And giving a spring backwards he broke his sword across his knee in order not to yield it up threw the pieces over the convent wall and crossing his arms whistled a Cardinalist air. ""Courage is always respected even in an enemy. The mousquetaires saluted Bicarat with their swords and returned them to their scabbards. D'Artagnan did the same and assisted by Bicarat he carried under the convent porch Jussac Cahusac and that one of Aramis's adversaries who was only wounded. The other as already observed was dead. They then rang the bell and left the ground; the mousquetaires and D'Artagnan intoxicated with joy carrying away four swords out of five and taking the direction of Monsieur de Treville's hotel. Every mousquetaire whom they met and informed of what had happened turned back and accompanied them; so that at last their march was like a triumphal procession. D'Artagnan was beside himself with delight; he walked between Athos and Porthos holding an arm of each. ""'If I am not yet a mousquetaire ' said he to his new friends as they crossed the threshold of the Hotel Treville 'I may at least say that I am received apprentice.'"" The result of this affair is to procure D'Artagnan the favour of Monsieur de Treville and the King--the latter of whom dislikes the Cardinal in secret nearly as much as he fears him. The young Gascon has an audience of Louis the Just who recruits his finances by the present of a handful of pistoles; and a few days later he is appointed to a cadetship in the company of guards of the Chevalier des Essarts a brother-in-law of Treville. According to the singular ideas of those days there was nothing degrading to a gentleman in receiving money from the king's hand. D'Artagnan therefore pockets the pistoles with many thanks and takes an early opportunity of dividing them with his friends with the mythological names Messieurs Athos Porthos and Aramis who according to the custom of mousquetaires have more gold upon their coats than in their purses. The courage and good qualities of the Gascon have won the hearts of the three guardsmen and he is admitted to make a fourth in their brotherhood of which the motto is ""_Un pour tous et tous pour un_."" All is in common amongst them--pleasures perils pistoles. The characters of the three mousquetaires are well sketched and sustained and illustrate admirably the vices virtues and propensities of their time and station. Aramis who was originally intended for the church has relinquished the black coat of an abbé in order to fight a nobleman who had insulted him. He still however persists in conside
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ing himself as a guardsman only _pro tempore_; and whenever fortune or his mistress frowns upon him he declares his intention of abandoning his sinful mode of life and throwing himself into the arms of mother church. Vanity is the failing of Porthos who shines more by his imposing appearance brilliant attire and bull-dog courage than by any qualities of the head. To Athos who is the most interesting of the three a certain mystery is attached which however is seen through early in the book. He is a man of high birth princely manners and chivalrous feeling but whose stormy life has cast a strong tinge of melancholy over his character and who now finds his sole consolation in the wine-cup. It must not be therefore supposed that Athos is a sot a wallower in wine or a haunter of tavern orgies. He drinks it is true enough to prostrate any three ordinary men; but he takes his liquor as he does every thing else so much like a gentleman and moreover there is so much self-devotion and generosity in his character such dignity of manner and rectitude of feeling--his temper so even and kindly--his courage so heroic--that he is unquestionably the most amiable and interesting of the _dramatis personæ_ preferable to D'Artagnan to whom premature worldly wisdom gives a hardness bordering upon egotism. While Aramis is sighing sonnets to his mistress and Porthos parading on the crown of the causeway in all the glory of gold lace and embroidery Athos sits tranquilly at home and says like Gregory in the Deserter-- ""J'aime mieux boire."" His real name--for Athos Porthos and Aramis are merely assumed ones--is known only to the King and to Monsieur de Treville. It would be difficult within the limits of this paper to give an idea of the entire plot of the _Three Mousquetaires_ which is in fact less a tale with a regular intrigue and _dénouement_ than a narrative of adventures and incidents extending over a period of nearly three years. D'Artagnan whose enterprising character and Gascon acuteness qualify him admirably to take a part in the court intrigues of the time soon finds himself almost at open war with the Cardinal and engaged in serving the interests of Louis the Thirteenth's unhappy queen Anne of Austria who by rejecting the suit of the scarlet duke--as the mousquetaires irreverently style the Cardinal Duke of Richelieu--has drawn upon herself the deadly hatred of that omnipotent personage. The Duke of Buckingham who is madly in love with the queen visits Paris in disguise and obtains an interview with her. At parting he implores her to give him some trifle which he may preserve as a _souvenir_ of their attachment; and Anne of Austria gives him the first thing that comes to hand which happens to be a jewel-case containing twelve diamond clasps or _ferrets_ that she has lately received from the King. The Cardinal omnipresent by his spies learns this; manages adroitly to rouse the king's jealousy; and prevails on him to give a ball at which the queen is desired to appear wearing the ferrets in question. Anne of Austria is in despair. To obtain the restitution of the jewels within the eight days that have to elapse before the one fixed for the ball appears impossible. Buckingham is in England; if she writes her letter will be intercepted by the Cardinal; if she sends her messenger will be stopped. Nothing could at that time be done in France without coming to the knowledge of Richelieu. In her extremity she is induced to confide in one of her attendants with whom D'Artagnan is in love; and a few hours later the intrepid Gascon and his three inseparable friends set out for England provided with a leave of absence from Monsieur de Treville and attended by their four lackeys. D'Artagnan alone knows the object of their journey; but the others confiding implicitly in his judgment and bound moreover by the rules of their association ask no questions and willingly brave the dangers that the Cardinal strews in their path. It is agreed that in case of rencontres by the way the dead or wounded are to be left to their fate and the others are to push on without an instant's delay. Should D'Artagnan fall the survivors are to take from his pocket the queen's letter to Buckingham and continue their route. The adventurers are not allowed to proceed far without molestation. They stop to breakfast and a stranger picks a quarrel with Porthos who stays behind to fight him and does not rejoin them. Near Beauvais they receive a volley from some pretended labourers; D'Artagnan's hat is knocked off by a ball; a lackey is left in the road and Aramis is badly wounded and obliged to remain at the next town. D'Artagnan Athos and their two attendants reach Amiens at midnight and stop to sleep at the sign of the Golden Lily. Here various suspicious incidents occur and in the morning their horses are found to be dead-lame and unable to proceed. One that might still have gone on has been bled by mistake. ""All these accidents succeeding each other began to alarm our travellers; they might be the result of chance but they were more probably that of an organized plot. Athos and D'Artagnan left their room while Planchet (D'Artagnan's groom) went to enquire whether there were any horses to be bought in the neighbourhood. At the door were standing two vigorous animals saddled and bridled and which would have suited the guardsmen well. Planchet asked to whom they belonged and was told that their masters had passed the night at the inn and were then paying their score previous to departure. Athos went to do the same while D'Artagnan and Planchet remained at the street door. ""The host was in a small back room which Athos was requested to enter. He did so without suspicion and took out some pistoles to pay. The innkeeper who was seated at a desk of which one of the drawers was half-open took the money turned it about and examined it on all sides and suddenly exclaiming that it was false declared that he would have Athos and his companion arrested as coiners. ""'Scoundrel!' cried Athos advancing towards him; 'I will cut your ears off for your insolence.' ""But the man stooped down took a brace of pistols out of the open drawer and pointing them at Athos called loudly for help. On the instant four armed men entered by a side-door and attacked Athos. ""'I am taken!' cried the mousquetaire with all the power of his lungs. 'To horse D'Artagnan! Spur! spur!' ""And he fired both his pistols. D'Artagnan and Planchet untied the two horses that were waiting at the door sprang upon their backs and set off full gallop. ""By dint of spurring and precaution D'Artagnan and his follower reach Calais without further accident; the horse of the former falling dead within a hundred yards of the town. They hasten to the port and find themselves close to a gentleman and his servant dusty and travel-stained who are enquiring for a vessel to take them to England. The master of a sloop that is ready to sail informs them that an order had arrived that very morning to prevent any ship from leaving the harbour without an express permission from the Cardinal. ""'I have that permission ' said the gentleman taking a paper from his pocket. ""'Very good!' said the sailor. 'Get it countersigned by the governor of the port and give me the preference.' ""'Where shall I find the governor?' ""'At his country-house a quarter of a league from the town. You see it yonder. A slated roof at the foot of a little hill.'"" The gentleman and his attendant take the direction of the governor's house. D'Artagnan follows them; picks a quarrel with the stranger who is a certain Count de Wardes an adherent of the Cardinal's wounds him desperately himself receiving a scratch takes the pass gets it countersigned and proceeds to England. The Duke of Buckingham is hunting at Windsor with the king; but the indefatigable Gascon follows him thither and delivers his letter. The duke hurries with him to London to give him the ferrets; but to his unspeakable consternation finds that two out of the twelve are missing. They had been cut from his dress by an emissary of the Cardinal's at a ball at Windsor Castle at which he had worn the queen's present. The ferrets are of immense value and difficult workmanship. Buckingham sends for his jeweller who demands eight days and three thousand pistoles to replace the missing ornaments. The duke locks him up in a room with his tools and a workman and allows him six thousand pistoles and thirty-six hours to complete then. The ferrets are ready within the prescribed period. Furnished with a password from the duke who has trusty agents in France D'Artagnan reaches Paris by a different road and without impediment arriving in time to save the queen who appears at the ball with her twelve ferrets to the vast discomfiture of the Cardinal. Meanwhile D'Artagnan's mistress had been spirited away by Richelieu and the young Gascon is in despair. He confides his misfortunes to Monsieur de Treville who promises to do what he can to find the lady and advises D'Artagnan to leave Paris till the Cardinal's wrath is a little blown over. D'Artagnan takes his advice; bethinks him of the three mousquetaires and sets out to look for them. He finds Porthos and Aramis where he left them nearly recovered from their wounds; and proceeding to Amiens enters the hotel of the Golden Lily and confronts the host--his whip in his right hand his left on his sword-hilt and evidently meaning mischief. The innkeeper however turns out to be more an object of pity than blame. Previously to the arrival of D'Artagnan and Athos on their way to England he had received information from the authorities that a party of coiners disguised as guardsmen would arrive at his inn and that he was to take measures to arrest them. The six men who brought him these orders disguised themselves as servants and stable-boys and remained to assist in the capture. In the skirmish Athos shot two of them wounded a third cut the host across the face with the flat of his sword and retreated fighting to the cellar stairs. Entering the cellar he pulled the door to and barricaded it. His assailants left the house carrying off their killed and wounded; and when the innkeeper recovering a little from his alarm went to inform the governor of what had occurred the latter declared himself totally ignorant of the whole business denied that he had given orders to arrest any coiners and threatened to hang the unlucky host if he mixed up his name in the affair. ""'But Athos!' cried D'Artagnan losing all patience at the innkeeper's prolixity --'Athos what is become of him?' ""'I was eager to repair my wrongs towards the gentleman ' replied the innkeeper 'and hurried to the cellar to set him at liberty. But on my declaring what I came for he swore it was only a snare laid for him and insisted upon making his conditions before he came out. I told him very humbly--for I was aware of the scrape into which I had got myself by my violence towards one of the King's mousquetaires--that I was ready to submit to them.' ""'In the first place ' said he 'I must have my servant delivered to me fully armed.' ""His order was obeyed and Monsieur Grimaud was taken down to the cellar wounded as he was. His master received him barricaded the door again and bid us go to the devil. ""'But where is he?' cried D'Artagnan. 'Where is Athos?' ""'In the cellar sir.' ""'Scoundrel! you have kept him all this time in the cellar?' ""'Good heavens sir! _I_ keep him in the cellar! You do not know what he is doing there or you would not suppose it. If you can prevail upon him to come out I shall be grateful to you to the last day of my life; I will adore you as my guardian angel.' ""'I shall find him there then?' ""'Certainly you will sir--he won't come out. Every day we are obliged to hand him down bread at the end of a hay-fork and meat too when he asks for it. But alas! it is not of bread and meat that he makes the largest consumption. I tried once to enter the cellar with two of my servants and he put himself in a most terrible passion. I heard him and his lackey cocking their pistols and carbine; and when we asked what their intentions were your friend said that they had forty shots to fire and that they would fire every one before allowing us to enter the cellar. I then went to complain to the governor and he told me that I had only got what I deserved and that it would teach me to maltreat honourable gentlemen who used my house.' ""'So that since that time....' said D'Artagnan who could not help laughing at the pitiable countenance of the host. ""'Since that time sir ' continued the latter 'we lead the most wretched life imaginable; for you must know that all our provisions are in the cellar our wine in bottle and our wine in cask beer oil and spices hams and sausages; and as we cannot get at them we are unable to give food or drink to the travellers who alight here and our inn is losing all its custom. If your friend stops one week longer in my cellar I am a ruined man.' ""'And quite right that you should be scoundrel! It was easy to see by our appearance that we were men of quality and not coiners.' ""'Yes sir you are right ' replied poor Boniface. 'But only listen to him he is getting into a passion.' ""'Doubtless somebody has disturbed him ' said D'Artagnan. ""'We are obliged to disturb him ' cried the host; 'two English gentlemen have just arrived. The English as you know love good wine and these have asked for the best. My wife is gone to beg Monsieur Athos to let her in and he has no doubt refused as usual. Holy Virgin! What a racket he is making.' ""D'Artagnan rose from his seat and followed by the host and by Planchet with his cocked carbine took the direction of the cellar whence a tremendous noise was proceeding. The Englishmen were exasperated; they had just come off a long journey and were dying of hunger and thirst. ""'It is perfect tyranny ' cried they in very good French 'that this madman will not allow these good people the use of their wine. But we will break open the door and if he is too furious we will kill him.' ""'Not so fast gentlemen ' said D'Artagnan drawing his pistols from his belt. 'You will kill nobody if you please.' ""'Let them come ' said Athos in his usual calm voice from the other side of the door 'let them come in and we shall see.' ""Brave as they appeared to be the two Englishmen hesitated and looked at one another. One might almost have supposed that the cellar was garrisoned by one of those hungry ogres of the fairy tale whose cavern no one could enter with impunity. There was a moment's silence; but the Englishmen were ashamed to retreat and one of them descending the five or six steps leading to the cellar gave the door a kick that made it rattle on its hinges. ""'Planchet ' said D'Artagnan cocking his pistols 'you take the one at the bottom of the stairs; I will take the other. Since you are for a fight gentlemen you shall have a bellyfull.' ""'Is that D'Artagnan's voice?' cried Athos. ""'It is ' replied the Gascon. ""'Very good ' said Athos 'we will work them a little these door-breakers.' ""'A moment's patience Athos ' said D'Artagnan. 'Gentlemen ' he continued turning to the Englishmen 'you are between two fires. My servant and myself have three shots to fire you will receive as many from the cellar besides which we have got our swords with the use of which I can assure you my friend and myself are tolerably well acquainted. Allow me to arrange matters. I give you my word that you shall have some wine just now.' ""'If there is any left ' growled Athos in a tone of raillery. ""'What does he mean--if there is any left?' cried the host who felt a cold perspiration break out all over him. ""'Nonsense there will be some left ' replied D'Artagnan; 'two men cannot have drunk the whole cellar out.' ""The Englishmen sheathed their swords and D'Artagnan related to them the history of the imprisonment of Athos upon hearing which they greatly blamed the innkeeper. ""'Now gentlemen ' said D'Artagnan 'if you will be pleased to return to your apartment in ten minutes you shall have what you require.' ""The Englishmen bowed and retired. ""'I am alone my dear Athos ' said D'Artagnan.--'Open the door.' ""There was a great noise of fagots and beams falling down; the besieged was demolishing his counter-scarps and bastions. The next moment the door opened and the pale face of the mousquetaire appeared. D'Artagnan sprang forward and embraced him but when he tried to lead him out of the cellar he perceived that Athos staggered. ""'You are wounded?' cried he. ""'I! not the least ' was the reply. 'I am dead drunk that is all and never did any man better deserve to be so. Fore God! mine host I have drunk for my share at least one hundred and fifty bottles.' ""'Heaven have mercy on me!' cried the host. 'If the servant has drunk half as much as the master I am a ruined man.' ""'Grimaud knows his place too well to drink the same wine as his master; he has drunk from the cask. By-the-by I think he must have forgotten to put in the spigot--I hear a running.' ""D'Artagnan burst into a fit of laughter. The innkeeper was in a high fever. Just then Grimaud showed himself behind his master his carbine on his shoulder and his head shaking like that of the drunken satyr in some of Rubens' pictures. His clothes were smeared with an unctuous liquid which the host immediately recognized as his best olive oil. ""D'Artagnan and Athos now crossed the common room and installed themselves in the best apartment of the hotel; while the innkeeper and his wife lighted lamps and rushed into the cellar where a frightful spectacle awaited them. In rear of the fortifications in which Athos had made a breach for his exit and which were composed of fagots planks and empty casks arranged according to all the rules of strategy were numerous pools of oil and wine in which the bones of the hams that had been eaten were lying. In one corner was a pile of broken bottles and in another a huge cask of wine was just yielding up the last drops of its blood. Out of fifty large sausages that had been suspended to the beams of the roof ten only were remaining. The image of devastation and death as the ancient poet said reigned there as upon a field of battle."" With characteristic generosity and _insouciance_ Athos forgives the host and compensates him for the damage done to his property. The two guardsmen then sit down to drink and D'Artagnan tells his friend of the misfortune he has had in the loss of his mistress. ""'Your misfortune makes me laugh ' said Athos shrugging his shoulders. 'I wonder what you would say to a love story that I could tell you.' ""'Something that happened to yourself?' ""'Or to one of my friends; no matter.' ""'Tell it me.' ""'I would rather drink.' ""'You can do both.' ""'True ' said Athos filling his glass; 'the two things go well together.' ""The mousquetaire paused and seemed to be collecting his thoughts; and as he did so D'Artagnan observed that he grew each moment paler. He had reached that stage of intoxication at which ordinary drinkers fall under the table and sleep. Athos however did not do that; he dreamed aloud without sleeping. There was something frightful in this somnambulism of drunkenness. ""'One of my friends ' he began--'one of my friends mind you not myself ' interrupted he with a gloomy smile; 'a count of my province that is to say of Berri noble as a Dandolo or a Montmorency fell in love when twenty-five years of age with a young girl of seventeen beautiful as painters have depicted Venus. Joined to the _naïveté_ of her age she possessed the soul and feeling of a poet; she could not be said to please--she intoxicated all who approached her. She lived in a little village with her brother who was a priest. None knew who they were nor whence they came; but she was so beautiful and her brother so pious that none thought of asking. It was rumoured and believed that they were of good family. My friend who was lord of that country might have seduced the young girl or taken her by force as he chose; he was the master; who would have come to the assistance of two friendless strangers? Unfortunately he was an honest man and he married her. The fool-the idiot!' ""'Why a fool since he loved her?' asked D'Artagnan. ""'Patience ' said Athos. 'He conducted her to his castle and made her the first lady of the province; and to do her justice she knew perfectly how to support her rank.' ""'Well?' said D'Artagnan. ""'Well! one day she was out hunting with her husband ' continued Athos speaking in a low tone and very fast 'she was overcome by the heat and fell from her horse in a swoon; the count sprang to her assistance and as her clothes seemed to prevent her breathing he cut them open with his dagger and her shoulder was uncovered. Guess what she had upon her shoulder D'Artagnan?' said Athos with a strange wild laugh. ""'How can I tell?' said D'Artagnan. ""'A _fleur-de-lis_. She was branded!' ""And Athos emptied at a draught the cup that stood before him. ""'Horror!' exclaimed D'Artagnan. 'What do you tell me?' ""'The truth--the angel was a devil--the innocent young girl was a convict.' ""'And what did the count do?' ""'The count was a powerful nobleman; he had right of pit and halter upon his lands; he bared the shoulder of the countess tied her hands behind her back and hung her to a tree.' ""'Heavens! Athos! a murder!' cried D'Artagnan. ""'Yes a murder nothing more ' said Athos pale as death. 'But there is no wine--we are drinking nothing.' ""And Athos seized the last bottle by the neck put it to his mouth and emptied it as though it had been an ordinary glass."" This strange story that could hardly have proceeded from any but a French imagination is nevertheless very effective far more so in Monsieur Dumas' terse and pointed diction than in our imperfect translation. The dame with the fleur-de-lis on her shoulder is not dead but on the contrary married again and proves to be no other than an emissary of the Cardinal a certain Lady de Winter or Milady as M. Dumas persists in calling her. She it was who cut the diamonds off Buckingham's dress and informed the Cardinal of the same. Throughout the whole book she plays the part of a sort of Mephistopheles in petticoats doing evil for evil's sake; and finally when in prison in England gains over a fanatical young officer named Felton who is set to guard her and working on him by the power of her charms and an artfully devised story instigates him to the murder of Buckingham who is at Portsmouth fitting out an armament for the relief of La Rochelle then besieged by Richelieu. She escapes to France but there falls into the hands of her deadly enemy D'Artagnan and of her first husband Athos otherwise Count de la Fère. Her punishment is one of the last and most striking scenes in the book which concludes with the capture of La Rochelle leaving D'Artagnan a lieutenant of mousquetaires and to all appearance on the high-road to further preferment. Some account of his future fortune is promised us by Monsieur Dumas; and however alarming a continuation to a book in eight volumes may sound we cannot help wishing he may keep his promise. There is less occasion to be alarmed at the length of a six or eight volume book from his hands than at that of a three volume one from those of many other writers; and moreover one must take into account the ingenuity of French publishers who manage to have the type spread out over the largest possible amount of white paper. The system of putting little in a page and diminishing that little by the interpolation of huge and apparently objectless blank spaces has reached its height in Paris; and although an imposition on the public it perhaps renders a book lighter and pleasanter to read. Light reading and pleasant reading Monsieur Dumas' romance assuredly is; and we can wish our readers no better pastime during the long evenings of this wintry season than the perusal of the feats and fortunes of the _Trois Mousquetaires_. MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XV. ""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. Valenciennes was now captured. The sagacity of my friend the French engineer had not been deceived. The explosion of the three great mines an operation from its magnitude almost new to war and in its effects irresistible had thrown open the fortress. The garrison had done their work gallantly and the result was a capitulation hastened by the outcry of the famishing inhabitants. I hastened to the quarters of my regiment was received with all cordiality had the honour of an interview with the royal duke who at all times affable was now in peculiar good-humour and who led me into a long detail of such public opinions as might be gathered from my intercourse with the garrison. At the close of our interview he gave me a note which was to be forwarded to the adjutant-general. I made my bow and retired. All in the camp was festivity. A great achievement had been accomplished and the barriers of France were broken down. But in the midst of national triumph I felt a depression which rendered me wholly incapable of sharing it. The wounds of the spirit are not to be healed like those of the frame; and with the recollection of the noble creature whom I had lost bitterness mingled in every sound and sight and exultation. My first request would have been for leave of absence that I might follow her if she were still in France or in the world. But the bustle at headquarters told me that some movement was about to take place; and under those circumstances to ask for leave was impossible. Still I continued making every imaginable enquiry dispatching letters and seeing postmasters to obtain intelligence of the route which Clotilde had taken. After tracing her for the first few leagues all tidings were lost; and I had only to trust to that hope which was a part of my sanguine nature and which was sustained by a kind of consciousness that a being so superior could not be flung away in the chances which visit the multitude. While I was thus pondering and perplexed I was summoned to attend one of the principal officers of his royal highness's staff. ""We are sending despatches of some importance to London "" said he ""and it is the wish of the commander-in-chief that you should take them. I have the pleasure to tell you that he feels an interest in you from the opportunities which you have had of distinguishing yourself in the campaign and that he has appointed you an extra aide-de-camp. Your service begins soon "" added my informant with a smile ""for you must set off to-night. The despatch mentioning the capitulation of the fortress was of course sent off at once; but as the commission in those cases is given by routine it is desirable to have some one in London capable of explaining the 'explanation ' or perhaps taking the place of the 'honourable ' or 'right honourable' personage who has been made the official bearer of the despatch. His royal highness is satisfied from his conversation with you that you will be perfectly fit for this purpose; and here is the despatch with which you are to make all expedition to the Horse-Guards."" After giving my orders for the journey I hastened to take leave of the man whom I most honoured and esteemed my unfailing friend Guiscard. To my surprise he received the intelligence of my appointment with scarcely a word of congratulation. Little as I myself was now excitable by any thing in the shape of human fortune I was chagrined by his obstinate gravity. He observed it and started from his seat. ""Come "" said he ""let us take a walk and get out of the sight of mankind if we can."" He took my arm and we strayed along the banks of the Scheldt where however his purpose was unobtainable for the whole breadth of the river was covered with the provision barges of the troops. The bargemen were enjoying the fine July evening in the national style--swilling the worst beer that ever punished the taste for that barbarian beverage and filling the fresh breeze with the fumes of tobacco worthy of the beer. Guiscard stopped to gaze at them. ""I envy those fellows "" said he. ""Not merely for their escaping all care and being able to extract enjoyment out of their execrable drink and pipes but from their being exempt from all contact with portfolios."" ""But such enjoyment is only that of the swine."" ""Well and is not that of the swine perfect?--and what would you have more than perfection?"" A huge herd of those creatures basking along the miry edge of the river helped his illustration. ""Mr Marston you have not been for the last month on the staff of the commander-in-chief of the allied armies or you would not look so incredulous. Sir man's senses may be as suitable for his purposes as those of the animals which we see wallowing there."" I stared waiting for the conclusion. He proceeded. ""But man has drawbacks on his natural faculties which they have not. Possibly nature intended that we should be as happy as they. But make nine-tenths of them hewers of wood and drawers of water--send some of them to dungeons--enforce a conscription among the rest and send them to use their tusks upon each other and the most complacent of them would rebel: or as the last trial of temper put the meekest of the race into a cabinet of princes and general-officers themselves controlled by a cabinet five hundred miles off; and if they do not growl as I do now I shall give up all my knowledge of quadruped nature."" ""Why Guiscard what is the matter with you to-night? Have we not gained our point? You are like the Thracians who always mourned at the birth of a child."" ""And the Thracians were perfectly right if the child were to be reared a diplomatist. You talk of success!"" Our path had led to where a view of Valenciennes opened on us through the trees; and its shattered ramparts and curtains the trees felled along its glacis and its bastions stripped and broken by our cannon-balls certainly presented a rueful spectacle. The Austrian flag was flying on the citadel. ""There "" said he ""is our prize. It is not worth the loading of a single gun; but it has cost us more millions to ruin than it took francs to build it--it has cost us the conquest of France; and will cost Europe the war which we might have extinguished three months ago if we had but left it behind. I acknowledge that I speak in the bitterness of my heart; delay has ruined every thing. Our march to Paris and our march to Georgium Sidus will now be finished on the same day."" I attempted to laugh off his predictions but he was intractable. ""The business "" said he ""is all over. That flag is the signal of European jealousy--the apple of discord. Yon are going to England; and if you have any regard for my opinion tell your friends there to withdraw their troops as soon as they can. That flag which pretends to partition France will unite it as one man. Our sages here are actually about to play its game. Orders have come to divide the army. What folly! What inconceivable infatuation! In the very face of the most fantastic and furious population of mankind whom the most trivial success inflames into enthusiasts; they are going to break up their force and seek adventures by brigades and battalions."" He stamped the ground with indignation; but suddenly recovering his calmness he turned to me with his grave smile. ""I am ashamed Marston of thus betraying a temper which time ought to have cooled. But after all what is public life but a burlesque; a thing of ludicrous disappointment; a tragedy with a farce always at hand to relieve the tedium and the tinsel; the fall of kingdoms made laughable by the copper lace of the stage wardrobe?"" ""Do you object to our duke?"" ""Not in the least. He is personally a gallant fellow; and if he wants experience so must every man at one time or other. His only error hitherto has been his condescending to come at all with so small a force under his command. No English army should ever plant its foot upon the Continent with less than fifty thousand men on its muster-roll. The duke's being put at the head of your troops--only a division after all--seems to me the only wise thing that has been done. It was a declaration of the heartiness of your alliance; and I honour your country for the distinctness of the avowal. Your king gives his son as your country gives her soldiers
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and your people give their money. The whole was manly magnanimous or as the highest panegyric it was English all over."" This language at once put an end to all my reserve. I shook his hand in the spirit of old friendship; and on our parting extracted a promise of keeping up our communication on all possible opportunities. We had already separated when I heard my name called again and Guiscard returned. ""I had forgotten "" said he ""to tell you what I was most anxious to say. If I had seen no other prospect for you I should be the last man to make you discontented with your profession. My only request is that when you once more tread on English ground you will seriously consider whether you will continue in the army. If know you at all I think that you would not be altogether satisfied with wearing your epaulettes at reviews and parades. And if I am not entirely mistaken you will have nothing else for the next dozen years. Your army are moving homewards already. You are now in the secret."" ""But is the campaign absolutely coming to an end? Are the hopes of attacking the French so suddenly given up? Is France always to baffle us?"" was my vexed question. ""As to the fate of France you should consult a prophet not a Prussian engineer--and one terribly tired of his trade besides "" was the reply. We parted; but the conversation was not lost upon me. By midnight I was on my journey. My route lay through the Flemish provinces which had now recovered all their luxuriance if not derived additional animation from the activity which every where follows the movements of a successful army. Troops marching to join the general advance frequently and strikingly diversified the scene. Huge trains of the commissariat were continually on the road. The little civic authorities were doubly conscious of the dignity of functions which brought them into contact with soldiership from the quartermaster up to the general. But the contrast of the tumult which I left behind with the quietness of the scenes around me--the haste the anxiety and the restlessness of a huge camp with the calm of the fields with the regularity which seemed to govern all the operations of farming life and with the grave opulence of the old mansions which seemed to be formed for the natural receptacles of the wealth of Flemish fields--at once refreshed me after the mental fever in which I had tossed so long and perhaps impressed on me more deeply the parting advice of my friend the philosopher. But from the moment when I touched British ground the whole sleepy tranquillity which gathers over every man in the quietude of Flanders where man seems to have followed the same plough from the deluge had utterly vanished. I was in the midst of a nation in a ferment. The war was the universal topic; party was in full life. From the inn at Dover up to the waiting-room at the Horse-Guards I heard nothing but politics. The conduct of our army--the absurdity of every thing that had been done or left undone--the failures of the Allies--the fanaticism of the French--the hopes of popular liberty on one side and the indignation of established power on the other--came rushing round me in a chaos of discordant conceptions that for the time bewildered me. How simple was the gossip of the camp to this heterogeneous mass of struggling topics! How straightforward was even the wild haranguing of the Palais Royal to the thousand reports and protests remonstrances and replications of the whole ringing and raging public mind of England! This was the age of pamphleteering. Every sage who could or could not write flung his pamphlet in the teeth of the party whose existence he conceived to be ruinous to his country or perhaps prejudicial to his own prospect of a sinecure. The journals printed their columns in gall; the satirists dipped their pens in concentrated acid; the popular haranguers dashed the oil of vitriol of contempt in each other's faces. The confusion the collision the uproar was indescribable. But my whole experience of public life has told me that however the popular opinion may be wrong the public opinion is right; and I felt that the nation was already adverse to the conduct of the campaign. The utmost skill of the cabinet was required to prevent a dangerous reaction. The member of administration with whom my chief intercourse officially existed was the same manly and kind-natured individual to whom I had formerly been indebted for so much civility; and as if proud of his own work his civility now took the form of friendship. Ill news came from abroad; and I expressed my impatience of remaining with the pen in my hand when I should have worn my sword. To all my suggestions on the subject the good-humoured answer was that my services were still necessary at home. At length on my making a decided request that I should be permitted to return to my regiment he told me in confidence that the campaign was probably at an end; that the British commander-in-chief was about to return; and that in fact the strength of England would be turned to the naval war. At the close of one of those conversations fixing his keen grey eye upon me he said ""Pray what think you of Parliament?"" My answer was ""That mediocrity was more contemptible there than any where else; while success was more difficult."" ""You mean such success as Pitt's: you mean victory. But you must get these Greek and Roman notions out of your head. An English House does not want orators. One on a side is quite enough. They are like the gold plate on a sideboard; it is well to show that we have such things for the honour of our establishment; but no one thinks of making use of them at table. Pitt is an exception; he is equal to every thing; an incomparable man of business. Burke or some other man of metaphor compared him to the falcon; which however high it may soar always follows the prey with its eye along the ground. But two Pitts if nature could be prolific of such magnificent monsters would absolutely perplex us. What could be more confusing than to have two suns shining at the same time?"" ""But is Fox nothing?"" I asked. ""A great deal "" was the answer. ""He is the finest talker I suppose in the world. The first of babblers."" ""Of babblers!"" I involuntarily repeated. ""Yes; for what is babbling but speaking in vain pouring out endless speculations without a purpose or the hope of a purpose indulging a remarkably powerful and productive mind with the waste of its own conceptions pouring out a whole coinage of splendid thoughts with no more expectancy of practical result than if he poured the mint into the Thames? You may rely upon it that such is the opinion of the House as it will be yours when you get there; and such will be that of posterity if they shall ever take the trouble to think about any of us."" This conversation was evidently more than accidental; and I gave to it some of my most perplexing hours. I had an original fondness for the life of arms. I was of the age to feel its variety animation and ardour. My experience had been fortunate; I had seen nothing but victory and had been flattered by personal distinction. But then came the reverse of the medal. I remembered the opinion of the most sagacious and penetrating spirit which it had been my lot ever to know; and I felt that the Continent was to be our field of battle no longer. The languor of home service to one who had seen war in its stateliest shape and in its most powerful activity rose before my mind with an inexpressible sense of weariness. On the other hand supposing that I possessed the faculties for political life was I possessed of the temper the endurance of toil the measureless patience the inexhaustible equanimity which every night of my public existence would henceforth demand? Why was this heart-wearying struggle to be preferred to the simple and straightforward pursuit of an honourable profession in which the only weight was the carrying of my sword and the only secret of distinction possessing an untarnished name? But I soon made up my mind. The question narrowed itself to this: which was the more active life? The point of honour was no longer the adherence to a profession whose purposes were necessarily changed. Every hour gave additional evidence that the gates of the Continent were closing upon the English soldier. Influence impression publicity were the prizes of a political career. I saw all other names fade before the great senatorial names of England. I saw men of humble extraction filling the world with their fame. I saw a succession of individuals who if their profession had been arms or if their birth-place had been the Continent would have lived and died in the routine of obscure service here rising to the height of national homage lustres of their generation and guiding by their opinions the courts of Europe. Whether I should ever take my place among those illustrious names scarcely entered into my thoughts. But I was determined never to waste my life in conscious indolence. Scarcely knowing what faculties I might possess I had fully resolved on trying their utmost strength; and grown almost indifferent to the ordinary pursuits of human indulgence I looked with something of a melancholy yet proud hope to the enjoyment which was to be found in giving myself up to the solitary and stern toil of living for a great cause and leaving a name behind me that should not be forgotten. On that very day the intelligence arrived that the British troops had marched towards the north of Germany; that the royal duke had returned to England; and that the Allies had by common consent abandoned the invasion of France. My habits were always prompt. Before the hour was over in which the gazette appeared I waited on my ministerial friend and expressed my full acquiescence in his proposal. I pass by the process of getting into Parliament. It was then a simpler matter than it has since become. A treasury borough was then the gate through which all the leading names of the country had entered the legislature and I merely followed the path of all but the lords of acres. Every man who will make himself master of an occupation must serve an apprenticeship. Parliament too has its seven years' indentures and the few who have refused the training have seldom been the wiser for their precipitancy. I ""bided my time "" taking a slight occasional share in debates with whose topics I happened to be well acquainted; and expecting the chances which to every one who employs himself vigorously are all but certainties. Still I felt that this mere hovering on the outskirts of debate must not last too long and that nothing was more hazardous to final reputation than to be too slow in attempting to lay its first stone. Yet I felt some difficulty in every great question; and after bracing my nerves for the onset I always found my courage fail at the sight of the actual encounter. I felt as a young knight might have felt in some of the tilting-matches of old--master of his charger in the open field and delighting in the pressure of his armour and the weight of his lance; but when he once rode within the barrier saw the galleries filled and the heralds lifting the trumpets to their lips feeling his blood grow chill and the light depart from his eyes. I mentioned my embarrassment to my Scottish friend and almost expected a remonstrance. To my great surprise and infinite pleasure he congratulated me. ""You cannot give a better sign "" said he. ""My only fear of you was that you would dash into debate at once like a tumbler jumping from a precipice; and that like him all that you would have gained by it would be broken limbs for life. If the fellow had kept to his slack-rope and his stage he would have been safe enough and gained some applause besides."" ""But what is to be done in the House without some hazard of the kind?"" ""Wrong--quite wrong. A great deal is to be done. Take myself for the example. You see where I am and yet I never made a _speech_ in my life. From the beginning of my career I never allowed any one to look for any thing of the kind from me; and the consequence was that by some I was regarded as a much shrewder personage than I ever believed myself to be; and by others was thought to know a great deal more than I ever acquired."" ""But will this account for the rapid distinctions of your public life?"" ""Perfectly so far as they have gone. I obtained ministerial confidence on the essential merits of being a safe man--one who made no ambitious attempts to lower the crests of those above me. I escaped the jealousy of those below me by adopting the style which mediocrity assumes by nature. I was thus like the senior subaltern in a marching regiment--I wore the same uniform with the colonel and went through the same exercise with the ensign. The field-officers knew that I would not tread upon their heels and every subaltern wished to see my promotion as a step to his own."" My official duties the mere entrance into office occupied me laboriously for a while and I felt all the habitual difficulties of my noviciate. It had been fully my intention to follow the advice of my experienced friend and leave the hour which was to call for my exertions in the House to the chances of the time. But that time came more rapidly than I had expected. The public mind was fevered hour by hour; the news from the Continent was more and more startling; the successes of the Republican armies had assumed a shape which our desponding politicians regarded as invincibility and which our factious ones pronounced to be the ruin of Europe. The cabinet offered only the prospect of a melancholy struggle. But six months before it had stood strong as a citadel erected by the national hands and garrisoned by the spirit of the empire. It still stood but it stood dismantled; there were evident breaches in its walls and the fugitives of Opposition rallying with the hope of success advanced again to the storm headed by their great leader and sustained by the capricious and fluctuating multitude. The premier was harassed by the incessant toil of defence--a toil in which he had scarcely a sharer and which exposed him to the most remorseless hostility. Yet if the historian were to choose the moment for his true fame this was the moment which ought to be chosen. He rose with the severity of the struggle; assault seemed to give him new vigour; the attempt to tear the robe of office from his shoulders only gave the nobler display of his intellectual proportions. When I saw him night after night standing almost alone with nothing but disaster in front and timidity in the rear combating a force such as had never before been arrayed under the banners of Opposition; the whole scene of magnificent conflict and still grander fortitude reminded me of the Homeric war and its warriors.--The champion of the kingdom standing forth in despite of evil omens thickening round him of the deepening cloud and the sinister thunders. I speak of those times and of the great men of those times in no invidious contrast with later days. I have so strong a faith in the infinite ability which freedom gives to a great empire that I am convinced of our being able in all its eras to find the species of public talent essential to its services. I regard the national mind as the philosopher does the natural soil always capable of the essential produce where we give it the due tillage. The great men of the past century have passed away along with it; they were summoned for a day of conflict and were formed for the conflict; their muscular vigour the power with which they wielded their weapons the giant step and the giant hand were all necessary and were all shaped and sustained by that necessity. But this day had its close; the leaders of man--like the ""mighty hunters"" of an Age when the land was still overshadowed with the forest and the harvest was overrun with the lion and the panther would naturally give place to a less daring and lofty generation when the forest had given way to the field and the lair of the wild beast had become the highway and the bower. But if the evil day should again return the guardian power of intellect and virtue will again come forth in the human shape and vindicate the providence that watches over the progress of mankind. I utterly deny the exhaustion of national genius; I even deny its exhaustibility. If the moral vegetation languishes and the soil is parched for a while the great source of refreshing and fertility still lies before us--the public mind in its boundless expansion and in its unfathomable depth; the intellectual ocean which no plummet has ever sounded and which no shore has ever circumscribed lies ready to restore the balance of nature. But the sense of power itself in the national mind forbids the exhibition of its strength in tranquil times. It is lofty and fastidious; it will not stoop to a contest in which nothing is to be contended for. It is not an actor; and it cannot adopt the figured passion of the actor rend its robe and flourish and obtest heaven against the traitor and the oppressor to the sound of an orchestra or in the glitter of stage lamps. The true ability of the empire must scorn all mimic encounter; and what else can be the little struggles of party shut up in the legislature whose sound scarcely transpires through the walls whose triumphs are a tax and whose oracles are an intrigue? But when the true day of trial shall come--when an enemy shall be seen hovering on the coasts of the Constitution--when trumpet answers trumpet and the ""country is proclaimed in danger""--then and not till then shall we know the superb resources of our intellectual strength: whatever may have been the prowess of the past we may see it not merely rivaled but thrown into eclipse by the future; the burnished armour and massive swords and maces of our old intellectual chivalry superseded by more manageable and more destructive implements of success; and the sterner conflict followed by the more consummate triumph. Yet when we undervalue the living ability of a nation from its quietude at the moment we but adopt the example of every past age in succession. The last ten years of the last century were preceded by a period of despair; Chatham's career was run and the national regrets over his tomb were mingled with sorrows for the extinction of all parliamentary renown!--The day had gone down and darkness was to cover the sky for ever. But while the prediction was scarcely uttered the horizon as in a blaze mighty meteors rushed across it in a thousand courses of eccentric speed and splendour; and a period of intellectual display began which at once dazzled and delighted mankind. Anne's Augustan age of war negotiation and eloquence was once pronounced to be like the Augustan age of Rome incapable of rivalship by posterity; but our own times have seen a bolder war a broader peace and a richer development of science invention and eloquence. For fifty years England was pronounced to have worn herself out by the prolific brilliancy of the half century before; like a precocious infant to have anticipated her powers and ensured their premature decay; like the Boeotians to have had her Pindaric period and thenceforward to have paid for its raptures and renown by perpetual darkness; or like the Israelites in Egypt to be condemned to drudgery for life sunk into an intellectual slave-caste;--when in the midst of the scoffing or the sorrow suddenly arrived a new epoch a new summons to the national genius a time of lofty interpositions ""thunderings in the air and lightning running along the ground "" an era of the marvellous things of mind; the chains fell off the hands and the generation went forth with a new sense of superiority into new scenes of knowledge discovery and empire. Whether it was my good or ill fortune to make my first effort in the midst of the men whose names have immortalized their day I shall not venture to decide. But my resolve had been firmly taken--not to remain in Parliament unless I discovered in myself faculties fit for its service. I was determined not to play the mute if I had the means of uttering a voice. But now the whole force of administration was demanded; and I made up my mind to ascertain by trial what no man can be sure of without that trial whether I possessed any capacity for public life. The subject on which I first spoke was an address to the throne in answer to the King's message on the war. On this night Pitt but lately recovered from a fit of his hereditary gout spoke briefly and with evident feebleness of frame. Fox whose energy seemed always to depend on his rival's power and whose eloquence always rose or fell with the vigour or languor of the minister--Fox never so great as when Pitt put forth all his strength on this night idled away his hour through the mere want of an antagonist; but Sheridan made ample compensation for his leader. The House had fallen into lassitude and the benches were already thin when he arose. I had heard him as the humorist on some trivial occasions of debate. I had enjoyed the social pleasantry which placed him at the head of the wits; but I was still but imperfectly acquainted with the strong sarcasm the deep disdain and the grave sophistry which this extraordinary man could exhibit with such redundant ease and wield with such vigorous dexterity. I must give but an outline:-- ""You have made war "" said he ""and you have made the arms of your country contemptible by failures which you rendered inevitable by your rashness. You sir "" and he fixed his flashing eye on the premier ""have commenced that war by a series of declarations which made our diplomacy as contemptible as our campaigns. The national sword had been wrested from our hands. But you were not content with that humiliation and you added to it the disgrace of the national understanding. You laid down a succession of principles and then trampled them in the dust on the first opportunity. You encumbered yourself for action with pledges which you could never have intended to sustain or which in the first collision your pusillanimity threw away. Yet I deprecate your perfidy even more than I despise your weakness. I can comprehend the effrontery of a fair aggression; but I scorn the meanness of intrigue. I may face the man-at-arms but I shudder at the assassin. I may determine to hunt down and destroy the lion but I disdain the trap and the pitfall. And what has been the pretext of his majesty's ministers? Moderation. In this spirit of moderation they invaded France; in this spirit of moderation they captured her fortresses and then handed them over to the Emperor; in this spirit of moderation they denounced the men who had given France a constitution; and in this spirit of moderation you now prepare to rebuild her Bastile to restore her scaffolds to reforge her chains and summon all the kings of Europe instead of taking a salutary lesson from the tomb of the monarchy to see its skeleton exhumed and placed robed and crowned upon the throne with the nation forced to offer homage at once in mockery and terror to the grinning emblem; in which with all your philtres you can never put life again."" The orator then gave a general and singularly imposing view of the state of our European connexions; which he described as utterly frail the result of interested motives and sure to be broken up at the first temptation. But the ""first lord of the treasury and chancellor of his majesty's exchequer "" said he ""smiles at my alarm; he has his security at his side--he has the purse which commands all the baser portion of our nature with such irresistible control! On one point I fully agree with the right honourable gentleman--that nothing but the purse could ever keep them faithful. Yet is there nothing but gold that can bribe? is there no bribe in territory? will he not find when he hurries to the purchase of allies with the millions of the treasury in his hand that more powerful purchasers have been there before him? When he offers the loan will he not find them offering the province? when he bids with the subsidy will he not be outbid with the kingdom? Or if the anticipated conquerors of Europe raising their sense of dignity to the level of their power should disdain the traffic of corruption; will not the roaring of the French cannon in the ears of kings make them feel that to persist in your ill-omened alliance is to devote themselves to ruin? will they bargain in sight of the axe? will they dare to traffic in the blood of their people with the grave dug at their feet? will they be dazzled by your gold while the French bayonet is startling their eyes? Within ten years if England exists she will be without an ally; or if she continues to fight it will be in loneliness in terror and in despair."" In this strain he poured out his daring conceptions for more than two hours during which he kept the whole audience in the deepest attention. He concluded in an uproar of plaudits from both sides of the House. My time now came. And the rising of a new member always regarded with a generous spirit of courtesy produced some additional interest from the knowledge of my services on the Continent and my immediate connexion with the ministry. The House which had filled to overflowing in the course of Sheridan's incomparable speech was now hushed to the most total silence and every eye was turned on me. I shall say nothing of my perturbation further than that I had stood before an enemy's line of ten thousand men with their muskets levelled within half a hundred yards of me; and that I thought the benches of the House of Commons on that night looked much the more formidable of the two. My head swam my throat burned my eyes grew dim. I thought that the ground was shaking under my feet and I could have almost rejoiced to have sunk into it from the gaze and the silence which equally appalled me. While I attempted to mutter a few sentences of which I felt the sound die within my lips my eye was caught by the quick turn of Pitt's head who fixed his impatient glance upon me. Fox with that kindliness of heart which always forgot party when a good-natured act was to be done gave his sonorous cheer. From that instant I was another man; I breathed freely and recovering my voice and mind together I plunged boldly into the boundless subject before me. After scattering a few of the showy sophisms which the orator of the opposition had constructed into his specious argument I placed the war on the ground of necessity. ""Nations cannot act like individuals--they cannot submit to self-sacrifice--they cannot give up their rights--they cannot affect an indolent disdain or an idle generosity. The reason of the distinction is that in every instance the nation is a trustee--It has the rights of posterity in its keeping; it has nothing of its own to throw away; it is responsible to every generation to come. If war be essential to the integrity of the empire war is as much a duty--a terrible duty I allow--as the protection of our children's property from the grasp of rapine or the defence of their lives against the midnight robber. But we are advised to peace. No man on earth would do more willing homage than myself to that beneficent genius of nations. But where am I to offer my homage? Am I to kneel on the high-road where the enemy's armies fierce with the hope of plunder are rushing along? Am I to build my altar in the midst of contending thousands or on the ground covered with corpses--in the battle or on the grave? Or am I to carry my offering to the capital and there talk the language of national cordiality in the ear of the multitude dragging their king to the scaffold? Am I to appeal to the feelings of human brotherhood in streets smoking with civil massacre; to adjure the nation by the national honour where revolt is an avowed principle; to press upon them the opinion of Europe where they have proclaimed war with the world; to invoke them by the faith which they have renounced the allegiance which they have disdained the God whom they have blasphemed? Those things are impossible. If we are to have a treaty with this new order of thinking and action it must be a compact of crime a solemn agreement of treachery a formal bond of plunder; it must be a treaty fitter for the cavern of conspiracy than for the chamber of council; its pledge must be like that of Catiline the cup of human blood! No; the most powerful reprobation which ever shot from the indignant lip of the moralist would not be too strong for the baseness which stooped to such a treaty or the folly which entangled itself in its toils. No burning language of prophecy would be too solemn and too stinging for the premeditated wretchedness and incurable calamity of such a bond. No; if we must violate the simplicity of our national interests by such degrading and such desperate involvements--if we should not shrink from this conspiracy against mankind let it at least not be consummated in the face of day; let us at once abandon the hollow pretences of human honesty; let us pledge ourselves to a perpetual league of rapine and revolution; let it be transacted in some lower region of existence where it shall not disgrace the light of the sun; and let its ceremonial be worthy of the spirit of evil which it embodies whose power it proclaims and to whose supremacy it commands all nations to bow down."" In alluding to the menace that our allies would soon desert us I asked ""Is this the magnanimity of party? Is England to be pronounced so poor or so pusillanimous that she must give up all hope unless she can be suffered to lurk in the rear of the battle? What says her prince of poets?-- 'England shall never rue If England to herself shall be but true.' Is this 'little body with a mighty heart ' to depend for existence on the decaying strength or the decrepit courage of the Continent? Is she only to borrow the shattered armour which has hung up for ages in the halls of continental royalty and encumber herself with its broken and rusty panoply for the ridicule of the world? The European governments have undergone the vicissitudes of fortune. Instead of scoffing at the facility of their overthrow let us raise them on their feet again; or if that be beyond human means I shall not join the party-cry which insults their fall--I certainly shall not exult in that melancholy pageant of mixed mirth and scorn in which like the old Roman triumph the soldier with his ruthless jest and song goes before the chariot and the captive monarch follows behind; wearing the royal robe and the diadem only till he has gratified a barbarous curiosity or a cruel pride and then exchanging them for the manacle and the dungeon. I deprecate the loss of these alliances; and yet I doubt whether the country will ever be conscious of her true strength until the war of the Continent is at an end. I more than doubt the wisdom of suffering others to take the lead which belongs to us by the right of superior rank superior prowess and superior fame. I shall have but slight regret for the fall of those outworks which--massive nay majestic as they are--waste the power of England by the division of her force and make us decline the gallant enterprize of the field--ramparts and fosses which reduce us to defence and which while they offer a thousand points of entrance to an active assault shut us in and disqualify us from victory."" I now repeat this language of the moment merely from later and long experience of its truth. I fully believe that if England had come forward to the front of the battle in the early years of the war she would have crushed all resistance; or if she had found by the chance of things the Continent impenetrable to her arms she would have surrounded it with a wall of fire until its factions had left nothing of themselves but their ashes. I was now fully engaged in public life. The effort which I had made in Parliament had received the approval of Pitt who without stooping to notice things so trivial as style and manner on questions of national life and death highly applauded the courage which had dared to face so distinguished a Parliamentary favourite as Sheridan and had taken a view of affairs so accordant with his own. From this period I was constantly occupied in debate; and taking the premier for my model I made rapid proficiency in the difficult art of addressing a British House of Commons. Of course I have no idea of giving myself the praise on this subject which no man can give to himself on any without offence. But I felt that this was an _art_ which might escape and which had often e
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caped men of distinguished ability and which might be possessed by men of powers altogether inferior. I must acknowledge that a portion of my success was owing to the advice of that shrewdest and at the same time most friendly of human beings the secretary. ""You must be a man of business "" said he ""or you will be nothing; for praise is nothing--popularity is nothing--even the applause of the House is nothing. These matters pass away and the orators pass away with them. John Bull is a solid animal and likes reality. This is the true secret of the successes of hundreds of men of mediocrity and of the failures of almost every man of brilliant faculties. The latter fly too high and thus make no way along the ground. They always alight on the same spot; while the weaker but wiser have put one foot before another and have pushed on. Sheridan at this moment has no more weight in the House than he had within a twelvemonth after taking his seat. Fox with the most powerful abilities is looked on simply as a magnificent speechmaker. His only weight is in his following. If his party fell from him to-morrow all his eloquence would find its only echo in bare walls and its only panegyric in street-placards. Pitt is a man of business complete profound indefatigable. If you have his talents copy his prudence; if you have not still copy his prudence--make it the interest of men to consult you and you must be ultimately successful."" I laughingly observed that the ""Nullum numen abest"" had been honoured with an unexpected illustration. ""Sir "" said the minister fixing his keen grey eye upon me ""if Eton had never taught any other maxim it would have been well worth all the tail of its longs and shorts. It is the concentration of wisdom personal private and public; the polar star of politics as probably you would say; or as in my matter-of-fact style should express it the fingerpost of the road to fortune."" But there never was a time when all the maxims of political wisdom were more required. A long succession of disasters had already broken down the outworks of the continental thrones. The renown of the great armies of Germany was lost; the discipline of the Prussian and the steady intrepidity of the Austrian had been swept before the wild disorder of the French. Men began to believe that the art of war had been hitherto unknown and that the enemy had at length mastered the exclusive secret. Monarchy came to be regarded as only another name for weakness; and civilized order for national decrepitude. A kind of superstition stole over the minds of men; the signs of European overthrow were discovered in every change; calculations were calmly raised on the chances of existence to the most powerful dynasties; the age of crowns was in the move the age of republics was in the ascendant; and while the feebler minds looked with quiescent awe on what they regarded as the inevitable tide of events the more daring regarded the prospect as a summons to prepare for their part of the spoil. The struggles of Opposition grew more resolute as the hope of success came nearer and the Government began to feel the effects of this perpetual assault in the sudden neutrality of some of its most ostentatious champions and in the general reserve of its supporters in the House. Even the superb perseverance of Pitt was beginning to be weary of a contest in which victory lost its fruits on the one side while defeat seemed only to give fresh vigour on the other. But a new triumph was to cheer the face of things. I was returning one morning from the House after a night spent in a fierce debate on the war which Fox denounced with an asperity unusual to his generous temperament. The premier had made a powerful speech vindicating the government from all share in the continental misfortunes; pronouncing loftily that in a war not made for conquest it was sophistry to speak of our failure of possession as a crime; and declaring in a tone of singular boldness and energy--that if the Continent were untrod by a British soldier there was a still broader field for the arms and the triumphs of England. But his eloquence had more effect in exposing the errors than in reducing the numbers of his opponents and the smallness of his majority would have made a feebler mind resign on the spot. The announcement of the numbers was received with an insulting cheer by the minority and the cabinet was already by anticipation in their hands. I left the House wearied and dejected and was returning to Downing Street to throw myself on a couch and get a few hours of rest before my morning toil; when I found a messenger at the door of my office bearing a request from the secretary of state that I should attend him as soon as possible. I found my friend before a table covered with despatches his brow furrowed with weariness like my own. ""You see me here Marston more tired than any ploughman or watchman or any other son of labour from this to John O'Groat's House. I was sent for from the House six hours ago and every hour since have I been poring over those puzzled papers. How long I can stand this wear and tear the physicians must tell but it would require the constitution of Hercules or Samson or both together to go through the work that is beginning to fall on the members of the cabinet."" I offered to give him such assistance as was in my power. ""No no Marston; I am chained to the oar for this night at least and must pull till I fall asleep. My purpose in keeping you from your pillow at this time of night is not to relieve myself from trouble; but to ask whether you are disposed to relieve the government from serious difficulty and in a way which I hope will be not disagreeable to yourself."" I concluded that my mission was to be continental and my heart danced at the suggestion. In England it was impossible to continue my search for the being in whom all my thoughts were fixed; but once beyond the sea I should have the world before me. I asked whether there was any intention of trying the chances of attack again on the French frontier. ""None whatever. The greater probability is that the French will make some experiment on the strength of ours."" I looked all astonishment. He interpreted my look and said--""To solve the enigma at once It is our wish to send you to Ireland."" I listened in silence while he went into a long detail of the hazard of the island arising from the interests of a powerful republican party who inflamed by the successes of France were preparing to receive troops and arms from the republic. He finished by saying in a tone of compliment which from him was as unusual as I believe it was sincere that my exertions in debate had attracted high consideration in the highest quarter and that I had been proposed by the monarch himself for the chief-secretaryship of Ireland. The premier had assented to the appointment at once; ""and here "" said he ""is the warrant which I have prepared in anticipation of its acceptance. You are from this moment virtual viceroy of Ireland."" This was elevation indeed! I had at once surmounted all the slow gradations of office. The broadest prospect of official ambition had suddenly opened before me; popularity founded on the most solid grounds was now waiting only my acceptance; the sense of power always dear to the heart of man glowed in every vein; and it is only justice to myself to say that the strongest impulse of all was the desire to leave my name as a benefactor to a people who seemed to me as much gifted by nature as they were unhappy by circumstances. ""How long will it take you to prepare for the journey?"" asked the minister. ""Half an hour "" was my reply. ""Bravo! Marston. I see your campaigning has not been thrown away upon you. You have the soldier's promptitude. We were prepared to allow you a week. But the sooner you set off the better. The truth is "" said he rising ""we are in great difficulties in that quarter. The most thoroughly English portion of the island is at this moment the most disturbed. There are drillings purchases of arms midnight musterings and even something not far from prepared attacks upon the king's troops. The papers among which you found me contain a regular and a very complete organization of an insurrectionary government. You will require all the energy of the soldier and all the prudence of the statesman."" ""Let me add to them "" said I ""what is essential to the success of both in a country of generous hearts and quick conceptions the sincerity of a patriot."" ""The experiment is worth trying "" said he with a smile ""if it were only for the sake of its novelty. But Ireland has qualities which like those of her soil require only to be turned up to the light to reward all the labours of wealth or wisdom."" Before that evening closed in I was a hundred miles on my way to the Irish capital. A rapid journey and a tranquil passage over the sixty miles that lie between Wales and Ireland gave me what an old Roman would regard as an omen of the peacefulness of my mission. On the dawn of one of the finest mornings of the year I came within sight of the Irish coast and was struck as all travellers have been by the beauty of the bold and picturesque coast which rose from the waters before me. In front was a province of mountains touched by all the variety of colours which are painted in such richness by the summer sun on groups of pinnacles and cones forest hills and the fine diversities of woodland and mountain scenery. On one side the eye glanced over a vast sheet of water shut in by headlands and as blue and bright as a lake under a serene sky. At the extremity of this noble estuary a cloud unchanging and unmoving showed where a city sent up the smoke of its ten thousand fires; beyond this all was purple confusion. My official rank threw open all the _élite_ of Irish society to me at my first step; and I found it as it has been found by every one else animated graceful and hospitable. The nature of its government tended to those qualifications. While the grave business of the state was done in London the lighter business of show was sedulously sustained in the Irish capital. The lord-lieutenant was generally a nobleman selected more for his rank and his wealth than for his statesmanship. A rich showy and good-humoured peer was the true man for the head of affairs in Ireland. It was of more importance that he should give balls and suppers say lively things to the ladies and be jocular with the gentleman than that he should have the brains of Bolingbroke or the tongue of Chatham. But the position of the secretary was the absolute antipode of this tranquil and festive sinecure. He was in Ireland what the premier was in England but with ten times more of the difficulty and ten times less of the power. The whole conduct of public affairs lay on his shoulders; he was responsible for every thing while he was free in nothing; perpetually assailed by opposition for measures which he was not at liberty to explain and standing between the English cabinet and the Irish party as a scapegoat for the mistakes of the one and a target for the shot of the other. But the chief trial of temper was in the House of Commons. Opposition in Ireland never had a list of more brilliant names. Government had the majority behind its bench and that majority recruited from the ranks of Opposition; but the more distinguished were fixed to party by their own celebrity; and the recruits however able were so liable to be attacked for their change of side that they were paralyzed; in some instances they were so much galled by the merciless sharpshooting of their former associates that they ran back and left the minister to fight the field alone. I was fortunately free from the entanglements of that question which has since formed so large a portion of the political disquietudes of Irish debate. The religion of the south was not yet among parliamentary topics. The religion of the north active ardent and indefatigable was our most restless theme; and the political theories which seemed to grow out of its bold abstractions kept the government in perpetual anxiety. The whole northern portion of the island was ripe for revolt. America had blown the hot-blast of the revolutionary furnace across the Atlantic and a spark from France would have now ignited the whole hot surface of the soil. One of my first acts after arranging the preliminary business of office was to make a flying tour through Ulster. I was astonished at its beauty. Even after being familiar with the loveliness of the English landscape I was in a state of continued surprise at the variety richness and singularity of nature in the northern counties. Mountain lake magnificent bay and broad river followed each other in noble and unceasing succession. I was still more struck with the skill and good fortune by which the people had contrived to combine the industry of manufactures with the life of the fields; a problem which England herself had failed to solve. But most of all I was attracted by the independent air and handsome and vigorous appearance of the people; almost every man was proprietor and had the look which proprietorship alone can give. I found books in almost every cottage decency of dress every where and among the higher orders frequent elegance and accomplishment. The women were cultivated and intelligent; the men spirited and enquiring. But the politics of France had made their way through a large portion of the province and the glories of a republic ""loomed large"" before the popular eye. As it was my purpose to see all that I could with my own eyes I mingled largely in society made no distinction between honourable men of different political creeds enjoyed to-day the stag-hunt and claret of the noble Whig and to-morrow the stag-hunt and claret of the noble Tory listened to all laughed with all and learned something from all. The English aristocrat especially if he holds high official place once haunted the imaginations of the Irish of all conditions like an incarnation of an Indian deity--all fierceness and frigidity; and it must be acknowledged that the general order of viceroys and secretaries had not tended much to remove the conception. They were chiefly men of advanced life with their habits formed by intercourse with the most exclusive class in existence the English peerage or rendered rigid by the dry formalities of official life. But I was young had seen a good deal of that rough work of the world which gives pliancy if not polish to all characters; and I was besides really delighted with the animation pleasantry and winning kindness which exhibited themselves every where round me. I was half a son of Ireland already and I regarded the recognition as the pledge of my success. ""Do you know "" said one of the most influential and accomplished noblemen of the country to me one day at his sumptuous table--""how many of the lords-lieutenant do you think have left a popular recollection behind them?"" I professed my ignorance but enumerated some names remarkable for intelligence and vigour of administration. ""Oh "" said my entertainer ""that was not the question! Great statesmen and showy governors capital rulers of the country and bold managers of our factions we have had in sufficient succession but I speak of the faculty of being remembered; the talent of making a public impression; the power of escaping that national oblivion into which mere official services let them be of what magnitude they may inevitably drop when their performer has disappeared. Well then I shall tell you. _Two_ and no more."" I begged to know the names of those ""discoverers of the grand secret the philosopher's stone of popularity "" the alchemists who had power to fix the floating essence of the Irish mind! ""Chesterfield and Townshend. Chesterfield regarded as a fop in England was a daring steady and subtle governor of the unruly spirits of Ireland in one of the most hazardous periods. That the throne of the Brunswicks did not see an Irish revolt at the moment when it saw a Scottish invasion was the service of Chesterfield. But he ruled not by his wisdom but by his wit. He broke down faction by _bon-mots_; he extinguished conspiracy by passing compliments; he administered the sternest law with the most polished smile; and cut down rebellion by quotations from La Fontaine and _calembourgs_ from Scarron. But with these fortunate pleasantries he combined public and solid services. He threw a large portion of the crown lands in the neighbourhood of the capital into a park for the recreation of the citizens and thus gave one of the earliest and most munificent examples of regard for the health and enjoyment of the people; a more enduring monument of his statesmanship could not have been offered to the gratitude of the country."" Of the Marquis Townshend I had heard as a gallant soldier and a stirring viceroy but I still had to learn the source of his popularity. ""Townshend was one of those singular men who possess faculties of which they have no knowledge until the moment when they become necessary. He began life as a soldier and finished his soldiership in the most brilliant victory of his day--the battle of Quebec. On his appointment to the viceroyalty he found his government a nothing; a government faction superseding the governor and an opposition faction engrossing the people. He now for the first time became a politician. He resolved to crush both and he succeeded. He treated the government faction in Ireland with contumely and he treated the opposition with contempt. Both were indignant; he laughed at both and treated them with still more scorn. Both were astonished--the government faction intrigued against him in England the opposition threatened impeachment. He defied them still more haughtily. They now found that he was not to be shaken and both submitted. The nation joined him was pacified grew in vigour as it required tranquillity; and here you have the secret of all the privileges which Ireland has obtained. Townshend performed only on a smaller scale the same national service which Pitt performed on a larger one. He took the people out of the hands of aristocracy broke up the league of opulence and power and gave the island that popular freedom which the great minister of England gave to the empire. For this the name of Townshend lives among us still. His bold satires are recorded his gallant bearing is remembered his passing pleasantries have become a portion of the national wit and his rough but effectual services are among the memorials of our independence as a people."" The evening of this hospitable day concluded with a ball to the neighbouring families and all was graceful and animated enjoyment. My host had travelled much in early life and had brought home some fine pictures and valuable sculptures. He was an accomplished classical scholar--a quality which I found in some degree fashionable among the leading personages of the time and which unquestionably added much to the high tone of conversation among the parliamentary circles. In his magnificent mansion an artist might have found studies a scholar learning a philosopher wisdom and a man of the world all the charms of polished life. How soon and how fearfully were they all to be extinguished! How bitterly were all who honoured and esteemed that generous and highly-gifted nobleman to feel what shadows we are and what shadows we pursue! Our mornings were chiefly spent in hunting over the fine landscape which spread in all the various beauty of vegetation within view of the mansion. On one of those days the attention of the field was caught by the fierce riding of a singular-looking man scarcely above the peasant in his general appearance and yet mounted on one of the finest English horses that I had ever seen. He rode at every thing managed his horse with practised skill and soon became an object of general emulation. To ""ride up"" to the ""wild horseman "" was found to be a task not easily accomplished and at length all was a trial of speed with this dashing exhibitor. A glance which when on the point of one of his most desperate leaps he threw back at me seemed to be a kind of challenge and I rushed on at speed. The Irish hunter matchless at ""topping"" stone walls but his practice has not lain much among rivers; and the English horse is sometimes his master at the deep and rapid streams which running between crumbling banks are perhaps the severest trials to both horse and rider. The majority of the hunt pulled up at the edge of one of those formidable chasms and I was by no means unwilling to follow their example; but the look of the strange rider had a sneer along with it which put me on my mettle and I dashed after him. The hounds had scrambled through and we rode nearly abreast through a broken country that mixture of bog and firm ground which occurs frequently in newly cleared land and over which nothing but the most powerful sinews can make way. We had now left every one behind us were struggling on through the dimness of a hazy day sinking into twilight. Suddenly my mysterious rival turned his horse full upon me and to my utter amazement discharged a pistol at my head. The discharge was so close that I escaped only by the swerving of my horse at the flash. I felt my face burn and in the impulse of the pain made a blind blow at him with my whip. He had drawn out another pistol in an instant which the blow luckily dashed out of his hand. No words passed between us but I bounded on him to seize him. He slipped away from my grasp and striking in the spur galloped madly forward I in pursuit. The twilight had now deepened and he plunged into a lane bounded on both sides by steep hedges and which from some former hunting in this quarter I knew to be a _cul-de-sac_. This doubled my determination to make myself master of the assassin; and even in the hurry of the moment I formed some conception of my having seen his face before and that the attempt to put me out of the way was connected in some way or other with public affairs. This question was soon decided. He reached the end of the lane which was shut in with a wall of about the height of a man. His horse shied at the obstacle. The rider with an oath and a desperate exertion pushed him to it again. I was now within a few yards of him and arrived just in time to see the animal make a convulsive spring touch with his hind feet on the top of the wall and roll over. My Irish horse cleared it in the native style and I found my enemy crushed under his hunter and evidently in the pangs of death. He had been flung on a heap of stones and the weight of the falling horse had broken his spine. I poured some brandy down his throat relieved him from the incumbrance of the hunter--attempted to give him hope--but he told me that it was useless; that he felt death coming on and that I was the last man who should wish him to live ""as he had pledged himself to my extinction."" For a while his recollections were wild and he talked of events in France and Spain where he seemed to have done some deeds which affected him with peculiar horror in the prospect of dissolution. But after a brief period of those terrible disclosures his pains totally ceased his mind grew clear; and he acknowledged that he was one of the leading agents of a National Conspiracy to republicanize Ireland. ""You are too kind "" said he to me ""to one who now sees the madness of the design and is sensible of the guilt of taking away the lives of honourable men."" A lapse of weakness here tied his tongue; and I brought him a draught of water from a spring which gurgled beside the wall. He thanked me and proceeded to say that my ""character for vigilance and activity had alarmed the principal conspirators and that he thinking all crimes meritorious in a popular cause had resolved to signalize the commencement of his services by putting the English secretary to death on the first occasion."" For this purpose he had followed my steps for some time in the metropolis but without finding a fit opportunity. The intelligence of my hunting days in the north gave him renewed expectations and he had followed me in various disguises; had been present at dinners and balls where I was the principal guest; had even frequently conversed with me on public and foreign topics; in fact had haunted me with a case of pistols constantly in his bosom; yet had never been able to find the true opportunity of despatching me without _eclat_. He had at last determined to give up the object as altogether hopeless; and had already prepared to act on a bolder scale by heading open rebellion when he heard of my intending to hunt on this day. It was to be his last experiment; ""and how rejoiced I am "" said he ""that it has failed!"" He now remained for a while in apparent meditation and then suddenly raising himself on his hand said in a full and manly tone--""One thing I still can do in this world if it may not be too late. Leave me here; I must die; go back in all haste to your friends and tell them to prepare either to fly or defend their lives. This is the night appointed for the breaking out of the insurrection. Fifty thousand men are already armed in the mountains and ready for the signal to march on the principal towns. The few troops in the country are to be made prisoners in their barracks. The government stores are to be divided among the people. Before twelve hours are over we shall have a force of a hundred thousand men on foot; and a republic will be proclaimed."" The intelligence was startling but not wholly unexpected. I demanded the names of the leaders; but on this head he refused to make any answer. I next enquired whether the rebel directory had any hope of assistance from the Continent. ""That I can fully answer "" said he now almost at his last gasp. ""I myself was the negotiator. It is but a month since I was in Paris. The government agreed to send seven sail of the line with ten thousand troops and Hoche the favourite general of the republic to the north; or in case of unexpected obstacles to the south of Ireland. I have been looking out for their flag from hour to hour."" The man sank back on the ground. I prepared to run for help if there were any to be found in that desolate place. He grasped my hand; his was icy. ""No "" said he ""I must now be left alone; I am dying and I am not sorry to die. I am free from your blood and I shall not share in the horrors which I see at hand. Men in health and men dying think differently of those things. Farewell!"" He gave my hand a convulsive clasp and expired. My situation was an anxious one. Night had fallen and the hour was full of peril to those whom I had left behind; it was even possible that the insurrection might have already broken out. Sounds which seemed to me in the stillness of the hour to be the signals of the peasantry--the echoes of horns and trampling of bodies of horse--began to rise upon the gust and yet I was unwilling to leave my unfortunate victim on the ground. A length a loud shout and the firing of musketry on the skirts of the wood awoke me to a sense of the real danger of my situation. I forced my way through the thickets and saw a skirmish between a large mass of armed men and a picket of troops in a village on the borders of the wood. There was now no time to be lost. I returned to the spot where the body lay placed my hand on its forehead to ascertain whether any remnant of life lingered there; found all cold; and remounting my horse wound my dreary and difficult way back to the mansion. To my surprise I found the windows blazing with lights carriages arriving and all the signs of a night of gala. I had forgotten that this was my noble entertainer's birthday and that the whole circle of the neighbouring nobles and gentlemen had been for the last month invited. There were to be private theatricals followed by a ball and supper. The whole country continued to pour in. Full of my disastrous intelligence my first enquiry was for the noble host; he was not to be seen. I was at length informed under the seal of secrecy by his secretary that some information of popular movements within a few miles having been conveyed to him late in the day he had put himself at the head of a squadron of his yeomanry to ascertain the nature of the disturbance and as it was then too late to countermand the invitations to the ball had given strict orders that the cause of his absence should be concealed and that the entertainments should go on as if he were present. Agreeing that this was the wisest thing which could be done to avoid unnecessary alarm which paralyses action beforehand and renders all ridiculous after I seldom felt it more difficult to play my part than on this occasion. As a minister any thing in the shape of solicitude on my part was sure to be magnified into actual disaster and I was forced to keep an unembarrassed countenance. I immediately sent out servants in every direction to bring intelligence of the actual state of affairs and above all to ascertain what had detained their master. Though all this was done with the utmost secrecy it was impossible to suppress the growing impression that something extraordinary must have occurred to withdraw from his own hospitable roof and so long detain the lord of the mansion distinguished as he was for the most polished courtesy. As the hour waned the enquiries became more urgent the dance languished and the showy crowd forming into groups and wandering through the saloons or gathered to the windows had evidently lost all the spirit of festivity. To my astonishment strong opinions began to find utterance and I discovered that his lordship in his general and lofty disregard of the shades of popular sentiment had among his guests some individuals whose rank and wealth had not preserved them from the taint of republicanism. As it was not my purpose to make a ball-room the scene of a political squabble and as I felt it due to my official position to avoid any unnecessary entanglement in the obscure follies of provincial partizanship I first tried to laugh down the topic. But a young orator a handsome and fluent enthusiast recently returned from a continental excursion gave so stirring a picture of the glories of French independence and the glittering advantages which must accrue to all countries following the example that I was forced to stand on my defence. The gallant republican was not to be repelled; he poured out upon me as he warmed with the theme so vast a catalogue of public injuries in language so menacing yet so eloquent that I was forced to ask whether I was standing in the midst of a Jacobin club--whether his object was actually to establish a democracy to govern by the guillotine to close up the churches and inscribe the tombs with--death is an eternal sleep; to swear to the extinction of monarchy and proclaim universal war. Our dispute had now attracted general notice. He answered with still more vehement and elaborate detail. I had evidently the majority on my side but some few adhered to him and those too men of consequence and obvious determination. The ladies shrank affrighted as the contest grew more angry; and the usual and unhappy result of political discussion in Ireland an exchange of cards was about to take place when one of the servants brought me a small packet of papers which had been found on the body of the assassin. Glancing over them I saw a list of the leaders of the insurrection and the first name in the paper that of my antagonist. I crushed the document in my hand and beckoned him to a window. There alone and out of hearing of the guests who however followed us anxiously with their eyes I charged him with his guilt. He denied it fiercely. I gave him five minutes to consider whether he would confess or abide the consequences. His countenance visibly exhibited the perturbations of his mind; he turned pale and red alternately shuddered then braced himself up with desperate resolution and finally ended by denying and defying every thing. It was not in my nature to press upon this moment of agony; but telling him that nothing but compassion prevented my ordering his arrest on the spot I again warned him to make his peace in time with the government by a solemn abjuration of his design. I have the whole scene before me still. This man was destined to a memorable and melancholy fate. I never remember a countenance more expressive of intellectual refinement; but there was a look of strange and feverish restlessness in his large grey eye almost ominous of his future career. He was still young tho
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gh he had already gone through vicissitudes enough to darken the longest life. He had been a few years before called to the bar the favourite profession of the Irish gentry where he had exhibited talents of a remarkable order; but an impatience of the slow success of this profession drove him to the hazards of political change. He had married and this increased his difficulties until party came athwart him with its promises of boundless honour and rapid fortune. His sanguine nature embraced the temptation at once; but the parliamentary opposition was too deliberate and too frigid for his boiling blood; he plunged into the deeper and wilder region of conspiracy took the lead which is so soon assigned to the brilliant and the bold and became the soul of the tremendous faction which was ready to proclaim the separation of the empire. He had but now returned from France with a commission in the army of the Republic and a plan agreed on with the Directory for the invasion of Ireland; but these were discoveries to be made hereafter. On this night I saw nothing but a gallant enthusiast filled with classic recollections inflamed with the ardour of early life and deluded by the dreams of political perfection. My sense of the utter ruin which he was preparing for himself was so strong that I pressed him from point to point until he was forced to take refuge in flight and rushing from me burst open a door which led to the demesne. While I paused not unwilling to give him the opportunity to escape I heard a wild burst of wailing and a confusion of voices outside. In the next moment I saw the fugitive return with a tottering step a bloodless countenance and a look of horror. Without a word he pointed to the door; I followed the direction and saw what might well justify his feelings. The troop of yeomanry had been attacked on their return from patrolling the country; an ambuscade had been laid for them by a large force of the insurgents in one of the narrow roads which bordered the demesne and where from its vicinity they had imagined themselves secure. As they moved down this defile with their noble commandant at their head a heavy fire of musketry assailed them from both sides; and as the assailants were unapproachable they had no resource but to gallop on. But they had no sooner reached the wider part of the road than they found themselves fired on again from behind a barricade of carts and waggons drawn across the road. The affair now seemed desperate; the muzzles of the muskets almost touched their breasts and every shot told. Their pistols could only keep up a random fire and their sabres were wholly useless. They were now falling helplessly and fast when the earl ordered them to charge the insurgents in front and force their way over the barricade at all risks. He bravely led the way and they burst through under a volley from the rebels. A ball fatally struck him as he was in the act of cheering on his men and he dropped dead from his horse without a groan. The troop furious at their loss had taken a desperate revenge cleared the road and had now brought the dead body of their lord to that mansion where he had so long presided as the example of every high-toned quality and which his fate was now to turn into a scene of terror and woe. The melancholy tidings could not now be suppressed and the ball-room was filled with screams and faintings. The corpse was brought in borne on the arms of the yeomanry most of them wounded and looking ghastly from loss of blood and the agitation of the encounter. The guests crowded round the sofa on which the body was laid with all the varieties of sorrow and strong emotion conceivable under the loss of a common and honoured friend. Tears fell down many a manly cheek; sobs were heard on every side mingled with outcries of indignation against the rebellious spirit by which so deep a calamity had been produced. But all other considerations were quickly absorbed in the sense of general danger. A tremendous shout was heard round the mansion followed by the discharge of musketry and the clashing of pikes. All rushed to the windows and we saw the hills in a blaze with fires and the demesne crowded with the armed thousands of the insurrection. JANUS; THE GOD OF NEW-YEAR'S DAY FROM THE FASTI OF OVID. Behold with omens blithe and bright on festive New-Year's Day First in the year old Janus comes and foremost in my lay! Twin-headed god source of the year that silent glides away Who only of the Olympian throng canst thine own back survey; Bless thou our noble chiefs whose arms have purchased gentle peace To fruitful Earth and lent the wave from pirate-chase release; On senators and people smile who call Quirinus god All temples bright in shining white fly open at thy nod! A lucky sun doth shine; nor voice nor thought of ill be stirr'd To tempt the time; the happy day demands the happy word. No brawls assail the ear; cease now the harsh-vex'd forum's hum And calumny with eager tongue for once thy spite be dumb! Lo! where the pure and fragrant flame from every altar round Upwreathes while ears devout receive the saffron's crackling sound! The wandering flame far darting strikes the golden-fretted roof And with the tremulous ray aloft it weaves a shining woof. In stately pomp the people wend up the Tarpeian slope All brightly on a bright day clad the pure white robes of hope; New axes shine and in the sun new purple bravely sports And greeted-far the curule chair new weight of worth supports;[12] New oxen come that lately cropp'd the sweet Faliscan grass And yield to Jove their willing necks on which no yoke did pass. He from his starry throne sublime looks East and West; and lo! He sees but Rome and Rome's domain in all he sways below. Hail happy day and still return to bless with happier face The sons of Romulus lords of Earth not thankless for thy grace! But who art thou strange biform god and what thy power? for Greece With all her gods of thee and thine hath bade her Muses cease; This say; and say why thou alone of all celestial kind Dost forwards still look steadfastly and also gaze behind? Thus with myself I mused and held my tablets to indite When sudden through the room there shone an unaccustom'd light And in the light the double shape of Janus hoar appear'd And 'fore my view with fix'd regard his double face he rear'd. I stood aghast each rigid hair erect rose on my head And through my frame with freezing touch the creeping terror sped. He in his right hand held a staff and in his left a key And with the mouth to-me-ward turn'd these words he spake to me-- ""Fear not pains-taking bard whose pen doth chronicle the days Receive my word with faithful ear and sound it in thy lays. When earth was young primeval speech first call'd me Chaos; I Am no birth of to-day--a name of hoar antiquity. This lucid air and the other three which elements ye class Fire water earth were then one rude and undigested mass; But soon within the mingled heap a secret strife did brew And to self-chosen homes anon the hostile atoms flew. First rose the flame sublime the air assumed the middle berth And to the central base were bound strong ocean and firm earth. Then I till then a mass confused a huge and shapeless round New features worthy of a god and worthy members found; Still of my primal shapeless bulk remain'd the little trace That I alone have no true back but show both ways a face. One cause thou hast; another hear and with my figure know My virtue and my power above my office here below. Whate'er thou see'st the earth the sea the air the fiery cope At my command they shut their gates at my command they ope. I of the vasty universe do hold the secret key The hinge of every thing that turns is turn'd alone by me. Peace when I please to send her forth from her secure retreats Walks freely o'er the unfenced fields and treads free-gated streets; The mighty globe would quake convulsed by blood and murderous din Did not my brazen bolt confine the store of strife within. The gates of Heaven are mine; I watch there with the gentle Hours That Jove supreme must wait my time in the Olympian bowers. Thence my name Janus;[13] thence the priest who on my altar places The salted cake the sacred meal with strange-mouth'd titles graces My hoary deity; thence you hear Patulcius now and now Clusius crown the votive gift and seal the mystic vow.[14] Thus rude antiquity at first its simple creed confess'd And with twin words the functions twain of one same god express'd. My power you know--the god of gates--now for my figure why? The cause is plain and may be read by half a poet's eye. There is no door but looks two ways; into the busy street This way and that way back towards the quiet Lar's retreat;[15] And as the porter whom you place to keep watch at your gate Sees who goes out and who comes in at early hour and late Thus I the warden of the sky from heaven's wide-tented blue Look forth and scan both east and west with comprehensive view. The triform image you have seen and any where may see Of Hecate standing at the point where one road parts in three; Thus I lest turning of my neck my function might delay The motive world on either side without a move survey."" Thus spake the god with friendly mien and eye that seem'd to say-- ""If wish be yours to question more command me; I obey."" Due thanks I gave; strong fear no more my eager tongue possess'd And with a look that sought the ground the immortal I address'd. ""This would I know why frosty days and storms begin the year Which flowery spring had usher'd in with more auspicious cheer; Then all things flourish--all things then of youth and freshness tell The juicy vine begins to flow the bud begins to swell; With fresh green leaves the tree is clad a virgin sheen appears The bursting seed above the ground the fresh green blade uprears. With fresh full-throated warblings then the blithe birds stir the air And lamb and lambkin in the mead their frisking sports prepare. Then suns are mild; its south retreat the stranger swallow leaves And skilful builds the well-known clay beneath the lofty eaves. Then walks the ploughman forth; the clod yields to the sturdy steer; Soothly the fittest time was this to omen in the year."" My words were many but in words few and well-chosen He Within the compass of two lines thus made reply to me. ""What time the sun that sunk before mounts loftier to the view This fitliest closed the parting year and usher'd in the new."" I ask'd again ""Why on this day the forum's strife should end Only in part.""--""The cause "" said he ""I will explain; attend. The young year's starting day I made but partial holiday Lest labourless begun the year might run to the end in play; Each cunning hand on Janus' feast makes prelude to his trade Of all the rest a timely test on New-Year's day is made."" Then I this further--""Tell me why when I bring frankincense To Jove or any other god with thee I still commence?"" ""Because of things in heaven and earth I hold the sacred key The first approach to all the gods is made alone through me."" ""But on thy kalends why are men so harsh on other days Keen to return the kindly look and change the friendly phrase?"" To this the god his strong right hand upon his good staff leaning ""All ominous things when first observed speak out their fateful meaning. To the first voice of things that cry ye lend a trembling ear And the first flight of bodeful wings fills pious hearts with fear. The ears are open of the gods to catch on New-Year's day What random words or thoughtless prayer a hasty fool may say."" Thus ceased the god; nor slow was I the broken thread to join But of the last words that he spake thus trode the heels with mine. ""But what have dates to do with thee and wrinkled figs this tell And what the honey dew that drops pure from its snowy cell?""[16] ""Here too an omen lies "" he said; ""the cause is passing clear That from sweet things a savour sweet may relish the whole year."" Thus taught the cause I understood of dates and figs and honey; ""But tell me now wise god!"" I said ""what means the piece of money?"" He smiled. ""Alas! how much thy age deceives thy wit "" he said; ""As if sweet honey by the touch of gold were sweeter made. Even in good Saturn's day 'twas hard to find a heart all pure From the infection of base gain and gainful lust secure. Small at the birth it grew apace the thirst of yellow ore Till heap on heap ye pile so high that ye can pile no more. Not so the measure was of wealth in Rome's primeval time When all was poor that now is rich and low that's now sublime; When a small hut was all that held the son of Mars divine And gather'd reeds were all the couch on which he drain'd the wine; When Jove within his narrow cell erect could scarcely stand An earthen Jove and of base clay the bolt that arm'd his hand. When with wild-flowers the fane was deck'd that now with jewels gleams And his own sheep the senator fed near the rural streams; When gently woo'd by healthy sleep the rustic warrior lay On straw and praised above all down a truss of bristling hay; When to give laws to Rome the peasant consul left the plough And gold was then as great a crime as 'tis a virtue now. But when our fates were lifted high and to the stars sublime Perch'd on her base of seven-hill'd state proud Rome had learn'd to climb; Wealth grew with power and lust of wealth a madness of the brain And still the more that they possess'd the more they sought to gain. Eager to make that they might spend spending to make anew Change nursed by change of fell extremes to monstrous nature grew; Thus he whose sickly body swells with water in the veins The more he drinks the more within the thirsty fever reigns. All things are prized by price; to wealth all honours now are sure; Wealth buys the rich man friends; forlorn and friendless pines the poor. If now you ask why copper coins are chiefly my delight The ancient brass of Rome should I the ancient Janus slight? Brass was their wealth of old; though now the better omen's gold And the new metal from the field has fairly beat the old. Myself though simple and severe approve a golden shrine-- This metal hath a majesty that suits a power divine. We praise the ancients and 'tis well; but use our modern ways-- All fashions in due time and place are worthy of our praise."" Thus ceased the god; but I to set all rising doubts at rest The hoar key-bearer of the sky thus with meek words address'd:-- ""Much I have learn'd; but tell me this--why of our copper coin Does one side bear a ship and one a double head like thine?""[17] ""That head is mine; you might have known the likeness of the face But that hoar age and wear have dull'd the sharpness of the trace. As for the ship attend: the god that bears the scythe whilcome Far-wandering in the Tuscan flood at length had ceased to roam.[18] Well I remember when he came and hold the memory dear-- Saturn by Jove expell'd from heaven and kindly welcom'd here. Thence was the land Saturnia call'd; and Latium still we name The part where ancient Saturn lurk'd in safety when he came.[19] Our pious sires upon the brass the sacred ship impress'd Whose keel to blest Ausonian shores had borne the Olympian guest. Then on that spot I made my home where Tiber's waters glide And eat the yielding banks away with sandy-rolling tide. Here where Rome stands wild copse green grew; the busy forum now Was then a peaceful glen disturb'd by wandering oxen's low. My fortress then was that same hill which pious Rome reveres Even now and thinks on Janus when Janiculum she hears. Here I was king when holy earth of heavenly guests could tell And in the haunts of men the gods were not ashamed to dwell; Ere Justice shrinking from the sight of human guilt and crime Last of immortals left the earth and sought the starry clime; When hearts were sway'd by love and held by bonds of holy awe And light the labour was to shape for willing hearts the law. Stern war I knew not and the gates I held were gates of peace; While in my hand the key declared--Let garner'd stores increase!"" Here closed the god his lips; but I not bashful open'd mine And with the mortal voice again unseal'd the voice divine. ""Since many gates are thine in Rome say why dost thou appear In perfect shape and size nowhere but at the forums here?""[20] Whereto the god with gentle hand stroking his long beard hoary Forthwith recounted in my ear OEbalian Tatius' story; And how by Sabine gauds ensnared the fair and faithless maid The path that to the Capitol leads to the Sabine lord betray'd. ""As there is now so then there was a slope by which you go Steep from the citadel to the plain and forum stretch'd below; And now the twain had reach'd the gate where Juno's partial ward The only bolts that closed their way propitiously unbarr'd When I too wise with Saturn's seed in open fight to join Contrived a scheme that baffled hers a plan entirely mine; I oped (in opening lies my strength) a gate where waters slept And from the solid rock straightway a stream impetuous leapt; To the hot spring such sulphurous steams my timely aid supplied That eager Tatius quail'd and shrunk back from the rolling tide. The Sabines fled; the gushing fount miraculous ceased to flow; Nor pious Rome to own the power that sent such aid was slow; A little altar on a shrine not large to Janus' name Was raised; there sprinkled meal and cake smokes mingled with the flame."" ""But this say further --why thy gates in war are open why In peace are closed?"" whereto the god thus gave the prompt reply; ""That till her sons fierce war have quench'd and crush'd the crude revolt Rome to receive the homeward host may keep unbarr'd the bolt; In peace my locks are closed that none may causeless leave his home Nor few the years I shall be closed while Cæsar reigns in Rome."" Thus spake the god; and lifting high his head of diverse view Scann'd east and west and all that's spread beneath the ethereal blue; And peace rein'd o'er wide earth; ev'n where i' the north with surly wave The rebel Rhine to Cæsar's arms their latest triumph gave; Peace hoary Janus make thou sure for ever; and may they Who purchased peace embrace the globe with everlasting sway. TO A BLIND GIRL. I do not sigh as some may sigh To see thee in thy darkness led Along the path where sunbeams lie And bloom is shed. I do not weep as some may weep Upon thy rayless brow to look; A boon more rare 'twas thine to keep When light forsook. A glorious boon! Thou shalt not view One treasure from the earth depart-- Its starry buds its pearls of dew Lie in thy heart. No need to heed the frosty air No need to heed the blasts that chafe The scatter'd sheaf the vintage spare-- _Thy hoard is safe_. Thou shalt not mark the silent change That falls upon the heart like blight The smile that grows all cold and strange.-- Bless'd is thy night! Thou shalt not watch the slow decay Nor see the ivy clasp the fane Nor trace upon the column gray The mildew stain. _Ours_ is the darkness--thine the light. Within thy brow a glory plays; Shrine blossom dewdrop all are bright With quenchless rays. J. D. THE FORCED SALE. A large red brick house with a multitude of gable-ends and rows of small dingy-looking windows had hidden itself for many generations in a clump of fine old trees in a large green field--almost qualified to take rank as a park--at a distance of six or seven miles from St Paul's. In the days of the good Queen Anne the city lay comfortably huddled up round the cathedral church and looked upon her sister of Westminster as too far removed and of too lofty a rank to be visited except on rare occasions. London was then contained within reasonable limits and it was easy to walk round her boundaries; you could even point out the precise spot at which the town ended and the country began. The inhabitants of the large brick house known by the name of Surbridge Hall at rare intervals and then only to visit the shops undertook the journey into the city; and unless in the stillest of autumn evenings when the enormous tongue of the metropolitan clock made itself audible on the Surbridge lawn they might have forgotten that such a place as the capital was within fifty miles. That generation died off; and London had begun to put out feelers in all directions and had outgrown the ancient limits. Streets began to move out a little way into the country for change of air; and in making their usual shopping-visits to the great city the inhabitants of Surbridge Hall had now to drive through a short row of houses where the elders of the party remembered nothing but a hedge. That generation also died out; and the city like an old dowager who has once been a beauty and boasted of a waist grew out of all shape. There were squares and crescents rising in every quarter and the white tops of chimneys and the blue dinginess of roofs became visible from the upper windows of Surbridge Hall. The proprietor terrified perhaps by the approach of such neighbours advertised the Hall for sale speedily found a purchaser and somewhere about the beginning of this century the old family name of the Walronds disappeared from the country and Surbridge Hall became the property of William Wilkins Esq. We may observe that much about the same time the name of the senior partner disappeared from the door of a dingy-looking house in Riches Court and the firm of Wilkins & Roe was deprived of its larger half. The old lion-rampant that had stood on its hind-legs for so many years on the top of one of the piers of the entrance gates as if in act to spring upon the deer that lay ruminating on the top of the other was now displaced; and in a few days his position was taken by a plaster-of-Paris cast of Hebe benevolently holding forth an empty goblet towards the thirsty statue of Apollo which did duty on the other side. The floors in the old hall were new laid the windows fitted with plate glass the painting and decoration put into the hands of a Bond-street finisher who covered the walls with acres of gilding and hung chandeliers from the ceilings and placed mirrors upon the walls till the rooms looked like the show galleries of an upholsterer and very different from the fine solid habitable apartments they used to be in the time of the late proprietor. And a change nearly as remarkable took place on Mr Wilkins himself as in his house. He attended county meetings and became learned in rents and agriculture. He built new houses for his tenants and only regretted he had never learned to ride or he would have followed the hounds. But though he was no Nimrod he dressed like one of his sons and encased his thick legs in top-boots and generally carried a whip. At last by dint of good dinners and voting on the right side at the elections he became a magistrate; and if Mrs Wilkins had had the politeness to die he would have married Lady Diana O'Huggomy the daughter of an Irish earl; but Mrs Wilkins did not die and Lady Diana ran away with a dancing-master. His son had been eighteen years at the bar and never had had a brief; his daughters had been twenty years on the world and never had had an offer; but he still expected to see Richard lord chancellor and his three girls peeresses. A country gentleman a county magistrate perfectly healthy and tolerably rich was there any thing wanting to Mr Wilkins's felicity? Yes. Alexander the Great was wretched when he had conquered the world and was ten times happier when he was breaking-in Bucephalus; and Mr Wilkins if the truth must be told was very like Alexander the Great at least in his discontent and was never so gay as he used to be in the dingy mansion in Riches Court. The dinners he gave were formal cold affairs where he never felt at his ease: he could not help thinking that the neighbours quizzed and looked down on him; and in short he felt out of his element and longed sometimes for the free-and-easy dinners he had relished so much in the city. His farm-houses were at last all built his improvements all completed and there was no further occupation for either himself or his money. He sometimes drove into Harley Street to see his son but he found that gentleman also on the rack of idleness and went home again wondering how Roe was getting on in the old premises though never venturing to go near him--for his family had insisted on a dead cut between the partners and could not endure the thoughts of Mr Roe coming between the wind and their newly acquired nobility. Time wore on. Old Wilkins grew older. He used to sit at the window of his drawing-room and look towards London fancying to himself the bustle and stir that were going on the crowding in Fleet Street the crush at the Bank; and occasionally imagination conjured up to him the image of an active citizen bustling down towards the Exchange radiant with success and filled with activity and hope; and he could scarcely recognise his own identity with that joyous citizen the William Wilkins of that happier time. The flood of building which had only reached to within three miles of Surbridge when the Walronds retired to the ark of some estate they retained in Yorkshire had now increased to such a degree as to have submerged many of the fields and orchards that lay at very short distance from the Hall. ""Willars "" with Italian fronts and little greenhouses at the side took post all along the road and from the open windows sounded in summer evenings the Battle of Prague or God save the King so that you walked amidst perpetual music for no house was so ungenteel as to be without a piano. Surbridge Hall itself ran a great risk of becoming a suburban villa at no distant time; and Mr Wilkins was in some hopes that his family would allow him to consider himself an inhabitant of London once more and no longer doom him to the cold nothingness of squireship and gentility. But whether they might have relented in this respect can never be known; for while he was meditating a renewal of his acquaintance with his late partner and an occasional dive into Riches Court he changed his bed at the Hall for the family vault (newly built) in Surbridge church and his great-coat and riding-whip for a Roman toga and a long gilt baton with which he pointed to heaven from the top of a splendid monument near the south wall. Richard now succeeded to the family honours; and as he had married a Miss Gillingham--a name which he preferred to his ancestral appellation--he did her the honour to take it to himself and was duly enrolled in the list of justices as Wilkins Gillingham Esq. His son was sent to Christchurch and his three daughters to a fashionable boarding-school. His mother and sisters retired to Tunbridge Wells and they all began to persuade themselves that Surbridge had been in the family from the time of the Conquest. By way of strengthening their claims to county consideration it was wisely determined to oppose the building invasion as powerfully as they could. Several farms and fields were bought plantations were skilfully placed two or three feet were added to the height of the walls all round the property; and it was hoped that some impression was made on the advancing architectural enemy; for in the speculative year of 1819 a dozen or two of builders were removed to the Queen's Bench and whole rows of houses were left looking up to heaven in vain expectation of a roof. Wilkins Gillingham served the office of High Sheriff caught a surfeit in entertaining the judges and in a few weeks gave place to his heir. Augustus had passed two years at Oxford--had then married a beauty--the daughter of a country surgeon of the name of Howard; and as he inherited his father's tastes along with his property he changed his family name; and poor old Widow Wilkins who still survived enlivened the tea-tables of the Wells with anecdotes and descriptions of her grandson Gillingham Howard. Death seemed entirely to have forgotten the relict of the original William. She stood like an ancient pillar to point out where the building it once belonged to was placed; and was looked upon by her descendants pretty much as a native American looks upon a venerable squaw of some Indian nation--the connecting link between New York and the woods. The widow was the sole point of union left between Surbridge Hall and Riches Court. Whether her grandson did not relish the reminiscence or from what cause no one can hazard more than a guess certain it is that on the death of his wife who left him with two daughters four or five years old he did not summon his venerable ancestor from the Wells but installed one of her daughters--Aunt Susannah--in the temporary charge of his house. By some secret arrangement into the causes of which we have no time to enquire such a change took place in Aunt Susannah that though she left Tunbridge having secured her place in the inside of the coach in the name of Miss S. Wilkins she was brought out from London in Mr Howard's carriage in the name of Miss S. Gillingham; and there was no person of the name of Wilkins in the whole of the establishment. Aunt Susannah was not a person to hesitate long as to a change of name. It had been the whole object of her life till five-and-thirty years of disappointment had almost made her despair of succeeding in her object by the help of special license or even vulgar banns; and she accordingly made no scruple in adopting the more euphonious Gillingham and sinking all mention of the other. Mr Gillingham Howard followed the example of his predecessors. He was a _bona fide_ country gentleman with the one drawback to his otherwise stupendous respectability of being the greatest drawer of the long-bow since the days of Mendez Pinto. He added two feet more to the height of his boundary walls and bought all the disposable land round his estate; but if he had transplanted a couple of miles of the Chinese wall to Surbridge he could no more have kept off the intrusion of the barbarian villa-builders than the Celestials have been able to shut out the same pushing bustling active energetic unabashable individuals from the Flowery land. Architecture went on and now the gigantic city had stuck her arms so majestically on either hip that one of her elbows actually came into contact with the park of Surbridge Hall. There was a gentle elevation--in those flat regions honoured with the name of a hill--which lay at one side of the Surbridge lands. It was a beautifully wooded little property of thirty or forty acres which it had always been the ambition of the Surbridge owners to buy; but it was so involved with lawsuits or doubtful titles that it had hitherto been impossible to get possession of it for love or money. The upper part of it rose high above the glades of Surbridge park and the clump of trees on the summit formed a very fine object in the view from the drawing-room windows. It was all laid down in the richest pasture and would have formed the most valuable addition to the property both in making it compact and keeping it secluded. The owner of it died at last in the Fleet and it was advertised for sale with a perfect title and immediate possession. The sale was by auction and the day drew rapidly near. Mr Gillingham Howard went carefully over the ground examined the condition of his credit--for his surplus cash was gone--had the property valued; and determined to give a thousand more than its worth to prevent it falling into any one else's hands. When the day of sale arrived he placed himself in front of the auctioneer and determined by the fierceness of his ""bids "" to frighten any competitor from the field. The room was crowded and the sale began. All the eloquence of the celebrated Puff was displayed on this occasion; and when he paused after his glowing description and asked any gentleman to be kind enough to name a sum to begin with--suggesting at the same time four thousand pounds. ""Gentlemen shall we say four thousand guineas?"" Mr Gillingham Howard in a voice that was calculated to show that he was in earnest and did not stand upon trifles nodded his head and said ""seven!"" The auctioneer himself was overcome with the success of his oratory and there was a dead silence among the spectators. ""Thank you sir--seven thousand guineas "" he said ""Will any gentleman make an advance?"" looking round at the same time as if he considered it useless to waste any breath in endeavouring to enhance the price. His hammer mechanically went up and was on the point of falling when a weak voice near the orator's pulpit whispered ""eight."" The voice proceeded from an old man wrapped up in a thick great-coat though it was a warm day in June--a clear-eyed small-featured diminutive old man who had sat
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the whole time taking no apparent interest in the proceedings. All eyes were turned upon him in a moment and he quietly repeated the awful monosyllable--""eight!"" Mr Gillingham Howard looked at the old gentleman with detestation in every feature for he felt that the person whoever he was was actually robbing him of a thousand pounds; and he would have had very few scruples in sending the culprit to Botany Bay for so tremendous an outrage. A sort of smile ran round the assemblage at seeing the sudden alteration produced on his countenance; and though he had determined not to give more than the original seven he was ashamed to be cowed by an unknown individual at once; and after a few minutes' pause and a glance of ineffable hatred at the little old man who had relapsed into his state of contented unconcern he looked at the auctioneer and said ""Five hundred more!"" Saying this he put his hands into his pockets and kept his eye fixed on his competitor. Without a moment's hesitation the old gentleman nodded his head once more and said ""Mr Puff I'm in a hurry. Will this gentleman give ten thousand guineas? I will!"" The auctioneer gave one look to Mr Gillingham Howard and saw from the blank expression of that gentleman's countenance that competition was at an end. The hammer fell and seemed like a great rock on Mr Gillingham Howard's heart. ""Your name if you please sir "" said Mr Puff. The little old gentleman rose up and said ""Give me a pen and ink. I'll write an order for the money. My name is Thomas Roe No. 20 Riches Court."" CHAPTER II. A week had passed and Mr Gillingham Howard nursed his wrath like Tam O'Shanter's wife to keep it warm. The name of the successful purchaser had struck him with a feeling of horror; for as silence had brooded for fifty years over the history of his grandfather--and as the misty period preceding the purchase of Surbridge had given rise to a whole mythology of ancestry like to the anti-historic periods of Greece and other imaginative nations--he looked upon the appearance of the veritable contemporary of that fabulous age in the same way as Romulus would have regarded any surviving friend and companion of the real _bona fide_ robber or pig-driver to whom he probably owed his birth. It is needless therefore to say that over all other feelings fear and disgust predominated. He determined to withdraw himself into still more aristocratic seclusion than before and on no account to recognise the existence of his new neighbour. A month or two passed on and no steps seemed taken on the part of the purchaser to avail himself of his new acquisition. Day after day Mr Gillingham Howard looked up to the tuft of trees that crowned the beautiful field beyond his park and on seeing no symptoms of cutting down nor other preparations for house-building began to indulge in the pleasing anticipation that the old gentleman had no intention of the kind; and by cherishing this idea for some time he succeeded at last in believing that if he did in reality turn his ground to any such a purpose he would be guilty of a fresh injustice. Three months had elapsed and the beautiful colours of Autumn just unfurled themselves in order to be struck at the first broadside of a November frost--the sun was shining so warmly that the leaves had every reason to be ashamed of their yellow complexions; and a young lady--like a butterfly awakened by the brightness of the day--fluttered forward from the porch of Surbridge Hall dressed in all the hues of the rainbow. A green bonnet a pink pelisse a red shawl and lilac parasol were scarcely in keeping with the sylvan scene on which she hurriedly entered. She was very tall and very thin and had been taught to walk by a Parisian _promeneuse_ at a guinea a lesson; so that the tail of her gown described a half circle every time she stept and her progress was apparently on the principle of the propeller screw. A small sketch-book was under her arm and across her wrist she bore a supernumerary shawl. ""If he should be there again "" she thought ""he will surely speak. He looked as if he wished to do it last time. But he's bashful perhaps to a person of my rank. Poor fellow--how handsome he looked as he turned away!"" The thought seemed to be a pleasant one for a sort of smile rose to her thin lips as she dwelt on it and she increased her pace. She opened a little gate and moved rapidly on towards an ornamental poultry-house near the boundary of the estate. The extra shawl was soon spread upon the stump of a tree the sketch-book opened and with her eye intently fixed on the fantastic chimney of the hen-house she listened for every sound. She moved the pencil as if busily engaged in sketching; but strange to say the figure produced by her touch took (involuntarily as it were) the appearance of a very handsome young man for whose bright eyes and smiling countenance there was no warrant in the twisted bricks and oddly shaped cans of the original. As if her drawing had been the mystic configurations of a conjurer the spirit came when she did call for it; and with a side glance of her eye she perceived at no great distance from her a young man who seemed to be gazing at her with great earnestness and was only prevented from addressing her by the awe that formed of course the body-guard of a daughter of Mr Gillingham Howard. There are many ways in which it is possible to show that the said body-guard may be broken through without subjecting the culprit to the penalties of high-treason. A short cough as if preparatory to a conversation--a hurried look and then a scarcely perceptible smile--a sort of fidgety uneasiness as if the stump of the tree was something rather different from an air-cushion--such were the methods pursued by Miss Arabel Howard on the present occasion with complete success. The stranger combated with his respect and going near to where the sketcher--again utterly unconscious of his presence was putting in a tuft of ivy--he took off his hat and bowed-- ""Ha!"" exclaimed Miss Arabel in a state of most becoming surprise. ""I hope I do not alarm you madam "" said the stranger; ""though my sudden presence here requires an apology."" ""Oh!--I beg--I feel sure--any gentleman--my father will be most happy to""---- ""You are very kind. I perceive you appreciate the beauty of this situation as much as I do. You are sketching the gable and chimney""---- ""Yes--but pray don't look."" But before she had time to close the page and clasp the book he had caught a view of a well drawn hat and very tastefully touched whiskers. The stranger smiled. ""It is indeed a beautiful little work "" he continued. ""And the building so very picturesque. Grandpapa pulled down a row of cottages that the poor people lived in and built this romantic little hermitage."" ""So I have heard."" ""Oh have you? Grandpapa improved this place very much. Think how the view must have been spoilt by a row of nasty cottages and a crowd of horrid poor people."" ""It was very near the church for the cottagers."" ""Oh! but papa is going to get the horrid old church removed to the other end of the parish and have a beautiful building instead of the present tumble-down old ruin."" ""Taste seems hereditary in your family."" ""It is indeed: ages ago great improvements were made by papa's grandfather. He got quit of all the cottages except the row that stood here--for what can be more horrid than the sight of a set of dirty ignorant people in such beautiful scenery? They should all live in a common or hide themselves in some dark streets in London. Don't you think so?"" ""A great many of them do; but if I were a sketcher I think I could make a very interesting subject out of a poor man's cottage with his little children playing about the garden."" ""Not real poor children!"" exclaimed Miss Arabel ""nor a real poor man--no. I have made sketches myself of papa and the Misses Warrible--Sir Stephen Warrible's daughters--dressing them in fancy rags and filling the garden they played in with flowers from our conservatory and giving the cottage French windows and a trellis-work veranda. He stands leaning on a spade with silver buckles in his shoes and the children are playing _La Grace_ with the hoops covered with pink ribands. I called it 'The Poor Man's Joy;' and Lord Moon has begged me to give it to an engraver."" ""I hope you will comply with his lordship's request."" ""I would if I could escape the publicity of the thing. Papa would be so angry if he thought I was so nearly professional as to be the author of a published sketch."" ""I am afraid your father is too particular. No scruple of the kind fettered the genius of one of the princesses of France."" ""Ah but she was one of the new people! There was no artist in the elder branch. Papa can't endure Louis Philippe and says they are all very low."" The gentleman was attacked with a slight cough and after a pause renewed the conversation. ""I think I have seen you engaged on this subject for some time."" ""It takes a long time to get in all these twists and corners "" replied Miss Arabel with a smile of satisfaction to find that the recontre was not more one of chance on his side than her own. ""Do you devote yourself entirely to sketching?"" ""Oh no! I paint as well. We have a large gallery at home and it is an excellent school. The family portraits are many of them very fine."" ""Does it go far back in the English school?"" ""Oh you should see the great wigs of the Charleses and jack-boots of the cavaliers! We were all cavaliers I suppose for I don't see a single roundhead among them."" ""And the ladies?"" ""Oh such hoops and farthingales! such pyramids of muslin on their heads and pillars of red leather upon their heels!"" ""And is the painting good of that ancient date? How do you like it compared to the modern?"" ""We have very few modern portraits; and none of any ladies later than George II."" ""No?"" enquired the young man anxiously. ""No lady later than that? Ah then I have been misinformed!"" he added in a disappointed tone. ""Had you heard of our collection then?"" ""Yes--no--that is--I believe in most old family houses there is a regular series of portraits that may enable the student to trace the alterations of the English school from its very commencement."" ""Oh--a student--are you?--that is--have I the pleasure of speaking to a painter?"" enquired Miss Arabel with great dignity. ""Oh no madam; only an admirer of the art."" ""And you are disappointed at the want of recent female portraits "" said Arabel more graciously the faintest possible hope springing to her heart that he was disappointed at the absence of her own. ""I should like to have heard the opinion of a competent judge on so interesting a subject. A comparison between Kneller for instance and Sir Joshua would be worthy of your taste."" ""Oh Kneller by all means and Lely better than both! I believe now that you put me in mind of it there is a pale colourless Sir Joshua in the nursery--the school-room I mean."" ""A lady?"" enquired the stranger. ""A person "" replied Miss Arabel who never allowed lady's rank to any one whose status she did not know--""with long hair falling about her face and a little boy lying asleep in her lap. Whether she was a lady or not I don't know but I rather think not for I never heard of her being connected with our family. Perhaps she was a nurse."" ""And are you sure it is a Sir Joshua?"" ""Oh yes!--His name is written on the back; and Mr Ochre my drawing-master says it is all out of proportion and of no merit at all. But why are you so anxious about the daub? Mr Ochre wishes to be allowed to retouch it."" ""If he lays a brush on it""--the stranger began in a furious tone but checked himself--""if he lays a brush on it he will spoil an old master."" ""A master!"" said Miss Arabel with a contemptuous giggle. ""I only wish you could see it."" ""I wish I could "" replied the young gentleman; ""but I am afraid I shall never be so happy."" ""Oh!""--The young lady did not say any thing more but looked at the stranger as if taking measure of his respectability to see if an _entrée_ to Surbridge Hall was really above his hopes. He was tall well made with an air such as she had not seen in any of the visitors at that aristocratic mansion. ""I'm sure "" she repeated looking down and speaking with interesting hesitation ""my papa would be happy to show his gallery to any gentleman in the neighbourhood. Perhaps you know papa?"" ""I have not the honour but since I know what a treasure he possesses I should think it a great happiness to make his acquaintance."" The lady said nothing but thought it the most neatly turned compliment she ever heard in her life. ""I am on a visit to a family near this "" he continued ""and may perhaps have the opportunity of meeting Mr Howard. ""Oh where is it?"" exclaimed Miss Arabel. ""What is their name? We know every body in the neighbourhood--that is of course you know""---- ""Every body that's worth knowing "" said the stranger with a smile. ""Exactly. Is it the Rayleighs of Borley Castle we know them very well; or the Manbys of Flixley Abbey delightful people we are quite intimate with them; or the Sundridges of Fairley Manor there are no pleasanter people in the world--so good so ladylike and yet they say Mrs Sundridge's father was something very low a Calcutta merchant or India director or something of that sort. Is it any of these?"" ""No! It is with a gentleman who has lately taken a small villa in the neighbourhood and I am afraid he will think I have been absent from him too long. Do you sketch here every day?"" ""Till I have finished this tiresome building "" replied Miss Arabel. ""I must avail myself of the fine weather and not miss a single morning."" The gentleman smiled and so did the lady. With another apology for having intruded he bowed and withdrew. Miss Arabel continued where she was till she lost his graceful figure among the windings of the shrubbery. ""He is a charming man "" she thought ""and might easily manage to get acquainted with papa if he chose. Who can he be?--he's very clever and very accomplished--and walks so nobly. I wonder if he is in the Guards."" She opened her sketch-book once more and was busy with her pencil and her thoughts at the same time. She had not seen what necessity there was for taking his leave so hurriedly and perhaps a faint idea came to her that it was not impossible he might return. While she was new-pointing her pencil and recalling all that the stranger had said she heard a footstep coming through the plantation. ""Hush! He is coming again. He can't stay away."" ""Servant young mum--servant and all that "" said a voice close behind her;--""Scratch! scratch! there you go painting bricks as if they was Christians and all that."" ""Sir! Are you aware this is private property. Papa would be very angry if""---- ""He heard I was here. I dassay he would and all that--but I don't intend to wait for him here. I'll beat up his quarters at the hall--I will--and all that."" Miss Arabel had a profound contempt for old people and little people; and the person who at present addressed her was both little and old. He wore a short flaxen wig and a spenser over a long-tailed blue coat; grey nether habiliments with four or five inches of a white worsted stocking visible between his knee and his gaiter. It was a very well-shaped leg and the owner thereof seemed to know it. ""You will not find papa at home "" said Miss Arabel. ""He has gone out to a magistrate's meeting."" ""I didn't say I was going there to-day did I?--and he don't go justicing every day in the week I hope. I'll see him soon depend on't and make acquaintance with his young 'uns and all that. How many is there of you?"" ""My sister and myself--if you enquire as to the number of Mr Gillingham Howard's family "" replied Miss Arabel. ""What! ha'n't ye picked up ne'er a man yet? ne'er a one on you? Is your sister any thing like yourself?"" Miss Arabel cast a look of haughty indignation on her questioner; but disdained a reply. ""Pr'aps you're looking out for a juke or a bernet or some regular nobleman and all that--for I hear you carries all your heads uncommon high--whereby it wouldn't be unagreeable to pull 'em down a bit and all that. Come come don't pout nor be sulky. Be friendly young 'oman now that we're going to be neighbours and all that."" ""Friendly indeed!"" said Miss Arabel with a toss of her head that would have snapped a martingale in fifty pieces. ""Pray walk on sir. I am a lady and papa would be very indignant at your impertinence."" ""I dassay he would; but not a bit more than I have been at his'n this many a long day. Why I've dandled him on my knee a hundred times."" ""Have you? Perhaps you were his nurse's husband or the butler. If you come to the servants' hall""---- ""Indeed! What to do? To see fine ladies' maids give themselves airs and disgust people with their insolence and affectation. Much obliged to you all the same; but when I wants to see sights like that I'll come into the drawing-room."" ""I don't know what you mean and beg you'll retire. Papa put an Irish beggar into prison for three weeks for insulting my aunt."" ""What! old Susie--old Two-to-the-Pound and all that. He must have been very much of an Irishman to insult the old Roman."" ""What do you mean sir? Do you know my aunt Susannah?"" ""Ay to be sure. Ain't I one of her elders? Lord love ye I've known old Susie since she was just up to my knee--and a reg'lar speciment she was. We always called her Two-to-the-Pound. Many's the laugh her father and I has had about her dumpiness and all that."" ""Papa's grandfather? Did you know him sir?"" enquired Miss Arabel examining her companion at the same time to see if he was not the Wandering-Jew or St Leon; for she considered her papa's grandfather as the principal personage of a very remote historical era; and would have been little more surprised to hear that the old gentleman before her had smoked cigars with Sir Walter Raleigh. ""Did you know my great-grandfather sir?"" ""Didn't I? There wasn't a bigger snob though I says it in all England; and just about two-and-forty years ago him and me was as thick as two thieves though only one of us was a thief. He was a old man then and I was a young 'un and all that. Your father was summut about eight years old and my daughter was born the very month afore he bought this here estate. So you see it ain't no great time to talk about seeing my daughter aint a old 'oman yet though she has a girl twenty year old."" ""I don't understand what you say "" repeated Miss Arabel. ""Old Susie will understand me better and so will little Gus."" ""Who is Gus?"" ""Gus is your father--Augustus he was christened; but we always called him Gus. Well it's quite pleasant I declare to be among old friends; and I'm glad I've took a willa so close."" The sound of the word ""willa "" even with the initial ""w "" attracted Miss Arabel's attention. Could it be possible that this was the old gentleman with whom the handsome stranger was on a visit? ""If you live so near you can of course have an opportunity of seeing papa."" ""Seeing him? yes and telling him a bit of my mind. I'll see every thing in the house--from old Susie Two-to-the-Pound down to the last born kitten. You keeps cats of course and all that? Susie must be pleased to see me. Sich laughs to be sure we had about her and a young man of the Excise. He was about seven feet high and she wa'n't above four and a half so we always called him her young man of the extra size. Wasn't it funny? But he died of a decline; and I hear she's a broad as she's long. Well we must all die!"" ""I must wish you good-day sir. I'm going home "" said Miss Arabel rising to go away and assuming as much dignity as she could. ""Well good-day and good-luck to you "" said the old man. ""Why how tall you are! and the wick not half covered. You wouldn't do credit to old Bill Wilkins's manufacture though I says it as shouldn't. You ain't much better than one of the single dips. I'll call on your father one of these fine days; for now that I've come to the neighbourhood I've little better to do than pay off old scores--and interest's been running on for two-and-forty years. Tell him he had better set a price on Surbridge and prepare to move for I want to buy the estate for a friend of mine."" ""I beg sir--I insist--I don't know you sir "" said the agitated and angry Arabel. ""He does though. He knows me precious well; and what's more you may tell him my name if you like."" ""I will tell him sir that he may send you to prison for your impertinence. He's a magistrate."" ""I know all about him. He's a boastful blockhead. Tell him I told you so. My name is Mr Thomas Roe 20 Riches Court."" CHAPTER III. The account given by Miss Arabel of her interview with the hateful purchaser of the coveted meadows was so confused that to persons less interested in the matter than Mr Gillingham Howard and Miss Susannah Wilkins (or Gillingham by brevet ) it would have been altogether unintelligible. But before these two terror-struck individuals rose a vision of their detected boasts and overthrown pretensions that filled them with dismay. What! Mr Gillingham Howard exposed in all quarters as the descendant of a tallow-chandler and the censorious Miss Susan as having been known from her childhood by the name of Two-to-the-Pound? Could they silence the accuser by making him their friend?--or could they repel his revelations by dint of unhesitating unqualified lying?--or finally would it be necessary to quit the neighbourhood? Mr Gillingham Howard was a tall portly man with his hair slightly grizzled and an air of quiet assurance reposing on his somewhat coarse features which his partial aunt considered the solemn dignity of virtue and high birth. To a less blinded observed his narrow brow and heavy chin showed strong indications of the animal preponderating over the intellectual in his organization and his slow solemn talk--always about himself--showed the importance he attached to the slightest incident that had occurred to so distinguished an individual. Not that Mr Gillingham Howard as we remarked before limited his narratives merely to what had actually occurred--they diffused themselves over every circumstance that had happened to any one else and might by any possibility have happened to him. By this means he had an extraordinary fund of conversational anecdote; for whatever story he heard or adventure he read he immediately appropriated to himself; and thought nothing of killing his eight hundred ducks at one shot with Munchausen or finding out false concords in a Greek play with the Bishop of London. His aunt was so used to hear his marvellous tales that we must in charity suppose she believed some of them to be true; and in that persuasion she was called upon on all occasions to bear witness to the facts. She testified accordingly with the most perfect readiness to all his achievements in the rows at Oxford; his suggestions to the other magistrates that were always approved; his courage in every danger; his mastery in every game and his skill in every science. She was a little vulgar-looking woman with small cunning eyes and a very round face glistening and shining with its absurd obesity; and in shape and complexion bearing a close resemblance to a sun-flower stuck into a Dutch cheese. The awe with which she regarded her nephew arose partly from his size but principally from the aristocratic loftiness of his birth--being the third in descent from the original founder of the family while nothing stood between her and the tallow vat except the six years during which her father had enacted the country squire. What could be more appalling to these unhappy beings than the threatened visit and long-delayed vengeance of the implacable Thomas Roe? In the mean time Miss Arabel had only a confused notion of the meaning of all the threats and messages the mere report of which wrought such anguish in the paternal breast. Her thoughts dwelt more constantly on the interview she had had with the mysterious stranger; and the speech he had made about the treasure he had heard of in Surbridge Hall came every moment to her mind. It was so pretty a speech; and he looked so full of admiration when he said it! Was there no way of getting him introduced to papa? Not a word of the meeting could she mention to her sister; for Miss Arabel was one of those amiable beings not uncommon in ball-rooms who will not risk the peace of mind of a friend by making her acquainted with a rich or fascinating partner on any account. And if this holds good with a friend much more in the case of Miss Arabel did it hold good with a sister. So she sat in her own room and devised fifty expedients for legitimating her acquaintance with the interesting unknown. But while Surbridge Hall is frightened from its propriety let us pass over for a moment to the hostile camp and see what is going on there. A beautiful young girl is sitting at a table on which a number of maps and plans are laid out; and while her eyes are busily running over the various lines and measurements her small white hand is resting we are sorry to say without making the smallest effort for liberty within that of the very same young gentleman whose appearance we have already commemorated. Beautiful blue eyes they are and fitter for other employment than to pore over architectural or horticultural designs; and so she seems to think for she occasionally lifts them to those of her companion and a sweet smile brightens over all her face. That is Fanny Smith the granddaughter of Thomas Roe--the child of a Yorkshire parson who had been lucky enough to win the heart of Mary Roe--and wise enough not to despise her father though he lived in Riches Court. ""But grandpapa says it is of no use Charles to look at all these plans for houses. He'll never build on the new ground for he says he is determined to establish us at Surbridge Hall."" ""The old gentleman is too sanguine "" replied Charles. ""He will never persuade the present proprietor to leave it."" ""Oh he will though! You don't know what a determined man grandpapa is. He'll weary them out--or shame them away."" ""Shame!"" enquired the other--""How do you think shame can have any effect in people so lost to truth and so encased in ignorance and conceit?"" ""But grandpapa will expose them--and besides he'll pay them handsomely to go. I don't the least despair of getting quit of them."" ""Why if people would only take the trouble to enquire into the actual facts of any part of their behaviour and not take their own account of it--the boastful falsehoods of the nephew the malicious insinuations of the aunt their disregard of truth in serious affairs as well as in trifles their selfishness narrow-mindedness and want of charity--they would hesitate before they countenanced such characters in spite of the dinners they occasionally give and the position they hold. But society winks on vices which it is the duty of society to punish since the law takes no cognizance of them though more hurtful and disgraceful than theft or swindling. And I am afraid even if your grandfather unmasks the solemn pretender he will still carry his head as high as if he had a right from any quality but his wealth to mix with honest men."" ""Oh never fear!"" said Fanny laughing; ""those boastful people are always easiest frightened and a very short time will see us in Surbridge Hall."" ""Ah Fanny that would be too much happiness! I've heard of nothing but Surbridge since I was a child; and if my father could but see me in it living there my own property or yours Fanny which is the same thing he would almost die with joy; but no no it is impossible."" ""Impossible! deuce a bit of it!"" exclaimed the old gentleman himself; bustling into the room. ""I tell you that Surbridge is the house you will take Fanny home to. I've a great mind to say you sha'n't marry her at all unless she gives you Surbridge as part of her fortune."" ""Oh don't say that sir!"" ""No don't say that grandpapa for you know those horrid people may be obstinate "" said Fanny. ""I should like to see them "" said the old man knitting his brow. ""No no they must go. The bully is soon bullied. See he has sent me a flag of truce already; a note asking if I will allow him to call on me at three o'clock to renew his old acquaintance."" ""And will you let him?"" enquired Fanny. ""To be sure I will; and I'll return his visit too; but he'll be here in a few minutes now. I think you had better take a walk Charles and leave Fanny and me to entertain them. You can go and take some more lessons in sketching eh? Don't keep your teacher waiting."" Charles looked at his watch and then at Fanny and finally hurried away as he was ordered. The young lady also left the room. The old man sat down and sank in thought. He had his eye on the conduct of his partner's grandson for forty years though little did that ostentatious individual suspect that any person saw within his pharisaical exterior and knew him for the mass of selfishness falsehood and meanness he actually was. Moreover the old gentleman knew that his victim was not so rich as he appeared and had struggled in vain to better his fortunes by speculations of various kinds and even (the last refuge of the sinking respectables) by thrusting himself into trusteeships. He felt an assurance therefore that his threatened exposures--united to an offer of the full value of the estate--would secure him the possession of Surbridge Hall; if it had not been for the enjoyment he anticipated in uncloaking the hypocrite he might perhaps have contented himself with the acquisition of the land. A knock was heard at the door and Mr Gillingham Howard and his aunt walked into the room. Mr Gillingham Howard was very pale and his eye evidently quailed as it met the glance of Mr Thomas Roe. The little fat Susannah was immensely red in the face but whether from agitation of mind or the exertion of climbing the hall steps it is impossible to decide. ""I've called my dear old friend to take you by the hand "" said Mr Gillingham Howard. ""I've long wished I assure you to renew our acquaintance."" ""That's a thumper!"" replied the old man; ""you have wished nothing of the kind. Oh Gus haven't you conquered the horrid habit of story-telling that used to make you the laughing-stock of all the young men in the shop. And you my little Two-to-the-Pound what a time it is since we've met never since the exciseman died I do believe. Well you've not grown thin on't. Do you study the ninth commandment as much as you used to do?"" ""The ninth commandment sir "" said the lady tossing her head. ""I don't know what you mean."" ""Yes you do Susan; the ninth commandment is the one about false witness you know. And sich a gal as you used to be for slashing a character or trying to make your kindest friends ridiculous there wasn't in all the city. You were always so tremendously witty you never had a good word for any body; for witty gals as you used to be thinks nothing funny that isn't what they calls severe. But you're a old woman now and I hope you're improved."" Miss Susannah had never been called an old woman before. If she had seen Mr Gillingham Howard looking with his usual brazen assurance she would have broken out in a torrent of invective against her merciless tormentor--but the fight was entirely out of that illustrious character and he stood in trembling silence before his opponent. ""My dear sir "" he said at last ""you are too severe on my aunt--but you were always a wag. I've heard my father say he never knew any one so full of humour."" ""Indeed?"" ""And I myself remember how good-natured you used to be when you visited my father in Harley Street."" ""Ay indeed--let me see. Had your father risen to be at the top of the profession by that time with a promise of the chancellorship in his pocket when his father died?"" ""My dear sir I don't know what you mean--why--what""-- Haven't you been in the habit of telling your friends so after dinner?"" enquired Mr Roe; ""now remember."" ""Well! I may perhaps have said that he hoped to be chancellor."" ""No no--you have uniformly stated as a fact that he had the written promise of the office--and you have constantly appealed to your aunt for the truth of your statement."" ""La! Mr Roe--how should I know about law and chancellorships? It isn't a lady's business."" ""It is a lady's business not to corroborate a falsehood."" ""Really my good sir "" said Mr Gillingham Howard ""you are too hard on a little after-dinner talk."" ""Not a bit not a bit--that
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after-dinner talk as you call it for forty years day after day retailing falsehoods and asseverating them so constantly that you at last almost succeed in deceiving yourself does away all the distinctions in your mind between truth and falsehood--and when once the boundary is broke down there is no farther pause. A man may go on and boast about his cricket and shooting till he would not stick at a false oath."" ""Sir! I bear many things from an old friend of our family but an imputation on my veracity is intolerable. Do I ever deviate from the truth Aunt Susan?"" ""You! Oh no! if there's any quality you excel in more than another it is your truth. Low people may tell lies and of course do; but you! Mr Gillingham Howard!--you are a perfect gentleman from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot."" ""Omitting all the intermediate parts "" replied Mr Roe. ""You know very well what I mean sir; and moreover you know that what I say is true--but I will spare you at present. I wish to purchase Surbridge Hall. I will give you the full price. Will you sell it or not?"" ""Why sir a place that has been long in one's family""---- ""I was nearly forty years old when it was bought--and hope to live few years yet "" interposed Mr Roe. ""And I don't see what pleasure you could take in acquiring a place to which you have no hereditary ties--my poor father--and my dear grandfather""----continued Mr Gillingham Howard. ""Should have stuck to the melting tub both of them--but it isn't for myself I want the property. I have _a_ grandchild sir; a grandson--but that has nothing to do with it. Will you let me have your answer soon? I will call on you to hear your decision to-morrow."" ""Always happy to see an old friend."" ""Provided he come with a new face "" interposed Mr Roe; ""but you don't much like the sight of my rough old phiz. At any rate there's no deceit in it and now we understand each other."" CHAPTER IV. It was on the day succeeding this visit of reconciliation that Miss Arabel and the stumpy Susannah pursued their way to the shrubbery walk in a rapid and mysterious manner as if they hoped to escape observation. ""Papa is so unreasonable aunt "" said the young lady. ""Why should he wish to leave Surbridge just when""---- ""You think you have caught a lover "" interposed the aunt; ""don't be too sure. You've been deceived in that way before now."" ""Oh if you only saw him! He met me yesterday and said he would see me again to-day; and paid such compliments and looked so handsome."" ""But who is he? Is he a gentleman?"" ""Of course he is "" replied Miss Arabel; ""or do you think he would venture to speak to _me_?"" ""Did he tell you his name?"" ""No. All he has told me is--he is living with an old gentleman in one of the villas in the neighbourhood."" ""An old gentleman "" mused Miss Susannah ""in a villa--it must be the same--it must be old Roe's Grandson. If it is and he takes a fancy to this girl it will be all well yet. What has he ever called you? Did he ever say you were an angel?"" ""No. He thought me one though; and said he had heard of what a treasure Surbridge contained; and yesterday he repeated it and said he would give the world to be able to call it his."" ""That's something. You must get him to say something of the kind before a witness."" ""But how? What witness can there be when I can never bring him to the house?"" ""Why not? Ah how I recollect in the back parlour "" said Miss Susannah her memory unconsciously wandering back to the love incidents of her youth. ""The back parlour?"" enquired Miss Arabel. ""The back--I didn't say back parlour. I said black parlour--the oaken dining-room in my father's house."" ""And what of it aunt? What made you think of the black parlour now?"" ""Oh it was a picture "" stammered Miss Susan inventing an excuse for her mistake; ""a beautiful old portrait--a sort of--I don't recollect what it was."" ""Ah! that puts me in mind of what he speaks of often--the pictures in our house. I say aunt "" she continued as if a thought had struck her. ""Well?"" ""Suppose I were to invite him to come into the Hall and see the portraits?"" ""Well so you might. Your father would think he was as fond of drawing as you are; and if he be the person I think he is your father will be delighted that you have made a friend of him."" ""Indeed? Oh I'm so happy! I'll ask him to the house this very day; and perhaps if he says anything aunt about the treasure you can be in the way to hear it."" ""That I will and I'll bring your father too. There's nothing like a father or brother in cases of the kind. If I had had a brother that would fight I might have been married myself. Dear me what an uncommon handsome young man in the avenue! I know him to be a lord by his walk."" Miss Arabel stretched her neck and nearly strained her eyeballs in the effort to follow the direction of Susannah's eyes. ""That's he "" she said; ""go now and leave me to get him into the house."" ""He can't be any relation of Thomas Roe: he's too handsome for that "" thought Miss Susannah; ""but whoever he is she'll be a lucky girl to catch him. My Sam was a foot or two taller but very like him in every other respect--except the limp in the left leg."" As she turned back before entering the house she saw the young people in full conversation in the shrubbery walk. ""Well if he _is_ old Thomas Roe's grandson and Arabel can hook him into a marriage there will be no occasion to leave Surbridge Hall. Does the monster wish us to be tallow-chandlers again?"" On hurrying to the drawing-room to communicate to her nephew the fact that Mr Roe's heir was desperately in love with Arabel she found Mr Gillingham Howard endeavouring to carry on a conversation with the very individual she most dreaded to see. Mr Roe had walked up accompanied by Fanny Smith to return the visit of the day before. ""This is so kind "" said Miss Susannah ""and so friendly to bring your pretty grandchild. Our girls will be delighted to be her friends."" ""Fanny's a good girl "" replied the old man; ""and you mustn't spoil her. Gus was just going to tell me if he had made up his mind when you came in. You've thought of my offer Gus?"" ""Certainly; any thing you say shall always have my best consideration. As far as I am concerned I could settle in Bucks where I have a small estate with satisfaction; but my girls are enthusiastically attached to this place. Arabel would break her heart if we took her away from Surbridge."" ""I warrant her heart against all breakage and other damages save and except the ordinary wear and tear--as Puff says in letting a furnished house; and if it only depends on the young lady I think I'll answer for her being more anxious for the arrangement than I am. But here's company coming and I must have your answer before I go."" Mr Gillingham Howard heard the carriage stop at the door. He felt it was impossible to present so rough-mannered a man as Mr Roe to any of his friends without a certainty of exposure and he was strongly tempted to agree to his demand at once if he would immediately leave the house; but before he had time to arrange his thoughts the door opened and the Rayleighs of Borley Castle were announced. Mr Gillingham Howard by a great effort received them with his usual courtesy. ""I have brought Mr Tinter with me "" said Mrs Rayleigh ""and I hope you will let him see your family portraits. We have told him so much of them that he is anxious to see them himself. He is writing a description of the private collections in the county."" Mr Tinter bowed; and Mr Gillingham Howard with an imploring look to Mr Roe who sat resting his chin upon his walking-stick professed himself highly honoured by Mrs Rayleigh's request. ""I believe you have portraits of the Sidney family sir "" said Mr Tinter ""as I hear from Mrs Rayleigh--you are nearly related to them; I should like very much to compare them with the pictures at Penshurst."" ""Oh! Mr Howard says the Penshurst pictures are only copies of his "" said Mrs Rayleigh. ""Did I madam? Did I say all?"" ""If not all you said most of them; and also that you had some originals of those in your distant relation the Duke of Norfolk's gallery."" Mr Gillingham Howard felt that Mr Roe's appalling eye was fixed upon him though he did not venture to look in the direction of where he sat. ""Mr Tinter will tell you at once which are the copies. You can do that Mr Tinter?"" ""I can guess at the age of the picture and the name of the painter if he is a master "" replied Mr Tinter. ""Oh! but Mr Howard has some pictures that Sir Thomas Lawrence said were the finest in Europe. Didn't he say so Mr Howard?"" ""Why ma'am--I think--at least so I understood him. Didn't Sir Thomas Lawrence praise some of my pictures aunt?"" ""I really don't remember "" said Miss Susannah looking more at Mr Roe than at her nephew. ""Oh I thought you told us last time we dined here that Sir Thomas stayed with you weeks at a time and copied five or six of them himself."" ""P'r'aps I knows more of them family portraits "" said Mr Roe with a wilful exaggeration of accent and magnanimous contempt of grammar--""than e'er a one on ye."" All eyes were immediately directed to the old man. Mrs Rayleigh who was a fine lady and had never seen so queer a specimen of a critic as Mr Roe was a little alarmed at his uncouth pronunciation. And Mr Gillingham Howard made a feeble and unsuccessful effort to deaden the effect of his remarks. ""My friend is a remarkably good judge of the fine arts but quite a character. An amazing humourist and very much given to quizzing. You'll hear what fun he'll make of us all."" ""Who is he?"" enquired Mrs Rayleigh in the same confidential whisper. ""A person who has grown very rich in some sort of trade. He was a protegé of a relation of mine."" ""And you bear with his eccentricities in hopes of his succession?"" ""Exactly."" ""I minds the getting of the whole lot on 'em. I can give you the birth parentage and edication of every one on 'em."" ""Of the pictures sir?"" enquired Mr Tinter taking out his note-book. ""I shall be delighted with any information."" ""But where is the gallery Mr Howard?"" enquired Mrs Rayleigh. ""Why madam many of the pictures--in fact all the best of them are in London at the cleaner's; but in the passage to the Conservatory there are some remaining but the place is dark. I hope you'll rather look at them some other time."" ""Now's the best "" said Mr Roe starting up. ""Let's see the family picters Gus."" Mr Howard was forced by the entreaties of all the party and led the way to the passage where his pictures were hung followed by Mrs Rayleigh and her two daughters and Mr Tinter Mr Roe and Fanny and Aunt Susannah. ""That seems a portrait of Queen Anne's time "" said Mr Tinter pointing to a much bewigged old gentleman in an antique frame. ""Pray what is its history?"" ""Isn't that your grandfather's uncle the general who won the battle of Ramillies against Marlborough's orders?"" enquired Mrs Rayleigh. ""Do tell Mr Tinter all about it."" ""I reminds all about it "" said Mr Roe before the agonized Mr Howard could make any reply. ""One of our agents failed and we seized on his furniture and old Bill Wilkins took this'n 'cause of the oak frame. He was a grocer in the Boro' and his name was--was--but I forgets his name."" ""Who took the furniture?"" asked Mr Tinter ""and who was a grocer in the Boro'?"" ""The man as had that picter and a sight more besides. There's one on 'em; the young 'oman a holding an orange in her hand and a parrot on her shoulder."" ""I thought that was the Saccharissa Mr Howard that had been in your family ever since the time of Waller."" ""I told you he was a wag "" said Mr Howard in the last desperate struggle to avoid detection. ""But who is he? He is a very impudent old man to be so free."" ""He is rich; the succession you know "" replied the gentleman with a forced laugh; but before he could mumble any thing more the party turned round one of the corners of the passage and heard voices in earnest talk. ""How can I refuse when you tell me your happiness depends on it?"" came distinctly to the ears of all in the sharp clear tones of Miss Arabel. ""You are too good "" replied a voice which Fanny Smith immediately recognized as that of Charles. ""You will make my whole family proud and happy when they hear you have consented."" ""But won't you think I yield too soon; and without having asked papa's consent?"" ""Ah--yes--I don't know how he will bear the loss of such a treasure. But he will reconcile himself to the want of it when he knows how happy it makes another in the possession. Say when may I call it mine?"" ""Oh now--this moment--any time""--said Arabel who had heard a noise in the passage and concluded it was aunt Susannah enacting the part of a witness. ""Again I thank you!""--exclaimed Charles. ""I will take it in my arms this instant and carry it down the shrubbery walk to Mr Roe's."" ""As you please--and wherever you like "" said Arabel throwing herself upon his shoulder. ""I'm your's."" ""Why what in the name of wonder is all this here?"" cried Mr Roe hurrying on and pouncing on the pair. ""Are you making love to this here gal in the very presence of Fanny Smith?"" ""I sir?""--said Charles astonished at his situation and still supporting Miss Arabel who pretended to be in a faint. ""I asked this young lady to show me the picture of my father's mother; and to my great delight she said she would give it me; and when I expressed my gratitude she flung herself upon my shoulder and said she would give me herself."" ""And was it not me you meant by the treasure you talked of?"" said Miss Arabel starting up. ""No madam. 'Twas my grandmother's portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds."" ""Now that's all right "" said Mr Roe. ""This young gentleman is the one I talked of Gus--that I wants to buy this house for. I don't think your daughter will care to give it up to poor Charles that she took such a fancy to""---- ""They seem attached sir "" replied Mr Howard. ""And if they like to marry""---- ""Bah!--he's to be married next week to my little grandchild Fanny Smith and we'll include the pictures in the purchase-money for one of them is a portrait that was left by mistake when Bill Wilkins bought the hall and he would never give it back to the real owners. But now that Charles Walrond is to be my grandson I'll take good care he recovers his grandmother's likeness. Come--shall I go on and give these ladies the facts of some of your other stories or will you close with my terms at once?"" Mr Gillingham Howard did not take long to decide and a very short time saw Surbridge Hall once more in the ancient line; and old Mr Roe in relating the means he used to expel the vainglorious descendant of his partner generally concluded with the moral if not the words of Shakspeare--""Men's pleasant vices make whips to scourge them."" VANITIES IN VERSE. BY B. SIMMONS. LETTERS OF THE DEAD. TO LIVIA. I. How few the moons since last immersed In thoughts of fev'rish worldly care My casket's heap'd contents reversed I sought some scroll I wanted there; How died at once abstraction's air-- How fix'd my frame as by a spell When on THY lines so slight so fair My hurrying glance arrested fell! II. My soul that instant saw thee far Sit in thy crown of bridal flowers And with Another watch the star We watch'd in vanish'd vesper hours. And as I paced the lonely room I wonder'd how that holy ray Could with its light a world illume So fill'd with falsehood and decay. III. Once more--above those slender lines I bend me with suspended breath-- The hand that traced them now reclines Clasp'd in th' unclosing hand of Death. The worm hath made that brow its own Where Love his wreath so lately set; And in this heart survive alone Forgiveness--pity--and regret. IV. 'Twas 'mid the theatre's gay throng-- Life's loveliest colours round me spread-- That mid the pauses of a song I caught the careless ""_She is dead!_"" The gaudy crowd--thy sudden grave-- I shrank in that contrasting shock Like midnight Listener by the wave When splits some bark upon the rock. V. This EARLY DEATH--within its pale Sad air each angry feeling fades-- An evening haze whose tender veil The landscape's harsher features shades. Ah Scornful One--thy bier's white hue Stole every earth-stain from thy cheek And left thee all to MEMORY'S view That HOPE once dared in thee to seek. 1836. PARTING PRECEPTS. I. How graceful was that Grecian creed Which taught that tongues of old Dwelt in the mountain and the mead And where the torrent roll'd And that in times of sacred fear With sweet mysterious moans They spoke aloud while some pale Seer Interpreted their tones.[21] II. And LADY why should we not deem That in each echoing hill And sounding wood and dancing stream A language lingers still? No lovelier scenes round DELPHI spread Than round thee stretch divine; Nor Grecian maid bent brighter head By haunted stream than thine. III. Then fancy thus that to thine ear While dies the autumn day The VOICES of THE WOODLANDS bear This tributary lay. Soft winds that steal from where the moon Brightens the mountain spring Shall blend with Mulla's[22] distant tune And these the words they sing:-- 1. ""Thou'st shared our thousand harmonies; _At morn_ thy sleep we stirr'd With sounds from many a balmy breeze And many a jocund bird; And far from Us when pleasure's lure Around thy steps shall be Ah keep thy soul as freshly pure As We came pure to thee! 2. ""_At noon_ beneath September's heat Was it not sweet to feel Through shadowy grasses at thy feet Our silver waters steal? Sparklingly clear as now the truth Seems in thy glance to glow; So may through worldly crowds thy youth A stainless current flow. 3. ""_At eve_ our hills for thee detain'd The sun's departure bright. He sank--how long our woods were stain'd For thee with rosy light! The worth the warmth the peace serene Thou'st known our vales among Say shall they be reflected seen Upon thy heart as long? 4. ""Morn noon and eve--bird beam and breeze Here blent to bless thy day; May portion of their memories Be ever round thy way! Sweet waters for the weary Bark Through parching seas that sails; Friends may grow false and fortune dark But NATURE never fails."" COLERIDGE AND OPIUM-EATING.[23] What is the deadest of things earthly? It is says the world ever forward and rash--""a door-nail!"" But the world is wrong. There is a thing deader than a door-nail viz. Gillman's Coleridge Vol. I. Dead more dead most dead is Gillman's Coleridge Vol. I.; and this upon more arguments than one. The book has clearly not completed its elementary act of respiration; the _systole_ of Vol. I. is absolutely useless and lost without the _diastole_ of that Vol. II. which is never to exist. That is one argument and perhaps this second argument is stronger. Gillman's Coleridge Vol. I. deals rashly unjustly and almost maliciously with some of our own particular friends; and yet until late in this summer _Anno Domini_ 1844 we--that is neither ourselves nor our friends--ever heard of its existence. Now a sloth even without the benefit of Mr Waterton's evidence to his character will travel faster than that. But malice which travels fastest of all things must be dead and cold at starting when it can thus have lingered in the rear for six years; and therefore though the world was so far right that people _do_ say ""Dead as a door-nail "" yet henceforwards the weakest of these people will see the propriety of saying--""Dead as Gillman's Coleridge."" The reader of experience on sliding over the surface of this opening paragraph begins to think there's mischief singing in the upper air. No reader--not at all. We never were cooler in our days. And this we protest that were it not for the excellence of the subject _Coleridge and Opium-Eating_ Mr Gillman would have been dismissed by us unnoticed. Indeed we not only forgive Mr Gillman but we have a kindness for him; and on this account that he was good he was generous he was most forbearing through twenty years to poor Coleridge when thrown upon his hospitality. An excellent thing _that_ Mr Gillman and one sufficient to blot out a world of libels on ourselves! But still noticing the theme suggested by this unhappy Vol. I. we are forced at times to notice its author. Nor is this to be regretted. We remember a line of Horace never yet properly translated viz:-- ""Nec scuticâ dignum horribili sectêre flagello."" The true translation of which as we assure the unlearned reader is--""Nor must you pursue with the horrid knout of Christopher that man who merits only a switching."" Very true. We protest against all attempts to invoke the exterminating knout; for _that_ sends a man to the hospital for two months; but you see that the same judicious poet who dissuades an appeal to the knout indirectly recommends the switch which indeed is rather pleasant than otherwise amiably playful in some of its little caprices and in its worst suggesting only a pennyworth of diachylon. We begin by professing with hearty sincerity our fervent admiration of the extraordinary man who furnishes the theme for Mr Gillman's _coup-d'essai_ in biography. He was in a literary sense our brother--for he also was amongst the contributors to _Blackwood_--and will we presume take his station in that Blackwood gallery of portraits which in a century hence will possess more interest for intellectual Europe than any merely martial series of portraits or any gallery of statesmen assembled in congress except as regards one or two leaders; for defunct major-generals and secondary diplomatists when their date is past awake no more emotion than last year's advertisements or obsolete directories; whereas those who in a stormy age have swept the harps of passion of genial wit or of the wrestling and gladiatorial reason become more interesting to men when they can no longer be seen as bodily agents than even in the middle chorus of that intellectual music over which living they presided. Of this great camp Coleridge was a leader and fought amongst the _primipili_; yet comparatively he is still unknown. Heavy indeed are the arrears still due to philosophic curiosity on the real merits and on the separate merits of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge as a poet--Coleridge as a philosopher! How extensive are those questions if those were all! and upon neither question have we yet any investigation--such as by compass of views by research or even by earnestness of sympathy with the subject can or ought to satisfy a philosophic demand. Blind is that man who can persuade himself that the interest in Coleridge taken as a total object is becoming an obsolete interest. We are of opinion that even Milton now viewed from a distance of two centuries is still inadequately judged or appreciated in his character of poet of patriot and partisan or finally in his character of accomplished scholar. But if so how much less can it be pretended that satisfaction has been rendered to the claims of Coleridge? for upon Milton libraries have been written. There has been time for the malice of men for the jealousy of men for the enthusiasm the scepticism the adoring admiration of men to expand themselves! There has been room for a Bentley for an Addison for a Johnson for a wicked Lauder for an avenging Douglas for an idolizing Chateaubriand; and yet after all little enough has been done towards any comprehensive estimate of the mighty being concerned. Piles of materials have been gathered to the ground; but for the monument which should have risen from these materials neither the first stone has been laid nor has a qualified architect yet presented his credentials. On the other hand upon Coleridge little comparatively has yet been written whilst the separate characters on which the judgment is awaited are more by one than those which Milton sustained. Coleridge also is a poet; Coleridge also was mixed up with the fervent politics of his age--an age how memorably reflecting the revolutionary agitations of Milton's age ________ridge also was an extensive and brilliant scholar. Whatever might be the separate proportions of the two men in each particular department of the three here noticed think as the reader will upon that point sure we are that either subject is ample enough to make a strain upon the amplest faculties. How alarming therefore for any _honest_ critic who should undertake this later subject of Coleridge to recollect that after pursuing him through a zodiac of splendours corresponding to those of Milton in kind however different in degree--after weighing him as a poet as a philosophic politician as a scholar he will have to wheel after him into another orbit into the unfathomable _nimbus_ of transcendental metaphysics. Weigh him the critic must in the golden balance of philosophy the most abstruse--a balance which even itself requires weighing previously or he will have done nothing that can be received for an estimate of the composite Coleridge. This astonishing man be it again remembered besides being an exquisite poet a profound political speculator a philosophic student of literature through all its chambers and recesses was also a circumnavigator on the most pathless waters of scholasticism and metaphysics. He had sounded without guiding charts the secret deeps of Proclus and Plotinus; he had laid down buoys on the twilight or moonlight ocean of Jacob Boehmen;[24] he had cruised over the broad Atlantic of Kant and Schelling of Fichte and Oken. Where is the man who shall be equal to these things? We at least make no such adventurous effort; or if ever we should presume to do so not at present. Here we design only to make a coasting voyage of survey round the headlands and most conspicuous sea-marks of our subject as they are brought forward by Mr Gillman or collaterally suggested by our own reflections; and especially we wish to say a word or two on Coleridge as an opium-eater. Naturally the first point to which we direct our attention is the history and personal relations of Coleridge. Living with Mr Gillman for nineteen years as a domesticated friend Coleridge ought to have been known intimately. And it is reasonable to expect from so much intercourse some additions to our slender knowledge of Coleridge's adventures (if we may use so coarse a word ) and of the secret springs at work in those early struggles of Coleridge at Cambridge London Bristol which have been rudely told to the world and repeatedly told as showy romances but never rationally explained. The anecdotes however which Mr Gillman has added to the personal history of Coleridge are as little advantageous to the effect of his own book as they are to the interest of the memorable character which he seeks to illustrate. Always they are told without grace and generally are suspicious in their details. Mr Gillman we believe to be too upright a man for countenancing any untruth. He has been deceived. For example will any man believe this? A certain ""excellent equestrian"" falling in with Coleridge on horseback thus accosted him--""Pray sir did you meet a tailor along the road?"" ""_A tailor_!"" answered Coleridge; ""_I did meet a person answering such a description who told me he had dropped his goose; that if I rode a little further I should find it; and I guess he must have meant you_."" In Joe Miller this story would read perhaps sufferably. Joe has a privilege; and we do not look too narrowly into the mouth of a Joe-Millerism. But Mr Gillman writing the life of a philosopher and no jest-book is under a different law of decorum. That retort however which silences the jester it may seem must be a good one. And we are desired to believe that in this case the baffled assailant rode off in a spirit of benign candour saying aloud to himself like the excellent philosopher the he evidently was ""Caught a Tartar!"" But another story of a sporting baronet who was besides a Member of Parliament is much worse and altogether degrading to Coleridge. This gentleman by way of showing off before a party of ladies is represented as insulting Coleridge by putting questions to him on the qualities of his horse so as to draw the animal's miserable defects into public notice and then closing his display by demanding what he would take for the horse ""including the rider."" The supposed reply of Coleridge might seem good to those who understand nothing of true dignity; for as an _impromptu_ it was smart and even caustic. The baronet it seems was reputed to have been bought by the minister; and the reader will at once divine that the retort took advantage of that current belief so as to throw back the sarcasm by proclaiming that neither horse nor rider had a price placarded in the market at which any man could become their purchaser. But this was not the temper in which Coleridge either did reply or could have replied. Coleridge showed in the _spirit_ of his manner a profound sensibility to the nature of gentleman; and he felt too justly what it became a self-respecting person to say ever to have aped the sort of flashy fencing which might seem fine to a theatrical blood. Another story is self-refuted: ""a hired partisan"" had come to one of Coleridge's political lectures with the express purpose of bringing the lecturer into trouble; and most preposterously he laid himself open to his own snare by refusing to pay for admission. Spies must be poor artists who proceed thus. Upon which Coleridge remarked--""That before the gentleman kicked up a dust surely he would down with the dust."" So far the story will not do. But what follows is possible enough. The _same_ ""hired"" gentleman by way of giving unity to the tale is described as having hissed. Upon this a cry arose of ""turn him out!"" But Coleridge interfered to protect him; he insisted on the man's right to hiss if he thought fit; it was legal to hiss; it was natural to hiss; ""for what is to be expected gentlemen when the cool waters of reason come in contact with red-hot aristocracy but a hiss?"" _Euge!_ Amongst all the anecdotes however of this splendid man often trivial often incoherent often unauthenticated there is one which strikes us as both true and interesting; and we are grateful to Mr Gillman for preserving it. We find it introduced and partially authenticated by the following sentence from Coleridge himself:--""From eight to fourteen I was a playless day-dreamer a _helluo librorum_; my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident. A stranger who was struck by my conversation made me free of a circulating library in King's Street Cheapside."" The more circumstantial explanation of Mr Gillman is this: ""The incident indeed was singular. Going down the Strand in one of his day-dreams fancying himself swimming across the Hellespont thrusting his hands before him as in the act of swimming his hand came in contact with a gentleman's pocket. The gentleman seized his hand turning round and looking at him with some anger--'What! so young and yet so wicked?' at the same time accused him of an attempt to pick his pocket. The frightened boy sobbed out his denial of the intention and explained to him how he thought himself Leander swimming across the Hellespont. The gentleman was so struck and delighted with the novelty of the thing and with the simplicity and intelligence of the boy that he subscribed as before stated to the library; in consequence of which Coleridge was further enabled to indulge his love of reading."" We fear that this slovenly narrative is the very perfection of bad story-telling. But the story itself is striking and by the very oddness of the incidents not likely to have been invented. The effect from the position of the two parties--on the one side a simple child from Devonshire dreaming in the Strand that he was swimming over from Sestos to Abydos and on the other the experienced man dreaming only of this world its knaves and its thieves but still kind and generous--is beautiful and picturesque. _Oh! si sic omnia_! But the most interesting to us of the _personalities_ connected with Coleridge are his feuds and his personal dislikes. Incomprehensible to us is the war of extermination which Coleridge made upon the political economists. Did Sir James Steuart in speaking of vine-dressers (not _as_ vine-dressers but generally as cultivators ) tell his readers that if such a man simply replaced his own consumption having no surplus whatever or increment for the public capital he could not be considered a useful citizen? Not the beast in the Revelation is held up by Coleridge as more hateful to the spirit of truth than the Jacobite baronet. And yet we k
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ow of an author--viz. one S.T. Coleridge--who repeated that same doctrine without finding any evil in it. Look at the first part of the _Wallenstein_ where Count Isolani having said ""Pooh! we are _all_ his subjects "" _i. e._ soldiers (though unproductive labourers ) not less than productive peasants the emperor's envoy replies--""Yet with a difference general;"" and the difference implies Sir James's scale his vine-dresser being the equatorial case between the two extremes of the envoy.--Malthus again in his population-book contends for a mathematic difference between animal and vegetable life in respect to the law of increase as though the first increased by geometrical ratios the last by arithmetical! No proposition more worthy of laughter; since both when permitted to expand increase by geometrical ratios and the latter by much higher ratios. Whereas Malthus persuaded himself of his crotchet simply by refusing the requisite condition in the vegetable case and granting it in the other. If you take a few grains of wheat and are required to plant all successive generations of their produce in the same flower-pot for ever of course you neutralise its expansion by your own act of arbitrary limitation.[25] But so you would do if you tried the case of _animal_ increase by still exterminating all but one replacing couple of parents. This is not to try but merely a pretence of trying one order of powers against another. That was folly. But Coleridge combated this idea in a manner so obscure that nobody understood it. And leaving these speculative conundrums in coming to the great practical interests afloat in the Poor Laws Coleridge did so little real work that he left as a _res integra_ to Dr Alison the capital argument that legal and _adequate_ provision for the poor whether impotent poor or poor accidentally out of work does not extend pauperism--no but is the one great resource for putting it down. Dr Alison's overwhelming and _experimental_ manifestations of that truth have prostrated Malthus and his generation for ever. This comes of not attending to the Latin maxim--""_Hoc_ age""--mind the object before you. Dr Alison a wise man ""_hoc_ egit:"" Coleridge ""_aliud_ egit."" And we see the result. In a case which suited him by interesting his peculiar feeling Coleridge could command ""Attention full ten times as much as there needs."" But search documents value evidence or thresh out bushels of statistical tables Coleridge could not any more than he could ride with Elliot's dragoons. Another instance of Coleridge's inaptitude for such studies as political economy is found in his fancy by no means ""rich and rare "" but meagre and trite that taxes can never injure public prosperity by mere excess of quantity; if they injure we are to conclude that it must be by their quality and mode of operation or by their false appropriation (as for instance if they are sent out of the country and spent abroad.) Because says Coleridge if the taxes are exhaled from the country as vapors back they come in drenching showers. Twenty pounds ascend in a Scotch mist to the Chancellor of the Exchequer from Leeds; but does it evaporate? Not at all: By return of post down comes an order for twenty pounds' worth of Leeds cloth on account of Government seeing that the poor men of the ----th regiment want new gaiters. True; but of this return twenty pounds not more than four will be profit _i. e._ surplus accruing to the public capital; whereas of the original twenty pounds every shilling was surplus. The same unsound fancy has been many times brought forward; often in England often in France. But it is curious that its first appearance upon any stage was precisely two centuries ago when as yet political economy slept with the pre-Adamites viz. in the Long Parliament. In a quarto volume of the debates during 1644-5 printed as an independent work will be found the same identical doctrine supported very sonorously by the same little love of an illustration from the see-saw of mist and rain. Political economy was not Coleridge's forte. In politics he was happier. In mere personal politics he (like every man when reviewed from a station distant by forty years) will often appear to have erred; nay he will be detected and nailed in error. But this is the necessity of us all. Keen are the refutations of time. And absolute results to posterity are the fatal touchstone of opinions in the past. It is undeniable besides that Coleridge had strong personal antipathies for instance to Messrs Pitt and Dundas. Yet _why_ we never could understand. We once heard him tell a story upon Windermere to the late Mr Curwen then M.P. for Workington which was meant apparently to account for this feeling. The story amounted to this: that when a freshman at Cambridge Mr Pitt had wantonly amused himself at a dinner party in Trinity in smashing with filberts (discharged in showers like grape-shot) a most costly dessert set of cut glass from which Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued a principle of destructiveness in his _cerebellum_. Now if this dessert set belonged to some poor suffering Trinitarian and not to himself we are of opinion that he was faulty and ought upon his own great subsequent maxim to have been coerced into ""indemnity for the past and security for the future."" But besides that this glassy _mythus_ belongs to an æra fifteen years earlier than Coleridge's so as to justify a shadow of scepticism we really cannot find in such an _escapade_ under the boiling blood of youth any sufficient justification of that withering malignity towards the name of Pitt which runs through Coleridge's famous _Fire Famine and Slaughter_. As this little viperous _jeu-d'esprit_ (published anonymously) subsequently became the subject of a celebrated after-dinner discussion in London at which Coleridge (_comme de raison_) was the chief speaker the reader of this generation may wish to know the question at issue; and in order to judge of _that_ he must know the outline of this devil's squib. The writer brings upon the scene three pleasant young ladies viz. Miss Fire Miss Famine and Miss Slaughter. ""What are you up to? What's the row?""--we may suppose to be the introductory question of the poet. And the answer of the ladies makes us aware that they are fresh from larking in Ireland and in France. A glorious spree they had; lots of fun; and laughter _à discretion_. At all times _gratus puellæ risus ab angulo_; so that we listen to their little gossip with interest. They had been setting men it seems by the ears; and the drollest little atrocities they do certainly report. Not but we have seen better in the Nenagh paper so far as Ireland is concerned. But the pet little joke was in La Vendée. Miss Famine who is the girl for our money raises the question--whether any of them can tell the name of the leader and prompter to these high jinks of hell--if so let her whisper it. ""Whisper it sister so and so In a dark hint--distinct and low."" Upon which the playful Miss Slaughter replies:-- ""Letters _four_ do form his name. * * * * He came by stealth and unlock'd my den; And I have drunk the blood since then Of thrice three hundred thousand men."" Good: But the sting of the hornet lies in the conclusion. If this quadril_i_teral man had done so much for _them_ (though really we think 6s. 8d. might have settled his claim ) what says Fire setting her arms a-kimbo would they do for _him_? Slaughter replies rather crustily that as far as a good kicking would go--or (says Famine) a little matter of tearing to pieces by the mob--they would be glad to take tickets at his benefit. ""How you bitches!"" says Fire ""is that all? ""I alone am faithful; I _Cling to him everlastingly_."" The sentiment is diabolical. And the question argued at the London dinner-table was--Could the writer have been other than a devil? The dinner was at the late excellent Mr Sotheby's known advantageously in those days as the translator of Wieland's _Oberon_. Several of the great guns amongst the literary body were present; in particular Sir Walter Scott; and he we believe with his usual good-nature took the apologetic side of the dispute. In fact he was in the secret. Nobody else barring the author knew at first whose good name was at stake. The scene must have been high. The company kicked about the poor diabolic writer's head as if it had been a tennis-ball. Coleridge the yet unknown criminal absolutely perspired and fumed in pleading for the defendant; the company demurred; the orator grew urgent; wits began to _smoke_ the case as active verbs; the advocate to _smoke_ as a neuter verb; the ""fun grew fast and furious;"" until at length _delinquent arose_ burning tears in his eyes and confessed to an audience (now bursting with stifled laughter but whom he supposed to be bursting with fiery indignation ) ""Lo! I am he that wrote it."" For our own parts we side with Coleridge. Malice is not always of the heart. There is a malice of the understanding and the fancy. Neither do we think the worse of a man for having invented the most horrible and old-woman-troubling curse that demons ever listened to. We are too apt to swear horribly ourselves; and often have we frightened the cat to say nothing of the kettle by our shocking [far too shocking!] oaths. There were other celebrated men whom Coleridge detested or seemed to detest--Paley Sir Sidney Smith Lord Hutchinson (the last Lord Donoughmore ) and Cuvier. To Paley it might seem as if his antipathy had been purely philosophic; but we believe that partly it was personal; and it tallies with this belief that in his earliest political tracts Coleridge charged the archdeacon repeatedly with his own joke as if it had been a serious saying viz.--""that he could not afford to keep a conscience;"" such luxuries like a carriage for instance being obviously beyond the finances of poor men. With respect to the philosophic question between the parties as to the grounds of moral election we hope it is no treason to suggest that both were perhaps in error. Against Paley it occurs at once that he himself would not have made consequences the _practical_ test in valuing the morality of an act since these can very seldom be traced at all up to the final stages and in the earliest stages are exceedingly different under different circumstances; so that the same act tried by its consequences would bear a fluctuating appreciation. This could not have been Paley's _revised_ meaning. Consequently had he been pressed by opposition it would have come out that by _test_ he meant only _speculative_ test: a very harmless doctrine certainly but useless and impertinent to any purpose of his system. The reader may catch our meaning in the following illustration. It is a matter of general belief that happiness upon the whole follows in a higher degree from constant integrity than from the closest attention to self-interest. Now happiness is one of those consequences which Paley meant by final or remotest. But we could never use this idea as an exponent of integrity or interchangeable criterion because happiness cannot be ascertained or appreciated except upon long tracts of time whereas the particular act of integrity depends continually upon the election of the moment. No man therefore could venture to lay down as a rule Do what makes you happy; use this as your test of actions satisfied that in that case always you will do the thing which is right. For he cannot discern independently what _will_ make him happy; and he must decide on the spot. The use of the _nexus_ between morality and happiness must therefore be inverted; it is not practical or prospective but simply retrospective; and in that form it says no more than the good old rules hallowed in every cottage. But this furnishes no practical guide for moral election which a man had not before he ever thought of this _nexus_. In the sense in which it is true we need not go to the professor's chair for this maxim; in the sense in which it would serve Paley it is absolutely false. On the other hand as against Coleridge it is certain that many acts could be mentioned which are judged to be good or bad only because their consequences are known to be so whilst the great catholic acts of life are entirely (and if we may so phrase it haughtily) independent of consequences. For instance fidelity to a trust is a law of immutable morality subject to no casuistry whatever. You have been left executor to a friend--you are to pay over his last legacy to X though a dissolute scoundrel; and you are to give no shilling of it to the poor brother of X though a good man and a wise man struggling with adversity. You are absolutely excluded from all contemplation of results. It was your deceased friend's right to make the will; it is yours simply to see it executed. Now in opposition to this primary class of actions stands another such as the habit of intoxication which are known to be wrong only by observing the consequences. If drunkenness did not terminate after some years in producing bodily weakness irritability in the temper and so forth it would _not_ be a vicious act. And accordingly if a transcendent motive should arise in favour of drunkenness as that it would enable you to face a degree of cold or contagion else menacing to life a duty would arise _pro hâc vice_ of getting drunk. We had an amiable friend who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was when sober; but when very drunk he had courage enough for the Seven Champions of Christendom. Therefore in an emergency where he knew himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a family we approved highly of his getting drunk. But to violate a trust could never become right under any change of circumstances. Coleridge however altogether overlooked this distinction; which on the other hand stirring in Paley's mind but never brought out to distinct consciousness nor ever investigated nor limited has undermined his system. Perhaps it is not very important how a man _theorizes_ upon morality; happily for us all God has left no man in such questions practically to the guidance of his understanding; but still considering that academic bodies _are_ partly instituted for the support of speculative truth as well as truth practical we must think it a blot upon the splendour of Oxford and Cambridge that both of them in a Christian land make Paley the foundation of their ethics; the alternative being Aristotle. And in our mind though far inferior as a moralist to the Stoics Aristotle is often less a pagan than Paley. Coleridge's dislike to Sir Sidney Smith and the Egyptian Lord Hutchinson fell under the category of Martial's case. ""Non amo te Sabidi nec possum dicere quare Hoc solum novi--non amo te Sabidi."" Against Lord Hutchinson we never heard him plead any thing of moment except that he was finically Frenchified in his diction; of which he gave this instance--that having occasion to notice a brick wall (which was literally _that_ not more and not less ) when reconnoitring the French defences he called it a _revêtement_. And we ourselves remember his using the French word _gloriole_ rather ostentatiously; that is when no particular emphasis attached to the case. But every man has his foibles; and few perhaps are less conspicuously annoying than this of Lord Hutchinson's. Sir Sidney's crimes were less distinctly revealed to our mind. As to Cuvier Coleridge's hatred of _him_ was more to our taste; for (though quite unreasonable we fear) it took the shape of patriotism. He insisted on it that our British John Hunter was the genuine article and that Cuvier was a humbug. Now speaking privately to the public we cannot go quite so far as _that_. But when publicly we address that most respectable character _en grand costume_ we always mean to back Coleridge. For we are a horrible John Bull ourselves. As Joseph Hume observes it makes no difference to us--right or wrong black or white--when our countrymen are concerned. And John Hunter notwithstanding he had a bee in his bonnet [26] was really a great man; though it will not follow that Cuvier must therefore have been a little one. We do not pretend to be acquainted with the tenth part of Cuvier's performances; but we suspect that Coleridge's range in that respect was not much greater than our own. Other cases of monomaniac antipathy we might revive from our recollections of Coleridge had we a sufficient motive. But in compensation and by way of redressing the balance he had many strange likings--equally monomaniac--and unaccountably he chose to exhibit his whimsical partialities by dressing up as it were in his own clothes such a set of scarecrows as eye has not beheld. Heavens! what an ark of unclean beasts would have been Coleridge's private _menagerie_ of departed philosophers could they all have been trotted out in succession! But did the reader feel them to be the awful bores which in fact they were? No; because Coleridge had blown upon these withered anatomies through the blowpipe of his own creative genius a stream of gas that swelled the tissue of their antediluvian wrinkles forced colour upon their cheeks and splendour upon their sodden eyes. Such a process of ventriloquism never _has_ existed. He spoke by their organs. They were the tubes; and he forced through their wooden machinery his own Beethoven harmonies. First came Dr Andrew Bell. We knew him. Was he dull? Is a wooden spoon dull? Fishy were his eyes; torpedinous was his manner; and his main idea out of two which he really had related to the moon--from which you infer perhaps that he was lunatic. By no means. It was no craze under the influence of the moon which possessed him; it was an idea of mere hostility to the moon. The Madras people like many others had an idea that she influenced the weather. Subsequently the Herschels senior and junior systematized this idea; and then the wrath of Andrew previously in a crescent state actually dilated to a plenilunar orb. The Westmoreland people (for at the lakes it was we knew him) expounded his condition to us by saying that he was ""maffled;"" which word means ""perplexed in the extreme."" His wrath did not pass into lunacy; it produced simple distraction; an uneasy fumbling with the idea; like that of an old superannuated dog who longs to worry but cannot for want of teeth. In this condition you will judge that he was rather tedious. And in this condition Coleridge took him up. Andrew's other idea because he _had_ two related to education. Perhaps six-sevenths of that also came from Madras. No matter Coleridge took _that_ up; Southey also; but Southey with his usual temperate fervour. Coleridge on the other hand found celestial marvels both in the scheme and in the man. Then commenced the apotheosis of Andrew Bell; and because it happened that his opponent Lancaster between ourselves really _had_ stolen his ideas from Bell what between the sad wickedness of Lancaster and the celestial transfiguration of Bell gradually Coleridge heated himself to such an extent that people when referring to that subject asked each other: ""Have you heard Coleridge lecture on _Bel and the Dragon_?"" The next man glorified by Coleridge was John Woolman the Quaker. Him though we once possessed his works it cannot be truly affirmed that we ever read. Try to read John we often did; but read John we did not. This however you say might be our fault and not John's. Very likely. And we have a notion that now with our wiser thoughts we _should_ read John if he were here on this table. It is certain that he was a good man and one of the earliest in America if not in Christendom who lifted up his hand to protest against the slave-trade. But still we suspect that had John been all that Coleridge represented he would not have repelled us from reading his travels in the fearful way that he did. But again we beg pardon and entreat the earth of Virginia to lie light upon the remains of John Woolman; for he was an Israelite indeed in whom there was no guile. The third person raised to divine honours by Coleridge was Bowyer the master of Christ's Hospital London--a man whose name rises into the nostrils of all who knew him with the gracious odour of a tallow-chandler's melting-house upon melting day and whose memory is embalmed in the hearty detestation of all his pupils. Coleridge describes this man as a profound critic. Our idea of him is different. We are of opinion that Bowyer was the greatest villain of the eighteenth century. We may be wrong; but we cannot be _far_ wrong. Talk of knouting indeed! which we did at the beginning of this paper in the mere playfulness of our hearts--and which the great master of the knout Christopher who visited men's trespasses like the Eumenides never resorted to but in love for some great idea which had been outraged; why this man knouted his way through life from bloody youth up to truculent old age. Grim idol! whose altars reeked with children's blood and whose dreadful eyes never smiled except as the stern goddess of the Thugs smiles when the sound of human lamentations inhabits her ears. So much had the monster fed upon this great idea of ""flogging "" and transmuted it into the very nutriment of his heart that he seems to have conceived the gigantic project of flogging all mankind; nay worse for Mr Gillman on Coleridge's authority tells us (p. 24) the following anecdote:-- ""'_Sirrah I'll flog you_ ' were words so familiar to him that on one occasion some _female_ friend of one of the boys "" (who had come on an errand of intercession ) ""still lingering at the door after having been abruptly told to go Bowyer exclaimed--'Bring that woman here and I'll flog her.'"" To this horrid incarnation of whips and scourges Coleridge in his _Biographia Literaria_ ascribes ideas upon criticism and taste which every man will recognise as the intense peculiarities of Coleridge. Could these notions really have belonged to Bowyer then how do we know but he wrote _The Ancient Mariner_? Yet on consideration no. For even Coleridge admitted that spite of his fine theorizing upon composition Mr Bowyer did not prosper in the practice. Of which he gave us this illustration; and as it is supposed to be the only specimen of the Bowyeriana which now survives in this sublunary world we are glad to extend its glory. It is the most curious example extant of the melodious in sound:-- ""'Twas thou that smooth'd'st the rough-rugg'd bed of pain."" ""Smooth'd'st!"" Would the teeth of a crocodile not splinter under that word? It seems to us as if Mr Bowyer's verses ought to be boiled before they can be read. And when he says '_Twas thou_ what is the wretch talking to? Can he be apostrophising the knout? We very much fear it. If so then you see (reader!) that even when incapacitated by illness from operating he still adores the image of his holy scourge and invokes it as alone able to smooth ""his rough-rugg'd bed."" Oh thou infernal Bowyer! upon whom even Trollope (_History of Christ's Hospital_) charges ""a discipline _tinctured_ with more than due severity;""--can there be any partners found for thee in a quadrille except Draco the bloody lawgiver Bishop Bonner and Mrs Brownrigg? The next pet was Sir Alexander Ball. Concerning Bowyer Coleridge did not talk much but chiefly wrote; concerning Bell he did not write much but chiefly talked. Concerning Ball however he both wrote and talked. It was in vain to muse upon any plan for having Ball blackballed or for rebelling against Bell. Think of a man who had fallen into one pit called Bell secondly falling into another pit called Ball. This was too much. We were obliged to quote poetry against them:-- ""Letters four do form his name; He came by stealth and unlock'd my den; And the nightmare I have felt since then Of thrice three hundred thousand men."" Not that we insinuate any disrespect to Sir Alexander Ball. He was about the foremost we believe in all good qualities amongst Nelson's admirable captains at the Nile. He commanded a seventy-four most effectually in that battle; he governed Malta as well as Sancho governed Barataria; and he was a true practical philosopher--as indeed was Sancho. But still by all that we could ever learn Sir Alexander had no taste for the abstract upon any subject; and would have read as mere delirious wanderings those philosophic opinions which Coleridge fastened like wings upon his respectable but astounded shoulders. We really beg pardon for having laughed a little at these crazes of Coleridge. But laugh we did of mere necessity in those days at Bell and Ball whenever we did not groan. And as the same precise alternative offered itself now viz. that in recalling the case we must reverberate either the groaning or the laughter we presumed the reader would vote for the last. Coleridge we are well convinced owed all these wandering and exaggerated estimates of men--these diseased impulses that like the _mirage_ showed lakes and fountains where in reality there were only arid deserts to the derangements worked by opium. But now for the sake of change let us pass to another topic. Suppose we say a word or two on Coleridge's accomplishments as a scholar. We are not going to enter on so large a field as that of his scholarship in connexion with his philosophic labours scholarship in the result; not this but scholarship in the means and machinery range of _verbal_ scholarship is what we propose for a moment's review. For instance what sort of a German scholar was Coleridge? We dare say that because in his version of the _Wallenstein_ there are some inaccuracies those who may have noticed them will hold him cheap in this particular pretension. But to a certain degree they will be wrong. Coleridge was not _very_ accurate in any thing but in the use of logic. All his philological attainments were imperfect. He did not talk German; or so obscurely--and if he attempted to speak fast so erroneously--that in his second sentence when conversing with a German lady of rank he contrived to assure her that in his humble opinion she was a ----. Hard it is to fill up the hiatus decorously; but in fact the word very coarsely expressed that she was no better than she should be. Which reminds us of a parallel misadventure to a German whose colloquial English had been equally neglected. Having obtained an interview with an English lady he opened his business (whatever it might be) thus--""High-born madam since your husband have kicked de bucket""---- ""Sir!"" interrupted the lady astonished and displeased. ""Oh pardon!--nine ten tousand pardon! Now I make new beginning--quite oder beginning. Madam since your husband have cut his stick""---- It may be supposed that this did not mend matters; and reading that in the lady's countenance the German drew out an octavo dictionary and said perspiring with shame at having a second time missed fire --""Madam since your husband have gone to kingdom come""---- This he said beseechingly; but the lady was past propitiation by this time and rapidly moved towards the door. Things had now reached a crisis; and if something were not done quickly the game was up. Now therefore taking a last hurried look at his dictionary the German flew after the lady crying out in a voice of despair--""Madam since your husband your most respected husband have hopped de twig""---- This was his sheet-anchor; and as this also _came home_ of course the poor man was totally wrecked. It turned out that the dictionary he had used (Arnold's we think )--a work of a hundred years back and from mere ignorance giving slang translations from Tom Brown L'Estrange and other jocular writers--had put down the verb _sterben_ (_to die_) with the following worshipful series of equivalents--1. To kick the bucket; 2. To cut one's stick; 3. To go to kingdom come; 4. To hop the twig. But though Coleridge did not pretend to any fluent command of conversational German he read it with great ease. His knowledge of German literature was indeed too much limited by his rare opportunities for commanding any thing like a well-mounted library. And particularly it surprised us that Coleridge knew little or nothing of John Paul (Richter.) But his acquaintance with the German philosophic masters was extensive. And his valuation of many individual German words or phrases was delicate and sometimes profound. As a Grecian Coleridge must be estimated with a reference to the state and standard of Greek literature at that time and in this country. Porson had not yet raised our ideal. The earliest laurels of Coleridge were gathered however in that field. Yet no man will at this day pretend that the Greek of his prize ode is sufferable. Neither did Coleridge ever become an accurate Grecian in later times when better models of scholarship and better aids to scholarship had begun to multiply. But still we must assert this point of superiority for Coleridge that whilst he never was what may be called a well-mounted scholar in any department of verbal scholarship he yet displayed sometimes a brilliancy of conjectural sagacity and a felicity of philosophic investigation even in this path such as better scholars do not often attain and of a kind which cannot be learned from books. But as respects his accuracy again we must recall to the reader the state of Greek literature in England during Coleridge's youth; and in all equity as a means of placing Coleridge in the balances specifically we must recall the state of Greek metrical composition at that period. To measure the condition of Greek literature even in Cambridge about the initial period of Coleridge we need only look back to the several translations of Gray's _Elegy_ by three (if not four) of the reverend gentlemen at that time attached to Eton College. Mathias no very great scholar himself in this particular field made himself merry in his _Pursuits of Literature_ with these Eton translations. In that he was right. But he was _not_ right in praising a contemporary translation by Cook who (we believe) was the immediate predecessor of Porson in the Greek chair. As a specimen of this translation [27] we cite one stanza; and we cannot be supposed to select unfairly because it is the stanza which Mathias praises in extravagant terms. ""Here "" says he ""Gray Cook and nature do seem to contend for the mastery."" The English quatrain must be familiar to every body:-- ""The boast of heraldry the pomp of pow'r And all that beauty all that wealth e'er gave Await alike the inevitable hour; The paths of glory lead but to the grave."" And the following we believe though quoting from a thirty-three years' recollection of it is the exact Greek version of Cook:-- Ha charis eugeneôn charis ha basilêidos archas Dôra tuchês chruseês Aphroditês kala ta dôra Panth' hama tauta tethnêke kai eiden morsimon hamar; Hêrôôn kle' olôle kai ôcheto xunon es Adên. Now really these verses by force of a little mosaic tesselation from genuine Greek sources pass fluently over the tongue; but can they be considered other than a _cento_? Swarms of English schoolboys at this day would not feel very proud to adopt them. In fact we remember (at a period say twelve years later than this) some iambic verses which were really composed by a boy viz. son of Dr Prettyman (afterwards Tomline ) bishop of Winchester and in earlier times private tutor to Mr Pitt; they were published by Middleton first bishop of Calcutta in the preface to his work on the Greek article; and for racy idiomatic Greek self-originated and not a mere mocking-bird's iteration of alien notes are so much superior to all the attempts of these sexagenarian doctors as distinctly to mark the growth of a new era and a new generation in this difficult accomplishment within the first decennium of this century. It is singular that only one blemish is suggested by any of the contemporary critics in Dr Cook's verses viz. in the word xunon for which this critic proposes to substitute ôoinon to prevent as he observes the last syllable of ôcheto from being lengthened by the x. Such considerations as these are necessary to the _trutinæ castigatio_ before we can value Coleridge's place on the scale of his own day; which day _quoad hoc_ be it remembered was 1790. As to French Coleridge read it with too little freedom to find pleasure in French literature. Accordingly we never recollect his referring for any purpose either of argument or illustration to a French classic. Latin from his regular scholastic training naturally he read with a scholar's fluency; and indeed he read constantly in authors such as Petrarch Erasmus Calvin &c. whom he could not then have
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ound in translations. But Coleridge had not cultivated an acquaintance with the delicacies of classic Latinity. And it is remarkable that Wordsworth educated most negligently at Hawkshead school subsequently by reading the lyric poetry of Horace simply for his own delight as a student of composition made himself a master of Latinity in its most difficult form; whilst Coleridge trained regularly in a great Southern school never carried his Latin to any classical polish. There is another accomplishment of Coleridge's less broadly open to the judgment of this generation and not at all of the next--viz. his splendid art of conversation on which it will be interesting to say a word. Ten years ago when the music of this rare performance had not yet ceased to vibrate in men's ears what a sensation was gathering amongst the educated classes on this particular subject! What a tumult of anxiety prevailed to ""hear Mr Coleridge""--or even to talk with a man who _had_ heard him! Had he lived till this day not Paganini would have been so much sought after. That sensation is now decaying; because a new generation has emerged during the ten years since his death. But many still remain whose sympathy (whether of curiosity in those who did _not_ know him or of admiration in those who _did_) still reflects as in a mirror the great stir upon this subject which then was moving in the world. To these if they should enquire for the great distinguishing principle of Coleridge's conversation we might say that it was the power of vast combination ""in linked sweetness long drawn out."" He gathered into focal concentration the largest body of objects _apparently_ disconnected that any man ever yet by any magic could assemble or _having_ assembled could manage. His great fault was that by not opening sufficient spaces for reply or suggestion or collateral notice he not only narrowed his own field but he grievously injured the final impression. For when men's minds are purely passive when they are not allowed to re-act then it is that they collapse most and that their sense of what is said must ever be feeblest. Doubtless there must have been great conversational masters elsewhere and at many periods; but in this lay Coleridge's characteristic advantage that he was a great natural power and also a great artist. He was a power in the art and he carried a new art into the power. But now finally--having left ourselves little room for more--one or two words on Coleridge as an opium-eater. We have not often read a sentence falling from a wise man with astonishment so profound as that particular one in a letter of Coleridge's to Mr Gillman which speaks of the effort to wean one's-self from opium as a trivial task. There are we believe several such passages. But we refer to that one in particular which assumes that a single ""week"" will suffice for the whole process of so mighty a revolution. Is indeed leviathan _so_ tamed? In that case the quarantine of the opium-eater might be finished within Coleridge's time and with Coleridge's romantic ease. But mark the contradictions of this extraordinary man. Not long ago we were domesticated with a venerable rustic strongheaded but incurably obstinate in his prejudices who treated the whole body of medical men as ignorant pretenders knowing absolutely nothing of the system which they professed to superintend. This you will remark is no very singular case. No; nor as we believe is the antagonist case of ascribing to such men magical powers. Nor what is worse still the co-existence of both cases in the same mind as in fact happened here. For this same obstinate friend of ours who treated all medical pretensions as the mere jest of the universe every third day was exacting from his own medical attendants some exquisite _tour-de-force_ as that they should know or should do something which if they _had_ known or done all men would have suspected them reasonably of magic. He rated the whole medical body as infants; and yet what he exacted from them every third day as a matter of course virtually presumed them to be the only giants within the whole range of science. Parallel and equal is the contradiction of Coleridge. He speaks of opium excess his own excess we mean--the excess of twenty-five years--as a thing to be laid aside easily and for ever within seven days; and yet on the other hand he describes it pathetically sometimes with a frantic pathos as the scourge the curse the one almighty blight which had desolated his life. This shocking contradiction we need not press. All readers will see _that_. But some will ask--was Mr Coleridge right in either view? Being so atrociously wrong in the first notion (viz. that the opium of twenty-five years was a thing easily to be forsworn ) where a child could know that he was wrong was he even altogether right secondly in believing that his own life root and branch had been withered by opium? For it will not follow because with a relation to happiness and tranquillity a man may have found opium his curse that therefore as a creature of energies and great purposes he must have been the wreck which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes away. It defeats the _steady_ habit of exertion but it creates spasms of irregular exertion; it ruins the natural power of life but it developes preternatural paroxysms of intermitting power. Let us ask of any man who holds that not Coleridge himself but the world as interested in Coleridge's usefulness has suffered by his addiction to opium; whether he is aware of the way in which opium affected Coleridge; and secondly whether he is aware of the actual contributions to literature--how large they were--which Coleridge made _in spite_ of opium. All who were intimate with Coleridge must remember the fits of genial animation which were created continually in his manner and in his buoyancy of thought by a recent or by an _extra_ dose of the omnipotent drug. A lady who knew nothing experimentally of opium once told us that she ""could tell when Mr Coleridge had taken too much opium by his shining countenance."" She was right; we know that mark of opium excesses well and the cause of it; or at least we believe the cause to lie in the quickening of the insensible perspiration which accumulates and glistens on the face. Be that as it may a criterion it was that could not deceive us as to the condition of Coleridge. And uniformly in that condition he made his most effective intellectual displays. It is true that he might not be happy under this fiery animation and we fully believe that he was not. Nobody is happy under laudanum except for a very short term of years. But in what way did that operate upon his exertions as a writer? We are of opinion that it killed Coleridge as a poet. ""The harp of Quantock"" was silenced for ever by the torment of opium. But proportionably it roused and stung by misery his metaphysical instincts into more spasmodic life. Poetry can flourish only in the atmosphere of happiness. But subtle and perplexed investigations of difficult problems are amongst the commonest resources for beguiling the sense of misery. And for this we have the direct authority of Coleridge himself speculating on his own case. In the beautiful though unequal ode entitled _Dejection_ stanza six occurs the following passage: ""For not to think of what I needs must feel But to be still and patient all I can; _And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man_-- This was my sole resource my only plan; Till that which suits a part infects the whole And now is almost grown the habit of my soul."" Considering the exquisite quality of some poems which Coleridge has composed nobody can grieve (or _has_ grieved) more than ourselves at seeing so beautiful a fountain choked up with weeds. But had Coleridge been a happier man it is our fixed belief that we should have had far less of his philosophy and perhaps but not certainly might have had more of his general literature. In the estimate of the public doubtless _that_ will seem a bad exchange. Every man to his taste. Meantime what we wish to show is that the loss was not absolute but merely relative. It is urged however that even on his philosophic speculations opium operated unfavourably in one respect by often causing him to leave them unfinished. This is true. Whenever Coleridge (being highly charged or saturated with opium) had written with distempered vigour upon any question there occurred soon after a recoil of intense disgust not from his own paper only but even from the subject. All opium-eaters are tainted with the infirmity of leaving works unfinished and suffering reactions of disgust. But Coleridge taxed himself with that infirmity in verse before he could at all have commenced opium-eating. Besides it is too much assumed by Coleridge and by his biographer that to leave off opium was of course to regain juvenile health. But all opium-eaters make the mistake of supposing every pain or irritation which they suffer to be the product of opium. Whereas a wise man will say suppose you _do_ leave off opium that will not deliver you from the load of years (say sixty-three) which you carry on your back. Charles Lamb another man of true genius and another head belonging to the Blackwood Gallery made that mistake in his _Confessions of a Drunkard_. ""I looked back "" says he ""to the time when always on waking in the morning I had a song rising to my lips."" At present it seems being a drunkard he has no such song. Ay dear Lamb but note this that the drunkard was fifty-six years old the songster was twenty-three. Take twenty-three from fifty-six and we have some reason to believe that thirty-three will remain; which period of thirty-three years is a pretty good reason for not singing in the morning even if brandy has been out of the question. It is singular as respects Coleridge that Mr Gillman never says one word upon the event of the great Highgate experiment for leaving off laudanum though Coleridge came to Mr Gillman's for no other purpose; and in a week this vast creation of new earth sea and all that in them is was to have been accomplished. We _rayther_ think as Bayley junior observes that the explosion must have hung fire. But _that_ is a trifle. We have another pleasing hypothesis on the subject. Mr Wordsworth in his exquisite lines written on a fly-leaf of his own _Castle of Indolence_ having described Coleridge as ""a noticeable man with large grey eyes "" goes on to say ""He"" (viz. Coleridge) ""did that other man entice"" to view his imagery. Now we are sadly afraid that ""the noticeable man with large grey eyes"" did entice ""that other man "" viz. Gillman to commence opium-eating. This is droll; and it makes us laugh horribly. Gillman should have reformed _him_; and lo! _he_ corrupts Gillman. S. T. Coleridge visited Highgate by way of being converted from the heresy of opium; and the issue is--that in two months' time various grave men amongst whom our friend Gillman marches first in great pomp are found to have faces shining and glorious as that of Æsculapius; a fact of which we have already explained the secret meaning. And scandal says (but then what will not scandal say?) that a hogshead of opium goes up daily through Highgate tunnel. Surely one corroboration of our hypothesis may be found in the fact that Vol. I. of Gillman's Coleridge is forever to stand unpropped by Vol. II. For we have already observed--that opium-eaters though good fellows upon the whole never finish any thing. What then? A man has a right never to finish any thing. Certainly he has; and by Magna Charta. But he has no right by Magna Charta or by Parva Charta to slander decent men like ourselves and our friend the author of the _Opium Confessions_. Here it is that our complaint arises against Mr Gillman. If he has taken to opium-eating can we help _that_? If _his_ face shines must our faces be blackened? He has very improperly published some intemperate passages from Coleridge's letters which ought to have been considered confidential unless Coleridge had left them for publication charging upon the author of the _Opium Confessions_ a reckless disregard of the temptations which in that work he was scattering abroad amongst men. Now this author is connected with ourselves and we cannot neglect his defence unless in the case that he undertakes it himself. We complain also that Coleridge raises (and is backed by Mr Gillman in raising) a distinction perfectly perplexing to us between himself and the author of the _Opium Confessions_ upon the question--Why they severally began the practice of opium-eating? In himself it seems this motive was to relieve pain whereas the Confessor was surreptitiously seeking for pleasure. Ay indeed--where did he learn _that_? We have no copy of the _Confessions_ here so we cannot quote chapter and verse; but we distinctly remember that toothach is recorded in that book as the particular occasion which first introduced the author to the knowledge of opium. Whether afterwards having been thus initiated by the demon of pain the opium confessor did not apply powers thus discovered to purposes of mere pleasure is a question for himself; and the same question applies with the same cogency to Coleridge. Coleridge began in rheumatic pains. What then? That is no proof that he did not end in voluptuousness. For our parts we are slow to believe that ever any man did or could learn the somewhat awful truth that in a certain ruby-coloured elixir there lurked a divine power to chase away the genius of ennui without subsequently abusing this power. To taste but once from the tree of knowledge is fatal to the subsequent power of abstinence. True it is that generations have used laudanum as an anodyne (for instance hospital patients ) who have not afterwards courted its powers as a voluptuous stimulant; but that be sure has arisen from no abstinence in _them_. There are in fact two classes of temperaments as to this terrific drug--those which are and those which are not preconformed to its power; those which genially expand to its temptations and those which frostily exclude them. Not in the energies of the will but in the qualities of the nervous organization lies the dread arbitration of--Fall or stand: doomed thou art to yield; or strengthened constitutionally to resist. Most of those who have but a low sense of the spells lying couchant in opium have practically none at all. For the initial fascination is for _them_ effectually defeated by the sickness which nature has associated with the first stages of opium-eating. But to that other class whose nervous sensibilities vibrate to their profoundest depths under the first touch of the angelic poison even as a lover's ear thrills on hearing unexpectedly the voice of her whom he loves opium is the Amreeta cup of beatitude. You know the _Paradise Lost_? and you remember from the eleventh book in its earlier part that laudanum already existed in Eden--nay that it was used medicinally by an archangel; for after Michael had ""purged with euphrasy and rue"" the eyes of Adam lest he should be unequal to the mere _sight_ of the great visions about to unfold their draperies before him next he fortifies his fleshly spirits against the _affliction_ of these visions of which visions the first was death. And how? ""He from the well of life three drops instill'd."" What was their operation? ""So deep the power of these ingredients pierced _Even to the inmost seat of mental sight_ That Adam now enforced to close his eyes Sank down and all his spirits became entranced. But him the gentle angel by the hand Soon raised""---- The second of these lines it is which betrays the presence of laudanum. It is in the faculty of mental vision it is in the increased power of dealing with the shadowy and the dark that the characteristic virtue of opium lies. Now in the original higher sensibility is found some palliation for the _practice_ of opium-eating; in the greater temptation is a greater excuse. And in this faculty of self-revelation is found some palliation for _reporting_ the case to the world which both Coleridge and his biographer have overlooked. On all this however we need say no more; for we have just received a note from the writer of the _Opium Confessions_ more learned than ourselves in such mysteries which promises us a sequel or _finale_ to those Confessions. And this which we have reason to think a record of profound experiences we shall probably publish next month. _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ Footnotes: [1] Reynolds' Discourses No. 16 _ad finem_. [2] Macaulay. [3] The finest design ever conceived by Michael Angelo was a cartoon representing warriors bathing and some buckling on their armour at the sound of the trumpet which summoned them to their standards in the war between Pisa and Florence. It perished however in the troubles of the latter city but an engraved copy remains of part which justifies the eulogiums bestowed upon it. [4] The state of Missouri as almost entirely peopled by emigration from Kentucky. [5] The Mississippi water although slimy becomes clear after it has stood few hours and is then excellent to drink. [6] An excellent map of Montenegro has been made by an Austrian officer of engineers who resided there for the purpose--but I have not now the advantage of referring to it. This country is divided into twelve military departments; the natives reckon its extent about three days' journey in the longest by two in the widest part. Those of course are foot or mule journeys. [7] It was this man's father who shortly before our arrival having been entrusted to receive from Lloyd's Company a packet containing a large sum of money converted the contents into two cannon-balls and forwarded them to the Vladika. [8] The late Vladika received the honours of sanctity after his death. [9] Meaning dressed in the European or Frank costume. [10] The Vladika bears the Russian eagle rising from a crown. [11] He passed but one night in Montenegro at Cettigna and returned the following day to Cattaro. [12] On the kalends of January the consuls-elect were formally installed; and on this occasion a procession was made to the Capitol and sacrifice performed to Jupiter. The principal part of the procession of course was the consuls in their curule chair preceded by the lictors bearing the _fasces_ or bundles of rods and axes. [13] From _Janua_ a gate. [14] The etymology of these old epithets from _pateo_ (to open) and _claudo_ (to shut ) is obvious enough. [15] The _lar familiaris_ or domestic god of the family who had an altar in the inner part of the Roman house. [16] The allusion here and in the following lines is to the different _strenæ_ or New-Year's gifts which used to be given by the Romans. [17] The old Roman _as_ with the double head on one side and a ship on the reverse is well known among numismatists. [18] The Tuscan flood is a common appellation for the Tiber as rising in Etruria and forming the ancient boundary between that country and Latium opposite Rome. [19] A silly etymology--from _lateo_ to lurk; mentioned also by Virgil.--_Æn_. viii. 323. [20] ""The Romans gave the name of _Jani_ to arches like that of Temple-Bar in London under which people passed from one street into another. They were always double; people entering by one and going out by the other every one keeping to the right. The temple or gateway mentioned in this place adjacent to the ox and the fish markets was built by Duilius.""--KEIGHTLY. [21] Although the allusion refers in the verses to Delphi it was I think at Dodona in the earliest period of oracular influence that this belief prevailed. [22] ""And Mullah mine whose waves whilome I taught to weep.""--SPENSER. [23] _The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge_. By JAMES GILLMAN. Vol. I London; 1838. [24] ""Jacob Boehmen."" We ourselves had the honour of presenting to Mr Coleridge Law's English version of Jacob--a set of huge quartos. Some months afterwards we saw this work lying open and one volume at least overflowing in parts with the commentaries and the _corollaries_ of Coleridge. Whither has this work and so many others swathed about with Coleridge's MS. notes vanished from the world? [25] Malthus would have rejoined by saying--that the flower-pot limitation was the actual limitation of nature in our present circumstances. In America it is otherwise he would say; but England _is_ the very flower-pot you suppose: she is a flower-pot which cannot be multiplied and cannot even be enlarged. Very well; so be it: (Which we say in order to waive irrelevant disputes.) But then the true inference will be--not that vegetable increase proceeds under a different law from that which governs animal increase but that through an accident of position the experiment cannot be tried in England. Surely the levers of Archimedes with submission to Sir Edward B. Lytton were not the less levers because he wanted the _locum standi_. It is proper by the way that we should inform the reader of this generation where to look for Coleridge's skirmishings with Malthus. They are to be found chiefly in the late Mr William Hazlitt's work on that subject: a work which Coleridge so far claimed as to assert that it had been substantially made up from his own conversation. [26] _Vide_ in particular for the most exquisite specimen of pig-headedness that the world can furnish his perverse evidence on the once famous case at the Warwick assizes of Captain Donelan for poisoning his brother-in-law Sir Theodosius Boughton. [27] It was printed at the end of Aristotle's _Poetics_ which Dr Cook edited. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics indicated by underscore _italics_. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. The original text includes missing printing represented by _______________ in this text version. Additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text. Misprints corrected: ""noice"" corrected to ""noise"" (page 24) ""opportunites"" corrected to ""opportunities"" (page 33) ""susspected"" corrected to ""suspected"" (page 61) ""d'Artagnan"" standardized to ""D'Artagnan"" (page 69) ""henceforch"" corrected to ""henceforth"" (page 79) ""Chapter IV"" corrected to ""Chapter II"" (page 102) ""drunkark"" corrected to ""drunkard"" (page 131) "
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file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCLII. FEBRUARY 1845. VOL. LVII. CONTENTS. NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS 133 THE TOWER OF LONDON. BY THOMAS ROSCOE 158 POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE. NO. III. 165 SPAIN AS IT IS 181 THE SUPERFLUITIES OF LIFE 194 THE OVERLAND PASSAGE 204 MESMERISM 219 AESTHETICS OF DRESS. ABOUT A BONNET 242 GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES 251 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. CCCLII. FEBRUARY 1845. VOL. LVII. NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. DRYDEN. Poetry according to Lord Bacon a Third Part of Learning must be a social interest of momentous power. That Wisest of Men--so our dear friends may have heard--extols it above history and above philosophy as the more divine in its origin the more immediately and intimately salutary and sanative in its use. Are not Shakspeare and Milton two of our greatest moral teachers? CRITICISM opens to us the poetry we possess; and like a magnanimous kingly protector shelters and fosters all its springing growths. What is criticism as a science? Essentially this--FEELING KNOWN--that is affections of the heart and imagination become understood subject-matter to the self-conscious intelligence. Must feeling perish because intelligence sounds its depths? Quite the reverse. Greatest minds are those in which in and out of poetry the understanding contemplates the will. Then first the soul has its proper strength. Disorderly passions are then tamed and become the massy pillars of high-built virtue. Criticism? It is a shape of self-intuition. Confession and penitence in the church are a moral and a religious criticism. The imagination is less august and solemn but of the same character. The first age of the world lived by divine instincts; the later must by reason. How then shall we possess the poetry of our being unless we guard and arm it? If it be a benign holy potent faculty nevertheless it cannot the most delicate of all our faculties sustain itself in the strife of opinions raging and thundering around. Then if it should rightly hold dominion over us let legislative opinion acknowledge establish and fortify that impaled territory. The temper of the times is in sundry respects favourable notwithstanding its too frequent possession by an incensed political spirit. Has there not been for half a century a spontaneous an ardent a loving return in literature of our own and all countries to the old and great in the productions of the human mind--to nature with all her fountains? Does not the spirit of man in the great civilized nations at this day travail with desire of knowing itself its laws its conditions its means its powers its hopes? It studies with irregular often blind and perverted efforts; but still it studies--itself. And is not criticism when it speaks much bolder more glowing and generous ampler-spirited more inspiring and withal more enquiring and philosophical? During the whole period we speak of poetry and criticism--in nature near akin--with occasional complaints and quarrels have flourished amicably together side by side. Both have been strong healthy and good. Prigs of both kinds--the pert and the pompous--will keep prating about the shallowness and superficiality of periodical criticism--deep enough to drown the whole tribe in its very fords. They call for systems. Why will they not be contented with the system of the universe?--of which they know not that periodical criticism is a conspicuous part. Every other year the nations without telescopes see the rising of some new bright particular star. Comets with tails like O'Connell are so common as to lose attraction and blaze by weekly into indiscoverable realms. We have constructed an Orrery of Ebony which we mean to exhibit at the next great cattle-show displaying in their luminous order the orbs and orbits of all the heavenly bodies. In the centre----but this is not the time for such high revelations. We have now another purpose; and leaving all those golden urns to yield light at their leisure we desire you to take a look along with us at the choice critics of other days waked by our potent voice from the long-gathering dust. In our plainer style we beg ladies and gentlemen to draw your attention to a series of articles in _Blackwood_ of which this is Alpha. Omega is intended for a Christmas present to your great-grandchildren. Ay there were giants in those days as well as in these--also much dwarfs. But we shall not lose ourselves with you in the darkness of antiquity--one longish stride backwards of some hundred and fifty years or so and then let us leisurely look about us for the Critics. Who comes here? A grenadier--GLORIOUS JOHN. Him Scott Hallam Macaulay have pronounced each in his own peculiar and admirable way to have been in criticism "a light to his people." Him Samuel Johnson called "a man whom every English generation must mention with reverence as a critic and a poet." "Dryden " says the sage in a splendid eulogium on his prose writings "may be properly considered as the father of English criticism--as the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition. Of our former poets the greatest dramatist wrote without rules conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled and never deserted him. Of the rest those who knew the laws of propriety had neglected to teach them." And he adds wisely--"To judge rightly of an author we must transport ourselves to his time and examine what were the wants of his contemporaries and what were his means of supplying them. That which is easy at one time was difficult at another." Let us then examine some of Dryden's expositions of principles; and first those on which he defends Heroic Verse in Rhyme as the best language of the tragic drama. This can be done effectually only by following him wherever he has treated the subject and by condensing all his opinions into one consecutive argument. His first play (a comedy ) "The Wild Gallant " was brought on the stage in February 1662-3 and with indifferent success though he has told us that it was more than once the divertisement of Charles II. by his own command and a favourite with "the Castlemain." "The Rival Ladies" (a tragi-comedy) was acted and published in the year following and the serious scenes are executed in rhyme. Of its success we know nothing in particular; but Sir Walter thinks that the flowing verse into which some part of the dialogue is thrown with the strong point and antithesis which all along distinguished his style especially his argumentative poetry tended to redeem the credit of the author of the "Wild Gallant." Up to this time Dryden now in his thirty-third year had not written much; but in his "Heroic Stanzas on the death of Oliver Cromwell " "Astrea Redux or Poem on the Happy Restoration and Return of his Sacred Majesty " and "A Panegyric on his Coronation " he had not only shown his measureless superiority to the Sprats and Wallers--poetasters of the same class after all though Sprat was always but a small fish while Waller was long thought like a whale--but manifested a vigour of thought and expression that gave assurance of a veritable poet. In those noble compositions he exults in his conscious power of numerous verse; and like an eagle in the middle element sweeps along majestically on easy wings. In "The Rival Ladies " the rhymed dialogue is exceedingly graceful the blank verse somewhat cumbrous; and in his dedication to the Earl of Orrery he justifies himself "for following the new way; I mean of writing scenes _in verse_." It may here once for all be remarked that in all his disquisitions by "verse" he usually means rhyme as opposed to blank verse. "To speak properly " he says "it is not so much a new way amongst us as an old way revived; for many years before Shakspeare's plays was the tragedy of 'Queen Gorboduc ' in English verse written by that famous Lord Buckhurst afterwards Earl of Dorset." Dryden here shows how little conversant he then was with the old English drama. For the tragedy of "Ferrex and Porrex" was first surreptitiously published under the title of "Gorboduc " who is not Queen but King of England; and it is not written in rhyme but excepting the choruses in blank verse; while Sackville's part of the play comprehends only the two last acts of themselves sufficient to place him in the highest order of Noble Authors. "But supposing " he continues "our countrymen had not received this writing till of late shall we oppose ourselves to the most polished and civilized nations of Europe? * * * All the Spanish and Italian tragedies I have yet seen are writ in rhyme. * * * Shakspeare (who with some errors not to be avoided in that age _had undoubtedly a larger soul of poesy than ever any of our nation_ ) was the first who to shun the pains of continual rhyming invented that kind of writing which we call blank verse but the French more properly _prose mesurée_; into which the English tongue so naturally glides that in writing prose it is hardly to be avoided." Here again it is hardly indeed worth while to remark is another mistake; Marlow and several other dramatists having used blank verse (but how inferior to the divine man's!) before Shakspeare. Coleridge somewhere quotes a verse or two forming itself in prose composition as a rarity and a fault; but though it had better perhaps be avoided and though its frequent recurrence would be offensive yet when words in their natural order do form a verse it might be difficult to give a good reason why they may not be permitted to do so more especially if they are not felt to be a verse insulated among the circumfluent prose. From the very best prose we could pick out thousands of single verses which are to be found only when you seek for them; and not from rich prose only like Coleridge's own or Jeremy Taylor's but from the poorest like Dr Blair's or Gerald's of Aberdeen. Dryden says he cannot "but admire how some men should perpetually stumble in a way so easy"--that is as blank verse--"into which the English tongue so naturally glides " and should strive to attain it by inverting the order of the words to make the "blanks" sound more heroically--as for example instead of "Sir I ask your pardon " "Sir I your pardon ask." And adds--"I should judge him to have little command of English when the necessity of a rhyme should force often upon this rock; though sometimes it cannot easily be avoided; _and indeed this is the only inconvenience with which rhyme can be charged_." In this lively style does he pursue his argument in favour of rhyme. For this it is which makes its adversaries say _rhyme is not natural_! But the fault lies with the poet who is not master of his art and either makes a vicious choice of words or places them for rhyme's sake so unnaturally as no man would in ordinary speech. But when it is so judiciously ordered that the first word in the verse seems to beget the second and that again the next till that becomes the last word in the line which in the negligence of prose would be so; it must then be granted that rhyme has all the advantages of prose--_besides its own_. "Glorious John" (who must have been laughing in his sleeve) then declares that the "excellence and dignity of it were never fully known till Mr Waller taught it;" that it was afterwards "followed in the epic by Sir John Denham in his 'Cooper's Hill ' a poem which your lordship knows for the majesty of the style is and ever will be the exact standard of good writing;" and that we are "acknowledging for the noblest use of it to Sir William D'Avenant who at once brought it upon the stage _and made it perfect in the Siege of Rhodes_!" Having thus carried things all his own way he triumphantly declares that the advantages which rhyme has over blank verse are so many that "it were lost time to name them." And then with fresh vigour he sets himself to name some of the chief--and first that one illustrated by Sir Philip Sidney in his "Defence of Poesy " "the help it brings to memory which rhyme so knits up by the affinity of sound that by remembering the last word in one line we often call to mind both the verses." Then in the quickness of repartees (which in discoursive scenes fall very often) it has he says so particular a grace and is so aptly united to them that the sudden smartness of the answer and the exactness of the rhyme set off the beauty of each other. But its greatest benefit of all according to Dryden is that it bounds and circumscribes the fancy. The great easiness of blank verse renders the poet too luxuriant; he is tempted to say many things which might be better omitted or at least shut up in fewer words. But when the difficulty of artificial rhyming is interposed; where the poet commonly confines his verse to his couplet and must continue that verse in such words that the rhyme shall naturally follow them not they the rhyme the fancy then gives leisure to the judgment to come in; which seeing so heavy a task imposed is ready to cut off all unnecessary expenses. And this furnishes a complete answer he maintains to the ordinary objection that rhyme is only an embroidery of verse to make that which is ordinary in itself pass for excellent with less examination. For that which most regulates the fancy and gives the judgment its busiest employment is like to bring forth the richest and clearest thoughts. The poet examines that most which he produces with the greatest leisure and which he knows must pass the severest test of the audience because they are aptest to have it ever in the memory. In conclusion he winds up skilfully by applying all he has said to "a fit subject"--that is an Heroic Play. For neither must the argument alone but the characters and persons be great and noble otherwise rhymed verse would be out of place which for the reasons assigned is manifestly suited for the utterance of lofty sentiments and for occasions of dignity and importance. Heroic Plays were then all the rage and Dryden was meditating to enter on that career which for many years occupied his genius not essentially dramatic to the exclusion of other kinds of poetry in which he afterwards excelled all competitors. Sir Robert Howard's Heroic Play the "Indian Queen " "part of which was written by Dryden " and the whole revised and corrected no doubt especially in the article of versification was acted in 1664 with great applause. "It presented " says Sir Walter "battles and sacrifices on the stage aërial demons singing in the air and the god of dreams ascending through a trap the least of which has often saved a worse tragedy." Evelyn in his Memoirs has recorded that the scenes were the richest ever seen in England or perhaps elsewhere upon a public stage. Dryden by its reception was encouraged to engraft on it another drama called the "Indian Emperor"--a continuation of the tale--which had the most ample success and till a revolution in the public taste retained possession of the stage. Soon after its publication Sir Robert Howard in a peevish Preface to some plays of his chose to answer what Dryden had said in behalf of verse in his Epistle Dedicatory to his "Rival Ladies " and not only without any mention of his name but without any allusion to the "Indian Emperor " while he bestowed the most extravagant eulogies on the heroic plays of my Lord of Orrery--"in whose verse the greatness of the majesty seems unsullied with the cares and the inimitable fancy descends to us in such easy expressions that they seem as if neither had ever been added to the other but both together flowing from a height like birds so high that use no balancing wings but only with an easy care preserve a steadiness in motion. But this particular happiness among those multitudes which that excellent person is an owner of does not convince my reason but employ my wonder; yet I am glad that such verse has been written for the stage since it has so happily exceeded those whom we seemed to imitate. But while I give these arguments against verse I may seem faulty that I have not only written ill ones but written any; but since it was the fashion I was resolved as in all indifferent things not to appear singular--the danger of the vanity being greater than the error; and therefore I followed it as a fashion though very far off." Sir Robert appears to have been in the sulks for some cause not now known with his great brother-in-law; and was pleased to punish him by thus publicly pretending ignorance of his existence as an heroic play-wright. Yet the "Annus Mirabilis" was about this time dedicated to Sir Robert; and only about a year before John had had a helping hand with the "Indian Queen." My Lord of Orrery must have been a proud man to have his gouty too so fervently kissed by the jealous rivals. "The muses " Dryden had said in his dedication to that nobleman "have seldom employed your thoughts but when some violent fit of the gout has snatched you from affairs of state; and like the priestess of Apollo you never come to deliver your oracles but unwillingly and in torments. So we are obliged to your lordship's misery for our delight. You treat us with the cruel pleasure of a Turkish triumph where those who cut and wound their bodies sing songs of victory as they pass and divert others with their own sufferings. Other men endure their diseases--your lordship only can enjoy them." Dryden however was not disposed to stomach Sir Robert's supercilious silence and took a noble revenge in his "Essay on Dramatic Poesy." This celebrated Essay was first published at the close of 1668; and the writing of it Dryden tells us in a dedication many years afterwards to the Earl of Dorset "served as an amusement to me in the country when the violence of the last plague had driven me from the town. Seeing then our theatres shut up I was engaged in these kind of thoughts with the same delight with which men think upon their absent mistresses." It is in the form of dialogue; under the feigned appellations of Lisideius Crites Eugenius and Neander the speakers are Sir Charles Sedley Sir Robert Howard Lord Buckhurst and Dryden. Nothing can exceed the grace with which the dialogue is conducted--the choice of scene is most happy--and the description of it in the highest degree striking and poetical. "It was that memorable day in the first summer of the late war when our navy engaged the Dutch; a day wherein the two most mighty and best appointed fleets which any age had ever seen disputed the command of the greater half of the globe the commerce of nations and the riches of the universe. While these vast floating bodies on either side moved against each other in parallel lines and our countrymen under the happy conduct of his Royal Highness went breaking little by little into the line of the enemies the noise of the cannon from both navies reached our ears about the city; so that all men being alarmed with it and in a dreadful suspense of the event which they knew was then deciding every one went following the sound as his fancy led him; and leaving the town almost empty some took towards the Park some cross the river some down it all seeking the noise in the depth of silence. "Amongst the rest it was the fortune of Eugenius Crites Lisideius and Neander to be in company together three of them persons whom their wit and quality have made known to all the town and whom I have chose to hide under these borrowed names that they may not suffer by so ill a narration as I am going to make of their discourse. "Taking then a barge which a servant of Lisideius had provided for them they made haste to shoot the bridge and left behind them that great fall of waters which hindered them from hearing what they desired; after which having disengaged themselves from many vessels which rode at anchor in the Thames and almost blocked up the passage towards Greenwich they ordered the watermen to let fall their oars more gently; and then every one favouring his own curiosity with a strict silence it was not long ere they perceived the air to break about them like the noise of distant thunder or of swallows in a chimney--those little undulations of sound though almost vanishing before they reached them yet still seeming to retain somewhat of their first horror which they had betwixt the fleets. After they had attentively listened till such time as the sound by little and little went from them Eugenius lifting up his head and taking notice of it was the first who congratulated to the rest that happy omen of our nation's victory; adding that we had but this to desire in confirmation of it that we might hear no more of that noise which was now leaving the English coast. When the rest had concurred in the same opinion Crites a person of sharp judgment and somewhat too delicate a taste in wit which the world hath mistaken in him for ill-nature said smiling to us that if the concernment of this battle had not been so exceeding great he could scarce have wished the victory at the price he knew he must pay for it in being subject to the reading and hearing of so many ill verses as he was sure would be made on that subject; adding that no argument could 'scape some of these eternal rhymers who watch a battle with more diligence than the ravens and birds of prey and the worst of them surest to be first in upon the quarry; while the better able either out of modesty writ not at all or set that due value upon their poems as to let them be often desired and long expected. There are some of those impertinent people of whom you speak answered Lisideius who to my knowledge are already so provided either way that they can produce not only a panegyric upon the victory but if need be a funeral elegy upon the Duke wherein after they have crowned his valour with many laurels they will at last deplore the odds under which he fell concluding that his courage deserved a better destiny. All the company smiled at the conceit of Lisideius; but Crites more eager than before began to make particular exceptions against some writers and said the public magistrates ought to send betimes to forbid them; and that it concerned the peace and quiet of all honest people that ill poets should be as well silenced as seditious preachers." We may perhaps have occasion by and by to notice other important topics spiritedly and eloquently discussed by these choice spirits in the barge; meanwhile our business is with the argument "rhyme _versus_ blank verse " between Crites and Neander. Crites maintains sometimes in the very words Sir Robert's views in the Preface to his plays in which he had animadverted on Dryden's dedication to the "Rival Ladies " while Neander combats them; and it may be observed that the worthy Baronet is made to speak forcibly and well--much better indeed on the whole than he does in his own preface. From beginning to end there cannot be imagined a more fair and gentlemanly dialogue. But first we cannot resist giving the very beautiful close. "Neander was pursuing this discussion so eagerly that Eugenius had called to him twice or thrice ere he took notice that the barge stood still and that they were at the foot of Somerset stairs where they had appointed it to land. The company were all sorry to separate so soon though a great part of the evening was already spent; and stood awhile looking back on the water upon which the moonbeams played and made it appear like floating quicksilver. At last they went up through a crowd of French people who were merrily dancing in the open air and nothing concerned for the noise of guns which had alarmed the town that afternoon. Walking three together to the Piazza they parted there; Eugenius and Lisideius to some pleasant appointment they had made Crites and Neander to their several lodgings." But now to the argument. Crites who is not more long-winded than may be permitted to a polite proser at least on the Thames of a summer evening somewhat condensed reasoneth thus. A play being the imitation of nature dialogue is there presented as the effect of sudden thought; and since no man without premeditation speaks in rhyme neither ought he to do it on the stage. The fancy may be elevated to a higher pitch of thought than it is in ordinary discourse for men of excellent and quick parts may speak noble things extempore; but surely not when fettered with rhyme for what more unnatural than to present the most free way of speaking in that which is the most constrained? The Greek tragedians therefore wrote in iambics the kind of verse nearest to prose which with us is blank verse. The champions of rhyme say that the quickness of repartees receives an ornament from it in argumentative scenes. But do men not only light on a sudden upon the wit but the rhyme too? Then must they be born poets. If they do not seem in the dialogue to make rhymes whether they will or no it will look rather like the design of two than the answer of one--as if your actors hold intelligence together and perform their tricks like fortune-tellers by confederacy. The hand of art will be too visible. Neither is it any answer to say that however you manage it 'tis still known to be a play; for a play is still an imitation of nature and one can be deceived only with a probability of truth. The mind of man does naturally tend to truth and the nearer any thing comes to the imitation of it the more readily will the imagination believe. Rhyme it is said circumscribes a quick and luxuriant fancy which would extend itself too far on every subject did not the labour which is required to well-turned and polished rhyme set bounds to it. But he who wants judgment to confine his fancy in blank verse may want it as much in rhyme; and he who has it will avoid errors in both kinds. Latin verse was as great a confinement to the imagination as rhyme; yet Ovid's fancy was not limited by it and Virgil needed it not to bind his. In our own language Ben Jonson confined himself to what ought to be said even in the liberty of blank verse; and Corneille the most judicious of the French poets is still varying the same sense a hundred ways and dwelling eternally on the same subject though confined by rhyme. Such is the substance of Crites' answer to Dryden's Defence of Rhyme; and Neander before replying begs it to be understood that he excludes all comedy from his defence and that he does not deny that blank verse may be also used; but he asserts that in Serious Plays where the subject and characters are great and the plot unmixed with mirth which might allay or divert those concernments which are produced rhyme is there as natural and more effective than blank verse--for what other conditions he asks are required to make rhyme natural in itself besides an election of apt words and a right disposition of them? The due choice of your words expresses your sense naturally and the due placing them adapts the rhyme to it. If both the words and rhyme be apt one verse cannot be made merely for sake of the other as Crites had urged; for supposing there be a dependence of sense betwixt the first line and the second then in the natural position of the words the latter line must of necessity flow from the former; and if there be no dependence yet still the due ordering of words makes the last line as natural in itself as the other. A good poet he affirms never establishes the first line till he has sought out such a rhyme as may fit the verse already prepared to heighten the second. Many times the close of the sense falls into the middle of the next verse or further off; and he may often avail himself of the same advantages in English which Virgil had in Latin--he may break off in the hemistich and begin another line. The not observing these two last things makes plays which are writ in verse so tedious; for though most commonly the sense is to be confined to the couplet yet nothing that does run in the same channel can please always. 'Tis like the murmuring of a stream which not varying in the fall causes at first attention at last drowsiness. Variety of cadence is the best rule the greatest help to the actor and refreshment of the audience. If then verse may be made natural in itself how becomes it unnatural in a play? The stage you say is the representation of nature and no man in ordinary conversation speaks in rhyme. True; but neither does he in blank verse. All the difference between them when they are both good is the sound in one which the other wants; and if so the sweetness of it and other advantages handled in the Preface to the "Rival Ladies " all stand good. The dialogue of plays you say is presented as the effect of sudden thought; but that no man speaks _extempore_ in rhyme which cannot therefore be proper in dramatic poesy unless we could suppose all men born so much more than poets. But it must not be forgotten that the question regards the nature of a Serious Play which is indeed the representation of nature but nature wrought up to an high pitch. The plot the characters the wit the passions the descriptions are all exalted above the level of common converse as high as the imagination of the poet can carry them with proportion to verisimility. Tragedy is wont to image to us the minds and fortunes of noble persons; and to portray these exactly heroic rhyme is nearest nature as being the noblest kind of modern verse. Verse it is true is not the effect of sudden thought; but this hinders not that sudden thought may be represented in verse since these thoughts are such as must be higher than nature can raise them without premeditation especially to a continuance of them even out of verse; and consequently you cannot imagine them to have been sudden either in the poet or the actors. A play to be like nature is to be set above it; as statues which are placed on high are made greater than the life that they may descend to the sight in their just proportion. But rhyme it has been argued appears most unnatural in repartees or short replies when he who answers (it being presumed he knew not what the other would say yet) makes up that part of the verse which was left incomplete and supplies both the sound and the measure of it. This 'tis said looks rather like the confederacy of two than the answer of one. But suppose the repartee were made in blank verse is not the measure as often supplied there as in rhyme?--the latter half of the hemistich as commonly made up or a second line subjoined as a reply to the former? But suppose it allowed to look like a confederacy. What more beautiful than a well-contrived dance? You see there the united design of many persons to make up one figure: after they have separated themselves in many petty divisions they rejoin one by one into a group: the confederacy is plain among them for chance could never produce any thing so beautiful and yet there is nothing in it that shocks your sight. True then the hand of wit appears in repartee as it must in all kinds of verse. When with the quiet and poignant brevity of it there mingles the cadency and sweetness of verse--"the soul of the hearer has nothing more to desire." Rhyme was said by its defender to be a help to the poet's judgment by putting bounds to a wild overflowing fancy. And it was answered by the admirer of blank verse that he who wants judgment in the liberty of his poesy may as well show the defect of it when he is confined to verse; for he who has judgment will avoid errors and he who has it not will commit them in all kind of writing. Granted that he who has judgment so profound strong and infallible that he needs no help to keep it always poised and right will commit no faults in rhyme or out of it. But where is that judgment to be found? Take it therefore as it is found in the best poets. Judgment is indeed the master workman in a play; but he requires many subordinate hands many tools to his assistance and rhyme is one of them--it is a rule and line by which he keeps his building compact and even which otherwise lawless imagination would raise loosely and irregularly--it is in short a slow and painful but the surest kind of working. Second thoughts being usually the best as receiving the maturest digestion from judgment and the last and most mature product of these thoughts being artful and laboured verse it may well be inferred that verse is a great help to a luxuriant fancy and that is what the argument opposed was to ev
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nce. Sir Robert though always made to speak well in the Dialogue was yet made to speak on the losing side; and in an address to the reader prefixed to ""The Great Favourite or the Duke of Lerma "" a tragedy published soon after having by way of retaliation sharply criticised some of Neander's dogmas about the drama brought down on himself a cool but cutting castigation--more severe than was merited by so small an offence. His retort in as far as the question of rhyme or blank verse is concerned was however to say the best of it very feeble. ""I cannot therefore but beg leave of the reader to take a little notice of the great pains the author of an Essay of Dramatic Poetry has taken to prove rhyme as natural in a Serious Play and more effectual than blank verse: Thus he states the question but pursues that which he calls natural in a wrong application; for 'tis not the question whether rhyme or not rhyme be best or most natural for a grave or serious subject; but what is nearest the nature of that which it presents. Now after all the endeavours of that ingenious person a play will still be supposed to be a composition of several persons speaking _extempore_ and it is as certain that good verses are the hardest things that can be imagined to be so spoken; so that if any will be pleased to impose the rule of measuring things to be the best by being nearest to nature it is proved by consequence that which is most remote from the thing supposed must needs be most improper; and therefore I may justly say that both I and the question were equally mistaken for I do own I had rather read good than either blank verse or prose and therefore the author did himself injury if he like verse so well in plays to lay down rules and raise arguments only unanswerable against himself."" We had rather that Dryden should answer this than we; for much of it eludes our comprehension. In his ""Defence of the Essay on Dramatic Poesy"" he replies thus:--""A play will still be supposed to be a composition of several persons speaking extempore "" quoth Sir Robert; ""I must move leave to dissent from his opinion "" requoth John; ""for if I am not deceived a play is supposed to be the work of the poet imitating or representing the conversation of several persons; and this I think to be as clear as he thinks the contrary."" There he has the baronet on the hip; and gives him a throw. He then makes bold to prove this paradox--that one great reason why prose is not to be used in Serious Plays is ""because it is too near the nature of converse."" Thus in ""Bartholomew Fair "" or the lowest kind of comedy where he was not to go out of prose Ben does yet so raise his matter in that prose as to render it delightful which he could never have performed had he only said or done those very things that are daily spoken or practised in the fair; for then the fair itself would be as full of pleasure to an enquiring person as the play which we manifestly see it is not. ""But he hath made an excellent lazar of it. The copy is of price though the original be vile."" Even in the lowest prose comedy then the matter and the wording must be lifted out of nature--as _we_ should now say idealized. In ""Catiline"" and ""Sejanus"" again where the argument is great Ben sometimes ascends into rhyme; and had his genius been proper for rhyme--which Dryden more than once asserts it was not--""it is probable he would have adorned those subjects with that kind of writing. Thus prose "" he finely says ""though the rightful prince yet is by common consent deposed as too weak for the government of Serious Plays; and he failing there now start up two competitors one the nearer in blood which is blank verse; the other more fit for the ends of government which is rhyme. Blank verse is indeed the nearer prose but he is blemished with the weakness of his predecessor. Rhyme (for I will deal clearly) has somewhat of the usurper in him but he is brave and generous and his dominion pleasing."" It was then ""for the reason of delight "" that the ancients wrote all their tragedies in verse--and not in prose; because it was most remote from conversation. Rhyme had not then been invented. But again he reminds his adversary that it seems to have been adopted by the general consent of poets in all modern languages--and that almost all their Serious Plays are written in it which though it be no demonstration that therefore they ought to be so yet at least the practice first and the continuation of it shows that it attained the end which was to please. It is thus that Dryden deals with Sir Robert as if blank verse in Serious Plays had not a leg to stand on. Yet throughout he preserves a wonderful air of candour and moderation as most becoming the victorious champion of rhyme. As for example where he allows that whether it be natural or not in plays is a problem not demonstrable on either side. But in reference to Sir Robert's acknowledgment that he had rather read good verse than prose he adds triumphantly ""that is enough for me; for if all the enemies of verse will confess as much I shall not need to prove that it is natural. I am satisfied if it cause delight; for delight is the chief if not the only end of poesy; instruction can be admitted but in the second place for poesy only instructs as it delights. It is true that to imitate well is a poet's work; but to affect the soul and to excite the passions and above all to move admiration (which is the delight of Serious Plays ) a bare imitation will not serve. The converse therefore which a poet is to imitate must be heightened with all the arts and ornaments of poesy; and must be such as strictly considered could never be supposed spoken by any without premeditation."" In his various argument in defence of the use of rhyme on the stage Dryden we have seen always speaks of its peculiar adaptation to ""Serious Plays "" or ""Heroic Plays."" In an essay thereon prefixed to the ""Conquest of Grenada "" in the pride of success he says ""whether heroic verse ought to be admitted into Serious Plays is not now to be disputed."" And he again takes up the obstinate objection to rhyme which he had not yet it seems battered to death that it is not so near conversation as prose and therefore not so natural. But it is very clear to all who understand poetry that Serious Plays ought not to imitate conversation too nearly. If nothing were to be traced above that level the foundation of poetry would be destroyed. Once grant that thoughts may be exalted and that images and actions may be raised above the life and described in measure without rhyme and that leads you insensibly from your principles; admit some latitude and having forsaken the imitation of ordinary converse where are you now? ""You are gone beyond it and to continue where you are is to lodge in the open fields between two inns."" You have lost that which you call natural and have not acquired the last perfection of art. It was only custom he says which cozened us so long; we thought because Shakspeare and Fletcher went no further that there the pillars of poetry were to be erected; that because they excellently described passion without rhyme therefore rhyme was not capable of describing it. _""But time has since convinced most men of that error._"" What then according to Dryden's idea of it was a serious or heroic play? An heroic play he says ought to be an imitation in little of an heroic poem; and consequently Love and Valour ought to be the subject of it. D'Avenant's astonishing ""Siege of Rhodes""--formerly declared to be the _beau-idéal_ of an heroic play--was after all it seems wanting in fulness of plot variety of character and even beauty of style. Above all it was not sufficiently great and majestic. He knew not honest man that in a true heroic play you ought to draw all things as far above the ordinary proportion of the stage as that is beyond the common words and actions of human life. The play that imitates mere nature as she walks in this world may be written in suitable language; but as in epic poetry all poets have agreed that we shall behold the highest pattern of human life so in the heroic play modelled by the rules of an heroic poem we must be shown only correspondent characters. Gods and spirits too are privileged to appear on such a stage and so are drums and trumpets. But Dryden himself denies that he was the first to introduce representations of battles on the English stage Shakspeare having set him the example; while Jonson though he shows no battle lets you hear in ""Catiline "" from behind the scenes the shouts of fighting armies. Warlike instruments and some fighting on the stage are indeed necessary to produce the effects of a heroic play. They help the imagination to gain absolute dominion over the mind of an audience. Were we to believe Dryden his heroic plays were dramatic imitations of such epic poems as the Iliad and the Æneid. And he has the brazen-faced assurance to say that the first image he had of Almanzor in the ""Conquest of Grenada "" was from the Achilles of Homer! The next was from Tasso's Rinaldo and the third--_risum teneatis amici--from the Artaban of Monsieur Calpranede_! Unquestionably our English heroic plays were borrowed from the French--as these were the legitimate offspring of the dramas of Calpranede and Scuderi. But Dryden's compositions are unparalleled in any literature. Nature is systematically outraged in one and all--from beginning to end. Never was such mouthing seen and heard beneath moon and stars. Through the whole range of rant he rages like a man inspired. He is the emperor of bombast. Yet these plays contain many passages of powerful declamation--not a few of high eloquence; some that in their argumentative amplitude if they do not reach border on the sublime. Nor are their wanting outbreaks of genuine passion among the utmost extravagances of false sentiment--when momentarily heroes and heroines warm into men and women and for a few sentences confabulate like flesh and blood. But it is with Dryden as a critic not as a poet that we have now to do; and we have said these few words about his heroic plays only in connexion with our account of his argument in support of his doctrine with regard to heroic verse in rhyme. That blank verse is better adapted than any other for the drama has been settled by Shakspeare. But though Dryden has driven his argument too far till his doctrine as he promulgates it becomes untenable as little do we doubt that he has made good this position that there may be good plays in rhyme. His heroic plays are bad not because they are in rhyme but because they are absurd; the rhyme is their chief merit; 'tis not possible to dream what they had been in blank verse. True that ""All for Love"" and ""Don Sebastian"" are in blank verse and may be said after a fashion to be fine plays. But they are constructed on rational principles and in them he was doing his best to write like Shakspeare. What reason is there for believing that those plays in many respects excellent are the better for not being in rhyme? None whatever. Rhyme in our opinion would have given them both a superior charm. In his heroic plays it often carries us along with absurdities which we know not whether we should call tame or wild; it gives an air of originality to trivial commonplaces; it embellishes what is vigorous and invigorates what is beautiful; and among events and characters alike unnatural its music sustains our flagging interest and enables us to read on. There can be no doubt that in representations on the stage the same cause must have been most effective on audiences accustomed to that kind of pleasure and who delighted in rhyme to them at once a necessary and a luxury of life. ""Aurengzebe "" the last of his rhyming plays is to our mind little if at all inferior to ""All for Love "" or ""Don Sebastian;"" and we know that it was most successful on the stage. Sir Walter says ""that during the space which occurred between the writing of the 'Conquest of Grenada ' and 'Aurengzebe ' Dryden's researches into the nature and causes of harmony of versification led him to conclude that the Drama ought to be emancipated from the fetters of rhyme--and that the perusal of Shakspeare on whom Dryden had now turned his attention led him to feel that something further might be attained in tragedy than the expression of exaggerated sentiment in smooth verse and that the scene ought to represent not a fanciful set of agents exerting their superhuman faculties in a fairyland of the poet's own creation but human characters acting from the direct and energetic influence of human passions with whose emotions the audience might sympathize because akin to the feelings of their own hearts. When Dryden had once discovered that fear and pity were more likely to be excited by other causes than the logic of metaphysical love or the dictates of fantastic honour he must have found that rhyme sounded as unnatural in the dialogue of characters drawn upon the usual scale of humanity as the plate and mail of chivalry would have appeared on the persons of the actors."" All this is finely said; but does it not assume the point in question? Dryden may have learned at last from the study of Shakspeare (in whom however he was well read many years before as witness his Essay on Dramatic Poesy ) that ""something further might be attained in tragedy than the expression of exaggerated sentiment in smooth verse."" But we do not see the necessity of the inference ""that rhyme sounded unnatural in the dialogue of characters drawn upon the usual scale of humanity."" Is rhyme self-evidently unnatural in the expression in verse of strong and deep human passion? To that question put thus generally the right answer is--NO. And is it then necessarily unnatural in the drama? Like all great powers that of rhyme is a secret past finding out. In itself a mere barbarous jingle it yet gives perfection to speech. The music of versification has endless varieties of measures and rhyme lends enchantment to them all. Not an affection emotion or passion of the soul that may not be soothed by its syllablings enkindled or raised to rapture. Pity and terror joy and grief love and devotion are all alike sensible of its influence; as the sweet similarities keep echoing through some artful strain that all the while is thought by them who listen to come in simplicity from the unpremeditating heart. Songs hymns elegies epicedia epithalamia--rhyme rules alike all the shadowy tribes. The triumphant ode--the penitential psalm--wisdom's moral lesson--the philosophic strain ""that vindicates the ways of God to man;"" such is the range of rhyme down all the depths of the pathetic up all the heights of the sublime. It is yet unlimited. Where shall we find its bounds? Let us try. In the Epos the poet in person is the relater. But he hides his own personality in that of the Muse he invokes; and offers himself to his auditors as the Voice only by which she speaks. She the Muse is thought to be throughout a faithful recorder; for she is supposed to have access to know all; and however marvellous may be the narrations they are accepted with undoubting faith. Since she speaks or rather sings and the auditor only listens the commonest and the most uncommon events are in one respect upon an even footing. For the hearer must picture them for himself. All are alike acted absent from the senses and before the imagination alone. Hence the Epic Poet has an extraordinary facility afforded him for introducing into his work that order of representation which is called the marvellous. For it is just as easy to the hearer to set before his fancy a giant or a pigmy as a man; the one-eyed monster Polyphemus as the beautiful the graceful the swift the strong the sublime the terrible Achilles. It is just as easy for him to transport himself in fancy to the summit of Olympus to the palace of Jupiter and to the Council or to the Banquet of the Gods or to the deep sea-caves where Thetis sits with her companion nymphs in the hall of her father the sea-god Nereus--as it is to remove himself from the festal hall where the poet is singing to him and to the other guests away to the camp of the Greeks or to the court of Priam or to the bower of Andromache. He has no more difficulty to think of Minerva darting in the likeness of a hawk from the snowy crest of Olympus to the shore of the Hellespont--or to imagine the Thunderer in his celestial car lashing on his golden-maned steeds that pace the clouds and the air and waft him at the speed almost of a wish from the unfolding portals of heaven to the summit of Mount Ida--than when he is called upon in the midst of some totally different scene to figure to himself a mortal hero with waving crest glittering in polished brass advancing erect in his war-chariot hurling his lance that misses his foe; and in return transpierced by that of his antagonist falling backwards to the ground in his resounding arms and groaning out his soul in the bloody dust. The truth is that when you are called upon to see and to hear _within the mind_ you rejoice in the capacities of seeing and hearing that are thus unfolded in you infinitely surpassing similar capacities which you possess in your bodily eye and ear; and therefore the stronger the demands that are made the more readily even do you comply with them; and in this way in part we must understand the character that is impressed upon the _Iliad_ and the temper of mind in the hearer answering to the character. It is one of infinite liberty. The mind of the poet seems to be released from all bonds and from all bounds; and the temper in the hearer is the same. Another character proper to Epic poetry judging after its great model the _Iliad_--is _universality_. In the direct narrative we have gods and men heaven earth sea for seats of action--and for a moment a glimpse of hell. Recollect whilst the conflagration of war is raging how the poet has found a moment at the Scæan Gate for the touching picture of an heroic father a noble mother and a babe in arms scared at his father's dazzling and overshadowing helmet who smiles puts it from his head upon the ground and lifts up the boy with a prayer to Jove. Sacrifices to the gods games funeral rites come in the course of the relation; and because the scene of the poem is distracted with warfare the great poet has found in the Vulcanian sculptures on the shield of Achilles place for images of peace--the labours of the husbandman; the mirthful gathering in of the vintage with dance and song; the hymeneal pomp led along the streets. And in the similes what pictures from animal life and manners! And then our enchantment is heightened by a prevailing duplication. Throughout or nearly so the transactions that are presented in the natural are also presented in the supernatural. Thus we have earthly councils heavenly councils; warring men warring gods; kings of men kings of gods; mortal husbands and wives and sons and daughters; immortal husbands and wives and sons and daughters. Palaces in heaven as on earth. The sea in a manner triplicates. Terrestrial steeds--celestial steeds--marine steeds! The natural and supernatural are united--when Achilles is half of mortal half of immortal derivation; when heavenly coursers are yoked in the chariots of men; when Juno for a moment grants voice to the horse of Achilles; and the horse whom Achilles has unjustly reproved answers prophesying the death of the hero. Why Homer made the _Iliad_ in hexameters no man can tell; but having done so he thereby constituted for ever the proper metre of Greek--and Latin--Epic poetry. But what a multitude of subjects how different from one another does that and every other Epic poem comprehend! Glory to the hexameter! it suits them all. Now in every Epic poem and in few more than in the _Iliad_ there are many dramatic scenes. But in the Greek tragic drama the dialogue is mainly in iambics; for this reason that iambics are naturally suited for the language of conversation. Be it so. Yet here in the Epic the dialogue is felt to be as natural in hexameters as the heart of man can desire. Hear Agamemnon and Achilles. Call to mind that colloquy in Pelides' tent. Rhyme is unknown in Greek; and it is of rhyme that we are treating though you may not see our drift. From Homer then pass on to Ariosto and Tasso. They too are Epic poets who have charmed the world. Their poems may not have such a sweep as the _Iliad_ still their sweep is great. Rich in rhyme is their language--rich the stanza they delighted in--_ottava rima_ how rich the name! Is rhyme unnatural from the lips of their peers and paladins? No--an inspired speech. Is hexameter blank verse alone fit for the mouths of Greek heroes--eight-line stanzas of oft-recurring rhymes for the mouths of Italian? Gentle shepherd tell me why. But the ""Paradise Lost"" is in blank verse. It is. The fallen angels speak not in rhyme--nor Eve nor Adam. So Milton willed. But Dante's Purgatory and Hell and Heaven are in rhyme--ay and in difficult rhyme too--_terza rima_. Yet the damned speak it naturally--so do the blessed. How dreadful from Ugolino how beautiful from Beatrice! But the drama--the drama--the drama--is your cry--what say we to the drama? Listen and you shall hear-- The Tragic Drama rose at Athens. The splendid and inexhaustible mythology of gods and heroes which had supplied the Epic Muse with the materials of her magnificent relations furnished the matter of a new species of poetry. A palace--or a temple--or a cave by the wild sea-shore was painted; actors representing by their attire and their majestic demeanour heroes and heroines of the old departed world; nay upon high occasions celestial gods and goddesses--trod the Stage and spoke in measured recitation before assembled thousands of spectators seated in wonder and awe-stricken expectation. The change to the poet in the manner of communicating with his hearers alters the character of the composition. The stage trodden by living feet the scenery voices from human tongues varying with all the changes of emotion impassioned gestures and events no longer spoken of but transacted in presence before the eyes of the audience are elements full of power that claim for tragedy and impose upon it a character of its own. The heart is more interested and the imagination less. Persons who accompany the whole business that is to be done with speaking--a poem consisting of incessant dialogue--must disclose with more precise and profounder discovery the minds represented as engaged. Motives are produced and debated--the sudden turns of thought--the violent fluctuations of the passions--the gentle variations of the feelings appear. Time is given for this internal display--and a species of poetry arises distinguished for the fulness and the decision with which the springs of action in the human bosom are shown as breaking forth into and determining human action. Meanwhile the means that are thus afforded to the poet of a more energetic representation curb in him the flights of imagination. To represent Neptune as at three strides from his seat on a mountain-top descending the slope that with all its woods quakes under the immortal feet and as reaching at the fourth step his wave-covered palace--this which was easy between the epic poet and his hearer becomes out of place and impossible for tragedy simply because no actors and no stage can represent a god so stepping and the hills so trembling. We know what the pathetically sublime literature was which the drama gave to Athens; how poets of profound and capacious spirits who had looked into themselves--and so enlightened had observed human life--were able by taking for their subjects the strongly portrayed characters and the stern situations of the old Greek fable to unite in their lofty and impressive scenes the truth of nature and the tender interests which endear our familiar homes to the grandeur of heroic recollections to the awe of religion and to the pomp the magnificence and the beauty of a gorgeous yet intellectual art. The Greek Tragic drama is from end to end in verse; and unavoidably because 'tis a part of a splendid religious celebration. It is involved in the solemn pomp of a festival. Therefore it dons its own solemn festival robes. The musical form is our key to the spirit. And in that varying musical form there are three degrees--first the Iambic nearest real speech--second the Lyrical dialogue farther off--third the full Chorus--utmost removal. Pray do not talk to us of the naturalness of the language. You never heard the like spoken in all your days. Natural it was on that stage--and over the roofless theatre the tutelary deities of Athens leant listening from the sky. The model or law or self of the English drama is _Shakspeare_. The character of his drama is the imaging of nature. A foremost characteristic of nature is infinite and infinitely various production expressing or intimating an indefatigably and inexhaustibly active spirit. But such a spirit of life so acting and producing appears to us as a fountain ever freshly flowing from the very hand of God. All _that_ Shakspeare's drama images; and thus his art appears to us as always the highest art appears to us to be a Divine thing. The musical forms of his language should answer; and they do. They are; first prose; second loose blank verse; third tied blank verse; fourth rhyme.[1] This unbounded variety of the musical form really seems to answer to the premised idea; seems really to clothe infinite and infinitely varied intellectual production. Observe we beseech you what varieties of music! The rhyme--ay the rhyme--has a dozen at least;--couplets--interlaced rhyme--single rhyme and double--anapests--diverse lyrical measures. Observe too that speakers of all orders and characters use all the forms. Hamlet Othello Lear Coriolanus Lance use prose; Leontes and his little boy Lear Coriolanus and his domestics--to say nothing of the Steward--Macbeth and his murderlings use blank verse. Even Falstaff now and then a verse. All high and low wise merry and sad _rhyme_. Fools witches fairies--we know not who else--use lyrical measures. Upon the whole the _uttermost_--that is the musical form--answers herein to the _innermost_ spirit. The spirit endlessly-varying creates endlessly-varying musical form. The total character is accordingly self-lawed irrepressible creation. Blank verse then is the predominating musical form of Shakspeare's comedies histories and tragedies. To such a degree as that _all_ the other forms often slip from one's recollection; and to speak strictly blank verse must be called the rule; while all other forms are diverse exceptions. Only one comedy the homely and English ""Merry Wives of Windsor "" has for its rule prose. Even here the two true lovers hold their few short colloquies in blank verse. And when the concluding fairy masque is toward blank verse rages. Page and Ford catch it. The merry wife Mrs Page turns poetess to describe and project the superstitions to be used. In the fairy-scene Sir John himself Shakspeare's most dogged observer of prose is quelled by the spirit of the hour and RHYMES. You would think that the soul of Shakspeare has been held chained through the play and breaks loose for a moment ere ending it. All this being said it may be asked:--""Why is blank verse the ordinary musical form of Shakspeare's Dramas?"" And the obvious answer appears to be:--""Because it has a _middle removedness_ or _estrangement_ from the ordinary speech of men:--raising the language into imagination and yet not out of sympathy."" Shakspeare and Sophocles agree in truth and strength in life passion and imagination. They differ inwardly herein--Shakspeare founds in the power of nature. Under his hand nature brings forth art. The Attic tragedy begins from art. Its first condition is order since it is part of a religious ceremonial. It resorts to nature to quicken strengthen bear up art. Nature enters upon the Athenian stage under a previous recognition of art as dominant. From all that has been now said--and it is more than we at first intended to say--this conclusion follows that there may be English rhymed dramas. There are French Spanish Portuguese Italian ones--and fine ones too; and nothing in nature forbids that there may be infinitely finer. That which universally affects off the stage in all kinds of poetry would in the work of a great master affect on it. The delusion of the theatre overcomes far greater difficulties carried with us thither in the constitution of our habitual life than the use of rhyme by the visionary beings in the mimic scene. Beyond all doubt there might arise in rhyme a most beautiful romantic drama. Unreal infused into real turns real at once into poetry. But this is of all degrees. In the lowest prose of life there is an infusion which we overlook. We should drop down dead without it. Let the unreal a little predominate; and now we become sensible to its presence and now we _call_ the compound poetry. Let it be an affair of words and we require verse as the fitting form. Our stage and language have settled upon blank verse as the proper metrical form for the proper measure of the unreal upon the ordinary tragic stage. Rhymed verse has a more marked separation or is more distant from prose than blank verse is. Hence you might suppose that it will be fitted on the stage for a surcharge of the unreal. Dryden's heroic tragedies are a proof as far as one authority goes; and even they had great power over audiences willing to be charmed and accustomed to what we should think a wide and continued departure from nature. But imagine a romantic play full of beautiful and tender imagination exquisitely written in rhyme and modelled to some suitable mould invented by a happy genius. Why the ""Gentle Shepherd "" idealizing modern Scottish pastoral life was in its humble way an achievement; and within our memory critics of the old school looked on it well pleased when acted by lads and lasses of high degree delighting to deem themselves for an evening the simple dwellers in huts around Habbie's How. Let us now collect together all that Dryden has in different moods of his unsettled and unsteady mind written about Shakspeare. In the Dialogue formerly spoken of comparisons are made between the modern English and the modern French drama. ""If you consider the plots "" says Neander ""our own are fuller of variety if the writing ours are more quick and fuller of spirit."" And he denies--like a bold man as he was--that the English have in aught imitated or borrowed from the French. He says our plots are weaved in English looms; we endeavour therein to follow the variety and greatness of characters which are derived to us from Shakspeare and Fletcher; the copiousness and well-knitting of the intrigues we have from Jonson. These two things he dares affirm of the English drama that with more variety of plot and character it has equal regularity; and that in most of the irregular plays of Shakspeare and Fletcher (for Ben Jonson's are for the most part regular ) there is a more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the writing than there is in any of the French. For a pattern of a perfect play he is proposing to examine ""the Silent Woman"" of Jonson the most careful and learned observer of the dramatic laws when he is requested by Eugenius to give in full Ben's character. He agrees to do so but says it will first be necessary to speak somewhat of Shakspeare and Fletcher; ""his rivals in poesy and one of them in my opinion at least his equal perhaps his superior."" Malone observes that the caution observed in this decision proves the miserable taste of the age; and Sir Walter that Jonson ""by dint of learning and arrogance fairly bullied the age into receiving his own character of his merits and that he was not the only person of the name that has done so."" This is coming it rather too strong; yet to stand well with others there is nothing like having a good opinion of one's-self and proclaiming it with the sound of a trumpet. ""To begin then with Shakspeare. He was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul; all the images of nature were still present to him and he drew them not laboriously but luckily; when he describes any thing you more than see it--you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature he looked inwards and found her there. I cannot say he is
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very where alike; were he so I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat and insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him--no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets 'Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.' ""The consideration of this made Mr Hales of Eton say that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ but he would produce it much better done in Shakspeare: and however others are now generally preferred before him yet the age wherein he lived which had contemporaries with him Fletcher and Jonson never equalled them to him in their esteem; and in the last king's court when Ben's reputation was at highest Sir John Suckling and with him the greater part of the courtiers set our Shakspeare far above him. ""Beaumont and Fletcher of whom I am next to speak had with the advantage of Shakspeare's wit which was their precedent great natural gifts improved by study. Beaumont especially being so accurate a judge of plays that Ben Jonson while he lived submitted all his writings to his censure and 'tis thought used his judgment in correcting if not contriving all his plots. What value he had for him appeared by the verses he writ to him and therefore I need speak no further of it. The first play that brought Fletcher and him into esteem was their 'Philaster;' for before that they had written two or three very unsuccessfully as the like is reported of Ben Jonson before he writ 'Every Man in his Humour.' Their plots were generally more regular than Shakspeare's especially those which were made before Beaumont's death; and they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better whose wild debaucheries and quickness of wit in repartee no poet before them could paint as they have done. Humour which Ben Jonson derived from particular persons they made it not their business to describe; they represented all the passions very lively but above all love. I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived to the highest perfection--what words have since been taken in are rather superfluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's; the reason is because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies and pathos in their more serious plays which suits generally with all men's humours. Shakspeare's language is likewise a little obsolete and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs. ""As for Jonson to whose character I am now arrived if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages ) I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge; of himself as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit but rather that he was frugal of it in his works; you find little to retouch or alter. Wit and language and humour also in some measure we had before him; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who succeeded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such an height. Humour was his proper sphere and in that he delighted most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients both Greek and Latin and he borrowed boldly from them. There is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times whom he has not translated in 'Sejanus' and 'Catiline.' But he has done his robberies so openly that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him. With the spoils of those writers he so represents old Rome to us in its rites ceremonies and customs that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language it was that he weaved it too closely and laboriously in his comedies especially. Perhaps too he did a little too much Romanize our tongue leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein though he learnedly followed their language he did not enough follow with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspeare I must acknowledge him the more correct poet but Shakspeare the greater wit. Shakspeare was the Homer or father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil the pattern of elaborate writing. I admire him but I love Shakspeare. To conclude of him as he has given us the most correct plays so in the precepts which he has laid down in his 'Discoveries ' we have as many and profitable rules for perfecting the stage as any wherewith the French can furnish us."" Samuel Johnson truly says of the Dialogue ""that it will not be easy to find in all the opulence of our language a treatise so artfully variegated with successive representations of opposite probabilities so enlivened with imagery and heightened with illustration."" But we have some difficulty in going along with him when he adds--""The account of Shakspeare may stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism exact without minuteness and lofty without exaggeration. The praise lavished by Longinus on the attestation of the heroes of Marathon by Demosthenes fades away before it. In a few lines is exhibited a character so sublime in its comprehension and so curious in its limitations that nothing can be added diminished or reformed; nor can the editors and admirers of Shakspeare in all their emulation of reverence boast of much more than of having diffused and paraphrased his epitome of excellence; of having changed Dryden's gold for baser metal of lower value though of greater bulk."" Since this great critic's day--ay with all his defects and perversities Samuel was a great critic--what a blaze of illumination has been brought to bear on the genius of Shakspeare! Nevertheless all honour to Glorious John! Next comes the famous prologue:-- As when a tree's cut down the secret root Lives under ground and thence new branches shoot; So from old Shakspeare's honour'd dust this day Springs up the buds a new reviving play. Shakspeare who (taught by none) did first impart To Fletcher wit to labouring Jonson art; He monarch-like gave those his subjects law And is that nature which they paint and draw. Fletcher reach'd that which on his heights did grow While Jonson crept and gather'd all below. This did his love and this his mirth digest; One imitates him most the other best. If they have since outwrit all other men 'Tis with the drops which fell from Shakspeare's pen. The storm which vanish'd on the neighbouring shore Was taught by Shakspeare's 'Tempest' first to roar. That innocence and beauty which did smile In Fletcher grew on this enchanted isle. But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be-- Within that circle none durst walk but he. I must confess 'twas bold nor would you now That liberty to vulgar wits allow Which works by magic supernatural things; But Shakspeare's power is sacred as a king's. Those legends from old priesthood were received And he them writ as people them believed."" Strange that he who could write so nobly about Shakspeare could commit such an outrage on his divine genius as the play to which this is the prologue--""The Tempest or the Enchanted Island "" a Comedy. It was--Dryden tells us and we must believe him--""originally Shakspeare's; a poet for whom Sir William D'Avenant had particularly a high veneration and whom he first taught me to admire."" So the two together to show their joint and judicious admiration set about altering ""The Tempest."" Fletcher had imitated it all in vain in his ""Sea Voyage;"" ""the storm the desert island and the woman who had never seen a man are all implicit testimonies of it."" Few more delightful poets than Fletcher; but in an evil hour and deserted by his good genius did he then hoist his sail. But now cover your face with your hands--and then shut your ears. ""_Sir John Suckling a professed admirer of our author has followed his footsteps_ in his '_Goblins_;' his Regmella being an open imitation of Shakspeare's Miranda and his spirits _though counterfeit_ yet are copied from Ariel."" But Sir William D'Avenant ""as he was a man of quick and piercing imagination soon found that somewhat might be added to the design of Shakspeare of which neither Fletcher nor Suckling had ever thought;"" ""and this excellent contrivance "" he was pleased says Dryden with looks of liveliest gratitude ""to communicate to me and to desire my assistance in it."" You probably knew what was the ""excellent contrivance"" by which ""the last hand""--the hand after Suckling's--""was put to it;"" so that thenceforth the ""Tempest"" was to be let alone in its glory. ""The counterpart to Shakspeare's plot namely that of a man who had never seen a woman that by this means these two characters of innocence and love might the more illustrate and commend each other. _I confess that from the very first moment it so pleased me that I never writ_ any thing with more delight."" Sir Walter says it seems to have been undertaken chiefly with a view to give room for scenical decoration and that Dryden's share in the alteration was probably little more than the care of adapting it to the stage. But Dryden's own words contradict that supposition and he further tells us that his writings received D'Avenant's daily amendments; ""and that is the reason why it is not so faulty as the rest which I have done without the help and correction of so judicious a friend."" They wrote together at the same desk. And Dryden found D'Avenant of ""so quick a fancy that nothing was proposed to him on which he would not suddenly produce a thought extremely pleasant and surprising. * * His imagination was such as could not easily enter into any other man."" It had been easy enough he adds to have arrogated more to himself than was his due in the writing of the play; but ""besides the worthlessness of the action which deterred me from it (there being nothing so base as to rob the dead of his reputation ) I am satisfied I could never have received so much honour in being thought the author of any poem how excellent soever--as I shall from the joining of my imperfections with the merit and name of Shakspeare and Sir William D'Avenant."" From all this and more of the same sort 'tis plain that Dryden's share in the composition was at least equal to--we should say much greater than--D'Avenant's. You must not meddle with Miranda--for she is all our own. Yet we cheerfully introduce you to her sister Dorinda and leave you all alone by yourselves for an hour's flirtation. Hush! she is describing the ship! ""This floating Ram did bear his horns above And tied with ribands ruffling in the wind: Sometimes he nodded down his head awhile And then the waves did heave him to the moon He climbing to the top of all the billows; And then again he curtsied down so low I could not see him. Till at last all sidelong With a great crack his belly burst in pieces."" We had but once before handled this performance--some threescore and ten years ago when a man of middle age. We dimly remember being amused in our astonishment. Now that we are beginning to get a little old we are perhaps growing too fastidious; yet surely it is something very shocking. Portsmouth Poll and Plymouth Sall--sisters originating at Yarmouth--when brought into comparison with Miranda and Dorinda of the enchanted island to our imagination seem idealized into Vestal virgins. True they were famous--when not half seas over--for keeping a quiet tongue in their mouths: with them mum was the word. Only when drunk as blazes poor things did they by word or gesture offend modesty's most sacred laws. But D'Avenant's and Dryden's daughters are such leering and lascivious drabs so dreadfully addicted to innuendoes and _doubles entendres_ of the most alarming character that high as is our opinion of the intrepidity of British seamen we should not fear to back the two at odds against a full-manned jolly-boat from a frigate in the offing sent in to fill her water-casks. Caliban himself--and what a Caliban he has become!--fights shy of the plenireps. Why--if it must be so--we give our arm to his sister Sycorax a ""fearsome dear"" no doubt but what better could one expect in a misbegotten monster? Oh the confounding mysteries of self-degrading genius! In the preface to ""An Evening's Love; or the Mock Astrologer "" we again meet with some criticism on Shakspeare. We learn from it that Dryden had formed the ambitious design of writing on the difference betwixt the plays of his own age and those of his predecessors on the English stage in order to show in what parts of ""dramatic poesy we were excelled by Ben Jonson--I mean humour and contrivance of comedy; and _in what we may justly claim precedence of Shakspeare and Fletcher_! namely in heroic plays."" He had moreover proposed to treat ""of the improvement of our language since Fletcher's and Jonson's days and consequently of our refining the courtship raillery and conversation of plays."" In great attempts 'tis glorious even to fail; and assuredly had Dryden essayed all this his failure would have been complete. ""I would "" said he with his usual ignorance of his own and his age's worst sins and defects ""have the characters well chosen and kept distant from interfering with each other which is more than Fletcher _or Shakspeare did_! * * I think there is no folly so great in any part of our age as the superfluity and waste of wit was in some of our predecessors particularly Fletcher _and Shakspeare_."" Refining the courtship raillery and conversation of plays! We cannot perhaps truly say very much in praise of those qualities in Ben's comedies admirable as they are and superior in all respects a thousand times over to the best of Dryden's and of his contemporaries'; but wilfully blind indeed or worse must the man who could thus write have been to the matchless grace vivacity delicacy prodigality and poetry of Shakspeare's comedy which as far transcends all the happiest creations of other men's wit as the pervading pathos and sublimity of his tragedy all their happiest inspirations from the holy fountain of ennobling or pitying tears. In its day the following Epilogue caused a great hubbub-- ""They who have best succeeded on the stage Have still conform'd their genius to their age. Thus Jonson did mechanic humours show When men were dull and conversation low. Then comedy was faultless but 'twas coarse: Cobb's tankard was a jest and Otter's horse. And as their comedy their love was mean; Except by chance in some one labour'd scene Which must atone for an ill-written play. They rose but at their height could seldom stay: Fame then was cheap and the first comer sped; And they have kept it since by being dead. But were they now to write when critics weigh Each line and every word throughout a play None of them no not Jonson in his height Could pass without allowing grains for weight. Think it not envy that these truths are told-- Our poet's not malicious though he's bold. 'Tis not to brand them that their faults are shown But by their errors to excuse his own. If love and honour now are higher raised 'Tis not the poet but the age is praised. Wit's now arrived to a more high degree; Our native language more refined and free; Our ladies and our men now speak more wit In conversation than those poets writ. Then one of these is consequently true; That what this poet writes comes short of you And imitates you ill (which most he fears ) Or else his writing is not worse than theirs. Yet though you judge (as sure the critics will) That some before him writ with greater skill In this one praise he has their fame surpast To please an age more gallant than the last."" Dryden was called over the coals for this sacrilegious Epilogue by persons ill qualified for censors--among others by my Lord Rochester--and was instantly ready with his defence--an ""Essay on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age."" In it he repeats the senseless assertion ""that the language wit and conversation of our age are improved and refined above the last;"" and he takes care to include among the writers of the last age _Shakspeare_ Fletcher and Jonson. ""In what "" he asks ""does the refinement of a language principally consist?"" ""Either in rejecting such old words or phrases which are ill sounding or improper or in admitting new which are more proper more sounding and more luxuriant. * * * Malice and partiality set apart let any man who understands English read diligently the works of _Shakspeare_ and Fletcher and I dare undertake that he will find in every page either some solecism of speech or some notorious flaw in sense; yet these men are reverenced when we are not forgiven. That their wit is great and many times their expressions noble envy itself cannot deny. But the times were ignorant in which they lived. Poetry was then if not in its infancy among us at least not arrived to its vigour and maturity. Witness the lameness of their plots many of which especially those they writ first (for even that age refined itself in some measure ) were made up of some ridiculous incoherent story which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name 'Pericles Prince of Tyre ' _nor the historical plays of Shakspeare_ besides many of the rest as the 'Winter's Tale ' 'Love's Labour Lost ' 'Measure for Measure ' which were either founded on impossibilities or at least so meanly written that the comedy neither caused your mirth nor the serious part your concernment."" In all this this rash and wretched folly Dryden shows his ignorance of the order in which Shakspeare wrote his plays; and Sir Walter kindly says that there will be charity in believing that he was not intimately acquainted with those he so summarily and unjustly condemns. But unluckily this nonsense was written during the very time he was said by Sir Walter to have been ""engaged in a closer and more critical examination of the ancient English poets than he had before bestowed upon them;"" and from the perusal of Shakspeare learning that the sole staple of the drama was ""human characters acting from the direct and energetic influence of human passions."" Yet Sir Walter was right; only Dryden's opinions and judgments kept fluctuating all his life long too much obedient to the gusts of whim and caprice or oftener still to the irregular influences of an impatient spirit that could not brook any opposition from any quarter to its domineering self-will. For in not many months after in the Prologue to ""Aurengzebe "" are these noble lines-- ""But spite of all his pride a secret shame Invades his heart at Shakspeare's sacred name; Awed when he hears his godlike Romans rage He in a just despair would quit the stage And to an age less polish'd more unskill'd Does with disdain the foremost honours yield."" Less polished--more unskilled! Here too he is possessed with the same foolish fancy as when he said in the ""Defence of the Epilogue ""--""But these absurdities which those poets committed may more properly be called the age's fault than theirs. For besides the want of education and learning (which was their particular unhappiness ) they wanted the benefit of converse. Their audiences were no better and therefore were satisfied with what they brought. Those who call theirs the golden age of poetry have only this reason for it that they were then content with acorns before they knew the use of bread!"" Then after a somewhat hasty and unconvincing examination of certain incorrectnesses and meannesses of expression even in Ben Jonson learned as he was he asks ""What correctness after this can be expected from _Shakspeare_ or Fletcher who wanted that learning and care which Jonson had? I will therefore spare myself the trouble of enquiring into their faults who had they lived now had doubtless written more correctly."" Since Shakspeare's days too the English language had been refined he says by receiving new words and phrases and becoming the richer for them as it would be ""by importation of bullion."" It is admitted however that Shakspeare Fletcher and Jonson did indeed beautify our tongue by their _curiosa felicitas_ in the use of old words to which it often gave a rare meaning; but in that they were followed by ""Sir John Suckling and Mr Waller _who refined upon them_!"" But the greatest improvement and refinement of all ""in this age "" is said to have been in wit. Pure wit and without alloy was the wit of the court of Charles the Second and of the Clubs. It shines like gold yea much fine gold in the works of all the master play-wrights. Whereas ""Shakspeare who many times has written better than any poet in any language is yet so far from writing wit always or expressing that wit according to the dignity of the subject that he writes in many places below the dullest writers of ours or any preceding age. Never did any author precipitate himself from such height of thought to so low expressions as he often does. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost every where two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one ere you despise the other."" That the wit ""of this age"" is much more courtly may Dryden thinks be easily proved by viewing the characters of gentlemen which were written in the last. For example--who do you think? Why MERCUTIO. ""Shakspeare showed the best of his skill in Mercutio; and he said himself that he was forced to kill him in the third act to prevent being killed by him. But for my part I cannot find he was so dangerous a person: I see nothing in him but what was so exceedingly harmless that he might have lived to the end of the play and died in his bed without offence to any man."" Wit Shakspeare had in common with his ingenious contemporaries; but theirs to speak out plainly ""was not that of gentlemen; there was ever somewhat that was ill-natured and clownish in it and which confessed the conversation of the authors."" ""In this age "" Dryden declares the last and greatest advantage of writing proceeds from conversation. ""In that age"" there was ""less gallantry;"" and ""neither did they (Shakspeare Ben and the rest) keep the best company of theirs."" But let the illustrious time-server speak at large. ""Now if they ask me whence it is that our conversation is so much refined? I must freely and without flattery ascribe it to the court; and in it particularly to the king whose example gives a law to it. His own misfortunes and the nation's afforded him an opportunity which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes--I mean of travelling and being conversant in the most polished courts of Europe; and thereby of cultivating a spirit which was formed by nature to receive the impressions of a gallant and generous education. At his return he found a nation lost as much in barbarism as in rebellion; and as the excellency of his nature forgave the one so the excellency of his manners reformed the other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern first awakened the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural reservedness; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus insensibly our way of living became more free; and the fire of the English wit which was before stifled under a constrained melancholy way of breeding began first to display its force by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of our neighbours. This being granted to be true it would be a wonder if the poets whose work is imitation should be the only persons in three kingdoms who should not receive advantage by it; or if they should not more easily imitate the wit and conversation of the present age than of the past. ""Let us therefore admire the beauties and the heights of Shakspeare without falling after him into a carelessness and as I may call it a lethargy of thought for whole scenes together."" Shakspeare lethargic--comatose! Sir Walter's admiration of ""glorious John"" was so much part of his very nature that he says ""it is a bold perhaps presumptuous task to attempt to separate the true from the false criticism in the foregoing essay: for who is qualified to be umpire betwixt Shakspeare and Dryden?"" None that ever breathed better than his own great and good self. Yet surely he was wrong in saying that when Shakspeare wrote for the stage ""wit was not required."" Required or not there it was in perfection of which Dryden with all his endowments had no idea. The question is not as he puts it were those ""audiences incapable of receiving the delights which a cultivated mind derives from the gradual development of a story the just dependence of its parts upon each other the minute beauties of language and the absence of every thing incongruous or indecorous?"" They may have been so though we do not believe they were. But the question is are Shakspeare's Plays beyond all that ever were written distinguished for those very excellences and free from almost all those very defects? That they are few if any will now dare to deny. While the best of Dryden's own Plays and still more those of his forgotten contemporaries infinitely inferior to Shakspeare's in all those very excellences are choke-full of all manner of faults and flagrant sins against decorum and congruity in the eyes of mere taste; and with a few exceptions according to no rules can be rated high as works of art. The truth of all this manifestly forced itself upon Sir Walter's seldom erring judgment as he proceeded in the composition of the elaborate note in which he would fain have justified Dryden even at the expense of Shakspeare. And as it now stands though beautifully written it swarms with _non-sequiturs_ and perplexing half-truths. In the Preface to ""Troilus and Cressida "" (1679 ) Dryden again--and for the last time--descants in the same unsatisfactory strain on Shakspeare. Æschylus he tells us was held in the same veneration by the Athenians of after ages as Shakspeare by his countrymen. But in the age of that poet the Greek tongue had arrived at its full perfection and they had among them an exact standard of writing and speaking; whereas the English language even in his (Dryden's) own age was wanting in the very foundation of certainty ""a perfect grammar:"" so what must it have been in Shakspeare's time? ""The tongue in general is so much refined since then that many of his words and more of his phrases are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand some are ungrammatical others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions that it is as affected as it is obscure. It is true that in his latter plays he had worn off somewhat of the rust; but the tragedy which I have undertaken to correct was in all probability one of his first endeavours on the stage.... So lamely is it left to us that it is not divided into acts. For the play itself the author seems to have begun it with some fire. The characters of Pandarus and Thersites are promising enough; but as if he grew weary of his task after an entrance or two he lets them fall; and the latter part of the tragedy is nothing but a confusion of drums and trumpets excursions and alarms. The persons who give name to the tragedy are left alive. Cressida is false and is not punished. Yet after all because the play was Shakspeare's and that there appeared in some places of it the admirable genius of the author I undertook to remove that heap of rubbish under which many excellent thoughts lay wholly buried. Accordingly I have remodelled the plot threw out many unnecessary persons improved those which were begun and left unfinished as Hector Troilus Pandarus and Thersites and added that of Andromache. After that I made with no small trouble an order and connexion of all the scenes removing them from the place where they were inartificially set; and though it was impossible to keep them all unbroken because the scene must be sometimes in the city and sometimes in the court yet I have so ordered them that there is a coherence of them with one another and a dependence on the main design: no leaping from Troy to the Grecian tents and thence back again in the same act but a due proportion of time allowed for every motion. I need not say that I have refined the language which before was obsolete; but I am willing to acknowledge that as I have often drawn his English nearer to our times so I have sometimes conformed my own to his; and consequently the language is not altogether so pure as it is significant."" John Dryden and Samuel Johnson resemble one another very strongly in their treatment of Shakspeare. Both of them seem at times to have perfectly understood and felt his greatness and both of them have indited glorious things in its exaltation. Their praise is the utterance of worship. You might believe them on their knees before an idol. But theirs is a strange kind of reverence. It alternates with derision and is compatible with contempt. The god sinks into the man and the man is a barbarian babbling uncouth speech. ""Coarse "" ""ungrammatical "" ""obscure "" ""affected "" ""unintelligible "" ""rusty!"" The words distilled from the lips of Cordelia Desdemona Juliet Imogen! Dryden informs us that ages after the death of Æschylus the Athenians ordained an equal reward to the poets who could alter his plays to be acted in the theatre with those whose productions were wholly new and of their own. But the case he laments is not the same in England though the difficulties are greater. Æschylus wrote good Greek Shakspeare bad English; and to make it intelligible to a refined audience was a hard job. Sorely ""pestered with figurative expressions"" must have been the transmogrifier; and he had to look for wages not to a nation's gratitude but a manager's greed. It was indeed a desperate expedient for raising the funds. In his judgment the Play itself was but a poor affair--an attempt by an apprentice that to be producible required the shaping of a master's hand. ""Lamely left"" it had to be set on its feet ere it could tread the stage. With what _nonchalance_ does he throw out ""unnecessary persons "" and improve ""unfinished!"" Hector Troilus Pandarus and Thersites skilless Shakspeare had but begun--artful Dryden made an end of them; Cressida who was false as she was fair yet left alive to deceive more men became a paragon of truth chastity and suicide; and by an amazing stretch of invention far beyond the Swan's was added Andromache. Dryden proudly announces that ""the scenes of Pandarus and Cressida of Troilus and Pandarus of Andromache with Hector and the Trojans in the second act are wholly new; together with that of Nestor and Ulysses with Thersites and that of Thersites with Ajax and Achilles. I will not weary my reader with the scenes which are added of Pandarus and the lovers in the third and those of Thersites which are wholly altered; but I cannot omit the last scene in it which is almost half the act betwixt Troilus and Hector. I have been so tedious in three acts that I shall contract myself in the two last. The beginning scenes of the fourth act are either added or changed wholly by me; the middle of it is Shakspeare's altered and mingled with my own; three or four of the last scenes are altogether new; and the whole fifth act both the plot and the writing are my own additions."" O heavens! why was it not all ""my own?"" No human being can have a right to use another in such a way as this. Shakspeare's plays were then and are now as much his own property as the property of the public--or rather the public holds them in trust. Dryden was a delinquent towards the dead. His crime was sacrilege. In reading _his_ ""Troilus and Cressida "" you ever and anon fear you have lost your senses. Bits of veritable Shakspearean gold burnished star-bright embossed in pewter! Diamonds set in dirt! Sentences illuminated with words of power suddenly rising and sinking through a flare of fustian! Here Apollo's lute--there hurdy-gurdy. ""For the play itself "" said Dryden insolently ""the author seems to have begun it with some fire;"" and here it is continued with much smoke. ""The characters of Pandarus and Thersites are pro
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ising enough;"" here we shudder at their performance. Such a monstrous Pandarus would have been blackballed at the Pimp. Thersites--Shakspeare's Thersites--for Homer's was another Thersites quite--finely called by Coleridge ""the Caliban of demagogic life""--loses all individuality and is but a brutal buffoon grossly caricatured. The scene between Ulysses and Achilles with its wondrous wisdomful speech is omitted! of itself worth all the poetry written between the Restoration and the Revolution. Spirit of Glorious John! forgive we beseech thee truth-telling Christopher--but angels and ministers of grace defend us! WHO ART THOU? Shakspeare's ghost. PROLOGUE SPOKEN BY MR BETTERTON REPRESENTING THE GHOST OF SHAKSPEARE. ""See my loved Britons see your Shakspeare rise An awful ghost confess'd to human eyes! Unnamed methinks distinguish'd I had been From other shades by this eternal green About whose wreaths the vulgar poets strive And with a touch their wither'd bays revive. Untaught unpractised in a barbarous age I found not but created first the stage; And if I drain'd no Greek or Latin store 'Twas that my own abundance gave me more. On foreign trade I needed not rely Like fruitful Britain rich without supply. In this my rough-drawn play you shall behold Some master-strokes so manly and so bold That he who meant to alter found 'em such He shook and thought it sacrilege to touch. Now where are the successors to my name? What bring they to fill out a poet's fame? Weak short-lived issues of a feeble age; Scarce living to be christen'd on the stage! For humour farce for love they rhyme dispense That tolls the knell for their departed sense. Dulness that in a playhouse meets disgrace Might meet with reverence in its proper place. The fulsome clench that nauseates the town Would from a judge or alderman go down-- Such virtue is there in a robe and gown! And that insipid stuff which here you hate Might somewhere else be call'd a grave debate: Dulness is decent in the church and state. But I forget that still 'tis understood Bad plays are best decried by showing good. Sit silent then that my pleased soul may see A judging audience once and worthy me. My faithful scene from true records shall tell How Trojan valour did the Greek excel; Your great forefathers shall their fame regain And Homer's angry ghost repine in vain."" The best hand of any man that ever lived at prologue and epilogue was Dryden. And here he showed himself to be the boldest too; and above fear of ghosts. For though it was but a make-believe it must have required courage in Shakspeare's murderer to look on its mealy face. The ghost speaks well--nobly--for six lines--though more like Dryden's than Shakspeare's. _That_ was not his style when alive. The seventh line would have choked him had he been a mere light-and-shadow ghost. But in death never would he thus have given the lie to his life. ""Untaught "" he might have truly said--for he had no master. ""Unpractised!"" Nay ""Troilus and Cressida"" sprang from a brain that had teemed with many a birth. ""A barbarous age!"" Read--""Great Eliza's golden time "" when the sun of England's genius was at meridian. ""Sacrilege to touch!"" Prologue had not read Preface. Little did the ""injured ghost"" suspect the spectacle that was to ensue. Much of what follows is in worse degree Drydenish all over. Sweetest Shakspeare scoffed not so! Suppose Shakspeare's ghost to have slipped quietly into the manager's box to witness the performance. Poets after death do not lose all memory of their own earthly visions. Thoughts of the fairest are with them in Paradise. At first sight of Dorinda he would have bolted. Dryden says that ""he knew not to distinguish the blown puffy style from true sublimity."" He would then have done so and no mistake. ""The fury of his fancy often transported him beyond the bounds of judgment either in coining of new words and phrases or racking words which were in use into the violence of catachresis."" His ears would have been jarred by Prospero's ""polite conversation "" so unlike what he who had not ""kept the best society "" was confined to ""in a barbarous age."" Yet Dryden confessed that he ""understood the nature of the passions "" and ""made his characters distinct;"" so that ""his failings were not so much in the passions themselves as in his manner of expression."" Unfortunately his vocabulary was neither choice nor extensive and he ""often obscured his meaning by his words and sometimes made it unintelligible."" ""To speak justly of this whole matter: it is neither height of thought that is discommended nor pathetic vehemence nor any nobleness of expression in its proper place; but it is a false measure of all these something which is like them and is not them; it is the Bristol stone which appears like a diamond; it is an extravagant thought instead of a sublime one; it is a roaring madness instead of vehemence; a sound of words instead of sense. If Shakspeare were stripped of all the bombasts in his passions and dressed in the most vulgar words we should find the beauties of his thoughts remaining; if his embroideries were burnt down there would still be silver at the bottom of the melting-pot but I fear (at least let me fear it for myself) that we who ape his sounding words have nothing of his thought but are all outside; there is not so much as dwarf within our giant's clothes. Therefore let not Shakspeare suffer for our sakes; it is our fault who succeed him in an age that is more refined if we imitate him so ill that we copy his failings only and make a virtue of that in our writings which in his was an imperfection. ""For what remains the excellency of that poet was as I have said in the more manly passions; Fletcher's in the softer. Shakspeare writ better betwixt man and man; Fletcher betwixt man and woman: consequently the one described friendship better--the other love. Yet Shakspeare taught Fletcher to write love; and Juliet and Desdemona are originals. It is true the scholar had the softer soul but the master had the kinder. Friendship is both a virtue and a passion essentially; love is passion only in its nature and is not a virtue but by accident: good-nature makes friendship but effeminacy love. Shakspeare had an universal mind which comprehended all characters and passions; Fletcher a more confined and limited: for though he treated love in perfection yet honour ambition revenge and generally all the stronger passions he either touched not or not masterly. To conclude all he was a limb of Shakspeare."" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: The prose even is in its music rude in ordinary folks--or _artful_ as in Hamlet's admiration of the world.] THE TOWER OF LONDON.--A POEM. BY THOMAS ROSCOE. PART I. Proud Julian towers! ye whose grey turrets rise In hoary grandeur mingling with the skies-- Whose name--thought--image--every spot are rife With startling legends--themes of death in life! Recall the voices of wrong'd spirits fled-- Echoes of life that long survived their dead; And let them tell the history of thy crimes The present teach and warn all future times. Time's veil withdrawn what tragedies of woe Loom in the distance fill the ghastly show! Oh tell what hearts torn from light's cheering ray Within thy death-shades bled their lives away; What anxious hopes strifes agonies and fears In thy dread walls have linger'd years on years-- Still mock'd the patient prisoner as he pray'd That death would shroud his woes--too long delay'd! Could the great Norman with prophetic eye Have scann'd the vista of futurity And seen the cell-worn phantoms one by one Rise and descend--the father to the son-- Whose purest blood by treachery and guilt On thy polluted scaffolds has been spilt Methinks Ambition with his subtle art Had fired his hero to a nobler part. Yes! curst Ambition--spoiler of mankind-- That with thy trophies lur'st the dazzled mind That 'neath the gorgeous veil thy conquests weave Would'st hide thy form and Reason's eye deceive-- By what strange spells still dost thou rule the mind That madly worships thee or tamely blind Forbears to fathom thoughts that at thy name Should kindle horror and o'erwhelm with shame. Alas that thus the human heart should pay Too willing homage to thy bloody sway; Should stoop submissive to a fiend sublime And venerate e'en the majesty of crime! How soon to those that tempt thee art thou near-- To prompt direct and steel the heart to fear! Oh not to such the voice of peace shall speak Nor placid zephyr fan their fever'd cheek; Sleep ne'er shall seal their hot and blood-stain'd eye But conscious visions ever haunt them nigh; Grandeur to them a faded flower shall be Wealth but a thorn and power a fruitless tree; And as they near the tomb with panting breast Shrink from the dread unknown yet hope no rest! Stern towers of strength! once bulwarks of the land When feudal power bore sway with sovereign hand-- Frown ye no more--the glory of the scene-- Sad silent witness of what crimes have been! Accurst the day when first our Norman foe Taught Albion's high-born Saxon sons to bow 'Neath victor-pride and insolence--learn to feel What earth's dark woes--when abject vassals kneel; And worse the hour when his remorseless heir Alike uncheck'd by heaven or earthly prayer With lusts ignoble fed by martial might Usurp'd man's fair domains and native right. Ye generous spirits that protect the brave And watch the seaman o'er the crested wave Cast round the fearless soul your glorious spell That fired a Hampden and inspired a Tell-- Why left ye Wallace greatest of the free His hills' proud champion--heart of liberty-- Alone to cope with tyranny and hate To sink at last in ignominious fate? Sad Scotia wept and still on valour's shrine Our glistening tears like pearly dewdrops shine To tell the world how Albyn's hero bled And treasure still the memory of her dead. Whose prison annals speak of thrilling deeds How truth is tortured and how genius bleeds? Whose eye dare trace them down the tragic stream-- Mark what fresh phantoms in the distance gleam As dark and darker o'er th' ensanguined page The ruthless deed pollutes each later age? See where the rose of Bolingbroke's rich bloom Fades on the bed of martyr'd Richard's tomb! Look where the spectre babes still smiling fair Spring from the couch of death to realms of air! Oh thought accurst! that uncle guardian foe Should join in one to strike the murderous blow. Ask we for tears from pity's sacred fount? ""Forbear!"" cries vengeance--""that is my account."" There is a power--an eye whose light can span The dark-laid schemes of the vain tyrant man. Lo! where it pierces through the shades of night And all its hideous secrets start to light-- In vain earth's puny conquerors heaven defy-- Their kingdom's dust and but one throne on high. See heaven's applause support the virtuous wrong'd And 'midst his state the despot's fears prolong'd. Thou tyrant yes! the declaration God Himself hath utter'd--""I'm the avenging rod!"" Words wing'd with fate and fire! oh not in vain Ye cleft the air and swept Gomorrah's plain When dark idolatry unmask'd she stood The mark of heaven--a fiery solitude! And still ye sped--still mark'd the varied page In every time--through each revolving age-- Wherever man trampled his fellow man Unscared by crimes ye marr'd his ruthless plan-- Still shall ye speed till time has pass'd away And retribution reigns o'er earth's last day. Methinks I hear from each relentless stone The spirits of thy martyr'd victims groan And eager whispers Echo round each cell The oft repeated legend and re-dwell With the same fondness that bespeaks delight In childhood's heart when on some winter's night As stormy winds low whistle through the vale It shuddering lists the thrilling ghostly tale. It seems but now that blood was spilt whose stain Proclaims the dastard soul--the bloody reign Of the Eighth Harry--vampire to his wife Who traffick'd for his divorce with her life; So fresh so moist each ruddy drop appears Indelible through centuries of years! And who is this whose beauteous figure moves Onward to meet the reeking form she loves; Whose noble mien--whose dignity of grace Extort compassion from each gazing face? 'Tis Dudley's bride! like some fair opening flower Torn from its stem--she meets fate's direst hour; Still unappall'd she views that bloody bier Takes her last sad farewell without a tear. Each weeping muse hath told how Essex died Favourite and victim doom'd by female pride. How courtly Suffolk spent his latest day And dying Raleigh penn'd his deathless lay. Here noble Strafford too severely taught How dearly royal confidence is bought; Received the warrant which demands his breath And with a calm composure walk'd--to death. Nor 'mong the names that liberty holds dear Shall the great Russell be forgotten here; His country's boast--each patriot's honest pride-- For them he lived--for them he wept and died. And must we yet another page unfold To glean fresh moral from the deeds of old? Ye busy spirits that pervade the air And still with dark intents to earth repair; That goad the passions of the human breast And bear the missives of Fate's stern behest-- Say stifle ye those thoughts that Heaven reveals-- The tears of sympathy--the glow that steals O'er the young heart or prompts soft pity's sigh-- The prayer to snatch from harsh captivity The virtuous doom'd--teach but to praise--admire-- Forbid to catch one spark of generous fire? The godlike wish of genius man to bless With rank and wealth still leaguing to oppress! Oh! when shall glory wreathe bright virtue's claim And both to honour give a holier fame? Ye towers of death!--the noblest still your prey Here spent in solitude their sunless day; In your wall'd graves a living doom they found; Broke o'er their night no ray no gladd'ning sound. Yet the mind's splendour with imprison'd wings Rose high and shone where the pure seraph sings; Where human thought taught conscience it was free And burst the shackles of the Romish See. Oh sweetest liberty! how dear to die! Bound by each sacred link; each holy tie; To save unspotted from the spoiler's hand Child of our heart--our own--our native land! And oh! how dear life's latest drop to shed To free the minds by superstition led;-- To spread with holy earnest zeal abroad That priceless gem--freedom to worship God! To keep unmingled with the world's vain lore The faith that lightens every darken'd hour; That faith which can alone the sinner save Prepare for death and raise him from the grave; Show how by yielding all we surest prove How humbly deeply truly we can love; How much we prize that hope divinely given The key--the seal--the passport into heaven. PART II. What sudden blaze spreads through the crimson skies And still in loftier volumes seems to rise? What meteor gleams that from the fiery north In savage grandeur fast are bursting forth And light your very walls? Tell me ye Towers-- 'Tis Smithfield revelling in his festal hours Fed with your captives: shrieks that wildly pierce The roaring flames now undulating fierce And gasping struggles mingled groans proclaim The power of torture o'er the writhing frame. Dark are your dens and deep your secret cells Whose silent gloom your tale of horrors tells. Saw ye how Cranmer dared--yet fear'd to die Trembling 'mid hopes of immortality? He stood alone;--a brighter band appears Unaw'd by threats--impregnable to fears; Who suffer'd glad the sacred truth to spread In mild obedience to its fountain-head. And when at length our popish James would see Cold superstition bend th' unhallow'd knee The mystic tapers on our altars burn And clouds of incense shade the fragrant urn Shone England's prelates faithful to their call In bonds of truth within thy massive wall. See grace divine--see Heaven in mercy pour The balm of peace on Albion's boasted shore. Once wrought by captive fingers on thy wall The hero's home and prison grave and pall What dark lines meet the startled stranger's gaze Thoughts that ennoble--sentiments that raise The iron'd captive from captivity How high above the power of tyranny!-- And ye that wander by the evening tide Where mountains swell or mossy streamlets glide; That on fresh hills can hail morn's orient ray And chant with birds your grateful hymns to day; Or seek at noon beneath some pleasant shade To feel the sunbeams cool'd by leafy glade-- That free as air morn noon and eve can roam Where'er you list and nature call your home; Learn from a hopeless prisoner's words and fate ""Virtue is valour--to be patient great!"" When traced on prison walls such words as these Arrest the eye--appall e'en while they please-- ""Ah! hapless he who cannot bear the weight With patient heart of a too partial fate For adverse times and fortunes do not kill But rash impatience of impending ill."" Yes still they speak to bosoms that are free Within the girdle of captivity; Of spirits dauntless who could spurn the chain Of human punishment or mortal pain; That e'en amid these precincts of despair Dared free themselves from thraldom's jealous care-- Bound but by ties of faith and virtue be Heirs of bright hopes and immortality. Oh! great mind's proud inscriptions! Who shall tell What hand engraved those lines within that cell? What heart yet steadfast while around him stood Phantoms of death to chill his curdling blood Could battle with despair on reason's throne And conquer where the fiend would reign alone? Ah! who can tell what sorrows pierced his breast-- Ran through each vein usurp'd his hours of rest? What struggle nerved his trembling hand to trace With moral courage words he dared to face With acts that ask'd new efforts while he wrote To man his soul and fix his every thought! Tremble thou tyrant! proud ambition blush! Hearts such as these thy power can never crush. Are they forgotten? no the rugged stone The lap of earth on which they rested lone; The very implements of torture there-- The axe the rack the tyrant's jealous care; Each mark that meets successive ages' eyes Speaks trumpet-tongued a fame that never dies; And tells the thoughtful stranger while the tear Unbidden starts that freedom triumph'd here-- Plumed her immortal wings for nobler flight And bore her martyr'd brave to realms of light. Nor false their faith nor like the fleeting wind Their spirits fled! for theirs the unprison'd mind No tyrant-chains no bonds of earth and time Could hold from truth and freedom's heights sublime-- From that bright heaven of science whence they shed Fresh glory o'er man's cause for which they bled. Ask what is left? their names forgotten now? Their birth their fortune? not a trace to show Where sleeps their dust? Go seek the blest abode Their mind's pure joy the bosom of their God! Then tell if in the dull cold prison's air And wasted to a living shadow there Earth scarcely knew them! if they were alone Where they were cast to pine away unknown? Friends had they none? nor beam'd a wish to share Love friendship and to breathe the common air. Lost lost to all! like some lone desert flower Felt they unseen Time's slow consuming power And hail'd each parting day with fond delight As the tired pilgrim greets the waning light? No! glad bright spirits guardians of the mind Were with them; as the demon-powers unbind And lash their furies on the conscious breast Of earth's fell tyrants who ne'er dream of rest. Theirs too joy's harbinger the thoughts aye fed With brighter objects than of earth that shed A light within their narrow home and gave A triumph's lustre to the yawning grave. And in that hour when the proud heart's o'erthrown And self all-powerless self is truly known; When pride no more could darken the free mind But all to God in firm faith was resign'd-- Then drank their souls the stream of love divine More richly flowing than the Eastern mine; Felt heaven expanding in the heart renew'd And more than friends in desert solitude. Peace to thy martyrs! thou art frowning now With all the array of bold and martial show; The same thy battlements with trophies dress'd Present defiance to the hostile breast; Around thy walls the soldier keeps his ward Scared with war's sights no more thy peaceful guard. Long may ye stand the voice of other years And ope in future times no fount of tears And sorrows like the past such as have brought A mournful gloom and shadow o'er the thought; And if the eye one pitying drop has shed That drop is sacred it embalms the dead. What though a thousand years have roll'd away Since thy dread walls entomb'd their noble prey; To us they speak ask the warm tear to flow For ills now pressing and for present woe; Bid us to succour fellow-men who haste Along the thorny road of life and taste The bitterness of poverty endure All that befalls the too neglected poor; And with no friend no bounty to assist Steal from the world unwept for and unmiss'd. What though no dungeon wrap the wasting clay Or from the eye exclude the cheering ray; What though no tortures visibly may tear The writhing limbs and leave their signet there; Has not chill penury a poison'd dart Inflicting deeper wounds upon the heart? All the decrees the sternest fate may bind To weigh the courage or display the mind-- All man could bear with heart unflinching bear Did not a dearer part his sufferings share-- Worse than the captive's fate--wife child his all The husband and the father's name appall His very soul and bid him thrilling feel Distraction as he makes the vain appeal. Upon his brow where manhood's hand had seal'd Its perfect dignity is now reveal'd A haggard wanness; from his livid eye The manly fire has faded; cold and dry No more it glistens to the light. His thought To the last pitch of frantic memory wrought Turns to the partner of his heart and woe Who weigh'd with grief no lesser love can know; Despair soon haunts the hope that fills his breast And passion's flood in tumult is express'd. Amid the plains where ample plenty spreads Her copious stores and decks the yellow meads The outcast turns a ghastly look to heaven; Oh not for him is Nature's plenty given; Robb'd of the birthright nature freely gave Save that last portion freely left--a grave! Oh that another power would rule man's heart Uncramp its free-born will in every part; Mercy more swift justice more just more slow Grandeur less prone to deal the cruel blow To bind men's hands with fetters than with alms And spurn the only boon that soothes and calms. England! thou dearest child of liberty; Free as thine ocean home for ever be; Thy commerce thrive; may thy deserted poor No more the pangs of poverty endure. Then shall thy Towers proud monument! display The thousand trophies of a happier day; And genial climes from earth's remotest shore Their richest tributes to her genius pour With wealth from Ind with treasures from the West Thy homes thy hamlets--cities still be blest; Till virtue truth and justice shall combine And heavenly hope o'er many a bosom shine; Auspicious days hail thy fair Sovereign's reign And happy subjects throng their golden train. POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE. No. III. Goethe though fertile in poems of the amatory and contemplative class was somewhat chary of putting forth his strength in the ballad. We have already selected almost every specimen of this most popular and fascinating description of poetry which is at all worthy of his genius;--at least all of them which we thought likely after making every allowance for variety of taste to fulfil the main object of our task--to please and not offend. It would have been quite easy for us to spin out the series by translating the whole section of ballads which relate to the loves of ""the Maid of the Mill "" the ""Gipsy's Song""--which somewhat unaccountably has found favour in the eyes of Mrs Austin--and a few more ditties of a similar nature all of which we bequeath with our best wishes as a legacy to any intrepid _rédacteur_ who may wish to follow in our footsteps. For ourselves we shall rigidly adhere to the rule with which we set out and separate the wheat from the chaff according to the best of our ability. The first specimen of our present selection is not properly German nor is it the unsuggested and original product of Goethe's muse. We believe that it is an old ballad of Denmark; a country which possesses next to Scotland the richest and most interesting store of ancient ballad poetry in Europe. However although originally Danish it has received some touches in passing through the alembic of translation which may warrant us in giving it a prominent place and we are sure that no lover of hoar tradition will blame us for its insertion. THE WATER-MAN. ""Oh mother! rede me well I pray; How shall I woo me yon winsome May?"" She has built him a horse of the water clear The saddle and bridle of sea-sand were. He has donn'd the garb of knight so gay And to Mary's Kirk he has ridden away. He tied his steed to the chancel door And he stepp'd round the Kirk three times and four. He has boune him into the Kirk and all Drew near to gaze on him great and small. The priest he was standing in the quire;-- ""What gay young gallant comes branking here?"" The winsome maid to herself said she;-- ""Oh were that gay young gallant for me!"" He stepp'd o'er one stool he stepp'd o'er two; ""Oh maiden plight me thy oath so true!"" He stepp'd o'er three stools he stepp'd o'er four; ""Wilt be mine sweet May for evermore?"" She gave him her hand of the drifted snow-- ""Here hast thou my troth and with thee I'll go."" They went from the Kirk with the bridal train They danced in glee and they danced full fain; They danced them down to the salt-sea strand And they left them there with hand in hand. ""Now wait thee love with my steed so free And the bonniest bark I'll bring for thee."" And when they pass'd to the white white sand The ships came sailing towards the land; But when they were out in the midst of the sound Down went they all in the deep profound! Long long on the shore when the winds were high They heard from the waters the maiden's cry. I rede ye damsels as best I can-- Tread not the dance with the Water-Man! This is strong pure rugged Norse scarcely inferior we think in any way to the pitch of the old Scottish ballads. * * * * * Before we forsake the North let us try ""The King in Thule."" We are unfortunate in having to follow in the wake of the hundred translators of Faust some of whom (we may instance Lord Francis Egerton) have already rendered this ballad as perfectly as may be; nevertheless we shall give it as Shakspeare says ""with a difference."" THE KING IN THULE. There was a king in Thule Was true till death I ween: A vase he had of the ruddy gold The gift of his dying queen. He never pass'd it from him-- At banquet 'twas his cup; And still his eyes were fill'd with tears Whene'er he took it up. So when his end drew nearer He told his cities fair And all his wealth except that cup He left unto his heir. Once more he sate at royal board The knights around his knee Within the palace of his sires Hard by the roaring sea. Up rose the brave old monarch And drank with feeble breath Then threw the sacred goblet down Into the flood beneath. He watch'd its tip reel round and dip Then settle in the main; His eyes grew dim as it went down-- He never drank again. * * * * * We shall now venture on an extravaganza which might have been well illustrated by Hans Holbein. It is in the ultra-Germanic taste such as in our earlier days whilst yet the Teutonic alphabet was a mystery we conceived to be the staple commodity of our neighbours. We shall never quarrel with a wholesome spice of superstition; but really Hoffmann Apel and their fantastic imitators have done more to render their national literature ridiculous than the greatest poets to redeem it. The following poem of Goethe is a strange piece of sarcasm directed against that school and is none the worse perhaps that it somewhat out-herods Herod in its ghostly and grim solemnity. Like many other satires too it verges closely upon the serious. We back it against any production of M. G. Lewis. THE DANCE OF DEATH. The warder look'd down at the depth of night On the graves where the dead were sleeping And clearly as day was the pale moonlight O'er the quiet churchyard creeping. One after another the gravestones began To heave and to open and woman and man Rose up in their ghastly apparel! Ho--ho for the dance!--and the phantoms outsprung In skeleton roundel advancing The rich and the poor and the old and the young But the winding-sheets hinder'd their dancing. No shame had these revellers wasted and grim So they shook off the cerements from body and limb And scatter'd them over the hillocks. They crook'd their thighbones and they shook their long shanks And wild was their reeling and limber; And each bone as it crosses it clinks and it clanks Like the clapping of timber on timber. The warder he laugh'd though his laugh was not loud; And the Fiend whisper'd to him--""Go steal me the shroud Of one of these skeleton dancers."" He has done it! and backward with terrified glance To the sheltering door ran the warder; As calm as before look'd the moon on the dance Which they footed in hideous order. But one and another seceding at last Slipp'd on their white garments and onward they pass'd And the deeps of the churchyard were quiet. Still one of them stumbles and tumbles along And taps at each tomb that it seizes; But 'tis none of its mates that has done it this wrong For it scents its grave-clothes in the breezes. It shakes the tower gate but _that_ drives it away For 'twas nail'd o'er with crosses--a goodly array-- And well was it so for the warder! It must have its shroud--it must have it betimes-- The quaint Gothic carving it catches And upwards from story to story it climbs And scrambles with leaps and with snatches. Now woe to the warder poor sinner betides! Like a long-legged spider the skeleton strides From buttress to buttress still upward! The warder he shook and the warder grew pale And gladly the shroud would have yielded! The ghost had its clutch on the last iron rail Which the top of the watch-turret shielded. When the moon was obscured by the rush of a cloud ONE! thunder'd the bell and unswathed by a shroud Down went the gaunt skeleton crashing! * * * * * A very pleasant piece of poetry to translate at midnight as we did it with merely the assistance of a dying candle! After this feast of horrors something more fanciful may not come amiss. Let us pass to a competition of flowers in the golden or--if you will have it so--the iron age of chivalry. The meditations of a captive knight have been a cherished theme for poets in all ages. Richard the Lion-heart of England and James I. of Scotland have left us in no mean verse the records of their own experience. We all remember how nobly and how well Felicia Hemans portrayed the agony of the crusader as he saw from the window of his prison the bright array of his Christian comrades defiling through the pass below. We shall now take a similar poem of Goethe but one in a different vein:-- THE FAIREST FLOWER. THE LAY OF THE CAPTIVE EARL. _The Earl._--I know a floweret passing fair And for its loss I pain me; Fain would I hence to seek its lair But for these bonds that chain me. My woes are aught but light to me For when I roam'd unbound and free That flower was ever near me. Adown and round the castle's steep I let my glances wander; But cannot from the dizzy keep Descry it there or yonder. Oh he who'd bring it to my sight Or were he knave or were he knight Should be my friend for ever! _The Rose._--I blossom bright thy lattice near And hear what thou hast spoken; 'Tis me--brave ill-starr'd cavalier-- The Rose thou wouldst betoken! Thy spirit spurns the base the low And 'tis the queen of flowers I know That in thy bosom reigneth. _The Earl._--All honour to thy purple cheer From swathes of verdure blowing; And so art though to maidens dear As gold or jewels glowing. Thy wreaths adorn the fairest face Yet art thou not the flower whose grace In solitude I cherish. _The Lily._--A haughty place usurps the rose And haughtier still doth covet; But where the lily meekly blows Some gentle eye will love it. The heart that beats in faithful breast And spotless is as my white vest Must value me the highest. _The Earl._--Spotless and true of heart am I And free from sinful failing Yet must I here a captive lie In loneliness bewailing. I see an image fair in you Of many maidens pure and true Yet know I something dearer. _The Carnation._--That may thy warder's garden show In me the bright carnation Else would the old man tend me so With loving adoration? In perfect round my petals meet And lifelo
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g are with scent replete And with a burning colour. _The Earl._--None may the sweet carnation slight It is the gardener's pleasure Now he unfolds it to the light Now shields from it his treasure. But no--the flower for which I pant No rare no brilliant charms can vaunt 'Tis ever meek and lowly. _The Violet._--Conceal'd and bending I retreat Nor willingly had spoken Yet that same silence since 'tis meet Shall now by me be broken. If I be that which fills thy thought Then must I grieve that I may not Waft every perfume to thee. _The Earl._--I love the violet indeed So modest in perfection So gently sweet--yet more I need To soothe my heart's dejection. To thee alone the truth I'll speak That not upon this rock so bleak Is to be found my darling. In yon far vale earth's truest wife Sits where the brooks run playing And still must wear a woeful life Till I with her am straying. When a blue floweret by that spot She plucks and says--FORGET-ME-NOT I feel it here in bondage. Yes when two truly love its might They own and feel in distance So I within this dungeon's night Cling ever to existence. And when my heart is nigh distraught If I but say--FORGET-ME-NOT Hope burns again within me! * * * * * Such is constant love--the light even of the dungeon! Nor to the glory of human nature be it said is this a fiction. Witness Picciola--witness those letters perhaps the most touching that were ever penned from poor Camille Desmoulins to his wife while waiting for the summons to the guillotine--witness above all that fragment signed Quéret-Démery which could not get beyond the sullen walls of the Bastile until fifty years after the agonizing request was preferred when that torture-chamber of cruelty was razed indignantly to the ground--""If for my consolation Monseigneur would grant me for the sake of God and the most blessed Trinity that I could have news of my dear wife! were it only her name on a card to show that she is yet alive! It were the sweetest consolation I could receive; and I should for ever bless the greatness of Monseigneur."" Poetry has no such eloquence as this. But we must not digress from our author. Here are a few lines of the deepest feeling and truth and most appropriate in the hours of wretchedness-- SORROW WITHOUT CONSOLATION. O wherefore shouldst thou try The tears of love to dry? Nay let them flow! For didst thou only know How barren and how dead Seems every thing below To those who have not tears enough to shed Thou'd'st rather bid them _weep_ and seek their comfort so. * * * * * The following stanzas though rather inferior in merit may be taken as a companion to the above. Their structure reminds us of Cowley. COMFORT IN TEARS. How is it that thou art so sad When others are so gay? Thou hast been weeping--nay thou hast! Thine eyes the truth betray. ""And if I may not choose but weep Is not my grief mine own? No heart was heavier yet for tears-- O leave me friend alone!"" Come join this once the merry band They call aloud for thee And mourn no more for what is lost But let the past go free. ""O little know ye in your mirth What wrings my heart so deep! I have not lost the idol yet For which I sigh and weep."" Then rouse thee and take heart! thy blood Is young and full of fire; Youth should have hope and might to win And wear its best desire. ""O never may I hope to gain What dwells from me so far; It stands as high it looks as bright As yonder burning star."" Why who would seek to woo the stars Down from their glorious sphere? Enough it is to worship them When nights are calm and clear. ""Oh I look up and worship too-- My star it shines by day-- Then let me weep the livelong light The whilst it is away."" * * * * * A thread from the distaff of Omphale may be stronger than the club of Hercules. Here is an inconstant Romeo escaped from his Juliet and yet unable to shake off the magnetic spell which must haunt him to his dying day. TO A GOLDEN HEART. Pledge of departed bliss Once gentlest holiest token! Art thou more faithful than thy mistress is That ever I must wear thee And on my bosom bear thee Although the bond that knit her soul with mine is broken? Why shouldest thou prove stronger? Short are the days of love and wouldst thou make them longer? Lili! in vain I shun thee! Thy spell is still upon me. In vain I wander through the distant forests strange In vain I roam at will By foreign glade and hill For ah! where'er I range Beside my heart the heart of Lili nestles still! Like a bird that breaks its twine Is this poor heart of mine: It fain into the summer bowers would fly And yet it cannot be Again so wholly free; For always it must bear The token which is there To mark it as a thrall of past captivity. * * * * * Here again is Romeo before his escape. Poor Juliet! may we hope that she still has and may long possess the power ""To lure this tassel-gentle back again."" Death indeed were a gentler fate than desertion. Truth to say Goethe would have made but a sorry Romeo for he wanted the great and leading virtue of constancy; and yet who can tell what Romeo might have become after six months' exile in Mantua? Juliet we know had taken the place of Rosaline. Might not some fairer and newer star have arisen to eclipse the image of the other? We will not credit the heresy. Far better that the curtain should fall upon the dying lovers before one shadow of doubt or suspicion of infidelity has arisen to perplex the clear bright mirror of their souls! WELCOME AND DEPARTURE. To horse!--away o'er hill and steep! Into the saddle blithe I sprung; The eve was cradling earth to sleep And night upon the mountains hung. With robes of mist around him set The oak like some huge giant stood While with its hundred eyes of jet Peer'd darkness from the tangled wood. Amidst a bank of clouds the moon A sad and troubled glimmer shed; The wind its chilly wings unclosed And whistled wildly round my head. Night framed a thousand phantoms dire Yet did I never droop nor start; Within my veins what living fire! What quenchless glow within my heart! We met; and from thy glance a tide Of stifling joy flow'd into me: My heart was wholly by thy side My every breath was breathed for thee. A blush was there as if thy cheek The gentlest hues of spring had caught And smiles so kind for me!--Great powers! I hoped yet I deserved them not! But morning came to end my bliss; A long a sad farewell we took. What joy--what rapture in thy kiss What depth of anguish in thy look! I left thee dear! but after me Thine eyes through tears look'd from above; Yet to be loved--what ecstacy! What ecstacy ye gods to love! Here are three small cabinet pictures of exquisite finish. We have laboured hard to do justice to them for the smallest gems are the most difficult to copy; yet after all we have some doubts of our success. EVENING. Peace breathes along the shade Of every hill The tree-tops of the glade Are hush'd and still; All woodland murmurs cease The birds to rest within the brake are gone. Be patient weary heart--anon Thou too shalt be at peace! * * * * * A CALM AT SEA. Lies a calm along the deep Like a mirror sleeps the ocean And the anxious steersman sees Round him neither stir nor motion. Not a breath of wind is stirring Dread the hush as of the grave-- In the weary waste of waters Not the lifting of a wave. * * * * * THE BREEZE. The mists they are scatter'd The blue sky looks brightly And Eolus looses The wearisome chain! The winds how they whistle! The steersman is busy-- Hillio-ho hillio-ho! We dash through the billows-- They flash far behind us-- Land land boys again! * * * * * In one of Goethe's little operas which are far less studied than they deserve although replete with grace melody and humour we stumbled upon a ballad which we at once recognised as an old acquaintance. Some of our readers may happen to recollect the very witty and popular ditty called ""Captain Wedderburn's Courtship "" a peculiar favourite amongst the lower orders in Scotland but not so far as we knew transplanted from its native soil. Our surprise therefore was great when we discovered Captain Wedderburn dressed out in the garb of a _Junker_ of the middle ages and ""bonny Girzie Sinclair "" the Laird of Roslin's daughter masquerading as a German _Fraülein_. The coincidence if it be not plagiary is so curious that we have translated the ballad with a much freer hand than usual confessing at the same time that the advantage in point of humour and gallantry is clearly on the side of the old Mid-Lothian ditty. THE CAVALIER'S CHOICE. It was a gallant cavalier Of honour and renown And all to seek a ladye-love He rode from town to town. Till at a widow-woman's door He drew the rein so free; For at her side the knight espied Her comely daughters three. Well might he gaze upon them For they were fair and tall; Ye never have seen fairer In bower nor yet in hall. Small marvel if the gallant's heart Beat quicker in his breast: 'Twas hard to choose and hard to lose-- How might he wale the best? ""Now maidens pretty maidens mine Who'll rede me riddles three? And she who answers best of all Shall be my own ladye!"" I ween they blush'd as maidens do When such rare words they hear-- ""Now speak thy riddles if thou wilt Thou gay young Cavalier!"" ""What's longer than the longest path? First tell ye that to me; And tell me what is deeper Than is the deepest sea? And tell me what is louder Than is the loudest horn? And tell me what is sharper Than is the sharpest thorn? ""And tell me what is greener Than greenest grass on hill? And tell me what is crueller Than a wicked woman's will?"" The eldest and the second maid They sat and thought awhile; But the youngest she look'd upward And spoke with merry smile. ""O love is surely longer far Than the longest paths that be; And hell they say is deeper Than is the deepest sea; And thunder it is louder Than is the loudest horn; And hunger it is sharper Than is the sharpest thorn; I know a deadly poison More green than grass on hill; And the foul fiend he is crueller Than any woman's will!"" Scarce had the maiden spoken When the youth was by her side And all for what she answer'd him Has claim'd her as his bride. The eldest and the second maid They ponder'd and were dumb; And there perchance are waiting yet Till another wooer come. Then maidens take this warning word Be neither slow nor shy And always when a lover speaks Look kindly and reply. * * * * * The following beautiful verses are from Wilhelm Meister. We shall venture to call them RETRIBUTION. He that with tears did never eat his bread He that hath never lain through night's long hours Weeping in bitter anguish on his bed-- He knows ye not ye dread celestial powers. Ye lead us onwards into life. Ye leave The wretch to fall then yield him up in woe Remorse and pain unceasingly to grieve; For every sin is punished here below. * * * * * We shall close this number with a series of poems in imitation or rather after the manner of the antique all of which possess singular beauty. No man understood or appreciated the exquisite delicacy of the Greek Anthology better than our author; and although we may in several of the versions have fallen short of the originals we trust that enough still remains to convince the reader that we have not exaggerated their merit. POEMS AFTER THE MANNER OF THE ANTIQUE. THE HUSBANDMAN. Lightly doth the furrow fold the golden grain within its breast Deeper shroud old man shall cover in thy limbs when laid at rest. Blithely plough and sow as blithely! Here are springs of mortal cheer And when e'en the grave is closing Hope is ever standing near. * * * * * ANACREON'S GRAVE. Where the rose is fresh and blooming--where the vine and myrtle spring-- Where the turtle-dove is cooing--where the gay cicalas sing-- Whose may be the grave surrounded with such store of comely grace Like a God-created garden? 'Tis Anacreon's resting-place. Spring and summer and the autumn pour'd their gifts around the bard And ere winter came to chill him slept he safe beneath the sward. THE BROTHERS. Slumber Sleep--they were two brothers servants to the Gods above; Kind Prometheus lured them downwards ever fill'd with earthly love; But what Gods could bear so lightly press'd too hard on men beneath; Slumber did his brother's duty--Sleep was deepen'd into Death. * * * * * LOVE'S HOUR-GLASS. Eros! wherefore do I see thee with the glass in either hand? Fickle God! with double measure wouldst thou count the shifting sand? ""_This_ one flows for parted lovers--slowly drops each tiny bead-- _That_ is for the days of dalliance and it melts with golden speed."" * * * * * WARNING. Do not touch him--do not wake him! Fast asleep is Amor lying; Go--fulfil thy work appointed--do thy labour of the day. Thus the wise and careful mother uses every moment flying Whilst her child is in the cradle--Slumbers pass too soon away. * * * * * SOLITUDE. Grant O ye healing Nymphs that have your haunts By rock and stream and lonely forest glade The boon which in their bosoms' silent depths Your votaries crave! Unto the sad of heart Give comfort--knowledge unto him that doubts-- Possession to the lover and its joy. For unto you the Gods have given what they Denied to man--to aid and to console All those soe'er who put their trust in you. * * * * * PERFECT BLISS. All the divine perfections which while ere Nature in thrift doled out 'mongst many a fair She shower'd with open hand thou peerless one on thee! And she that was so wond'rously endow'd To whom a throng of noble knees were bow'd Gave all--Love's perfect gift--her glorious self to me! THE CHOSEN ROCK. Here in the hush and stillness of mid-noon The lover lay and thought upon his love; With blithesome voice he spoke to me: ""Be thou My witness stone!--Yet therefore vaunt thee not For thou hast many partners of my joy-- To every rock that crowns this grassy dell And looks on me and my felicity; To every forest-stem that I embrace In my entrancement as I roam along Stand thou for a memorial of my bliss! All mingle with my rapture and to all I lift a consecrating cry of joy. Yet do I lend a voice to thee alone As culls the Muse some favourite from the crowd And with a kiss inspires for evermore."" * * * * * THE DEATH TRANCE. Weep maiden here by Cupid's grave! He fell Some nothing kill'd him--what I cannot tell. But is he really dead?--I swear not that in sooth; A trifle--nothing--oft revives the youth. * * * * * PHILOMELA. Surely surely Amor nursed thee songstress of the plaintive note And in fond and childish fancy fed thee from his pointed dart. So sweet Philomel the poison sunk into thy guileless throat Till with all love's weight of passion strike its notes to every heart. * * * * * SACRED GROUND. A place to mark the Graces when they come Down from Olympus still and secretly To join the Oreads in their festival Beneath the light of the benignant moon. There lies the poet watching them unseen The whilst they chant the sweetest songs of heaven Or floating o'er the sward without a sound Lead on the mystic wonder of the dance. All that is great in heaven or fair on earth Unveils its glories to the dreamer's eye And all he tells the Muses. They again Knowing that Gods are jealous of their own Teach him through all the passion of his verse To utter these high secrets reverently. THE PARK. How beautiful! A garden fair as heaven Flowers of all hues and smiling in the sun Where all was waste and wilderness before. Well do ye imitate ye gods of earth The great Creator. Rock and lake and glade Birds fishes and untamed beasts are here. Your work were all an Eden but for this-- Here is no man unconscious of a pang No perfect Sabbath of unbroken rest. * * * * * THE TEACHERS. What time Diogenes unmoved and still Lay in his tub and bask'd him in the sun-- What time Calanus clomb with lightsome step And smiling cheek up to his fiery tomb-- What rare examples there for Philip's son To curb his overmastering lust of sway But that the Lord of the majestic world Was all too great for lessons even like these! * * * * * MARRIAGE UNEQUAL. Alas that even in a heavenly marriage The fairest lots should ne'er be reconciled! Psyche wax'd old and prudent in her carriage Whilst Cupid evermore remains the child. * * * * * HOLY FAMILY. O child of beauty rare-- O mother chaste and fair-- How happy seem they both so far beyond compare! She in her infant blest And he in conscious rest Nestling within the soft warm cradle of her breast! What joy that sight might bear To him who sees them there If with a pure and guilt-untroubled eye He looked upon the twain like Joseph standing by. EXCULPATION. Wilt thou dare to blame the woman for her seeming sudden changes Swaying east and swaying westward as the breezes shake the tree? Fool! thy selfish thought misguides thee--find the _man_ that never ranges; Woman wavers but to seek him--Is not then the fault in thee? * * * * * THE MUSE'S MIRROR. To deck herself the Muse at early morn Wander'd a-down a wimpling brook to find Some glassy pool more quiet than the rest. On sped the stream and ever as it ran It swept away her image which did change With every bend and dimple of the wave. In wrath the Goddess turn'd her from the spot Yet after her the brook with taunting tongue Did call--""'Tis plain thou wilt not see the truth All purely though my mirror shows it thee!"" But she meanwhile stood with indifferent ear By a far corner of the crystal lake Delightedly surveying her fair form And settling flowerets in her golden hair. * * * * * PH[OE]BUS AND HERMES. The deep-brow'd lord of Delos once and Maia's nimble-witted son Contended eagerly by whom the prize of glory should be won; Hermes long'd to grasp the lyre --the lyre Apollo hoped to gain And both their hearts were full of hope and yet the hopes of both were vain. For Ares to decide the strife between them rudely dash'd in ire And waving high his falchion keen he cleft in twain the golden lyre. Loud Hermes laugh'd maliciously but at the direful deed did fall The deepest grief upon the heart of Phoebus and the Muses all. * * * * * A NEW LOVE. Love not the simple youth that whilome wound Himself about young Psyche's heart look'd round Olympus with a cold and roving eye That had accustom'd been to victory. It rested on a Goddess noblest far Of all that noble throng--a glorious star-- Venus Urania. And from that hour He loved her. Ah! to his resistless power Even she the holy one did yield at last And in his daring arms he held her fast. A new and beauteous Love from that embrace Had birth; that to the mother owed his grace And purity of soul; whilst from his sire He borrow'd all his passion all his fire. Him ever where the gracious Muses be Thou'lt surely find. Such sweet society Is his delight and his sharp-pointed dart Doth rouse within men's breasts the love of ART. * * * * * THE WREATHS. Our German Klopstock if he had his will Would bar us from the skirts of Pindus old. No more the classic laurel should be prized But the rough leaflets of our native oak Alone should glisten in the poet's hair; Yet did himself with spirit unreclaim'd From first allegiance to those early Gods Lead up to Golgotha's most awful height With more than epic pomp the new Crusade. But let him range the bright angelic host On either hill--no matter. By his grave All gentle hearts should bow them down and weep. For where a hero and a saint have died Or where a poet sang prophetical Dying as greatly as they greatly lived To give memorial to all after times Of lofty worth and courage undismay'd; There in mute reverence all devoutly kneel In homage of the thorn and laurel wreath That were at once their glory and their pang! * * * * * THE SWISS ALP. Yesterday thy head was brown as are the flowing locks of love In the bright blue sky I watch'd thee towering giant-like above. Now thy summit white and hoary glitters all with silver snow Which the stormy night hath shaken from its robes upon thy brow; And I know that youth and age are bound with such mysterious meaning As the days are link'd together one short dream but intervening. SPAIN AS IT IS. There exists in this country a numerous class of persons who if they were given their choice of an overland journey to India and back or a ramble through Spain occupying the same space of time would prefer the former as likely to be less inconvenient and decidedly far less perilous. The wars and rumours of wars revolutions rebellions skirmishes and _pronunciamentos_ that newspapers have recorded during the last ten or twelve years with an occasional particularly bloody and barbarous execution by way of interlude have certainly not been calculated to reassure timid travellers; nor can we well wonder that at the mere mention of an excursion beyond the Pyrenees tourists are seized with a vertigo; and that visions not only of rancid _gaspachos_ and vermin-haunted couches but of chocolate-complexioned ruffians with sugar-loaf hats button-bedecked jackets fierce mustaches and lengthy _escopetas_ peering out of the gloomy recesses of a cork wood or from among the silvery foliage of an olive grove pass before the eyes of their imagination. Dangers often appear greater at a distance than upon close examination; many a phantom of ghastly aspect proves upon inspection to be but a turnip-faced goblin after all: and we suspect that if some of the timorous would adventure themselves upon Spanish soil they might find their precious persons far safer than they had anticipated; and discover that they were in the hands neither of Caffres nor cannibals but amongst a courteous and generous people who if occasionally a little too disposed to slit each other's weasands on the other hand are very rarely forgetful of the laws of hospitality or of the kindness and protection to which travellers in a foreign land have a fair claim. We do not mean to recommend Spain as a desirable travelling ground for those adventurous English dames whom we have occasionally met journeying by coachfuls in France Germany and other peaceable lands unsquired and unescorted save by their waiting-maids: to them the encounter of _rateros_ _salteadores_ or other varieties of Spanish banditti might be in various respects disagreeable; but for men who without leaving Europe may wish to visit other scenes than those in which every Cockney tourist has wandered we know of few expeditions more interesting than one into the interior of Spain. Fine scenery interesting monuments associations historic classic and poetical and--which to our thinking is still preferable--a people who in spite of Gallo and Anglo manias still possess great originality of character and customs are there to be met with. We cannot do better than refer those persons who would like additional evidence on the subject to the volumes named at foot[2] in which they will see how a man possessed of prudence good sense and good temper may visit some of the wildest and least frequented parts of the Peninsula not only without injury or annoyance but with considerable pleasure and profit. Captain Widdrington's journey to Spain in the Spring of 1843 had as he tells us a twofold object. He was desirous of observing the effects of the numerous changes that have taken place in that country since the death of Ferdinand; and he at the same time thought that his assistance and previous knowledge of the country and people would be useful to a scientific friend Dr Daubeny who had been commissioned by the Agricultural Society to examine the formation of phosphorite in Estremadura. This mineral it was imagined might be advantageously substituted for bones as manure. The travellers had sketched out their route beforehand and seem to have adhered very closely to the plan they had laid down. Proceeding from Bayonne to Madrid after a short stay in that capital they struck into Estremadura; visited the vein of phosphorite and explored several interesting districts into which few travellers penetrate; thence to the quicksilver mines at Almaden and to various iron mines and founderies through Seville Ronda Malaga and Granada and back to Madrid. Here Captain Widdrington separates from his companion and continues his peregrinations alone through the kingdom of Leon the Asturias and Galicia. In his narrative of this somewhat extensive ramble the gallant captain displays a very respectable degree of knowledge on a considerable variety of subjects. Agriculture geology natural history the resources of Spain and the best mode of applying them political intrigues and changes the strange and apparently inexplicable ups and downs of public men are all touched upon in turn: and if the earlier portion of his work is worthy of a member of the learned societies to which he belongs the latter part is no less creditable to his habits of observation and to the soundness of his judgment. One of the first things that appear to have struck Captain Widdrington on arriving at Madrid was the great activity in the building department--an activity arising chiefly from the sequestration of the church property. Convents were being pulled down or at least altered so as to render them suitable to other purposes. The ground on which one had stood had been converted into a public walk--a chapel had been replaced by a covered market. The large convent of St Thomas was the headquarters of the national guard; while that of the Trinity had been appropriated to the reception of works of art the spoils of the other convents. One had been sold to a private speculator who let it out in chambers; another was the refuge of military invalids; a third the convent of St Catalina--which was set fire to while the Duke of Angouleme was attending in the year 1823 a mass celebrated in honour of his successful campaign--had been demolished and a building for the senate and deputies was erecting on its site. The names of many of the streets had been altered to those of various heroes of Spanish liberty; such as Porlier Lacy the Empecinado and others. The street of the Alcala had been rebaptized after the Duque de la Victoria; but no doubt as the Captain observes by this time _on a changé tout cela_. Of the Countess of Mina who was then _aya_ or governess to the queen some interesting details are given by Captain Widdrington who had known her and her husband when they were living in exile at Plymouth subsequently to the affairs of 1823. Madame Mina appears to be a person of very superior powers of mind far better qualified to superintend the female department of a Spanish queen's education than the bigoted and _afrancesada_ dowager-marchioness who preceded her in the office and in the selection of whom Maria Christina with her usual selfishness had probably thought more of the political principles and opinions in which she wished Isabella to be brought up than of her daughter's future welfare and happiness. The universal complaint of the _Spanish_ or national party in the time of Christina was that the queen's education was neglected or it should rather be said misconducted. The queen-dowager's French tendencies were more than suspected. Of course when the popular party became in the ascendant and Madame Mina received the appointment alike unsolicited and unexpected of governess to the queen the _afrancesados_ set up a yell of horror and consternation. Her husband's humble birth her character even her piety and the mourning habit she had worn ever since her husband's death were made matters of reproach to her. But though Mina had been born a tiller of the earth he had died a grandee of Spain ennobled yet more by his patriotism and great qualities than he could be by the tinsel of a title; the character of the countess was that of a high-minded and virtuous woman; and as to the accusation of being a _santarona_ or affectedly pious it was no less unjust than malicious. Here is Captain Widdrington's portrait of her:-- ""Her stature is rather below the middle size and her person stout with an abundance of the blackest hair simply dressed; eyes very large dark and fuller than usual even in this classic land of them and beaming with intelligence. Her forehead and the lower part of her face are remarkable for their development and an admirable study for the phrenologists who would pronounce them models as indicating firmness of character. Her constant costume is the deepest black which completely covers her person; and when she accepted her appointment it was stipulated that she should never be required to lay it aside. The only ornament she wore was a simple but rather massive gold chain and cross which had a singularly good effect in relieving the mass of deep black; and her manner noble and serious bordering on the severe at first sight made her the _beau-idéal_ of a lady abbess."" During the celebrated attack upon the palace at Madrid on the 7th of October 1841 the countess gave proof of energy courage and presence of mind worthy of Mina's widow and of one who supplied the place of mother to the queen and infanta of Spain. A most interesting account of the transactions of that eventful night is to be found in the third chapter of Captain Widdrington's book; and as he is indebted for the details to Madame Mina herself it is no doubt the most accurate that has appeared before the public. The _alabarderos_ or halberdiers who formed the body-guard of the queen and whose post was in the avenues leading to the royal apartments consisted of two hundred sergeants picked from the whole army and placed under the command of a colonel and lieutenant-colonel who had the rank of lieutenant and sergeant in this sacred band. ""By the regulations one-third of this little corps ought always to have been on duty; but 'Cosas de Espana ' when the disturbance broke out there were only the two officers and seventeen privates present! The rest were in the town at supper or various other engagements."" And on this handful of men devolved the duty of defending the queen against the attack of as many companies as they numbered muskets. The first alarm was given by _vivas_ and other noises in the quadrangle of the palace. Colonel Dulce the commander of the halberdiers descended the stairs to enquire the cause of the uproar and was met on the landing-place by a detachment of the Princesa regiment marching up. He ordered them to halt; they opened fire in reply. Colonel Dulce retreated to the guard-room and the skirmish began. A double flight of steps leads up from one of the principal entrances of the palace to this guard-room of which the door is of considerable size and covered by a _mampara_ or moveable stuffed screen similar to those used in churches abroad. The alabarderos left the mampara in its place opening the door no more than was absolutely necessary to fire through. The assailants took up their station at the bottom of the stairs and blazed away vigorously replied to from the _sala de armas_. The sides of the doorway and the mampara were riddled but the assailants could only fire at a guess their opponents being completely concealed behind the screen; and on the other hand a stone balustrade at the top of the staircase between the two flights and the angle of the floor protected the insurgents. The latter no doubt thought the whole guard was at its post so steady and incessant was the fire the alabarderos kept up. To approach the guard-room door was certain death. General Concha the same who the other night danced the third quadrille with Isabel at a court ball taking the _pas_ of the Spanish grandees there assembled was present at this treasonable attack at the head of the Princesa regiment in plain clothes but with a drawn sword. About midnight (the firing had begun at half-past seven--what were the authorities about all that time?) Diego Leon the scapegoat of the affair made his appearance in his usual dashing attire a showy hussar uniform braided belted and befrogged and took command of the proceedings. ""According to his own account he went to the foot of the great staircase and called to the alabarderos to discontinue firing lest they should alarm the queen!"" but the noise of the musketry was such that he could not make himself heard even with the aid of a trumpet! Things however had not gone as the conspirators wished; the gallant defence of the halbardiers which they had not reckoned upon had caused them to lose much time and after a short consultation Concha and Leon took to flight. Concha hid himself under the dry arch of a bridge and afterwards took refuge at the Danish embassy where he passed a few days and was then conveyed from another embassy (French of course) to headquarters at Paris. His caution in wearing plain clothes saved him; while poor Leon who thought as he afterwards said
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hat uniform was the proper costume for the occasion was taken at Colmenar a few leagues from Madrid. Captain Widdrington says with much truth that nothing could be more characteristic of the two men than their different mode of acting in this trifling particular. In the whole affair Concha was the real director and manager although he sheltered himself behind the Count of Belascoain who was put forward as being a popular man especially with the army. A braver or more dashing cavalry officer than Leon could hardly be found but he was of the wrong stuff for a conspirator; his brains as the Spaniards used to say in rather a coarse proverb were in the wrong place. But who that had ever known or even seen him could help regretting him the chivalrous the high-hearted soldier as much loved by his friends as he was dreaded by his foes! His death was doubtless necessary as an example and should not be laid at the door of the Spanish government of the day but at that of the unprincipled and selfish faction that made a tool of him. We are surprised to find by Captain Widdrington's book that the petitions for his pardon sent for signature to the national guard of Madrid were torn across and returned the only name affixed to them being that of Captain Guardia who was then dying of wounds received on the night of the insurrection. This speaks plainly as to the general feeling in Madrid concerning the necessity of Leon's sentence being put into execution the national guard consisting of ten thousand men who represent every shade of political opinion. While the fighting was going on the Countess of Mina was doing her best to shield the queen and her sister from the bullets of the insurgents who surrounded the royal apartments on three sides and seem to have been tolerably careless where they sent their lead. A shot came into the room where the queen and her sister lay in bed. They were frightened and got up and the attendants placed mattresses on the floor in the angle of an alcove upon which the children lay down and after some time fell asleep. ""The poor children were hungry and asked for supper but there was nothing to give them; and from two in the afternoon of the 7th till eight in the morning of the 8th they did not taste food."" What a curious picture is this! Isabel de Borbon queen of Spain and the Indies lying on a mattress upon the floor terrified and a-hungered her governess the widow of an ex-peasant and guerilla keeping watch beside her; nineteen intrepid soldiers defending her against troops sent by her own mother to attack her palace and carry off herself! Nor was this all. There was a private staircase leading from the _entresol_ of the palace to the royal apartments; and although it had been blocked up some time previously the rebels were aware of its existence and were heard sawing at the barrier that closed it. ""At this time the countess told me she felt it her duty to rouse the queen and prepare her for the worst dictating to her the manner in which those who should enter were to be addressed. The intention was when they should arrive at the inner door to open it for fear of greater violence and admit them."" If the conspirators could have got possession of the queen's person their plan was to wrap her in a cloak and mount her behind one Fulgosio who had been a colonel in the Carlist service but was included in the convention of Bergara. In this Tartar fashion she was to have been carried off to the north of Spain. Captain Widdrington evidently considers that this daring attempt on the part of Christina's faction as well as subsequent almost equally strange events that have occurred in Spain were in great measure concerted and organized in France the money proceeding partly from the French treasury and partly from the coffers of Christina--coffers which she had taken excellent care to fill during the period of her regency. We have been rather amused at the diplomatic caution displayed by the Captain when alluding to French intrigues. The French are always ""our neighbours "" and Louis Philippe ""a certain personage."" His meaning however is plain enough and we fully agree with him that French gold and French counsels and influence have been at the bottom of most of the disturbances that have taken place in Spain since the year 1840. But enough for the present of plots and plotters; we shall perhaps find more of them before we bid our author farewell in Vigo Bay. At present we will follow him to the mines of Almaden whither he betakes himself after rambling through a considerable portion of Estremadura one of the most fertile but neglected and thinly peopled of Spanish provinces. ""Nothing "" he says ""is wanted but a good government to assist the bounteous hand with which the gifts of Providence have been showered on this beautiful region."" But alas! instead of a thriving peasantry and well-tilled soil what does he meet with? _Despoblados_ or deserts with here and there some wretched villages few and far between and from time to time a _cortijo_ or farm-house with its cultivated patch; but the general face of the country is _zaral_ ground covered with the cistus numerous varieties of that beautiful plant abounding in the province. Captain Widdrington mentions four sorts he found in flower--the gum cistus a large white species without spots a smaller white and the purple kind common in English gardens. Furze then just breaking into flower and _retama_ or brooms vary the collection; interesting enough no doubt to the botanist but a melancholy sight when one reflects on the far better purpose to which this fertile territory might be applied. The roads through these districts are as might be expected execrable intersected by large open ditches to carry off the water; and subsequently to each journey the diligence requires extensive repairs. After Truxillo however public conveyances are no longer to be found and mules supply their place. On these the travellers reach Logrosan where is situate the vein of phosphorite that it was one of the objects of their journey to visit. Four mule-loads of the mineral are taken as a sample and forwarded to Seville; and this done an excursion is made to the famous sanctuary of Guadelupe in the sacristy at which place are some of the finest paintings of Zurbaran. Not the least agreeable portions of Captain Widdrington's book are his descriptions of the churches and other edifices he visits and of the pictures and carvings they contain. Details of that kind are often apt to be dry and wearisome; but these are done _con amore_ and varied by reflections and criticisms of which many are very interesting. It had been a matter of deliberation with Captain Widdrington upon commencing his wanderings in the Peninsula whether it were advisable to be armed or not. The usual advice one gets upon this subject on entering Spain is to take neither arms nor money or at least no more of the latter than is absolutely necessary for the journey. By being unarmed the traveller is said to avoid risk of ill treatment at the hands of any banditti he may chance to encounter and who if they see him with weapons are apt either to give him a volley from some ambuscade or to murder him for having thought of resistance. Captain Widdrington's theory is different. He calculates that as the majority of Spanish robbers are _rateros_ or ignoble and dastardly cut-purses who prowl about by twos and threes it is just as well to be provided with a few fire-arms the mere sight of which may make all the difference between being robbed or not. He has accordingly armed himself his companion and attendant with muskets; and between Logrosan and Almaden he finds the advantage of having done so. While passing through a wild and broken country with no road and scarcely any visible track he perceives three suspicious-looking customers descending through a field to the further side of a thicket which he is about to traverse. He calls up his companions who are a little in the rear--they look to their arms and prepare for a brush. If the three men that have been seen are alone the travellers are a match for them; but they may be only the van or rearguard of a larger force. ""After waiting a little time in silence there was no appearance of their emerging from the thicket which was very close; and as it would have been imprudent to enter it we called out to them to advance. They were still invisible but a voice answered--'Come on we shall not meddle with you.' We then rode through and found them on the banks of a pretty stream that flowed through the ravine preparing to breakfast; some beautiful bread far better than any we could find in the villages being part of their intended repast. The man who had answered was nearest to the ford and the others a little higher up. Of course we passed them at the 'recover ' and the simple salutation of _Vaya vd. con Dios!_ was interchanged. Had we omitted exchanging this compliment even with the people we were now dealing with we should have risked being thought unpolished."" There is something characteristic and Gil Blas-like about this--Spanish all over. Pass we on to the Almaden mines of which there is a detailed and very interesting account. The quicksilver mines of Almaden are one of the sure cards of the Spanish finance minister and during the late war especially were often a great resource to the poverty-stricken government. When other sources of revenue failed there were always to be found speculators willing to treat for the quicksilver contract; and these mines like the tobacco and other monopolies and the Havanna revenue have helped many a Spanish minister in his moment of greatest need. Of course as the usual demand was money down the bargains were frequently made at great disadvantage to the seller; and once made the consumer is entirely at the mercy of the contractor--the Almaden mines producing a very large portion of all the quicksilver known to exist in the world. Madame Calderon de la Barca in her _Life in Mexico_ alludes to this when speaking of the unsuccessful mining speculations in that country where ""heaps of silver lie abandoned because the expense of acquiring quicksilver renders it wholly unprofitable to extract it."" That lady further observes that quicksilver has been paid for at one hundred and fifty dollars per quintal in real cash when the same quantity was given at credit by the Spanish government for fifty dollars. Madame Calderon is good authority; but we suspect that the cause of such a vast difference between the price given and demanded by the contractor must have been the cash advances required by the Spanish government. ""The contract once made "" says Captain Widdrington ""it is clear that excepting any qualms of conscience the lessee may be influenced by there is no check upon his cupidity. The temptation to charge exorbitant prices is increased by the habit of the government requiring large sums to be paid down. This practice which was unavoidable during the civil war when it frequently produced the only ready money they could lay their hands on has continued and must still do so unless a financial change take place."" Owing to this state of things the profit to the government is only about £75 000 per annum; although we are told that the price has been raised in a few years from thirty-four to eighty-four dollars the quintal--the price paid to the government we presume. The contract was taken in 1843 by those great _accapareurs_ of good things the Rothschilds. Of course as long as the civil war lasted if the contractors had to give money in advance the risk they ran entitled them to a large rate of profit. Had Don Carlos got the upper hand before they had reimbursed themselves their lien upon the mines would have been so much waste paper; or even without that they might have been exposed to considerable loss and delay had Messrs Cabrera Balmaseda Palillos or others of the same kidney chosen to take a turn in that direction carry off the workmen destroy or damage the works or drown out the mines. Gomez did pay Almaden a visit when he made the tour of Spain with his expeditionary corps. He burned a part of the town and plundered all he could; but did no harm to the mine--which was either very foolish or very considerate of him. There is room for much curious speculation as to the effect which the increased and increasing value of quicksilver may have upon the monetary system of Europe especially in France and other countries where silver is the legal currency and gold very little used on account of the premium on it. It has been seen above that in Mexico silver is not worth refining owing to the dearness of the mineral required for the purpose. Unless something be discovered as a substitute for quicksilver the same result will in all probability ensue in other mining districts; and the natural consequence will be the diminished use of silver as a circulating medium and the increased employment of gold the more so as the supply of the latter metal has of late years been greatly augmented--a great deal now coming from Asiatic Russia--while its wear and tear are very small. This change would not arise from a scarcity of quicksilver the quantity and quality of which at Almaden at least improve as the miners get deeper into the vein; and moreover the portion extracted is limited to 20 000 quintals or weights of 105 pounds English. ""All the works are executed in a truly royal manner; and so capacious and enlarged are the views carried out in the management that they only take away about one-half of the mineral leaving the other as a legacy to the future possessors of it and to provide a supply in case of unforeseen accidents in the workings."" There are other uses besides the refining of silver to which quicksilver is applied; and should the contractors continue to raise the price of the latter the consequence must necessarily be an increase in the value of the former and a diminution in its consumption. There are five thousand men employed at the Almaden establishment and most of those who work in the mines suffer as may be supposed in their health from the unwholesome exhalations. In the summer when they are most liable to be affected in that way work is suspended the labourers retire to their respective provinces to recruit and generally return in the autumn restored by their native air. Temperance cleanliness and a milk-diet appear to be the best preservatives from the pernicious effects of the mercury-infected atmosphere. Captain Widdrington does not visit Catalonia which we regret; for we should like to have had the result of his observations on that turbulent and troublesome province to which he once or twice alludes. It must truly be a difficult thing to legislate for a country split into so many conflicting interests--fancied interests many of them--as Spain is. The Catalonians for instance have got a notion that they are cotton-manufacturers--a notion which their northern neighbours do all in their power to nourish and encourage. Of course the French would be much annoyed to see Spanish ports opened to cotton goods at a reasonable duty until such time (if it ever arrives) as they can compete successfully with English manufacturers. It suits their book much better to have a prohibition or what amounts to such imposed on all foreign cottons. The Pyrenees are high but it is a long line of frontier from Port Vendres to Bayonne and the deuce is in it if they cannot manage to smuggle more French calicoes and _percales_ and suchlike commodities into Spain than would ever be taken by the Spaniards were those articles admitted at a reasonable duty which would put a stop to smuggling by rendering it unprofitable. At present there is a regular tariff of smugglers' charges for passing goods so much per cent on the value according to the bulk and nature of the articles; and the agents of this traffic abound in Bayonne Oleron Perpignan and all the frontier towns. The idea prevailing in Spain that Espartero intended entering into a treaty of commerce with England made him enemies of the Catalonians and indeed of the majority of the mercantile classes most of the members of which are more or less mad about the importance of Spanish manufactures or at any rate they seem to be nearly unanimous in their wish to prohibit foreign goods. It is impossible to persuade them so pigheaded are they that it would be better to admit foreign manufactures at a fair duty than to have their markets deluged with smuggled ones that pay no duty at all. ""To these miserable manufactures only capable of producing about one-half of what is required for the consumption of the kingdom "" (and that half be it observed of inferior quality and at vastly higher prices than the same merchandise could be imported for ) ""is the interest of the landed proprietors and commercial class as well as that of the entire community sacrificed."" These manufacturing madmen the Catalonians are the plague-spot of the Peninsula. Obstinate fiery and selfish they think only of themselves and of what they consider their interests petty and miserable as the latter are compared to those of the rest of Spain. The real interests of the country are obvious to any but prejudiced understandings. It is a land flowing with milk and honey or what is far better with wine and oil; abounding in valuable products of which the export might be vastly increased by admitting the manufactures of countries possessing perhaps a less-favoured soil and climate but a more industrious population. Instead of making bad calicoes at a high price let the Spaniards set to work to clear and plant their _despoblados_--let them improve their system of agriculture their mode of producing oil; let them cut canals and make roads and get something like decent communications between towns and provinces. The irrigation of the soil in Spain is also a matter of great importance and which in many parts of the country is at present sadly neglected. There are vast districts that remain uninhabited and barren solely because people will not build or live where they are beyond a certain distance from water; districts where every thing is parched and dry for the greater part of the year and where the land although rich in its nature becomes worthless from excessive drought. The system of Artesian wells might we are persuaded be introduced to great advantage in Spain; and for such as well as for canals railways and similar improvements abundance of foreign capital would be forthcoming if--and here is the sticking point--Spaniards would only show a disposition to remain quiet and turn their attention to the arts of peace instead of ruining their country wasting their blood and degrading the national character by all these unmeaning and unprofitable _pronunciamentos_ and skirmishings. It is probably not very important at this moment who rules over the Spaniards provided the government have power and energy enough to keep them from cutting each others' throats and to prevent their getting into a confirmed habit of revolutions and rebellions. ""In all the larger towns of Spain "" we quote Captain Widdrington ""there is a crowd of idlers characters with little or no occupation frequenters of theatres and _cafés_ great readers of journals and considerable politicians pretenders to small places excessively ignorant and ready to join in any movement provided it be attended with little personal risk to themselves. A large portion of this class took a very active part in opposing the government and were delighted to figure in _juntas_ or fill other analogous situations giving them a momentary importance and possibly a few dollars at the public expense."" And this is one of the great causes of the unsettled state of Spain the immense number of idlers. Wars and revolutions producing an unflourishing state of trade and agriculture have discouraged Spaniards during the last thirty or forty years from putting their children to trades or professions. ""There is no knowing how long this war may last "" they used to say during the Carlist contest; ""and as long as it lasts there is no good to be done in Spain."" So instead of bringing up their sons to work they just let them live on from day to day gossiping and smoking; and at the present moment there are many hundred thousand young and middle-aged men of the lower and middle classes especially the latter who are idlers by profession and exactly correspond to Captain Widdrington's description. These gentry have nothing particular to lose by any political rumpus and they flatter themselves they may gain; besides they cannot be always playing _monté_ or taking the _siesta_; and even if they could a change is sometimes agreeable. Now and then too they get tired of hearing Aristides called the Just--that is a very common thing with Spaniards--some mischievous political agent comes amongst them they are soon excited get hold of an old musket or rusty fowling-piece chuck up their _sombreros_ cry _viva la Libertad!_ and rush about the town uttering _gritos_; and in a few hours and before they have any clear idea of what they have been doing they are told that they are heroes and patriots that ""_Spaniards_ never shall be slaves "" and all the rest of the humbug and claptrap that revolutionary agitators always have upon their tongue's tip. The poor idiots fizzing and boiling over with their fire-new enthusiasm aimless and causeless as it is are in ecstasies for about a week or until they discover what is pretty often the case that instead of being better off they have exchanged King Log for King Stork. The fact is Spaniards are not at present fit for a mild and constitutional government. Espartero who had got the country into something like a state of respectability fell into the error of imagining that they were; and such was in great measure the cause of his overthrow. The iron and remorseless rule of a Narvaez will perhaps suit them better and of a certainty it is what a large portion of them richly deserve. To those persons who wish to understand what many have doubtless found rather incomprehensible; namely the causes immediate and remote that led to the deposition of the Duque de la Victoria and the triumph of the Moderado party--we recommend the attentive perusal of Captain Widdrington's book especially the chapter entitled ""On the Pronunciamentos and Fall of the Regency."" That chapter is a very complete manual of the Spanish politics of the day in a lucid and simple form; and we were much pleased to find our own theories and opinions on the subject confirmed by an eyewitness and by so shrewd an observer as Captain Widdrington. He traces the share that each party and class in Spain took in the recent changes; and proves satisfactorily enough what every one who is acquainted with Spanish character and feelings must have already been pretty certain of that the revolution in question was not a national one but the result of intrigue bribery and delusion--the work of a faction aided by foreign gold. The ill-judged selection of Lopez for minister and the still more injudicious act of agreeing to a _programme_ which he was afterwards compelled to repudiate were the fatal mistakes made by Espartero who was placed in a situation of extreme difficulty by his wish to govern constitutionally. ""It is impossible not to respect and admire the firmness with which to the very last he carried through the principle sacrificing his station and rank to it; but as far as the interests of his country were concerned no greater mistake was ever made in government than the selection of Lopez."" It is customary in Spain for a new minister to make public his programme or plan of campaign--but this is considered a mere matter of form. In that of Lopez however amidst the usual commonplaces one article of vital importance had insinuated itself; it was that of the amnesty ""which was so speciously made out as completely to answer the purpose for which it was intended that of paving the way for bringing back the _afrancesado_ leaders who were engaged in the attempt to carry off the Queen in October 1841."" It was not deemed sufficient to recall the regent's mortal enemies; an attempt was made to isolate him by dismissing his most faithful friends even to the distinguished officer who acted as his private secretary and who now bears him company in his exile. Espartero naturally kicked at this--as who would not in his place?--dismissed Lopez and dissolved the Chamber. But the people especially those troublesome fellows the Andalusians and Valencians had got the fraternizing fit strong upon them and were mad after the programme. Juntas were formed--pronunciamentos made--and misrule was again the order of the day. As to the conduct of the army towards Espartero it was unquestionably most disgraceful; but it must be borne in mind that a large proportion of the officers were his personal enemies especially those of the regiments of guards which had been broken up after the war when many of the officers passed into line regiments. Others were partisans of Leon of Narvaez or Christina; and another large section were won over by the profuse promotion given by the juntas who as soon as the pronunciamentos began assumed the functions of government and scattered epaulets in absurd profusion. Truly as Captain Widdrington observes one has heard of bloody wars and sickly seasons and rapid advancement consequent thereon but nothing ever equalled the promotion that was now given; and this system Espartero was also obliged to adopt in order not to be deserted by the lukewarm among his adherents or by those whom the prospect of a step of rank might have influenced to leave him. There can be little doubt too that bribery was largely employed by the Moderados. Witness the instance of Colonel Echalecu which is no case of suspicion but an official and publicly known fact. He was offered four millions of reals (forty thousand pounds sterling) to surrender the fort of Montjuich and a French steamer was put at his disposal to convey him away. To the immortal honour of this gallant Basque soldier be it said he was proof against the temptation; true to his colours to his general and to the established constitution of his country he held out the fort to the very last and only gave it up when every hope was lost and the new order of things completely victorious. The Moderados had the good sense to continue so faithful an officer in his command; but at the time of Amettler's revolt he refused to bombard Barcelona and of course resigned. His however was a solitary instance of virtue; far less brilliant baits were found irresistible by the mass of officers who used their influence to bring over the soldiery a credulous and ignorant class in Spain. The men there is no question were disposed to stand by the regent and some even held out against their officers till compelled to give in; but at last all followed in the stream led away partly by habits of obedience partly by the hopes held out to them of more regular pay and better rations and still more by the prospect of obtaining their discharge previous to the legal expiration of their term of service--the latter being the strongest argument that can be urged to Spanish soldiers. The peasantry with the exception perhaps of those around certain towns had neither voice nor part in the change; the nobility sunk in sloth and smothered by incapacity looked on as idle spectators; and a vast many of the restless and excitable spirits who got up the revolution were mere instruments in the hands of a faction and knew not what they did. Hear Captain Widdrington-- ""The parties who began the pronunciamentos had neither the intention nor the slightest idea that the result of their proceedings would be the fall of the regency. This I can most positively assert to be fact."" The Spaniards especially those of the south had got a sort of Utopian notion into their very ill-furnished heads that all parties were to ""kiss and be friends."" The projected amnesty which Espartero so unfortunately agreed to was the cause of this idea getting ground. It took them upon their weak side carried them entirely off their legs; and acting under the influence of this frothy enthusiasm they ran a-muck as the saying is and only awakened from their day-dream to curse the changes that their own folly had so largely contributed to bring about. As to any body attempting to divine what will be the next move upon the Spanish chessboard it is out of the question and nobody who knows the character of the people will attempt to do it. Unquestionably there is no such country in the world for anomalies of all kinds. _Cosas de Espana!_ as Captain Widdrington amusingly enough says when he meets with some huge piece of inconsistency that astonishes even him accustomed though he be to the most contradictory vagaries on the part of his Iberian friends. And it is exactly what intelligent Spaniards themselves say when similar absurdities on the part of their countrymen are pointed out or reproached to them. ""_Que quiere vd hombre_ "" cry they with a shrug ""_son cosas de Espana_."" What can we say to you? They are Spanish doings. At Almaden the Captain finds a magnificent road leading to the town which had been commenced at great expense by a former governor. For some distance it is fit for an approach to the largest capital but on a sudden it terminates--in a mule-track! _Cosas de Espana_. ""I entered Corunna just before nightfall and although a regular fortress seaport and chief place of the province--_Cosas de Espana_--not a sentinel was mounted on the works!"" Guards desert their post--witness the attack on the palace when seventeen men were present out of sixty-five; a governor is absent from his province at the very time when he is most wanted there; an official is sent for by one of his superiors and returns for answer that he can certainly come if necessary but hopes he shall be excused as it would occasion him the trouble of dressing himself--this in the middle of the day. The creature was no doubt lying on a mattress half naked with a cigar in his mouth. These are instances of ""_Cosas de Espana_ "" always odd and sometimes unintelligible but usually to be explained by the system of laxity and inattention to the duties of their respective posts and stations that seems to extend to nearly all classes in Spain. Captain Widdrington professes the strictest impartiality in the accounts and opinions he gives; and if we venture to point out an instance where we think he has deviated a little from the straight line he drew for himself at starting it is only because his having done so in the particular we refer to is rather creditable to him than otherwise and is exactly the error that most warm-hearted men who passed any length of time in the very agreeable society of Spaniards would be apt to fall into. But we cannot help thinking that in some respects he takes too favourable a view of the Spanish character; that he is led away by his love for the nation. The following passages are rather remarkable-- ""No people in existence "" he says ""are so little anarchical in their habits or live unless under immediate excitement in a more orderly and peaceable manner or are so easily governed. The presiding genius of the country is tranquillity and quiet inoffensive demeanour in every class of society and in every part of the kingdom; nor is there any necessity unless where domination or unpopular and false principles are the object for the application of force to coerce them at any time. What they want by their universal consent is a steady progressive and intelligent government that will lead the way in the changes and improvements which every class at least the far greater majority are desirous of seeing carried out but which their indolence and easy habits prevent originating with themselves alone."" ""_Aide toi et Dieu t'aidera_ "" says the French proverb. It is really a pity that a proper dry-nurse cannot be procured for these quiet and inoffensive people who have been slaughtering each other with small intermission for the last ten years to say nothing of previous instances of mansuetude. Unfortunately however they are as jealous of being helped as according to Captain Widdrington's own admission they are incompetent to help themselves. ""_Es una lastima_ "" as they would say; but really at this rate there seems no chance of their ever getting their country into a prosperous or even a decent state. We fully agree with Captain Widdrington in liking the Spanish character as a whole in appreciat
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ng its fine qualities in rendering ample justice to that courtesy of feeling and manner so agreeable to those who have intercourse with Spaniards and that may truly be called national seeing that it is found as commonly under the coarse _manta_ of the muleteer as beneath the velvet-lined _capa_ of the high-born hidalgo; but we have some small experience of Spain and a more considerable one of Spaniards and we cannot for the life of us think them so tractable and easy to guide into the right path or so exceedingly averse to bloodshed. ""The truth is that excepting in cases of deadly feud which sometimes happen in no country in the world is life more secure.""--(Vol. ii. p. 358.) We will not contradict the Captain but it has always appeared to us that human life is rated at a much lower value in Spain than in any other civilized country we are acquainted with and that the natural consequence of that low valuation is the cool indifference with which blood is there so frequently and abundantly poured out upon the most trifling and insufficient grounds. At the end of a chapter on the church in Spain we find a notice of Mr Borrow's proceedings for the propagation of the Scriptures in the Peninsula--proceedings which seem to have resulted in perfect failure. ""As to the object of the undertaking it was not only a most complete and entire failure but of such a nature as entirely to defeat any future attempt of the same kind."" The meaning of this is clear although the sentence is of a curious turn. Further on the Captain says--""It is impossible not to regret that the very large sums annually sent out of the country from the most pure and really religious and conscientious motives on this and other undertakings producing equally little result were not devoted to the building or endowing of churches and chapels in our own manufacturing districts where they are so very much needed."" How can Captain Widdrington make such an observation as this latter one? Surely he must be aware how much more interesting it is to provide for the spiritual wants of people at a distance than for those of people in our country. What missionary society worthy of the name would undertake a church-building crusade into Lancashire or Yorkshire? It is too near home too commonplace. But let them discover some region at the antipodes inhabited by copper-coloured gentry with feathers upon their heads and curtain rings through their noses and _there_ is a worthy field for the labours of the pious. In like manner poor Spain which really might be allowed to set its temporal house a little in order before being expected to a depart from the faith that has been universal in it since the expulsion of the Saracen was deemed sufficiently distant and dangerous to be interesting and ""the great London Caloro"" girded up his loins and departed thither. Of the peril he encountered the acquaintances he made of how he galloped through the country on silver-grey _burras--Anglicé_ female donkeys--and dropped tracts in public walks and concealed Testaments in ruins and other queer places where robbers _might_ go _might_ find them and _might_ be improved by their perusal has he not written a most marvellous and amusing account for the benefit of generations present and to come? Notwithstanding however his missionary avocations and Munchausenish tendencies we have a sneaking kindness for friend Borrow having collected from his writings that he is a fellow of considerable pluck and energy of adventurous spirit with a sharp eye for a good horse and who would no doubt have made an excellent dragoon had it pleased God to call him to that way of life. But we must say that his manner of spreading the Scriptures in Spain puts us considerably in mind of those peripatetic advertisers whose handbills thrust _nolens volens_ into the fist of the passer-by are for the most part cast unread into the gutter. It would be curious to calculate the proportion borne by those Testaments that Mr Borrow succeeded in getting really circulated and read in Spain to the very large number which he acknowledges to have been confiscated burnt stolen on the road or otherwise lost. The expense of the mission must have been very considerable and the same funds might have been employed in this country with tenfold advantage both to humanity and the Christian religion. There is a certain class of writers some of whom ought to know better who have lately taken up the cudgels upon the pseudo-philanthropic side of the question and have expended a vast deal of uncalled-for indignation and maudlin sympathy upon the rich and poor of this country--the former of whom they would make out to be the most selfish and hard-hearted of created beings and the latter the most amiable and ill-treated. According to these writers it would appear as if no man with less than seven children to provide for and more than ten shillings a-week to do it with could be possessed of any one of the Christian virtues. Charity and kindness of heart exist they would have us to believe in an inverse ratio to income and the _warmest_ men in city parlance are invariably those of the coldest feelings. The sickly cant of this style of writing in a country where charity both public and private is so extensive and practical; and its probable ill effects in rendering the poorer classes discontented are too evident for it to be necessary to dwell upon them. It would be far better if the writers who go to such large expense of sympathetic ink would change the direction of their virtuous indignation and try if they have sufficient influence to put an end to this foreign tract and testament mongering whether its scene be in Spain or at a greater distance. Before concluding Captain Widdrington alludes to a growing shyness towards English travellers in some of the large southern towns owing to the indiscretions exaggerations and absurdities of certain tour-writers. It is a lamentable fact that now-a-days every booby who gets on board a steamer and leaves England for a few weeks or months thinks himself entitled to perpetrate a book about what he sees and hears. We would fain whisper to such persons that mere locomotion never qualified any body to write a book even of travels; that some powers of observation and a certain correctness of judgment and even some previous acquaintance with the history and character of the nation they visit are also necessary; and if after that they still persisted in their designs we would beg of them to remember that light words are apt to travel both far and fast; that some part of their lucubrations may possibly reach the countries they refer to--perhaps through the instrumentality of the trunkmakers; and that in any case they should avoid giving unfavourable details even if true of the private life and habits of people who have shown them kindness and hospitality--details the data of which if investigated would be found in most instances to be absurd and ridiculously insufficient. Some travelling bagman or half-fledged subaltern on his way to the Mediterranean gets ashore at Cadiz or Gibraltar takes a run through three or four of the principal Andalusian cities perhaps has a letter of introduction or else meets at a _fonda_ with some good-natured Spaniard who compassionates his ""goose look"" and evident helplessness invites him to his house and introduces him at a tertulia or two. The gosling picks up a few Spanish sentences hears a few anecdotes from some lying valet-de-place who has attached himself to the Señor Ingles and leaves the country after a few weeks' perhaps days' residence considerably bewildered by all the novelties he has seen but without the slightest real addition to his previous knowledge of Spanish character and customs. Six months afterwards the new work on Spain by Ensign Epaulet or Tedious Twaddle Esquire issues forth borne on a mighty blast of puffery from the laboratory of some fashionable publisher. ""Nothing can be more harmless "" says Captain Widdrington ""than this mode of making a livelihood provided their effusions are kept within the bounds of moderation and charity as well as confined to such views as a rapid transit enables any one unacquainted with the language and the people to make during a few hours' sojourn in the place. This rule however has been broken in upon; and as it unluckily happens that the females are generally a favourite subject for the tirades of that class of writers their random assertions on subjects they had no means of investigating and most assuredly did not speak of from their own knowledge and experience have made both the Gaditanas and Malaguanas and their relations and countrymen extremely irate."" And with good reason too say we. It is not the first time we have heard this sort of thing complained of. The practice is one that cannot be too severely reprehended and we shall look out for such offenders in future. There are a number of anecdotes and pleasant bits scattered through Captain Widdrington's work which is a happy blending of the amusing and instructive neither predominating to the injury of the other; and we take leave both of the book and its accomplished author with much respect and gratitude. Before doing so however and having said much in commendation Captain Widdrington will perhaps permit us to offer him a slight and well-intended hint in the contrary sense. When next the truant-fit comes over him and he favours us with the result of his researches and observations in Spain or any other country--and we hope it will not be long before he does thus favour us--may he be able to devote rather more time to the mere authorship part of the work to the correction and chastening of his style. His sentences are often terribly piled up and intricate and some are really illogical in their construction to the extent of being difficult of comprehension. That kind of negligence in an author considerably diminishes the reader's enjoyment even of the most interesting book. Captain Widdrington should bear in mind that however sterling his matter may be some attention to manner is also expected and that the appearance at least of the most valuable gems is deteriorated by an inelegant setting. Nevertheless in this book-making age it may be considered highly creditable to an author when faults of form and not of substance are the greatest with which he can be reproached. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 2: _Spain and Spaniards in 1843._ By Captain S. E. WIDDRINGTON R.N. K.T.S. F.R.S. F.G.S. _A Journey across the Desert from Ceylon to Marseilles &c. &c._ By Major and Mrs GRIFFITH. 2 vols. _Facts in Mesmerism with Reasons for a Dispassionate Enquiry into it._ By the Rev. CHAUNCY HARE TOWNSHEND A.M.] THE SUPERFLUITIES OF LIFE. A TALE ABRIDGED FROM TIECK. CHAPTER I. In the month of February at the close of an exceedingly severe winter a singular tumult took place in the town of ---- the origin progress and final pacification of which gave rise to the most strange and contradictory reports. Where every one _will_ relate and no one knows any thing of the matter it is natural that the simplest circumstance should become invested with an air of the marvellous. It was in one of the narrowest streets of the populous suburbs of the town that this mysterious event took place. According to some a traitor or desperate rebel had been discovered and captured by the police; others said that an atheist who had secretly conspired with others to tear up Christianity by the roots had after an obstinate resistance surrendered himself to the authorities and was now lying in prison there to learn better principles. All agreed that the criminal had defended himself in the most desperate manner. One man who was a profound politician and an execrable shoemaker laboured to convince his neighbours that the prisoner was at the head of a hundred secret societies which had their ramifications over France Germany Spain Italy and the far East; and that in fact a monstrous insurrection was on the very point of breaking out in the furthest parts of India which like the cholera would spread over Europe and set in flame all its combustible material. Thus much was certain that a tumult had arisen in a small house in the suburbs; that the police had been called in; that the populace had made an uproar; that some eminent personage was seen amongst the crowd; and that after a little time all became still again without any body being the wiser. In the house itself certain devastations had undoubtedly been made which some explained one way some another according to their humours: the carpenters and joiners were busy in repairing them. In this house had lived a man of whom no one in the neighbourhood knew any thing. Whether he was a poet or a politician a native or a foreigner no one could divine. The wisest were at fault. This only was certain that the unknown lived in a most quiet and retired manner; he was seen on none of the promenades nor in any public place; he was young was pronounced to be handsome and his newly married bride who shared his solitude with him was described as being miraculously beautiful. It was about Christmas time when this young couple were sitting together over the stove in their little apartment. ""Of a truth "" said the young man ""how all this is to end is a riddle. All our resources seem now exhausted."" ""Alas! yes Henry "" answered the beautiful Clara to whom this was addressed; ""but whilst you dearest are still cheerful I cannot feel myself unfortunate."" ""Fortunate and unfortunate "" replied Henry ""shall be with us but empty words. The day when you quitted your father's house and for my sake abandoned all other considerations decided our fortune for all our lifetime to come. To live and to love this is our watchword; in what manner exactly we live shall be indifferent."" ""Indeed we are deprived of almost every thing "" said the young wife ""except each other. But I knew you were not rich and you knew when I left my father's house I could bring nothing with me; so love and poverty came to us hand in hand. And now this little chamber which we never quit and the talking together and the looking into the eyes we love--this is all our life."" ""Right! right!"" said Henry and springing up from his seat he embraced his charming companion with renewed fondness. ""Here are we like Adam and Eve in their paradise; and I think "" he added looking round the apartment as he spoke ""no angel will come down from heaven for the express purpose of driving us out of it."" ""If it were not "" said Clara a little dejected ""that the wood begins to fail--and this winter is certainly the severest I ever knew""---- ""Certainly "" said Henry; ""some fuel must somewhere be found. It is inconceivable that we should be allowed to freeze from without with all this warm love within us. Quite impossible! I cannot help laughing amidst it all with a sense of ridiculous embarrassment at the idea that so simple a thing as a little coin cannot be procured."" Clara smiled. ""If only "" said she ""we had some superfluous furniture any brass pans or copper kettles."" ""Ah! if only we were millionaires!"" interrupted Henry gaily; ""then we could get wood in abundance and perhaps "" he added looking slyly over to the stove where some bread-soup was in preparation for their very temperate repast ""some better fare for dinner. But "" he continued in a tone of humorous banter which he frequently adopted and pushing back his chair a few paces as he spoke ""while you superintend the household concerns and give the necessary orders to the cook I will withdraw into my study. Now what would I not write if only pen paper and ink were to be got at; and how studiously would I read if but a book could be procured."" ""You must _think_ dearest "" said Clara waggishly; ""the stock of thoughts it is to be hoped is not quite so low as our wood."" ""Dearest wife "" he replied ""the cares of our establishment demand all your attention; let me proceed undisturbed with my studies. I will read "" he continued speaking as if to himself ""the journal I formerly kept in our palmy days of stationery. And it strikes me that it would be particularly profitable to study it backwards; to begin at the end and so lay a proper foundation for a full comprehension of the beginning. All true wisdom goes in a circle and is typified by a serpent biting at its own tail. We will begin this time at the tail."" Opening his journal at the last page he began to read in the same subdued tone--""They tell a tale of a raving criminal who being condemned to death by starvation ate himself gradually up. This is in fact the story of life and of all of us. In some there remains nothing but the stomach and the mouth. With us there is left the soul which is expressly said to be inconsumable. So far as externals are concerned I have certainly flayed and devoured myself. That I should up to this day have retained a certain dress-coat--I who never go out--was perfectly ridiculous. Mem.--Next birthday of my wife to appear before her in a waist-coat and shirt sleeves as it would be highly indecorous to present myself to a person of her rank in a frock-coat somewhat overworn."" Here he came to the end both of the page and the book. Turning back he commenced at the page immediately preceding--""One can live very well without napkins. And now I think of it what are these miserable napkins but a niggardly expedient for saving the table-cloth? Nay what is this table-cloth itself but a base economy for sparing the table! I pronounce them both to be mere superfluities; both shall be sold that we may eat off the table in the manner of the patriarchs. We will live in the fashion of our magnanimous ancestors. It is in no cynical Diogenes-humour that I banish them from the house but from a resolution not to follow the example of this poor-spirited age which encumbers itself with extravagant superfluities out of a sordid economy."" ""Exactly so "" said Clara laughing. ""Meanwhile on the proceeds of those and other superfluities I invite you to a repast which at all events shall not savour of extravagance."" So saying they sat down to their bread-soup. He who had seen them whatever he might have thought of the dinner would have envied those who partook of it so cheerful were they so joyful so full of freaks and frolics over their simple provender. When the bread-soup was dispatched Clara slyly brought from the stove a covered plate and set before her astonished husband--a reserve of potatoes! ""Long live thou second Sir Walter Raleigh!"" cried Henry. Whereupon they drank to each other out of the pure element and _hob-nobbed_ with such glee that Clara looked anxiously the next moment at the glasses to see that they had not cracked them in their enthusiasm. The dinner concluded they drew their chairs by way of variety up to the solitary window of their apartment and amused themselves with looking at the fantastic filigree work with which the frost had decorated the inside of the glass. ""My aunt used to maintain "" said Clara ""that the room was warmer with this ice on the window than when the glass was clear."" ""Possibly!"" replied Henry. ""But on the strength of this faith I would not dispense with the fire."" ""How wonderfully various "" said Clara ""are these ice-flowers! Is it not strange one seems to have seen them all in reality yet cannot give a name to a single one of them? And look how one grows over the other and how the noble leaves seem to expand even as we speak of them."" ""It is your sweet breath my dear that is calling up these ghosts and spirits of departed flowers "" said Henry. ""I imagine that some invisible genius is reading all thy gentle and loving fancies and pictures them forth as they arise in these flower-phantoms; so that by looking at this glass I know even while you are silent that your thoughts are full of love--that they are dwelling upon me."" A fond kiss was the answer and the reward of this pretty speech. Henry took up his journal and beginning at the ante-penultimate page read aloud:--""To-day--Sold to that old miser of a bookseller my rare copy of Chaucer the costly edition of Caxton. My friend the dear noble Andreas Vandelmeer made me a present of it on my birthday when we were at the university together. He had written to London for it himself: paid an enormous price for it; and then had it bound after his own taste in rich Gothic style. The old hunks of a bookseller will no doubt send it back to London and will get for it tenfold what he has given me. I ought at least to have cut out the leaf where the circumstance of this gift is recorded; and here I have written some lamentable lines signed with my present name and address. This is vexatious. Parting with this book almost persuades me that something like want is pressing on us; for without doubt it was the most precious thing I possessed and the memorial of my dearest and my only friend. Oh Andreas Vandelmeer! art thou still living? Where art thou? And dost thou still think of me?"" ""I saw your pain "" said Clara as he concluded ""when you sold that book; but this friend of your youth--you have never described him to me."" ""He was in person "" replied Henry ""somewhat resembling myself--rather older and more staid. We knew each other as boys at school. I might say he almost persecuted me with his love so passionately did he press it on me. He was ever complaining that my friendship was too cold. Rich as he was and tenderly as he had been brought up no indulgence had made him selfish. On leaving the university he determined on going to India that distant land of wonder having fascinated his ardent imagination. There was then quite a storm of entreaties and supplications that I should accompany him. He assured me that I should make my fortune there as his own forefathers had in fact done. But my mother died about this time and my friends moreover procured for me a position in the diplomatic body. He persuaded me at least to entrust to him the small fortune I had inherited from my mother that he might employ it advantageously for me; a request which I have always suspected was made in order that he might have some future time a pretext and disguise for his generosity. We took leave of each other and I repaired in the suite of my ambassador to the town where your father resided--and where""---- ""The history becomes tolerably well known to us both. But this noble Andreas--did you never hear of him again?"" ""I received two letters "" answered Henry ""from that remote quarter of the world. After which I heard but through no authentic source that he died of the cholera. So far as fortune was concerned I was left as you see entirely dependent on myself. Still I enjoyed the favour of my ambassador--was not unpopular at my court--could reckon on some powerful friends;--but all this has disappeared."" ""All this alas!"" said Clara ""you have sacrificed for me. And I also am a fugitive from home."" ""Then love must supply all. And so it has and so it will. Has not our honeymoon as they vulgarly call it lasted nearly a year?"" ""It shall last for ever!"" said Clara. Then after a pause which was filled up as lovers' pauses usually are she added. ""But the worst blow of all was the loss of your own book;--that dear poetry you had written. If we had but kept a copy of it we might have passed many hours of these winter evenings in reading it. But then "" she added with a smile and a sigh at the same time ""we should have wanted a candle."" ""We talk--we gossip "" said Henry ""which is much better. I hear the sweet tones of your voice; you sing me a song or you break suddenly out into that heavenly laugh of yours. What is there not in that musical jubilee laugh? When I hear it angel mine I am not only delighted I muse I meditate I am rapt. How much of character is there in a laugh! You know no man till you have heard him laugh--till you know when and how he will laugh. There are occasions--there are humours when a man with whom we have been long familiar shall quite startle and repel us by breaking out into a laugh which comes manifestly right from his heart and which yet we had never heard before. Even in fair ladies with whom I have been much pleased I have remarked the same thing. As in many a heart a sweet angel slumbers unseen till some happy moment awakens it so there sleeps often in gracious and amiable characters deep in the background a quite vulgar spirit which starts into life when something rudely comical penetrates into the less frequented chambers of the mind. Our instinct teaches us that in that being there lies something we must take heed of. ""As to that young and thoughtless publisher "" continued Henry ""who became bankrupt and ran off with my glorious manuscript he no doubt did us good service; for how easily might my intercourse with him while the book was being printed have led to our discovery? Your father has not yet be assured relinquished his pursuit of us--my passport would have been examined again with severer scrutiny--something no doubt would have led to the suspicion that the name I bear is assumed. We should have been separated. So angel mine we are happy as we are--most happy!"" It had now grown dark and the fire was burned out; a candle to talk by would have been certainly superfluous: so they retired early to their sleeping apartment. Here they could continue their chat in the dark quite heedless of the heavy fall of snow that was encumbering their windows. CHAPTER II. Next morning at approach of dawn Clara hastened up to run to the stove to awake the sparks in the ashes. Henry soon came to her assistance and they laughed like children as with all their efforts the flame would _not_ come. At last with much puffing and blowing the shavings kindled and slips of wood were most artistically laid on so as to heat the little stove without any waste of the precious store. ""You see Henry dear "" said Clara ""there is hardly enough for to-morrow and then""---- ""A fresh supply must be had "" said her husband in a tone as if this matter of supply was the simplest thing in the world; whereas he well knew that whatever stock of money remained to them must be reserved for the still more essential article of food. After breakfast he again took up his journal. ""How I long to come to that page which records how you and I dearest ran away with one another."" ""O Heaven!"" cried Clara ""how strange how unexpected as that eventful moment! For some days my father had shown a certain ill-humour towards me and had spoken in a quite unusual manner. He had before expressed his surprise at your frequent visits; now he did not name you but talked _at_ you and spoke continually of young men who refused to know their own position. If I was silent on these occasions he was angry; and if I spoke it was still worse: he grew more and more bitter. One morning just as I was going out in the carriage to pay some visits my faithful maid ran down the steps after me and under pretence of adjusting my dress whispered into my ear that all was discovered--that my desk had been broken open and your letters found--and that in a few hours I was to be sent off a prisoner to an aunt in a distant part of the country. How sudden was my resolution! I had not ridden far before I alighted from the carriage under pretence of buying something at a trinket-shop. I sent the coachman and servant away bidding them return for me in at hour and then""---- ""And then "" interrupted Henry ""how delighted was I how almost terrified with joy to see you suddenly enter my apartments! I had just returned from my ambassador and had by good chance some blank passports with me; I filled one up with the first name that occurred; and then without further preparation we entered a hired carriage crossed the borders were married and were happy."" This animated dialogue was interrupted by the entrance of an old woman by name Christina who had formerly been Clara's nurse. In their flight they had entered into her little cottage as a place where they could safely stop to rest themselves and the faithful old dame had entreated them to take her with them. She now lived in a small room below in the same house and entirely supported herself by going out to work amongst the neighbors. She entered the room at present to mention that she should not sleep that night in her own apartment below; but that nevertheless she should return next morning early enough to make their usual daily purchases for them. Clara followed her out of the room to speak with her apart. Henry in her absence as if relieved from the necessity of supporting his spirits or deprived of the power which sustained them sunk his head upon the table and burst into tears. ""Why cannot I "" he muttered to himself ""work with my hands as this poor woman does? I have still health and strength. But no--I dare not--she would then for the first time feel the misery of our position; she would torture herself to work also; besides we should be discovered and separated--and come what may while we can yet live we are happy."" Clara returned in excellent spirits. They sat down to their frugal and cheerful meal to which some additions had been made by the obstinate kindness of old Christina. ""I could not have the heart to refuse her "" said Clara. ""Now if only wood were not wanting all would be well."" The next morning Clara slept longer than usual. She was surprised on waking to see that the day had dawned and still more to find that her husband had left her side. Her astonishment was further increased when she heard in the next room a crashing and grating noise as of one sawing through an obstinate piece of timber. She got up as speedily as possible to ascertain the cause of these unusual events. ""Henry "" she cried as she entered the room ""what are you about there?"" ""Sawing wood my dear "" he replied as he looked up panting from his labours. ""But how in the world did you come by that saw and this famous piece of wood?"" ""I remembered "" answered Henry ""having seen in the loft above us soon after we came here in one of my voyages of discovery a saw and a hatchet belonging I suppose to some previous tenant of our apartment or perhaps to our old landlord. So much for these brave tools. As to this noble piece of wood it was till this morning the banister to our staircase. Observe what solid substantial men our ancestors were! What a broad magnificent piece of oak! This will make a quite different sort of fire from your deal shavings and slips of fir."" ""But "" cried Clara ""the damage to the house!"" ""No one comes to see us "" said Henry. ""We know these steps and indeed seldom or never go down them. The old Christina is the only person who will miss it and I will say to her very gravely--Look you old lady do you think that a noble oak of the forest is to be hewn down and then planed and polished by carpenters and joiners merely that you may come up and down these steps a little more easily? No no such a magnificent banister is a most palpable superfluity."" ""Since it is done "" said Clara ""I will at least take my share in this new species of woodcraft."" So they laid the beam which filled the apartment on two chairs and first they sawed with united efforts at the middle to make it the more manageable. It was hard work for the oak was tough and the saw was old and the workmen were more willing than skilful; but at length it came in two with a crash. ""Well "" said Clara as she looked up and threw her ringlets aside her face glowing with the unwonted exercise ""this work has one advantage at least; we want no fire this morning to warm us."" After sawing off several square blocks Henry set to work with his hatchet to cleave them into pieces fit for the stove. It was fortunate that during this operation which made the walls of their little dwelling re-echo their landlord was absent. Nor were the neighbours likely to be much surprised at the noise as many handicraftsmen inhabited that locality. On this eventful day breakfast had been forgotten; dinner and breakfast were consolidated into one meal. This being dispatched with their usual cheerfulness they retired to their seat by the window. To-day there was no frost upon the glass; and the sky--all that could be seen of it--was clear as crystal. It was a curiously simple prospect which this window presented. Underneath them over the ground-floor of the house had been constructed--for what reason it would not be easy to say--a tiled roof which projected in such a manner as completely to hide the narrow street from their view. In front stretched the long low
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roof of a building which seemed to be used as a warehouse; and on both sides they were hemmed in by the blank projecting walls and the tall chimneys of larger houses--so that certain masses of brickwork a long roof and a fragment of the open sky was all that the eye could possibly command. This complete isolation suited the lovers very well; for besides that it effectually concealed them from the discovery of their pursuers it permitted them to stand at the window and talk and caress without the restraint occasioned by envious spectators. When they first occupied the apartment if they heard an unusual noise out of doors they naturally ran to the window to look down into the street; and it was not till after many fruitless experiments that they learned to sit quiet on such occasions. It was quite an event if a cat was seen stealthily making its way over the long sloping roof in front of them. In the summer when the sparrows built their nests in the tall chimneys on either side and were perpetually flying to and fro twittering caressing quarrelling--this was quite a society. When a chimney-sweeper once thrust out his black face from one of these chimneys and shouted aloud to testify the accomplishment of his ascent it was an event that brought a shriek of surprise from Clara. Thus passed the days and the pair were happy as kings though they were living very like beggars. Very singular was their power of abstraction from the future their entire satisfaction with the present. Clara it is true cast some anxious thoughts after the wood; but Henry brought in every morning the necessary supply: there was no symptoms of failure. She thought indeed of late that the grain of the wood seemed altered; but it burned as well as ever. ""Where "" said Clara one morning ""where is our faithful Christina? I have not seen her for many a day. You rise in the morning before I can get up--you take in the bread and the water-jug--I never see her. Why does she not come up? Is she ill?"" ""No "" said Henry with a slight embarrassment of manner which his wife did not fail to detect. ""Ah! you conceal something from me"" she cried. ""I will go down directly and see what is the matter with her."" ""It is so long since you descended these steps and there is no banister--you will fall."" ""No no I know the steps--I could find them in the dark."" ""Those steps "" said Henry with a mock solemnity of manner--""those steps will you never tread again!"" ""Oh there is something you conceal from me!"" exclaimed Clara. ""Say what you will I will go down and see Christina."" She turned quickly round and opened the door but Henry clasped her as quickly in his arms. ""My dear "" cried he ""will you break your neck?"" The secret was at once disclosed. They stepped together to the landing-place. There were no longer any stairs to be seen. Clara clasped her little hands as she looked first down into the dark precipice below and then at her husband who maintained the most comical gravity in the world. She then ran back to the stove snatched up one of the pieces of wood and looking at it closely said--""Ah now I see why the grain was so different! So then we have burned up the stairs?"" ""So it seems "" answered Henry quite calmly. ""I hardly know why I kept this secret from you--perhaps that you might not be distressed by any superfluous scruples. Now that you know it I am sure you will find it quite reasonable."" ""But Christina?"" ""Oh she is quite well! In the morning I let her down a cord to which she fastens her little basket. This I draw up and afterwards the water-jug. Our housekeeping proceeds in the most orderly fashion in the world. When the banister was at an end it struck me that one half at least of the steps of our staircase might be dispensed with; it was but to step a little higher as one is forced to do in many houses. With the help of Christina who entered into this philosophical view of the matter I broke off the first third fifth and so forth. When one half of the steps was consumed the other half was also condemned as superfluous--for what do we want with stairs we who never go out?"" ""But the landlord?"" ""He will not return till Easter. Meanwhile the weather will be getting milder and there are still some old doors and planks up above which I shall pronounce altogether superfluous. Therefore warm thee dearest Clara without any care for the future."" Things however did not quite fall out as expected. On the afternoon of that very same day a carriage was heard to drive up to the little house. They heard the rattling of the wheels the stopping of the vehicle the descent of the passengers. It was in vain to put their heads out of window they could see nothing there. But they heard the sound of unpacking then the greeting of neighbours--it was evident beyond a doubt that their dreaded landlord had returned home much sooner than he ought. The heavy tread of the gouty gentleman now resounded in the passage--the crisis was at hand. Henry stood at the half-open door listening. Clara sat within regarding him with a questioning look. ""I must go up "" the landlord was now heard to say; ""I must go up and see after my lodgers. I hope they are as cheerful as ever and the young wife as pretty."" There was a pause. The old man was groping about in the dark. ""How is this?"" he muttered to himself. ""Don't know my own house! Not here--not there! Ulric! Ulric! help here!"" Ulric his servant and factotum came to his assistance. ""Help me up these stairs "" said the landlord. ""I am blinded--bewitched! I cannot find the steps and yet they were broad enough!"" ""Herr Emmerich "" said the old and somewhat surly domestic ""you are a little giddy from travelling."" ""An hypothesis "" whispered Henry turning to his wife ""which unhappily will not hold."" ""Zounds!"" cried Ulric who had run his head against the wall ""I have lost my wits too!"" ""I am groping right and left "" said the landlord ""and all round and up above. I think the devil has taken the stairs!"" ""Another hypothesis "" whispered Henry ""and a very bold one."" Meanwhile the more sensible domestic had at once run for a light. This he now returned with and holding it up in his sturdy fist he illuminated the quite empty space. ""Ten thousand devils!"" exclaimed the landlord as he gazed around and above him with astonishment. ""This is the strangest business! Herr Brand! Herr Brand! Is any one up there?"" It was of no use to deny himself. Henry stepped out bent over the landing and saw by the uncertain flicker of the light the portly form of his landlord. ""Ah my worthy friend Herr Emmerich!"" he called out in the blandest manner imaginable ""you are most welcome. It speaks well for the gout that you have returned so much earlier than your appointed time. I am delighted to see you looking so well."" ""Your obedient servant "" answered the other; ""but that is not the question. What has become of my stairs?"" ""Stairs! were there any stairs here?"" said Henry. ""Indeed my friend I go out so seldom or rather not at all that I take no notice of any thing out of my own chamber. I study I work--I concern myself about little else."" ""Herr Brand "" said the landlord half choking with rage ""we must speak about this in another tone! You are the only lodger. You shall give an account before a court of justice""-- ""Be not overwroth "" replied Henry. ""If you really contemplate legal proceedings I think I can be of use to you; for now I think of it I perfectly remember that there _were_ stairs here and have a vivid recollection of having in your absence used them."" ""Used them!"" cried the old man stamping with his feet; ""and how used them? You have destroyed them--you have destroyed the house."" ""Nay do not exaggerate Herr Emmerich. I cannot ask you to walk up-stairs or you might see that these rooms we inhabit are in a perfect state of preservation. As to this ladder which was but an asses' bridge for tedious visitors and bad men I removed it with great difficulty as being superfluous."" ""But these steps "" cried Emmerich ""with their noble banister these two-and-twenty broad strong oaken steps were an integral part of my house. Old as I am I never heard of a lodger who dealt as he pleased with the stairs of a house."" ""Be patient "" said Henry ""and you shall hear the real connexion of events. The post failed in bringing our necessary remittances; the winter was unusually severe; all ordinary means of procuring fuel were wanting; I had recourse to this sort of forced loan. At the same time I did not think respected sir that you would return before the warm summer weather."" ""Nonsense!"" said the landlord. ""Summer weather! Do you think that these my stairs will sprout out again like asparagus when the summer comes?"" ""Really "" said Henry ""I am not sufficiently acquainted with the growth and habits of the stair-plant to determine."" ""Ulric!"" cried the wrathful landlord ""run for the police. You shall find this no jesting matter."" The police arrived. The inspector was scandalized at the outrage which had been committed and summoned the delinquent to surrender. ""Never!"" said Henry. ""An Englishman says well that his house is his castle; and mine is a castle with the drawbridge up."" ""There is an easy remedy for that "" said the officer who thereupon called for a ladder and gave command to his men to mount to bind the criminal with cords and bring him down to his condign punishment. The house was now filled with the people of the neighbourhood. Men women and children had been attracted to the spot and a crowd of curious spectators assembled in the street made their comments upon the business. Clara had seated herself near the window not a little embarrassed; but as she saw that her husband still retained his accustomed cheerfulness she also kept her self-possession--not however without much wondering how it would all end. Henry came in for a moment to hearten her and also to fetch something from the room. ""We are shut up my dear "" said he ""like our famous Götz in his Taxthausen. This obstinate trumpeter has summoned me to surrender at mercy and I will now answer him in the manner of our great model."" Clara smiled. ""Your fate is my fate "" she said and added to herself in a low voice: ""I think if my father saw us now he would forgive all."" Henry again stepped out upon the landing and seeing they were verily bringing in a ladder called to them in a solemn tone--""Gentlemen bethink you what you do. I have been prepared weeks ago for every thing--for the very worst that can happen. I will not be taken prisoner but intend to defend myself to the last drop of my blood. Here do I bring two blunderbusses loaded with ball and this old cannon a fearful piece of ordnance full to the throat with every destructive ingredient. I have in this chamber powder and ball cartridges lead all things necessary to sustain the war; whilst my brave wife who has been accustomed to fire-arms will load the pieces as I fire them. Advance therefore if you wish blood to flow."" Henry had laid two sticks and an old boot upon the floor. The leader of the police who could distinguish nothing in the dark beckoned to his men to stand back. ""Better "" said he to Herr Emmerich ""that we starve out this formidable rebel."" ""Starve indeed!"" said Henry: ""we are provided for months to come with all sorts of dried fruits--plums pears apples biscuits. The winter is nearly passed but should fuel fail us there is still in the roof above much superfluous timber."" ""Oh hear the heathen!"" cried Emmerich in agony. ""First he breaks to pieces the bottom of my house and then he threatens to unroof it."" ""It is beyond all example "" said the officer. Many of the spectators however were secretly pleased at the distress of the avaricious landlord. Some suggested the calling in of the military with their guns. ""For Heaven's sake no!"" cried Emmerich; ""the house will then be utterly destroyed."" ""You are quite right "" said Henry. ""And have you forgotten what for many years every newspaper has been repeating to us that the first cannon-shot let it fall where it may will set all Europe in blaze?"" ""He is a demagogue a carbonaro "" said the officer. ""Who knows what confederates he may have even in this crowd which surrounds us?"" The alarm of the officer seemed for a moment to be justified for a shout was now heard from some of the populace who were collected in the street. Emmerich and the officer turned round to enquire into the meaning of this new demonstration. Henry took the opportunity to whisper a word to his young wife. ""Be of good cheer "" he said; ""we gain time. We shall be able to capitulate. Perhaps even a Sickingen may come to our rescue."" The shout of the mob had been occasioned by the appearance of a brilliant equipage which made its way slowly through the thronged and narrow street. The footmen were clad in splendid livery and a coachman covered with lace drove four prancing steeds. The mob might be excused for shouting ""The king! The king!"" The carriage stopped before the door of the house which was now become the great point of attraction and a nobleman descended elegantly attired and decorated with orders and crosses. ""Does a certain Herr Brand live here?"" enquired the illustrious stranger; ""and what means all this uproar?"" Hereupon fifty different voices made answer with as many different accounts. The landlord stepping forward pointed to the dilapidated condition of the house and explained the real state of affairs. The stranger continued to advance into the hall and called with a loud voice ""Does Herr Brand live here?"" ""Yes "" replied Henry from above; ""but who is this that asks?"" ""The ladder here!"" cried the stranger. ""No one ascends to this place!"" said Henry. ""Not if he brings back the Chaucer the edition of Caxton?"" ""O Heaven! the good angel may ascend!"" and immediately ran back to Clara to communicate the joyful news. ""Our Sickingen is verily come!"" he exclaimed. Tears of joy were starting to his eyes. A few words from the stranger addressed to the landlord and the officer produced a sudden calm. The ladder was raised and Henry in a moment was in the arms of his old friend Andreas Vandelmeer! All was now joy and congratulation in the little apartment as Henry introduced to his friend his dear and beautiful wife. The first greetings passed Vandelmeer informed them that the small fortune which Henry had entrusted to his care had increased and multiplied itself and that he might now consider himself a rich man. Vandelmeer on his return from India had landed at the port of London. There it had occurred to him to procure some antiquarian present for his friend like that which he had formerly given him. Entering the bookseller's where his previous purchase had been made he saw a Chaucer which attracted his attention from its similarity to the one he had procured for his friend. It was in fact the same. It had found its way back to its original owner. On opening it he found some melancholy lines written on the fly-leaf and signed with his present name and address. He immediately repurchased the book and hastened to the discovery and as it proved the rescue of his friend. To complete the happiness of all parties he was able to inform them that the father of Clara had laid aside his anger and was desirous of discovering his daughter only that he might receive and forgive her. What need to say more? Even the landlord was content and had reason to congratulate himself on the devastation committed on his staircase. THE OVERLAND PASSAGE. Our intercourse with India has become so important within these few years and the rapid transit by the isthmus of Suez has become so favourite a passage that the public naturally feel an extreme curiosity relative to every circumstance of the route. The whole is a splendid novelty sufficiently strange to retain some portion of the old wonder which belongs to all things Arabian; sufficiently wild to supply us with the scenes and adventures of barbarism; and yet sufficiently brought within the sphere of European interests to combine with the romance of the wilderness at once Oriental pomp and the powers and utilities of civilized and Christian society. The contrast is of the most exciting kind:--we have the Bedouin with his lance and desert home hovering round the European carriage but now guarding what his fathers would have plundered; the caravan with all its camels turbaned merchants and dashing cavalry moving along the river's bank on whose waters the steam-boat is rushing; the many-coloured and many-named tribes of the South meeting the men of every European nation in the streets where the haughty Osmanli was once master. The buildings offer scarcely a less singular contrast:--the lofty prison-like close casemented fronts of the huge Mahometan dwellings frowning in grim repose upon the spruce shops and glittering hotels of the French and Italian trader and tavern-keeper; and though last most memorable of all--the old Pasha the only man in existence who has given a new being to a people; the true regenerator of his country or rather the creator of a nation out of one of the most abject exhausted and helpless races of mankind. Egypt the slave of the stranger for a thousand years trampled on by Saracen Turk Mameluke and Frenchman; but by the enterprise and intelligence of this extraordinary individual suddenly raised to an independent rank and actually possessing a most influential interest in the eyes of Europe and Asia. The route of the travellers begins with Ceylon. Ceylon is a fine picturesque island very fertile strikingly placed for commerce and containing a tolerably intelligent population. Yet we do not seem to have made much of its advantages hitherto; Singapore and even Hong-Kong are likely to throw it into eclipse; and the chief benefit of its possession is in keeping away foreign powers from too near an inspection of our settlements in India. But its shores have the richness of vegetation which belongs to the tropics and the variety of aspect which is so often found in the Asiatic islands. The Major and his wife embarked on board the steamer ""The India "" in May 1844. The view from the Point de Galle is striking. The town is shaded by trees which give it the look of richness and freshness that contributes such a charm to the Oriental landscape. On the left of the bay is a headland clothed with tropic vegetation. In front are two islands giving variety to the bay. Behind is the esplanade shut in by hills covered with cocoa-nut trees. At the foot of those hills is the native town and bridge also shaded by trees. Crowds of canoes of various shapes and colours moored along the shore complete the scene. The passengers were discontented with the India. They never saw any thing like the dirt of the ship. The coal-dust penetrated into every thing. It was in vain to sigh for a clean face and hands for they were unattainable. This must be true; yet it passes our comprehension. We cannot understand why coal-dust should make its appearance at all for the affliction of the passengers. It certainly blackens no one in our European steamers. Its business is in the engine-room and we never heard of its making its _entrée_ into either the saloon or the cabin. The India is complained of as being very ill adapted for the service as unwieldy and inadequate to face the south-west monsoon. Yet the vessel was handsomely decorated: the saloon was profusely ornamented with gilding cornices and mirrors; the tables were richly veneered and the furniture was of morocco leather. All this exhibits no want of liberality on the part of the proprietors; but a much heavier charge is laid on the carelessness which allowed this handsome vessel to be infested with disgusting vermin. ""The swarms of cock-roaches "" says Mrs Darby Griffiths ""almost drove me out of my senses. The other day sixty were killed in our cabin and we might have killed as many more. They are very large about two inches and a half long and run about my pillows and sheets in the most disgusting manner. Rats are also very numerous."" Now all this we can as little comprehend as the coal-dust. If such things were they must have arisen from the most extraordinary negligence; and we hope the proprietors enlightened by Mrs Darby Griffith's book will have the vessel cleansed out before her next voyage. The monsoon was now direct against them and the probability was that instead of getting to Aden in its teeth their coal-dust would fail and they would be driven back to Bombay for more. But the commander of one of the Oriental Company's ships who was fortunately a passenger advised the captain to go south for the purpose of meeting winds which would afterwards blow him to the north-west. The advice was as fortunately taken. They steamed till within two degrees of the line and then met with a south wind. This however though it drove them on their course made them roll terribly. The India was not prepared for this rough treatment. There was not a swing-table in the ship. The consequence was that bottles of wine were rolling in every direction; geese turkeys and curry were precipitated into the laps of the unfortunate people on the lee-side; while those on the weather-side were thrown forward with their faces on their plates. This was treatment which probably John Bull would not like; but being a philosopher and besides a native of an island he would endure it as one of the necessities of nature. But there were four French passengers on board who took it in a different way and probably conceiving that a vessel at sea was something in the nature of a stage-coach and the Indian ocean a high-road they felt themselves peculiarly ill-used by this tossing; and at every instance of having a bottle of wine emptied into their drapery they regarded it as a national insult and complained bitterly to the captain. The French are a belligerent people and we are surprised that this series of aggressions by the billows has not been taken up by Mons. Thiers and his friends as an additional evidence of the malice of England to the _grande nation_. Sea-sickness starvation and the loss of their claret were acts worthy indeed of _perfide Albion_. The captain himself was one of the victims to the ""movement."" The fair tourist thus draws his portrait--whether the captain will admire either the sketch or the limner is another question. He is described as ""an immensely fat punchy man resembling a huge ball with great fat red cheeks which almost conceal his eyes and a small turned-up nose."" He was of course always seated at the head of the table and she supposed considered it beneath his dignity to have his chair tied; but this world is all made up of compromises and compensations--if the captain preserved his dignity he lost his balance. A surge came ""his fixity of tenure was gone in a moment and this solid dignitary was shot forth chair and all and rolled against the bulkhead. Every body was in roars of laughter."" But though all this was toil and trouble for the miserable lords and ladies of the creation it was delight for the masters and mistresses of the mighty element around them. The inhabitants of the ocean were in full sport; whales were seen rushing through the brine porpoises were sporting with their sleek skins in the highest enjoyment through the billows and shoals of dolphins filled the waves with their splendid pea-green and azure. It was an ocean fête a _bal-paré_ of the finny tribe a gala-day of nature; while miserable men and women were shrinking and shivering and sinking in heart in the midst of the animation enjoyment and magnificence of the world of waters. On the third night of their sailing the wind became higher and the swell from the south stronger than ever. They pitched about in the most dreadful manner and during the night two sails were carried away and the fore-topmast. They were now in peril; but they had the steam in reserve and steered for their port. On the 9th of June they were in smooth water running up between the coasts of Arabia and Africa. The weather now suddenly changed; the sun became intensely hot and though forty miles from the shore they were visited by numerous butterflies dragon-flies and moths. In two days after they sailed through an orange-coloured sea filled with a shoal of animalculæ fifteen miles long. On the next day they came in sight of the harbour of Aden. This whole track was the voyage from which the Arabian story-tellers have fabricated such wonders. One of the voyages of the celebrated Sinbad the sailor the most picturesque of all voyagers was over this very ocean. The orange-coloured waters the strong effluvium of the waves intoxicating the brain the wild headlands of Africa--each the dwelling of a necromancer--the Maldives filled with mermaids and sea-monsters the volcanic blaze that guarded the entrance to the Red Sea the fiery mountains of Aden the Hadramant or region of Death the Babelmandeb or Gate of Tears the Isle of Perim and the Cape of Burials wild black and terrific--fill the Arab imagination with wonders that throw all modern invention to an immeasurable distance. The town of Aden is not seen from the sea; it lies behind the mountains which are first visible. To look at the coast from this spot nothing but a sandy desert presents itself. The peninsula is joined to the mainland Arabia Felix by a narrow sandy isthmus nearly level with the ocean. It is only 14 000 feet wide. There are three rocky islands in the bay one of which commanding the isthmus is fortified. The passengers of the India were disturbed during the whole day by the yells of the Arabs who were bringing the coals on board. They look more like demons than human beings. ""The coal-dust of which we had lost sight for some time now began once more to turn every thing into its own colour. The coolies employed in this service come from the coast of Zanzibar. They keep up a continual yell during their work and perform a kind of dance all the time."" They must be very well paid and this is the true secret of making men work. The African is no more lazy than other men when he can get value for his labour. This is the true secret for abolishing the slave trade. Those men come hundreds or thousand of miles to cover themselves with coal-dust in an atmosphere where the thermometer sometimes rises to 120° in the shade and work ""day and night until they have finished their task "" roaring and dancing all the time besides--and all this for the stimulant of wages. It is to be presumed that their performance is ""piece-work "" the only work which brings out the true effort of the labourer. Their zeal was said to be so great that every hundred tons of coal embarked cost the life of a man. But the Africans have learned to drink grog; an accomplishment which we should have thought they would not be long in acquiring and since that period they live longer. This we must acknowledge is a new merit in grog; it is the first time that we have heard of it as a promoter of longevity. The Arabs on the coast form two classes perfectly distinct at least in their conduct to the English. The class of warriors being robbers by profession are extremely anxious to rob us and still more indignant at our preventing their robbery of others. Their piracies have suffered grievously from the vigilance of our gun-boats and they have once or twice actually attempted to storm our fortifications. The consequence is that they have been soundly beaten the majority have left their carcasses behind them and the survivors have been taught a ""moral lesson "" which has kept them at a respectful distance. But the Arab cultivators are decent and industrious men and form the servants of the town. Whether we shall ever make a great southern colony of the country adjoining the peninsula must be a question of the future. But it is said that a very fine and healthy country extends to the north and that the mountains visible from Aden enclose valleys of singular productiveness and beauty. Taste in personal decoration differs a good deal in the south from that of the north. The Arab with a face as black as ink thinks an enormous shock of red hair the perfection of taste; he accordingly dyes his hair with lime and thus makes himself unconsciously the regular demon of the stage. The entrance to the new British settlement is through masses of the boldest and wildest rocks. After passing a defile between two mountains we come to the only access on this side the ""lofty mountains forming an impregnable fortification."" This entrance is cut through the solid rock. A strong guard of sepoys is posted there. The passage is so high and narrow that ""one might almost compare it to the eye in a darning needle."" This is a female comparison but an expressive one. Issuing from the pass the whole valley of Aden lay like a map beneath bounded on three sides by precipitous mountains rising up straight and barren like a mighty wall while on the fourth was the sea; but even there the view was bounded by the island rock of Sera thus completing the fortification of this Eastern Gibraltar. Here the travellers were welcomed by a hospitable garrison surgeon and his wife found a dinner an apartment great civility and a romantic view of the Arab landscape by moonlight. They heard the drums and pipes of one of the regiments and were ""startled by the loud report of a cannon which shook the frail tenement and resounded with a lengthened echo through the hills. It was the eight o'clock gun which stood only a stone's throw from the house and on the same rock."" The lady as a soldier's wife ought to have been less alarmed; but she was in a land where every thing was strange. ""We were literally sleeping out in the open air; as there were no doors windows or venetians to close and every breath of wind agitated the frail walls of bamboo and matting I was awoke in the night by the musquitto curtains blowing up; the wind had risen and came every now and then with sudden gusts; but its breath was so soft warm and dry that I who had never ventured to bear a night-blast in Ceylon felt that it was harmless."" Aden in earlier times formed one of the thirteen states of Yemen; and prodigious tales are told of its opulence its mosques and minarets its baths of jasper and its crescents and colonnades. But Arabia is proverbially a land of fable and the glories of Aden exhibit Arabian imagination in its highest stage. Possibly while it continued a port for the Indian trade it may have shared the wealth which India has always lavished on commerce. But a spot without a tree without a mine and without a manufacture could never have possessed solid wealth under the languid industry and wild rapine of an Arab population. When we recollect too how long the Turks were masters of this corner of Arabia we may well be sceptical of the opulence of periods when the sword was the law. No memorials of its prosperity remain; no ruined temples or broken columns attest the magnificence or the taste of an earlier generation. Its only hope of opulence must be dated from its first possession by the British. But the barrenness of the soil forbids substantial wealth; and though the native merchants relying on the honour of British laws and the security of British arms are flocking into it by hundreds and will soon flock into it by thousands it must be at best but a warehouse and a fortress though both will in all probability be of the most magnificent description. The population is of the miscellaneous order which is to be found in all the Eastern ports. The Parsees the handsome and industrious race who are to be seen every where in India; the Jews keen and indefatigable who are to be seen in every part of the world; and the Arabs whose glance and gesture seem to despise both are already crowding this half camp half capital. From eighty to a hundred camels every morning supply the markets of Aden. They bring in baskets of fine fruit grapes melons dates and peaches. The greater number bring also poultry grass and straw. Troops of donkeys carry water in skins to every part of the town; and there is no want of the necessaries of life though of course they are dear. Aden is excessively hot but regarded as healthy. The air is pure dry and elastic. The engineers are building works on the different commanding positions; and Aden within a few years will probably be the strongest fortification as it is already one of the finest ports east of the Mediterranean. But we look to nobler prospects; the inland country is perhaps one of the finest regio
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s in the world. Almost within view of Aden lies a country as picturesque as Switzerland and as fertile as the valleys of the tropics. It is singularly salubrious; and in point of extent may be regarded as unlimited. We see no possible reason why Aden should not in the course of a few years be made the capital of a great Arabian colony. Conquest must not be the means but purchase might not be difficult; and civilization and Christianity might be spread together through immense territories formed in the bounty of nature and only waiting to be filled with a free and vigorous population. It is only the centre and north of Arabia that is desert. The coast and especially the southern extremity are fertile. Without the ambition of empire or the desire of encroachment British enterprize might here find a superb field and the Arabian peninsula might for the first time in history be added to the civilized world. The travellers now ran up the Red Sea. The navigation has greatly improved within these few years in consequence of the intercourse between England and India. Surveys have been made and charts have been formed which almost divest the passage of peril. But the navigation is still intricate in consequence of the coral rocks and numerous shoals which however may be escaped by due vigilance and the experienced mariner has nothing to fear. The aspect of the coast of both Africa and Arabia is wild and repulsive; but some compensation for the monotony of the shores is to be found in the sea itself. When calm the transparency of the water exhibits the bottom to the depth of thirty fathoms. ""And what a new world is discovered through this vale of waters! what treasures for the naturalist!"" The sands are overspread with forests of coral plants of every colour shells of remarkable beauty; and in the midst of this sub-aqueous landscape fish of brilliant hues sporting in all directions. At length they reached the gulf of Suez with the blue peaks of Sinai in the distance and continued running up the gulf which was one hundred and sixty miles long until Suez came in sight. Here all is dreary: deserts and sand-banks form the whole landscape. Arab boats came alongside and conveyed the passengers from the steamer. The town looked dismal; its walls and fortifications were in decay; the landing-place was crowded by sickly-looking creatures the evident victims of malaria and the chief ornament of the place was a large white-washed tomb. This condition of things was not much improved when the party found themselves in the hotel of Messrs Hill and Co. Musquittoes and every species of frightful insect made war against sleep; and when their reign had passed away and the travellers rose crowds of flies continued the persecution. The travellers made a bad bargain in paying their passage-money at once from Suez to Alexandria; and it is described as the wiser mode to pay only to Cairo and then take the choice of the several conveyances which are sure to be found there. The Arab drivers and carriers seem to have fully acquired those arts of extortion which flourish in such abundance wherever English money is to be found. They cheat and lie and cajole with extraordinary assiduity; and the majority of the passengers on this occasion seem to have been detained unnecessarily on the road and treated badly at the station houses. The first part of the desert is rather rocky than sandy and the road seems to have been formed chiefly by the carriage wheels. It is covered with great pieces of stone and rock which sorely tried the patience of the travellers. Hundreds of carcasses of camels lie in the way; the flesh is soon eaten by the wolves and rats while the bones bleach in the sun. Little troops of Arabs were met from time to time sometimes on camels and sometimes on horses. They were armed to the teeth as black as negroes and looked ferocious enough to make any party of pacific travellers tremble for their goods and chattels. But they were the patrols of Mohammed Ali and guardians of the goods which in other days they would have delighted to plunder. There are eight stations on this road through the desert all built by that man of wonders the Pasha. Of these four are only stables; but four are houses for the reception of travellers. They are generally from twelve to sixteen miles apart. The station No. 6 though by no means possessing the comforts of an English hotel must be a miracle to the old travellers of the desert. It consists of two chambers a kitchen and servants' room with a large public saloon occupying the whole of one end and completing a little centre court. Three sides of the saloon were furnished with divans. There was a long table in the centre with several chairs and a glass window at each end of the room. But this was unluckily the season of flies and they were the torment of the travellers; table wall ceiling and floors swarmed with them. They flew into the face the eyes and the mouth. Thousands of musquittoes were also buzzing round and biting every thing. The breakfast was no sooner laid on the table than it was blackened with flies. The beds were hiving and intolerable. No. 4 the halfway-house was rather better. It is the largest of them all and has a long row of bedrooms and two public saloons. It has a large courtyard in which were turkeys geese sheep and goats for the use of travellers. The Arab coachman here tried a trick of the road. He sent up a message that he had observed the lady looked very much tired and that he therefore advised them to get to the end of their journey as quickly as possible; that they had better start in two hours as the moon was very bright and that he would take them into Cairo by breakfast-time in the morning. But it was suspected that this haste was in order that the passengers waiting at Cairo to go by the India steamer should be conveyed across the desert by himself so they declined his offer and enjoyed their night's rest. On rising in the morning they felt that they had reason to congratulate themselves on their refusal of the night's journey; for they found even the morning air bitter and the atmosphere a wet fog. The aspect of the country had now changed. Chains of hills disappeared and all was level sand. On the way they saw the mirage sometimes assuming the appearance of a distant harbour at others of an inland lake reflecting the surrounding objects on its surface; and they met one of the picturesque displays of Arabia a wealthy Bey going on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He had a train of twenty or thirty camels. Those carrying himself and his harem had superb trappings. The women were seated in large open boxes hanging on each side as paniers. There were red silk embroidered curtains hung round like those on a bedstead and an awning over all. The bey was smoking his splendid pipe and behind came a crowd of slaves with provisions. The road on approaching Cairo grew rougher than ever; it was often over ridges of rock just appearing above the sand. The Pasha's ""commissioners of paving"" seem to have slumbered on their posts as much as if they had been metropolitan. At last a ""silvery stream"" was seen winding in the horizon--the ""glorious Nile!"" The country now grew picturesque; a forest of domes and minarets arose in the distance; and the Pyramids became visible. The road then ran through a sort of suburb where the Bedouins take up their quarters on their visits to buy grain they being not suffered within the walls. It then passed between walled gardens filled with flowers shrubs orange and olive trees; most of the walls were also surmounted with a row of pillars interlaced with vines--a species of ornament new to us but which we should conceive must add much to the beauty external and internal of a garden. Cairo was entered at last; and its lofty houses and the general architecture of this noblest specimen of a Mahometan capital delighted the eyes which had so long seen nothing but the sea the rocky shore and the desert. Cairo is like all the rest of the world growing European and even English. It has its hotels; and the traveller except that he hears more Arabic and inhales more tobacco smoke will soon begin to imagine himself in Regent street. The ""Eastern Hotel"" is a good house where Englishmen get beefsteaks port wine and brown stout; read the London papers; have waiters who at least do their best to entertain them in their own tongue; and want nothing but operas and omnibuses. But the dress still makes a distinction and it is wholly in favour of the Mussulman. All modern European dresses are mean; the Oriental is the only man whose dress adds dignity to the human form. When Sultan Mahmoud stripped off the turban and turned the noble dress of his people into the caricature of the European costume he struck a heavier blow at his sovereignty than ever was inflicted by the Russian sabre or the Greek dagger. He smote the spirit of his nation. The Egyptian officials wear the fez or red nightcap--the fitting emblem of an empire gone to sleep. But the general population of Egypt wear the ancient turban the finest ornament of the head ever invented by man; that of the Egyptian Mahometan is white muslin; that of the Shereefs or line of Mahomet is green; that of the Jews and Copts is black. The remaining portions of the costume are such as perhaps we shall soon see only upon the stage. The embroidered caftan the flowing gown the full trouser of scarlet or violet-coloured cloth the yellow morocco boot the jewelled dagger and velvet-sheathed cimeter--all the perfection of magnificence and taste in costume. The ample beard gives completeness to the majesty of the countenance and finishes the true character of the ""lord of the creation."" The citadel of Cairo has a melancholy and memorable name from the horrid massacre of the Mamelukes in 1811 when four hundred and seventy of those showy soldiers were murdered and but one escaped by leaping his horse from the battlements. The horse was killed; the man is now a bey in the Pasha's service. The citadel stands on a hill and contains the Pasha's palace a harem a council-hall police-offices and a large square where the massacre was perpetrated. The view from the windows of the palace is superb. Cairo is seen immediately beneath skirted by gardens on the right. Beyond those the mosques of the caliphs and as far as the eye can reach the Arabian desert. In front is the Nile a silver stream covered with sails of every description till it is lost in the groves of the Delta. The ports of Boulac and old Cairo with numerous villages stud its banks and from its bosom rise verdant islands. To the left the Nile is still visible and beyond are seen the Pyramids which though twelve miles off appear quite close from the transparency of the air. In the citadel is also a mosque now building by the order of the Pasha. It is constructed of Oriental alabaster is of great size already exhibits fine taste and promises to be one of the most beautiful structures in Egypt. But the Pasha has not yet attained the European improvement of lamps in the streets. After nightfall the only light is from the shops which when they close leave the street in utter darkness. However most of the pedestrians carry lamps with them. How does it happen that no gas company has taken pity upon this Egyptian darkness and saved the Cairans from the chance of having their throats cut or at least their bones broken; for during the summer a considerable portion of the poorer population sleep in the streets? Still the Pasha is a man of taste fond of living in gardens and sensible enough to have the garden of his favourite palace at Shoobra laid out by a Scotch gardener. He used to reside a great deal there but now chiefly lives when at Cairo in the house of his daughter a widow where his apartments are in the European style. Nothing surprises a European traveller more than the people themselves; and no problem can seem more mysterious than the means by which they are enabled to supply so much expensive costume. The Egyptian gentleman seems to want for nothing wherever they find the money to pay for it. Fine houses fine furniture fine horses and fine clothes seem to be constantly at the command of a crowd who have nothing to do who produce nothing and yet seem to have every thing. The Egyptian or Turkish lady is an absolute bale of costly clothing--the more breadths of silk they carry about them the better. Before leaving her home she puts over her house costume a large loose robe called a _tob_ made of silk or satin and always of some gay colour pink yellow red or violet. She next puts on her face veil a long strip of the finest white muslin often exquisitely embroidered. It is fastened just between the eyes conceals all the other features and reaches to the feet. She next envelopes herself in large cloak of rich black silk tied round the head by a piece of narrow riband. Her costume is completed by trousers of silk gauze and yellow morocco boots which reach a considerable way up the legs. How any human being can bear such a heap of clothing especially under the fiery sun and hot winds of Egypt is to us inconceivable. It must melt all vigour out of the body and all life out of the soul; but it is the fashion and fashion works its wonders in Egypt as well as elsewhere. The veil across the mouth in a climate where every breath of fresh air is precious must be but a slower kind of strangulation. But the preparative for a public appearance is not yet complete. Women of condition never walk. They ride upon a donkey handsomely caparisoned sitting astride upon a high and broad saddle covered with a rich Turkey carpet. They ride with stirrups but they never hold the reins; their hands are busy in keeping down their cloaks. A servant leads the donkey by the bridle. Their figures when thus in motion are the most preposterous things imaginable. Huge as they are the wind which has no respect for persons gets under their cloaks and blows them up to three times their natural size. Those are the ladies of Egypt; the lower orders imitate this absurdity and extravagance as far as they can and with their face veils the most frightful things possible shuffle through the streets like strings of spectres. Poverty and labour may by possibility keep the lower ranks in health; but how the higher among the females can retain health between their want of exercise their full feeding their hot baths and this perpetual hot bath of clothing defies all rational conjecture. The Egyptians of all ranks are terribly afraid of what they call the evil eye and stifle themselves and children in all kinds of rags to avoid being bewitched. The peasants are a fine-looking strong-bodied race of men; but many of them are met blind of an eye. This is attributed to the reluctance to be soldiers for the glory of the Pasha. But Mohammed Ali was not to be thus tricked and he raised a regiment of one-eyed men. In other instances they are said to have knocked out the fore-teeth to avoid biting a cartridge or to have cut off a joint of the first finger to prevent their drawing a trigger. Even thus they are not able to escape the cunning Pasha. But this shows the natural horror of the conscription; and we are not surprised that men should adopt any expedient to escape so great a curse and scandal to society. It is extraordinary that in this 19th century even of the Christian world such an abomination should be suffered to exist in Europe. It is equally extraordinary that it exists in every country but England and she can have no prouder distinction. The habeas-corpus and her free enlistment are two privileges without which no real liberty can ever exist and which in any country it would be well worth a revolution or ten revolutions to obtain. Hers is the only army into which no man can be forced and in which every man is a volunteer. And yet she has never wanted soldiers and her soldiers have never fought the worse. It is true that when she has a militia they are drawn by ballot from the population; but no militiaman is ever sent out of the country; and as to those who are drawn if they feel disinclined to serve in this force which acts merely as a national guard ten shillings will find a substitute at any time. It is also true that England has impressment for the navy; but the man who makes the sea his livelihood adopts his profession voluntarily and with the knowledge that at some time or other he may be called upon to serve in the royal navy. And even impressment is never adopted but on those extreme emergencies which can seldom happen and which may never happen again in the life of man. But on the Continent every man except the clergy and those in the employment of the state is liable to be dragged to the field let his prospects or his propensities be what they may. In every instance of war parents look to their children with terror as they grow up to the military age. The army is a national curse and parental feelings are a perpetual source of affliction. If the great body of the people in Europe instead of clamouring for imaginary rights and talking nonsense about constitutions which they have neither the skill to construct nor would find worth the possession if they had them would concentrate their claims in a demand for the habeas-corpus and the abolition of the conscription they would relieve themselves from the two heaviest burdens of despotism and obtain for themselves the two highest advantages of genuine liberty. One of the curiosities of Cairo is the hair-oil bazar. The Egyptian women are prodigious hairdressers and the variety of perfumes which they lavish upon their hair and persons exceed all European custom and calculation. This bazar is all scents oil and gold braids for the hair. It is nearly half a mile long. The odour or the mixture of odours may well be presumed to be overpowering when every other shop is devoted to scented bottles--the intervening ones containing perfumed head-dresses formed of braids of ribands and gold lace which descend to the ground. A warehouse of Turkish tables exhibited the luxurious ingenuity of the workers in mother-of-pearl. They were richly wrought in gold and silver ornaments. Within seven miles of Cairo there still exists a wonder of the old time which must have made a great figure in the Arab legends--a petrified forest lying in the desert and which to complete the wonder it is evident must have been petrified while still standing. The trees are now lying on the ground many of the trunks forty feet long with their branches beside them all of stone and evidently shattered by the fall. Cairo too has its hospital for lunatics; but this is a terrible scene. The unfortunate inmates are chained and caged and look like wild beasts with just enough of the human aspect left to make the scene terrible. A reform here would be well worth the interference of European humanity. We wish that the Hanwell Asylum would send a deputation with Dr Connolly at its head to the Pasha. No man is more open to reason than Mohammed Ali and the European treatment of lunatics transferred to an Egyptian dungeon would be one of the best triumphs of active humanity. The travellers at length left Cairo and embarked on board Mills and Company's steam-boat named the Jack o' Lantern. It seemed to be merely one of the common boats that ply on the river with the addition of a boiler and paddles and is probably the smallest steamer extant. However when they entered the cabin upon the deck they found every thing nicely arranged and began to think better of their little vessel. They had another advantage in its smallness as the Nile was now so low that numbers of vessels lay aground and a large steamer would probably have been unable to make the passage. The river seemed quite alive with many-formed and many-coloured boats. Their picturesque sails crossing each other made them at a distance look almost like butterflies skimming over the water. The little steamer drew only two feet and a half of water. She is jestingly described as of two and a half Cairo donkey power. About six miles from Boulac they passed under the walls of Shoobra palace and gardens. Its groves form a striking object and its interior cultivated by Greek gardeners is an earthly Mahometan paradise. It has bower-covered walks gardens carpeted with flowers ever-flowing fountains and a lake on which the luxurious Pasha is rowed by the ladies of his harem. The Nile winds in the most extraordinary manner across the tongues of land; boats and sails are seen close which are in reality a mile further down the stream. The banks were high above the boat through the present shallowness of the river. They were chiefly of brown clay and were frequently cut into chasms for the purposes of irrigation. As they shot along they saw large tracts covered with cotton wheat Indian corn and other crops. Date-trees in abundance the leaves large and like those of the cocoa the fruit hanging in large clusters when ripe of a bright red. Water-melons cultivated every where often on the sandy banks of the river itself three or four times the size of a man's head and absolutely loading the beds. Numbers of the Egyptian villages were seen in the navigation of the river. The houses are huddled together are of unbaked clay and look like so many bee-hives. Every village has its date-trees and every hut has pigeons. The peasants in general seem intolerably indolent and groups of them are every where lying under the trees. Herds of fine buffaloes twice the size of those in Ceylon were seen along the shore and sometimes swimming the river. Groups of magnificent cattle larger and finer than even our best English breed were driven occasionally to water at the river side. The Egyptian boats come to an anchor every night; but the Jack o' Lantern dashed on and by daybreak reached the entrance of the Mahoudiah Canal on which a track-boat carries passengers to Alexandria. A high mound of earth here separates the canal from the Nile which flows on towards Rosetta. This embankment is about forty feet wide. Some of Mrs Griffith's observations are at least sufficiently expressive; for example:--""All the children and some past the age of what are usually styled little children were running about entirely devoid of clothing. We observed a great deal of this in Egypt. _Men_ are often seen in the same condition; and the women of the lower orders having concealed their heads and faces appear to think they have done _all that is necessary_."" This is certainly telling a good deal; nothing more explicit could be required. The track-boats are odious conveyances long and narrow and the present one very dirty and swarming with cockroaches. They were towed by three horses ridden by three men. In England one would have answered the purpose. The Canal itself is an extraordinary work worthy of the country of the Pyramids and one of the prodigies which despotism sometimes exhibits when the iron sceptre is combined with a vigorous intellect. It is ninety feet wide and forty-eight miles long and yet was completed in six weeks. But it took the labour of 250 000 men who worked if the story be true night and day. Along the canal were seen several large encampments of troops rather rough instruments it is true for polishing African savagery into usefulness but perhaps the only means by which great things could have been done in so short a period as the reign of Mohammed Ali. An Italian fellow-passenger who had resided in Egypt twenty-five years gave it as the result of his experience that without the strong hand of power the population would do nothing. Bread and onions being their food when those were obtained they had got all that they asked for. They would leave their fruitful land to barrenness and would prefer sleeping under their trees to the simplest operation of agriculture in a soil that never requires the plough. Yet they are singularly tenacious of their money and often bury it keeping their secret to the last. The Italian told them that he was once witness to a scene exactly in point. He accompanied the tax-gatherer to a miserable village where they entered one of the most miserable huts. The tax-gatherer demanded his due the Egyptian fell at his feet protesting that his family were starving and that he had not a single coin to buy bread. The tax-gatherer finding him impracticable ordered some of his followers to give him a certain number of stripes. The peasant writhed under the stripes but continued his tale. The beating was renewed on two days more when the Italian interfered and implored mercy. But the officer said that he must continue to flog as he was certain that the money would come forth at last. After six days' castigation the peasant's patience could hold out no longer. He dug a hole in the floor of his hut and exhibited gold and silver to a large amount. All this may be true; but it would be an injustice to human nature to suppose that man in any country would prefer dirt poverty and idleness to comfort activity and employment where he could be sure of possessing the fruits of his labours. But where the unfortunate peasant is liable to see his whole crop carried off the land at the pleasure of one of the public officers or the land itself torn from him or himself or his son carried off by the conscription how can we be surprised if he should think it not worth the while to trouble his head or his hands about any thing? Give him security and he will work; give him property and he will keep it; and give him the power of enjoying his gains in defiance of the tax-gatherer and he will exhibit the manliness and perseverance which Providence has given to all. Whether even the famous Pasha is not still too much of a Turk to venture on an experiment which was never heard of in the land of a Mahometan before must be a matter more for the prophet than the politician; but Egypt so long the most abject of nations and the perpetual slave of a stranger seems rapidly approaching to European civilization and by her association with Englishmen and her English alliance may yet be prepared to take a high place among the regenerated governments of the world. The road from the termination of the canal to Alexandria about two miles long leads through a desert track. At last the Mediterranean bursts upon the eye. In front rise Pompey's stately and well-known pillar and Cleopatra's needle. High sand-banks still intercept the view of Alexandria. At length the gates are passed a dusty avenue is traversed the great square is reached and the English hotel receives the travellers. Mahometanism is now left behind for Alexandria is comparatively an European capital. All the houses surrounding the great square including the dwellings of the consuls have been built within the last ten years by Ibrahim Pasha who prince and heir to the throne as he is here performs the part of a speculative builder and lets out his houses to Europeans. These houses are built as regularly as those in Park Crescent and are two stories high above the Porte Cochère. They all have French windows with green Venetian shutters and the whole appearance is completely European. The likeness is sustained by carriages of every description filled with smartly dressed women driving through all the streets--a sight never seen at Cairo for the generality of the streets are scarcely wide enough for the passage of donkeys. But the population is still motley and Asiatic. Turbans caps and the scarlet fez loose gowns and embroidered trousers make the streets picturesque. On the other hand crowds of Europeans tourists merchants and tailors are to be seen mingling with the Asiatics; and the effect is singularly varied and animated. The pageant of the French consul-general going to pay his respects to the Viceroy exhibited one of the shows of the place. First came a number of officers of state in embroidered jackets of black cachmere ornamented gaiters and red morocco shoes. Each wore a cimeter an essential part of official costume. Next followed a fine brass band; after them came a large body of infantry in three divisions the whole in heavy marching order. Their discipline and general appearance were striking; they wore the summer dress consisting of a white cotton jacket and trousers with red cloth skull-caps and carried their cartouche-boxes cross-belts and fire-locks in the European manner. The next feature and the prettiest consisted of the Pasha's led horses in number about eighteen all beautiful little Arabs caparisoned with crimson and black velvet and cloth of gold. We repeat the description of one for the sake of tantalizing our European readers with the Egyptian taste in housings. ""The animal was a chestnut horse of perfect form and action. His saddle was of crimson velvet thickly ribbed by gold embroidery. His saddle-cloth was entirely of cloth of gold embossed with bullion and studded with large gems; jewelled pistols were seen in the holsters; the head-piece was variegated red green and blue; embroidered and golden tassels hung from every part."" But the European portion of the scene by no means corresponded to the Oriental display. The French consul followed in a barouche and pair with his _attachés_ and attendants in carriages; but the whole were mean-looking. The French court-dress or any court-dress must appear contemptible in its contrast with the stateliness of this people of silks and shawls jewelled weapons and cloth of gold. Mohammed Ali is after all the true wonder of Egypt. A Turk without a single prejudice of the Turk--an Oriental eager for the adoption of all the knowledge the arts and the comforts of Europe--a Mahometan allowing perfect religious toleration and a despot moderating his despotism by the manliest zeal for the prosperity of his country; he has already raised himself to a reputation far beyond the rank of his sovereignty and will live in the memories of men whenever they quote the names of those who rising above all the difficulties of their original position have proved their title to the mastery of nations. The Pasha affected nothing of the usual privacy or even of the usual pomp of rajahs and sultans. He was constantly seen driving through Alexandria in a low berlin with four horses. The berlin was lined with crimson silk and there squatting on one of the low broad seats sat the Viceroy. Two of his officers generally sat opposite to him and by his side his grandson--a handsome child between eight and nine years old of whom he seems remarkably fond. Like so many other eminent men his stature is below the middle size. His countenance is singularly intelligent his nose aquiline and his eye quick and penetrating. He does not take the trouble to dye his beard as is the custom among Orientalists. He wears it long and thick and in all its snows. Years have so little affected him that he is regarded as a better life than his son Ibrahim--his general and confessedly a man of ability. But his second son Said Pasha the half brother of Ibrahim is regarded as especially inheriting the talents of his father. He is an accomplished man speaks English and French fluently seems to enter into his father's views with great intelligence and exhibits a manliness and ardour of character which augur well for his country. But the appearance of the Pasha is not without its attendant state. In front of his berlin ride a number of attendants caracoling in all directions. Behind the carriage rides his express mounted on a dromedary in readiness to start with despatches. The express is followed by his pipe-bearer; the pipe-bearer followed by a servant mounted on a mule and carrying the light for the Pasha's pipe. The cavalcade is closed by a troop of the officers in waiting mounted on showy horses. At length the day of parting arrived and the travellers embarked on board the Tagus steamer. The view of Alexandria from the sea is stately. A forest of masts a quay of handsome houses and the viceroyal palace forming one side of the harbour tell the stranger that he is approaching the seat of sovereignty. The sea was rough but of the bright blue of the Mediterranean and the steamer cut swiftly through the waves. The vessel was clean and well arranged the weather was fine and the travellers began to feel the freshness and elasticity of European air. At length they arrived at Malta and heard for the first time for years the striking of clocks and the ringing of church-bells. They were at length in Europe. But there is one penalty on the return from the East which always puts the stranger in ill-humour. They were compelled to perform quarantine. This was intolerably tedious expensive and weari
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ome; yet all things come to an end at last and after about a fortnight they were set at liberty. Malta in its soil and climate belongs to Africa--in its population perhaps to Italy--in its garrison and commerce to Europe--and in its manners and habits to the East. It is a medley of the three quarters of the Old World; and for the time a medley of the most curious description. The native carriages peasant dresses shops furniture of the houses and even the houses themselves are wholly unlike any thing that has before met the English eye. Malta in point of religious observances is like what St Paul said of Athens--it is overwhelmingly pious. The church-bells are tolling all day long. Wherever it is possible the cultivation of the ground exhibits the industry of the people. Every spot where earth can be found is covered with some species of produce. Large tracts are employed in the cultivation of the cotton plant--fruit-trees fill the soil--the fig-tree is luxuriant--pomegranate peach apple and plum are singularly productive. Vines cover the walls and the Maltese oranges have a European reputation. The British possession of Malta originated in one of those singular events by which short-sightedness and rapine are often made their own punishers. The importance of Malta as a naval station had long been obvious to England; and when in the revolutionary war the chief hostilities of the war were transferred to the Mediterranean its value as a harbour for the English fleets became incalculable. Yet it was still in possession of the knights; and so far as England was concerned it might have remained in their hands for ever. A national sense of justice would have prevented the seizure of the island however inadequate to defend itself against the navy of England. But Napoleon had no such scruples. In his expedition to Egypt he threw a body of troops on shore at Malta; and having either frightened or bribed its masters or perhaps both plundered the churches of their plate turned out the knights and left the island in possession of a French garrison. Nothing could be less sagacious and less statesmanlike than this act; for by extinguishing the neutrality of the island he exposed it to an immediate blockade by the English. The result was exactly what he ought to have foreseen. An English squadron was immediately dispatched to summon the island; it eventually fell into the hands of the English and now seems destined to remain in English hands so long as we have a ship in the Mediterranean. Malta is a prodigiously pious place according to the Maltese conception of piety. Masses are going on without intermission--they fast twice a-week--religious processions are constantly passing--priests are continually seen in the streets carrying the Host to the sick or dying. When the ceremonial is performed within the house some of the choristers generally remain kneeling outside and are joined by the passers-by. Thus crowds of people are often to be seen kneeling in the streets. The Virgin of course is the chief object of worship; for nothing can be more true than the expression that for one prayer to the Deity there are ten to the Virgin; and confession at once the most childish and the most perilous of all practices is regarded as so essential that those who cannot produce a certificate from the priest of their having confessed at least once in the year are excluded from the sacrament by an act of the severest spiritual tyranny; and if they should die thus excluded their funeral service will not be performed by the priest--an act which implies a punishment beyond the grave. And yet the morals of the Maltese certainly derive no superiority from either the priestly influence or the personal mortification. The travellers now embarked on board the Neapolitan steamer Ercolano--bade adieu to Malta and swept along the shore of Sicily. Syracuse still exhibits in the beauty of its landscape and the commanding nature of its situation the taste of the Greeks in selecting the sites of their cities. The land is still covered with noble ruins and the antiquarian might find a boundless field of interest and knowledge. Catania which was destroyed about two centuries ago at once by an earthquake and an eruption is seated in a country of still more striking beauty. The appearance of the city from the sea is of the most picturesque order. It looks almost encircled by the lava which once wrought such formidable devastation. But the plain is bounded by verdant mountains looking down on a lovely extent of orange and olive groves vineyards and cornfields. But the grand feature of the landscape and the world has nothing nobler is the colossal Etna; its lower circle covered with vegetation--its centre belted with forests--its summit covered with snow--and above all a crown of cloud which so often turns into a cloud of flame. The travellers were fortunate in seeing this showy city under its most showy aspect. It was a gala-day in Catania; flags were flying on all sides--fireworks and illuminations were preparing--an altar was erected on the Cave and all the world were in their holiday costume. As the evening approached the scene became still more brilliant for the fireworks and illuminations then began to have their effect. The evening was soft and Italian the air pure and the sky without a cloud. From the water the scene was fantastically beautiful; the huge altar erected on the shore was now a blaze of light; the range of buildings as they ascended from the shore glittered like diamonds in the distance. Fireworks in great abundance and variety flashed about; and instrumental bands filled the night air with harmony. The equipages which filled the streets were in general elegant and lined with silk; the dresses of the principal inhabitants were in the highest fashion and all looked perfectly at their ease and some looked even splendid. A remark is made that this display of wealth is surprising in what must be regarded as a provincial town. But this remark may be extended to the whole south of Italy. It is a matter of real difficulty to conceive how the Italians contrive to keep up any thing approaching to the appearance which they make in their Corsos and on their feast-days. Without mines to support them as the Spaniards were once supported; without colonies to bring them wealth; without manufactures and without commerce how they contrive to sustain a life of utter indolence yet at the same time of considerable display is a curious problem. It is true that many of them have places at court and flourish on sinecures; it is equally true that their manner of living at home is generally penurious in the extreme; it is also true that gaming and other arts not an atom more respectable are customary to supply this yawning life. Yet still how the majority can exist at all is a natural question which it must require a deep insight into the mysteries of Italian existence to solve. Whatever may be the secret the less Englishmen know on these subjects the better; communion with foreign habits only deteriorates the integrity and purity of our own. On the Continent vice is systematized--virtue is scarcely more than a name; and no worse intelligence has long reached us than the calculation just published in the foreign newspapers that there were 40 000 English now residing in France and 4000 English families in that especial sink of superstition and profligacy Italy. The sail from the Sicilian straits to Naples is picturesque. The Liparis with their volcanic summits on one side--the Calabrian highlands on the other--a succession of rich mountains clothed with all kinds of verdure and of the finest forms; and around the perpetual beauty of the Mediterranean. The travellers hove to at Pizza in the gulf of Euphania the shore memorable for the gallant engagement in which the English troops under Stuart utterly routed the French under Regnier--a battle which made the name of Maida immortal. Pizza has obtained a melancholy notoriety by the death of Murat who was shot by order of a court-martial as an invader and rebel in October 1815. Murat's personal intrepidity and even his _fanfaronade_ excited an interest for him in Europe. But he was a wild rash and reckless instrument of Napoleon's furious and remorseless policy; the commandant of the French army in Spain in 1808 could not complain of military vengeance; and his death by the hands of the royal troops only relieved Europe of the boldest disturber among the fallen followers of the great usurper. The finest view of Naples is the one which the mob of tourists see the last. Its approaches by land are all imperfect--the city is to be seen only from the bay. Floating on the waters which form the most lovely of all foregrounds a vast sheet of crystal a boundless mirror a tissue of purple or any other of the fanciful names which the various hues and aspects of the hour give to this renowned bay the view comprehends the city the surrounding country Posilipo on the left Vesuvius on the right and between them a region of vineyards and vegetation as poetic and luxuriant as poet or painter could desire. The wonders of Pompeii are no longer wonders and people go to see them with something of the same spirit in which the citizens of London saunter to Primrose hill. It was a beggarly little place from the beginning; and the true wonder is how it could ever have found inhabitants or how the inhabitants could ever have found room to eat drink and sleep in. But Herculaneum is of a higher rank. If the Neapolitan Government had any spirit it would demolish the miserable villages above it and lay open this fine old monument of the cleverest though the most corrupt people of the earth to the light of day. In all probability we should learn from it more of the real state of the arts the manners and the feelings of the Greek partially modified by his Italian colonization than by any other record or memorial in existence. In those vaults which still remain closed owing to the indolence or stupidity of the existing generation eaten up as it is by monkery and spending more upon a _fête_ to the Madonna or the liquifying of St Januarius's blood than would lay open half the city there is every probability that some of the most important literature of antiquity still lies buried. Why will not some English company tired of railroad speculations and American stock turn its discharge on Herculaneum pour its gold over the ground exfoliate the city of the dead recover its statues bronzes frescoes and mosaics transplant them to Tower Stairs and sell them by the hands of George Robins for the benefit of the rising generation? This seems their only chance of revisiting the light of day; for the money of all foreign sovereigns goes in fêtes and fireworks new patterns of soldiers' caps and new costumes for the maids of honour. We have now glanced over the general features of these volumes. They are light and lively and do credit to the writer's powers of observation. The result of his details however is to impress on our minds that the ""overland passage"" is not yet fit for any female who is not inclined to ""rough it"" in an extraordinary degree. To any woman it offers great hardships; but to a woman of delicacy the whole must be singularly repulsive. Something is said of the decorations of the work proceeding from the pencil of the lady's husband. Whether the lithographer has done injustice to them we know not; but they seem to us the very reverse of decoration. The adoption too of new modes of spelling the Oriental names is wholly unnecessary. Harem turned into Hharéem--Dervish into Derwéesh--Mameluke into Memlook give no new ideas and only add perplexity to our knowledge of the name. These words with a crowd of others have already been fixed in English orthography by their natural pronunciation; and the attempt to change them always renders their pronunciation--which is after all the only important point--less true to the original. On the whole the ""overland passage"" seems to require immense improvements. But we live in hope; English sagacity and English perseverance will do much any where; and in Egypt they have for their field one of the most important regions of the world. MESMERISM. ""They say miracles are past and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless.""--_All's Well that Ends Well Act II. Scene 3._ From the many crude illiterate and unphilosophical speculations on the subject of mesmerism which the present unwholesome activity of the printing-press has ushered into the world there is one book which stands out in prominent and ornamental relief--a book written by a member of the Church of England a scholar and a gentleman; and the influence of which either for good or for harm is not likely to be ephemeral. Few even of the most incredulous can read with attention the first half of ""Facts in Mesmerism by the Rev. Chauncy Hare Townshend "" of which a second edition has recently appeared without being staggered. The author leads the reader up a gentle slope from facts abnormal it is true but not contradictory to received notions to others deviating a little more from ordinary experience; and thence by a course of calm narrative to still more anomalous incidents; until at length almost unconsciously the incredible seems credible impossibilities and possibilities are confounded and miracles are no longer miraculous. There is much difficulty in dealing with such a book; gentlemanly courtesy which should grant what it would demand and an unavoidable faith in the purity of the author's intentions entirely prevent our treating it as the work of an empiric. It is evident that the author believes what he writes that the facts in mesmerism are facts to him; to those unprepared by previous experience for the fallacies which the enthusiastic temperament is led into the book would be irresistible; to those however accustomed to physical or phsycological investigation the last half of the work does much to unravel the web which the first half has been engaged in weaving. When the author departs from the narrative of facts and endeavours to render those facts consistent with reason and experience we see the one-sided bias of his mind--we see that he is not a judge but an advocate; and the faith which we should repose on the circumstantial narrative of a gentleman becomes changed into the courtesy with which we listen to an honourable but deceived enthusiast. If the utilitarian school has done harm by its hasty attempts to reduce every thing to rule and to the dominion of human reason no stronger proof than this book need be given of the evils to which the opposite extreme of transcendental philosophy has given rise. As an instance of the fallacies to which one-sided philosophic views may lead Mr Townshend says that if asked of what use is the eye if we can see without it he might answer ""To show us how to make a camera obscura."" The case is put illustratively and we are far from wishing to take it literally to the author's disadvantage; but in setting at nought the ordinary and sufficient reasoning on this subject the author himself is obliged to adopt a similar but weaker line of argument. Unfortunate it is that even in philosophy the judicial character is so rare; it is vainly imagined that error may be counteracted by antagonist error; and because neutrality is too often the companion of impotence impartiality is supposed to be synonymous with neutrality. It will be seen from the above that Mr Townshend has failed to convince us that all the ""facts in mesmerism"" are facts; and certainly if he has failed the herd of peripatetic lecturers[3] on the so-called science are not likely to have succeeded; but although unconvinced of the marvellous we are by no means indisposed to believe some of the abnormal phenomena of mesmerism. We have witnessed several mesmeric exhibitions--we have never seen any effect produced which was contradictory to the possible of human experience in which collusion or delusion was fairly negatived. We insist on our right to doubt to disbelieve. The more startling the proposition the more rigorous should be the proof; we have never seen the tests which are applied to the most trifling novelty in physical science applied to mesmeric _clairvoyance_ and withstood. The advocates of it challenge enquiry in print but they shrink from or sink under experiment. In endeavouring to analyse the work before us and to examine generally the phenomena of mesmerism we shall do our utmost to avoid the vices of partial advocacy which we censure; we moreover agree with Mr Townshend that ridicule is not the weapon to be used. Satire when on the side of the majority is persecution; it is striking from a vantage ground--fair perhaps when the individual contends with the mass as when an author writes to expose the fallacies of social fashion; but unfair and very frequently unsuccessful when directed against partially developed truths or even against such phenomena as we believe mesmerism presents viz. novel and curious psychical truths o'erclouded with the dense errors of sometimes enthusiasm sometimes knavery. We shall soberly examine the subject because we think that much good may be done by its investigation. The really skilful and judicious steer clear of it from a fear of compromising their credit for commonsense; and while the caution necessarily attendant upon habitual scientific studies dissuades the best men from meddling with that which may blight their hardly-earned laurels the public is left to be swayed to and fro by an under-current of fallacious half-truths far more seductive and dangerous than absolute falsehoods. We cannot undertake to say thus far is true and thus far false;--to mark out the actual limits of true mesmeric phenomena demands the very difficult and detailed enquiries which for the reasons just mentioned have been hitherto withheld;--but we think we shall be able to succeed in showing that though there be much error there is some truth and truth of sufficient importance to merit a calm and careful investigation. We may class the phenomena of mesmerism as asserted by its professors as follows:-- 1st. Sleep or coma induced by external agency (partly mental partly physical.) 2d. Somnambulism or as called by Mr Townshend sleep-waking; _i.e._ certain faculties rendered torpid while others are sensitive. 3d. Insensibility to pain and other external _stimuli_. 4th. Physical attraction to the mesmeriser and repulsion from others; community of sensation with the mesmeriser. 5th. Clairvoyance or the power of perception without the use of the usual organs; and second-sight or the power of prediction respecting the mesmeric state and remedial agencies. 6th. Phreno-mesmerism or the connexion between phrenology and mesmerism. 7th. Curative effects. We believe these categories will include all the leading phenomena of mesmerism. We purpose to give instances of these partly derived from our own experience and partly from the book of Mr Townshend or other the best sources to which we can have recourse; to state fearlessly what we believe may be true and what we entirely disbelieve; and then to examine the arguments by which the reason of the public has been assailed and in many cases rendered captive. First then as to the power of induced coma we will relate an instance which came under our own observation and which serves to demonstrate that a power may be exercised by one human being over another which will produce a comatose or cataleptic state. In the Christmas week of the year 1842 we dined at a friend's house with a party of eight (numeric perfection for a dinner-party according to the ingenious author of the _Original_.) In the evening Mackay's book on popular delusions being on the drawing-room table some one asked if the author had treated of mesmerism. Upon this one of the party who had recently returned from London--a man who had led a studious life and of a highly nervous temperament--said he had recently witnessed a mesmeric exhibition and would undertake to mesmerise any one present. Upon this two or three ladies volunteered as patients; and he commenced experimenting upon a lady of some twenty-five years old whom he had known intimately from childhood clever and well read but rather imaginative. To make the thing more ridiculous he knelt on both knees and commenced making passes with both hands slowly before her eyes telling her whenever she took her eyes off to look fixedly at him and keeping a perfectly grave face when every body around was laughing unreservedly. After this had endured for some three minutes the lady's eyes gradually closed she fell forwards and was only prevented from farther falling by being caught by the mesmeriser. He shook her and in rather a rough manner brought her to her senses; then suspicious lest she had been purposely deceiving him questioned her seriously as to whether her sleep were feigned or real. She assured him that it was not simulated that the sensation was irresistible different from that of ordinary sleep and by no means unpleasant; but that the only disagreeable part was the being roused. Upon this the gentleman declared that he knew nothing of mesmerism and that had he believed there was any thing in it he would not have attempted the joke. Another lady present married and having a family was now most anxious to have the experiment repeated upon her. She said she had before sat to an experienced mesmeriser who had failed and she was still incredulous and believed that M---- had merely given way to an imaginative temperament. It required considerable persuasion to induce the gentleman who had before operated to try any more experiments. He protested that he knew nothing about it that he had once seen a person said to be in the mesmeric state; but that if he succeeded again in inducing coma he knew not at all how to awake the patient. Curiously enough he was instructed in the manipulation by the sceptical patient who had previously seen public mesmeric exhibitions. After some further persuasion and with the permission of the lady's husband who was present he commenced again the same passes as with the former patient the only difference being that he was in this case sitting instead of kneeling. The patient kept constantly bursting into fits of laughter and as constantly apologising telling him that his gravity of face was irresistible. Of the other persons present some laughed others were too much terrified to laugh but they kept up a constant running fire of comment satirical and serious upon the mesmeriser and mesmerisee. In four or five minutes the fits of laughter of the latter assumed a rather unnatural character. It was evident she forced herself to laugh in spite of the strongest disinclination and in a minute or two more she fixed into a state of ghastly catalepsy the eyes wide open but the lids fixed the features all rigid (except the lower lip which was convulsed ) and pale as a corpse. The bystanders now much frightened interfered and laid hold of the mesmeriser. After some time water being given her to drink she came to herself and appeared not to have suffered from the experiment. Notwithstanding the external difference of the case from the first she described her sensations as the same; viz. a sleep differing from ordinary sleep pleasing and irresistible but the rousing very disagreeable. The lady's husband now insisted on being operated on himself. This was done and entirely without success. Another lady was also experimented on with no success; at least she said she felt sleepy but nothing more which was not extraordinary as it was now getting late. When questioned as to what means he had used the mesmeriser said he had done nothing but stare steadily at the patients making them also look fixedly at him and move his hands slowly and in uniform directions his instructor in these manoeuvres having been Tyrone Power in the farce of _His Last Legs_. He stated that soon after the commencement of the experiment he felt an almost irresistible tendency to go on with it; but whether this resulted from a conviction that he was exercising some unknown influence or from mere experimental curiosity he would not undertake to say--""this only was the witchcraft he had used."" The result was to all present conclusive as to the production of some effect inexplicable upon received theories. The second case defied simulation and we believe it was equally removed from hysteria. The patient was a strong-minded person of a temperament neither nervous nor hysterical to all appearance perfectly calm except when overcome by a sense of the ridiculous and before the experiment obstinately incredulous. It was certainly a strong case. Any hypothesis to account for it would be hasty; but one point suggests itself to us as arising from the remark made by the mesmeriser viz. that the only influence he was conscious of using was that of a fixed determined stare. This may possibly afford some key to a more philosophical examination of these curious phenomena. The fabled effects of the basilisk the serpent and the evil eye have probably all some facts for their foundation. The effect of the human eye in arresting the attacks of savage animals is better authenticated and its influence upon domestic animals may be more easily made the subject of experimental proof. Let any one gaze steadily at a dog half dozing at the fireside--the animal will after a short time become restless and if the stare be continued will quit his resting-place and either shrink into a corner or come forward and caress the person staring. How much of this may be due to the habitual fixed look of stern command with which censure or punishment is accompanied it may be difficult to say; but the fact undoubtedly is that some influence either innate or induced is exercised. Again those who in society habitually converse with an averted glance we generally consider wanting in moral force. We doubt the man who doubts himself. On the other hand if in conversation the ordinary look of awakened interest be prolonged and the eyes are kept fixed for a longer period than usual an embarrassed and somewhat painful feeling is the result; an indistinct impulse makes it difficult to avert the eye and at the same time a consciousness of that impulse is an inducement to avert it. We lay no undue stress upon these phenomena; but they are phenomena and fair subjects for scientific investigation. An explanation of mesmerism has been sought in the physical effect of the stare alone; thus it is said that if a party look intently at a prominent object fixed to his forehead he will in time be thrown into mesmeric coma. There is more in it we think than this; there is an influence exerted by that nearest approach to the intercourse of soul--""the gaze into each other's eyes""--the extent and _normæ_ of which are unknown. The schoolboy's experiment of staring out of countenance is not so bad a test of moral power as it would at first sight be deemed to be. The second case we shall relate is also one at which we were personally present but one in which both mesmeriser and mesmerisee were if we may use the term adepts--the former a gentleman of fortune and education; the latter a half-educated young man who had been in service as a footman. We shall designate them as Mr M---- and G----. At this ""_soirée magnétique_"" G. was brought in in the sleep-waking state walking or rather staggering and holding the arm of Mr M. his eyes to all appearance perfectly closed and his gait and gestures those of a drunken man. After some little time he was detached from the mesmeriser and followed him to different parts of the room. When in proximity Mr M. raised his hand the patient's hands followed it his legs the same while they receded from the hands and legs of any other of the party present. Some of these effects were certainly curious and not easy of explanation. The mesmeriser would walk or stand behind the patient and waving his hands somewhat after the manner of the cachuca dancer the hands of the patient followed his with tolerable but not unerring precision. We determined to bear in mind these effects when some other phenomena were exhibiting and try whether similar results would ensue when the attention of the parties was devoted to other subjects. When the attention of every body present was intently strained upon some experiments which we shall presently mention we approached as though watching the experiment very near to G. and frequently without his at all flinching; at other times we were told by Mr M. not to come too near and once in particular we observed that having had one knee and toe in close juxtaposition almost in contact with the patient's we retained it so for several seconds before he withdrew his leg. These facts which would probably be explained by mesmerists on the ground of the whole power of sensation being concentrated upon one object rendered however the experiments upon mesmeric attraction inconclusive. Passing over several experiments such as the mesmerisation of water showing community of taste in which after some hesitation the patient selected from three or four glasses of water one which had been tasted by the mesmeriser we come to the most important point viz. the clairvoyance. One of the party stood behind the patient and he was asked how the former was dressed; his reply after some hesitation was ""not over nice--he has a queerish waist-coat on "" (it was a plain white.) A book was then taken off the table--one of the annuals. Mr M. held his hands tightly over the eyes of G. and the title-page was presented open opposite the covered eyes of the latter; after struggling and moving his head about for some time just as if endeavouring to catch a glimpse of the book he mentioned the place of publication and afterwards the title. Other experiments were proposed such as holding a book behind the party or to different parts of his body; but of these some did not succeed others were not tried. To obviate the doubt of the book having been previously seen we were requested to write in large letters a word on a card such as a slightly educated person could read and to present it looking at the same time as closely as we wished at the eyes of G. the lids of which were as before apparently tightly held down by Mr M. We did so: the word was _Peru_; and after some struggles the word was read certainly without an exposure of any part of the eye to us. We now proposed as likely to be more satisfactory to write another word on a similar card and instead of the hands of the mesmeriser being held over the eyes to place a piece of thin paper over the card. This it was said was useless and would not succeed as the influence would not be transmitted through the person of the mesmeriser; we then proposed that he (the mesmeriser) should place his hand over the card; in short that the card should be blinded and not the eye. Our reason will be obvious. According to the known laws of vision viz. the convergence of all the rays of light to a focus in the eye were the least part of this exposed vision though imperfect of every object within the visual angle would follow; but were the object covered a partial opening would assist vision but little and only _quoad_ the part exposed. The experiment thus performed would have been optically conclusive; and we cannot see according to any of the mesmeric hypotheses any mesmeric reason why it should not have succeeded: it was however declined. We are obliged to omit many other points in this evening's proceedings to avoid prolixity. Though many facts were curious and certainly not easy of explanation by ordinary means there was nothing which defied it; every _experimentum crucis_ failed and we of course remained unconvinced. The third case which we shall instance was one at which we were also personally present. Having been invited to view the mesmeric experiments of Dr B. we arrived at his house with a friend at about ten in the morning and having been duly introduced to the Doctor in one room were instantly ushered into another when a scene presented itself certainly one of the most extraordinary we have ever witnessed. There were seven females in the room and not one man. On a sofa near the fire-place a young girl sat upright supported by cushions her eyes were fixed and opposite her stood a middle-aged woman slowly moving her hands before the eyes of the patient. On the hearth-rug near this lay a woman covered with a coarse blanket. She appeared sound asleep was breathing heavily
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and looked deadly pale. A third patient was seated on a chair also undergoing the mesmeric passes from another woman; and on the opposite side of the room from the fire-place two others were seated on chairs with their heads hanging on their shoulders and eyes closed. Description cannot convey the mystic and fearful appearance of this room and its inmates to the first glance of the unexpectant spectator. Not a word was spoken; the solemn silence the immobility and deathlike pallor of the objects was awful--they were as breathing corpses. The clay-cold nuns evoked from their tombs presented not a more unearthly spectacle to Robert of Normandy. The free-and-easy expressions of Dr B. however which first broke the silence instantly dissolved the spell. ""That woman "" he said pointing to her on the floor ""has a disease of the liver and her left lung is somewhat affected. I think we shall do her good. She is now getting into the clairvoyant state. She can see into the next room."" He then stooped over her and said ""How are you Mary?"" She replied ""I have the pain in my side very bad."" He approached his hand to the part affected and again withdrew it several times opening the fingers as it neared and closing them as it receded as though he would gently extract the pain. He again asked her how she felt; she said better. He then pointed to the girl on the sofa and said ""She is deaf and dumb. We cannot get her asleep."" He subsequently pointed out other of the patients and mentioned their ailments. These and the sombre darkness of the room accounted to us for the unnatural paleness of the patients. Dr B. next asked one of two sleeping patients to follow him into another room. We accompanied him and his experiments upon the female whom we shall call S. commenced. First of all he placed her hands with the palms together and making with his fingers motions the converse of those made in the former case asked us to endeavour to separate them. We did and _instantly succeeded_ with no more effort than would be expected were any woman of average strength purposely to hold her hands together. ""Ah!"" said the Doctor ""not an easy matter is it?"" We made no reply. He then walked having on a pair of loudly-creaking boots to the other end of the room and looked sternly at the patient. She after a second or two followed him and sat on the same chair. He then said ""I willed her to come to me."" He next asked our friend to hold the patient's hands and ask her a question _mentally_ without expressing it. After some little time she frowned and endeavoured to withdraw her hands. _Dr._ ""Ah she does not like your question! Ask her another."" After some time she burst out into a fit of laughter. _Dr._ ""Ah you have tickled her fancy now!"" What the question asked by our friend was did not transpire. This experiment having been so successful we were asked to do the same. Not without a feeling of shame we complied; and taking hold of the patient's hands we mentally asked her the question--""Are you single or married?"" which question did not appear to us to involve any metaphysical subtilty. However after struggling and frowning for some time she said with a sort of hysteric gasp ""He's a funny man!"" _Dr B._ ""Ah she can't make you out!"" We are not aware to what feature in our character the epithet _funny_ will apply; but probably our self-esteem will not permit us justly to appreciate the appositeness of this somewhat ambiguous epithet. So much however for the power of divination with which the mesmeriser seemed perfectly satisfied. Dr B. now showed us a camomile flower put it in his mouth and chewed it. The patient made a face as if tasting something disagreeable and in answer to his questions said it was bitter. He then did the same with a lozenge; and after some time required according to the doctor for the removal of the bitter taste she said she tasted _lozenges_. _Dr B._ ""There you see the community of taste."" Dr B. now touched her forehead a little above and outside of the eyebrows; she burst out laughing. _Dr B._ ""I touched the organ of gaiety."" He then did the same with the organs of music; she set up an old English ditty. Then touching these organs with one hand and placing the other on the top of her head she instantly changed the ballad to a doleful psalm-tune. Affection philo-progenitiveness were in turn touched the doctor stating aloud beforehand what organ he was going to excite. We should weary our readers with a detail of the platitudes which ensued. She was asked what was going on in the next room and said ""Ah Sophy may try but cannot get the girl asleep!"" A few other experiments such as suspending chairs on her arms &c. followed and we returned to the next room where the deaf and dumb girl was found _fast asleep_. Upon being asked how long she had been so the female mesmeriser replied ""Just after you left the room."" No comment was made upon the answer of the clairvoyante patient above given which appeared to have been forgotten by all but ourselves. Had we been anxious to give a factitious interest to our narrative we should certainly have avoided a description of the above cases which could not at the same time be made to possess graphic interest and to relate accurately the real facts as presented; but we have selected them as having happened to ourselves and as being shown not by public exhibitors but by parties both holding a highly respectable station in life and being as we believe among the best examples to be found of English mesmerisers. Although invited as sceptical spectators and the experiments being in nowise confidential we feel that the exhibition not being public we have no right to mention the names of the parties. It will be obvious that the three exhibitions we have selected differed much in character. The first as we have stated to our minds defied collusion or self-deception. The second was open to either construction though from the character of the parties we should think collusion was in the highest degree improbable; and the experiments although not conclusive were very curious and some of them not easy of explanation. In the third case transparent and absurd as the experiments seemed to us and as the account of them will probably appear to our readers the doctor from his position and practice must have been seriously injured by his mesmeric experiments; and therefore there is fair reason to believe that he was not a party to a fraud which must have been objectless and professionally injurious to him; but how a man of experience could be carried away by such flimsy devices is a psychological curiosity almost as marvellous as the asserted phenomena of mesmerism. We are aware that in giving the above accounts of experiments which we have personally witnessed our authority being anonymous is of no great weight. We state them to avoid the charge of writing on what we have not seen and to show that we do not attempt unfairly to decry mesmerism without seeing it fairly tried; if we felt justified in giving the names of the parties these instances would be much more conclusive. Nearly all the cases in Mr Townshend's book are given without the names of parties probably for similar reasons to those which have induced us to withhold them. The above cases supply instances of all the phenomena included in our categories except those of insensibility to pain powers of prediction and the curative effects. Having never personally seen cases of this description we shall select examples of them from the book of Mr Townshend and others; but before we give these instances we will extract from Mr Townshend's book his account of the first mesmeric sitting at which he was present. This will give the reader a fair idea of his attractive style and of his state of mind previously to witnessing for the first time mesmeric effects. ""If to have been an unbeliever in the very existence of the state in question can add weight to my testimony my reader should he also be a heretic on the subject may be assured that his incredulity in this respect can scarcely be greater than mine was up to the winter of 1836. That at the time I mention I should be both ignorant and prejudiced on the score of mesmerism will not surprise those who are aware of its long proscription in England and the want of information upon it which till very lately prevailed there. ""In the course of a residence at Antwerp a valued friend detailed to me some extraordinary results of mesmerism to which he had been an eyewitness. I could not altogether discredit the evidence of one whom I knew to be both observant and incapable of falsehood; but I took refuge in the supposition that he had been ingeniously deceived. Reflecting however that to condemn before I had examined was as unjust to others as it was unsatisfactory to myself I accepted readily the proposition of my friend to introduce me to an acquaintance of his in Antwerp who had learned the practice of the mesmeric art from a German physician. We waited together on Mr K---- the mesmeriser (an agreeable and well-informed person ) and stated to him that the object of our visit was to prevail on him to exhibit to us a specimen of his mysterious talent. To this he at first replied that he was rather seeking to abjure a renown that had become troublesome--half the world viewing him as a conjurer and the other half as a getter-up of strange comedies; 'but ' he kindly added 'if you will promise me a strictly private meeting I will this evening do all in my power to convince you that mesmerism is no delusion.' This being agreed upon with a stipulation that the members of my own family should be present on the occasion I to remove all doubt of complicity from every mind proposed that Mr K---- should mesmerise a person who should be a perfect stranger to him. To this he readily acceded; and now the only difficulty was to find a subject for our experiment. At length we thought of a young person in the middling class of life who had often done fine work for the ladies of our family and of whose character we had the most favourable knowledge. Her mother was Irish her father who had been dead some time had been a Belgian and she spoke English Flemish and French with perfect facility. Her widowed parent was chiefly supported by her industry: and in the midst of trying circumstances her temper was gay and cheerful and her health excellent. That she had never seen Mr K---- we were sure; and of her probity and incapacity for feigning we had every reason to be convinced. With our request conveyed to her through one of the ladies of our family for whom she had conceived a warm affection she complied without hesitation. Not being of a nervous though of an excitable temperament she had no fears whatever about what she was to undergo. On the contrary she had rather a desire to know what the sensation of being mesmerised might be. Of the phenomena which were to be developed in the mesmeric state she knew absolutely nothing; thus all deceptive imitation of them on her part was rendered impossible. ""About nine o'clock in the evening our party assembled for what in foreign phrase is called 'une séance magnétique.' Anna M---- our mesmerisee was already with us. Mr K---- arrived soon after and was introduced to his young patient whose name we had purposely avoided mentioning to him in the morning; not that we feared imposition on either hand but that we were determined by every precaution to prevent any one from alleging that imposition had been practised. Utterly unknown as the parties were to each other a game played by two confederates was plainly out of the question. Almost immediately after the entrance of Mr K---- we proceeded to the business of the evening. By his directions Mademoiselle M---- placed herself in an arm-chair at one end of the apartment while he occupied a seat directly facing hers. He then took each of her hands in one of his and sat in such a manner as that the knees and feet of both should be in contact. In this position he remained for some time motionless attentively regarding her with eyes as unwinking as the lidless orbs which Coleridge has attributed to the Genius of destruction. We had been told previously to keep utter silence and none of our circle--composed of some five or six persons--felt inclined to transgress this order. To me novice as I was at that time in such matters it was a moment of absorbing interest: that which I had heard mocked at as foolishness that which I myself had doubted as a dream was perhaps about to be brought home to my conviction and established for ever in my mind as a reality. Should the present trial prove successful how much of my past experience must be remodelled and reversed! ""Convinced as I have since been to what valuable conclusions the phenomena of mesmerism may conduct the enquirer never perhaps have I been more impressed with the importance of its pretensions than at that moment when my doubts of their validity were either to be strengthened or removed. Concentrating my attention upon the motionless pair I observed that Mademoiselle M---- seemed at her ease and occasionally smiled or glanced at the assembled party; but her eyes as if by a charm always reverted to those of her mesmeriser and at length seemed unable to turn away from them. Then a heaviness as of sleep seemed to weigh down her eyelids and to pervade the expression of her countenance; her head drooped on one side; her breathing became regular; at length her eyes closed entirely and to all appearance she was calmly asleep in just seven minutes from the time when Mr K---- first commenced his operations. I should have observed that as soon as the first symptoms of drowsiness were manifested the mesmeriser had withdrawn his hands from those of Mademoiselle M---- and had commenced what are called the mesmeric passes conducting his fingers slowly downward without contact along the arm of the patient. For about five minutes Mademoiselle M---- continued to repose tranquilly when suddenly she began to heave deep sighs and to turn and toss in her chair. She then called out 'Je me trouve malade! Je m'étouffe!' and rising in a wild manner she continued to repeat 'Je m'étouffe!' evidently labouring under an oppression of the breath. But all this time her eyes remained fast shut and at the command of her mesmeriser she took his arm and walked still with her eyes shut to the table. Mr K---- then said 'Voulez-vous que je vous éveille?'--'Oui oui ' she exclaimed; 'je m'étouffe.' Upon this Mr K---- again operated with his hands but in a different set of movements and taking out his handkerchief agitated the air round the patient who forthwith opened her eyes and stared about the room like a person awaking from sleep. No traces of her indisposition however appeared to remain; and soon shaking off all drowsiness she was able to converse and laugh as cheerfully as usual. On being asked what she remembered of her sensations she said that she had only a general idea of having felt unwell and oppressed: that she had wished to open her eyes but could not they felt as if lead were on them. Of having walked to the table she had no recollection. Notwithstanding her having suffered she was desirous of being again mesmerised and sat down fearlessly to make a second trial. This time it was longer before her eyes closed and she never seemed to be reduced to more than a state of half unconsciousness. When the mesmeriser asked her if she slept she answered in the tone of utter drowsiness 'Je dors et je ne dors pas.' This lasted some time when Mr K---- declared that he was afraid of fatiguing his patient (and probably his spectators too ) and that he should disperse the mesmeric fluid. To do so however seemed not so easy a matter as the first time when he awoke the sleep-waker; with difficulty she appeared to rouse herself; and even after having spoken a few words to us and risen from her chair she suddenly relapsed into a state of torpor and fell prostrate to the ground as if perfectly insensible. Mr K---- entreating us not to be alarmed raised her up--placed her in a chair and supported her head with his hand. It was then that I distinctly recognised one of the asserted phenomena of mesmerism. The head of Mademoiselle M---- followed every where with unerring certainty the hand of her mesmeriser and seemed irresistibly attracted to it as iron to the loadstone. At length Mr K---- succeeded in thoroughly awaking his patient who on being interrogated respecting her past sensations said that she retained a recollection of her state of semi-consciousness during which she much desired to have been able to sleep wholly; but of her having fallen to the ground or of what had passed subsequently she remembered nothing whatever. To other enquiries she replied that the drowsy sensation which first stole over her was rather of an agreeable nature and that it was preceded by a slight tingling which ran down her arms in the direction of the mesmeriser's fingers. Moreover she assured us that the oppression she had at one time felt was not fanciful but real--not mental but bodily and was accompanied by a peculiar pain in the region of the heart which however ceased immediately on the dispersion of the mesmeric sleep. These statements were the rather to be relied upon inasmuch as the girl's character was neither timid nor imaginative.""--(P. 38-42.) We would willingly give the whole of the second sitting of the same patient in which were developed the phenomena of 1st ""Attraction towards the mesmeriser."" 2d ""A knowledge of what the mesmeriser ate and drank indicating community of sensation with him."" 3d ""An increased quickness of perception."" 4th ""A development of the power of vision."" Our space will not permit us to give these in detail. We shall therefore give an extract from the third sitting where the clairvoyance was more decidedly developed and the impressions of Mr Townshend on the phenomena he had witnessed are stated. ""Upon first passing into the mesmeric state Theodore seemed absolutely insensible to every other than the mesmeriser's voice. Some of our party went close to him and shouted his name; but he gave no tokens of hearing us until Mr K---- taking our hands made us touch those of Theodore and his own at the same time. This he called putting us '_en rapport_' with the patient. After this Theodore seemed to hear our voices equally with that of the mesmeriser but by no means to pay an equal attention to them. ""With regard to the development of vision the eyes of the patient appeared to be firmly shut during the whole sitting and yet he gave the following proofs of accurate sight:-- ""Without being guided by our voices (for in making the experiment we kept carefully silent ) he distinguished between the different persons present and the colours of their dresses. He also named with accuracy various objects on the table such as a miniature picture a drawing by Mr K---- &c. &c. ""When the mesmeriser left him and ran quickly amongst the chairs tables &c. of the apartment he followed him running also and taking the same turns without once coming in contact with any thing that stood in his way. ""He told the hour accurately by Mr K----'s watch. ""He played several games at dominoes with the different members of our family as readily as if his eyes had been perfectly open. ""On these occasions the lights were placed in front of him and he arranged his dominoes on the table with their backs to the candles in such a manner that when I placed my head in the same position as his own I could scarcely through the shade distinguish one from the other. Yet he took them up unerringly never hesitated in his play generally won the game and announced the sum of the spots on such of his dominoes as remained over at the end before his adversaries could count theirs. One of our party a lady who had been extremely incredulous on the subject of mesmerism stooped down so as to look under his eyelids all the time he played and declared herself convinced and satisfied that his eyes were perfectly closed. It was not always however that Theodore could be prevailed upon to exercise his power of vision. Some words written by the mesmeriser of a tolerable size being shown to him he declared as Mademoiselle M---- did on another occasion that it was too small for him to distinguish. ""Towards the conclusion of the sitting the patient seemed much fatigued and going to the sofa arranged a pillow for himself comfortably under his head; after which he appeared to pass into a state more akin to natural sleep than his late sleep-waking. Mr K---- allowed him to repose in this manner for a short time and then awoke him by the usual formula. A very few motions of the hand were sufficient to restore him to full consciousness and to his usual character. The fatigue of which he had so lately complained seemed wholly to have passed away together with the memory of all that he had been doing for the last hour. ""I must now pause to set before my reader my own state of mind respecting the facts I had witnessed. I perceived that important deductions might be drawn from them and that they bore upon disputed questions of the highest interest to man connected with the three great mysteries of being--life death and immortality. On these grounds I was resolved to enter upon a consistent course of enquiry concerning them; though as yet while all was new and wonderful to my apprehension I could scarcely do more than observe and verify phenomena. It was however necessary that my views though for the present bounded should be distinct. I had already asked respecting mesmeric sleep-waking 'Does it exist?' and to this question the cases which had fallen under my notice and which were above suspicion seemed to answer decidedly in the affirmative: but it was essential still further to enquire 'Does it exist so generally as to be pronounced a part--though a rarely developed part--of the human constitution?' In order to determine this it was requisite to observe how far individuals of different ages stations and temperaments were capable of mesmeric sleep-waking. I resolved therefore by experiments on as extensive a scale as possible to ascertain whether the state in question were too commonly exhibited to be exceptional or idiosyncratic. Again the two cases that I had witnessed coincided in characteristics; but could this coincidence be accidental? It might still be asked 'Were the phenomena displayed uncertain mutable such as might never occur again; or were they orderly invariable the growth of fixed causes which being present implied their presence also?' In fine was mesmeric sleep-waking not only a state but entitled to rank as a distinct state clearly and permanently characterized; and as such set apart from all other abnormal conditions of men? On its pretensions to be so considered rested I conceived its claims to notice and peculiar investigation: to decide this point was therefore one of my chief objects; and respecting it I was determined to seek that certainty which can only be attained by a careful comparison of facts occurring under the same circumstances. To sum up my intentions I desired to show that man through external human influence is capable of a species of sleep-waking different from the common not only inasmuch as it is otherwise produced but as it displays quite other characteristics when produced.""--(P. 49-52.) In the subsequent portions of the book similar and still more wondrous phenomena are produced by Mr Townshend. He mesmerises several Cambridge friends. He procures two patients designated by the names of Anna M---- and E---- A---- who are said to be very susceptible of the mesmeric state and sight or mesmeric perception is manifested in a dark closet with large towels over the head through the abdomen through cards books &c. &c. Anna M. is mesmerised unconsciously when in a separate house from the mesmeriser; they predict remedies for themselves and others read thoughts [4] state how they and others can be further mesmerised and demesmerised. As an instance of the curative effects and the power of predicting remedies we cite the following:-- ""Accident threw in my way a lad of nineteen years of age a Swiss peasant who for three years had nearly lost the faculty of sight. His eyes betrayed but little appearance of disorder and the gradual decay of vision which he had experienced was attributed to a paralysis of the optic nerve resulting from a scrofulous tendency in the constitution of the patient. The boy whom I shall call by his Christian name of Johann was intelligent mild-tempered extremely sincere and extremely unimaginative. He had never heard of mesmerism till I spoke of it before him and I then only so far enlightened him on the subject as to tell him that it was something which might perhaps benefit his sight. At first he betrayed some little reluctance to submit himself to experiment asking me if I were going to perform some very painful operation upon him; but when he found that the whole affair consisted in sitting quiet and letting me hold his hands he no longer felt any apprehension. ""Before beginning to mesmerise I ascertained with as much precision as possible the patient's degree of blindness. I found that he yet could see enough to perceive any large obstacle that stood in his way. If a person came directly before him he was aware of the circumstance but he could not at all distinguish whether the individual were man or woman. I even put this to the proof. A lady of our society stood before him and he addressed her as 'mein herr ' (sir.) In bright sunshine he could see a white object or the colour scarlet when in a considerable mass but made mistakes as to the other colours. Between small objects he could not at all discriminate. I held before him successively a book a box and a bunch of keys and he could not distinguish between them. In each case he saw something he said like a shadow but he could not tell what. He could not read one letter of the largest print by means of eyesight; but he was very adroit in reading by touch in books prepared expressly for the blind running his fingers over the raised characters with great rapidity and thus acquiring a perception of them. Whatever trifling degree of vision he possessed could only be exercised on very near objects: those which were at a distance from him he perceived not at all. I ascertained that he could not see a cottage at the end of our garden not more than a hundred yards off from where we were standing. ""These points being satisfactorily proved I placed my patient in the proper position and began to mesmerise. Five minutes had scarcely elapsed when I found that I produced a manifest effect upon the boy. He began to shiver at regular intervals as if affected by a succession of slight electric shocks. By degrees this tremour subsided the patient's eyes gradually closed and in about a quarter of an hour he replied to an enquiry on my part--'Ich schlaffe aber nicht ganz tief'--(I sleep but not soundly.) upon this I endeavoured to deepen the patient's slumber by the mesmeric passes when suddenly he exclaimed--his eyes being closed all the time--'I see--I see your hand--I see your head!' In order to put this to the proof I held my head in various positions which he followed with his finger; again he told me accurately whether my hand was shut or open. 'But ' he said on being further questioned 'I do not see distinctly.--I see as it were sunbeams (sonnen strahlen) which dazzle me.' 'Do you think ' I asked 'that mesmerism will do you good?' 'Ja freilich ' (yes certainly ) he replied; 'repeated often enough it would cure me of my blindness.' ""Afraid of fatiguing my patient I did not trouble him with experiments; and his one o'clock dinner being ready for him I dispersed his magnetic sleep. After he had dined I took him into the garden. As we were passing before some bee-hives he suddenly stopped and seemed to look earnestly at them: 'What is it you see?' I asked. 'A row of bee-hives ' he replied directly and continued--'Oh! this is wonderful!--I have not seen such things for three years.' Of course I was extremely surprised for though I had imagined that a long course of mesmerisation might benefit the boy I was entirely unprepared for so rapid an improvement in his vision. My chief object had been to develop the faculty of sight in sleep-waking; and I can assure my readers that this increase of visual power in the natural state was to me a kind of miracle as astonishing as it was unsought. My poor patient was in a state of absolute enchantment. He grinned from ear to ear and called out 'Das ist prächtig!' (This is charming!) Two ladies now passed before us when he said 'Da sind zwei fräuenzimmer!' (There go two ladies!) 'How dressed?' I asked. 'Their clothes are of a dark colour ' he replied. This was true. I took my patient to a summer-house that commanded an extensive prospect. I fear almost to state it but nevertheless it is perfectly true that he saw and pointed out the situation of a village in the valley below us. I then brought Johann back to the house when in the presence of several members of my family he recognised at first sight several small objects (a flowerpot I remember amongst other things ) and not only saw a little girl one of our farmers' children sitting on the steps of a door but also mentioned that she had a round cap on her head. In the house I showed Johann a book which it will be remembered he could not distinguish before mesmerisation and he named the object. But though making great efforts he could not read one letter in the book. Having ascertained this I once more threw Johann into the mesmeric state with a view to discover how far a second mesmerisation could strengthen his natural eyesight. As soon as I had awaked him at the interval of half an hour I presented him with the same book (one of Marryat's novels ) when he accurately told me the larger letters of the title-page which were as follows--'Outward Bound.' Johann belonging to an institution of the blind situated at some distance from our residence I had unhappily only the opportunity of mesmerising him three times subsequently to the above successful trial. The establishment also of which he was a member changed masters; and its new director having prejudices on the score of mesmerism there were difficulties purposely thrown in the way of my following up that which I had so auspiciously begun.""--(Pp. 176-179) Many of these cases of clairvoyance given by Mr Townshend appear on the face of them ambiguous; thus the reading is said to be effected with difficulty and imperfectly the difficulty to be increased by the superposition of obstacles. Others as related certainly admit of no explanation by deductions from ordinary experience. All we can say of them therefore is that we have fairly sought to see such phenomena and have never succeeded; when we see them and can properly test them we will believe them. But from the internal evidence of the latter portion of Mr Townshend's book which we shall presently discuss we cannot although not doubting his honesty of purpose set our faith upon his experiments and judgment. Mr Townshend gives no account of the phreno-mesmerism or of the surgical operations performed without any evidence of pain during the mesmeric states. We have already related one of the former exhibitions which we think requires no further comment. Viewed abstractedly the attempt to support by the assumed accuracy of one science at best in its infancy and confessedly fallible another still more so is making too large demands upon public credulity to require much counter argument. With regard to the surgical cases they stand on a very different ground; three operations among the most painful of those to which man is ever subjected are alleged to have been performed during the mesmeric state--Madame Plantin amputation of cancerous breast; and James Wombwell and Mary Ann Lakin amputation of the leg above the knee. The case of Wombwell was canvassed at length at the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London; and in that and the other cases there seems to have been no question raised as to the facts of the patients having undergone the operation without the usual evidence of suffering. In Wombwell's case the divided end of the sciatic nerve was purposely (it appears to us very wantonly) touched with the forceps but without any appearance of sensation on the part of the patient. In all these cases the medical men most opposed to mesmerism seem to have admitted the fact and to have
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rested their incredulity on the various cases known to them of parties having borne operations with such fortitude as not to have expressed the usual cries of suffering. In Madame Plantin's case it is stated; that she subsequently confessed to a nurse in an hospital that she felt the full pain but purposely and by great effort kept silent. This confession is however strongly denied by Dr Elliotson and others and does not appear to be clearly substantiated. A professional ""_odium_"" appears to have arisen on the subject; and from the controversial tone of the speaking and writing on both sides it is difficult to get at the truth. We must say however that admitting the facts which the antagonists of mesmerism seem to do we are more inclined to believe the paralysis of nervous sensation by mesmeric influence than that with such inadequate motives as the _patients_ could feel they should have such marvellous self-control as to feign sleep and keep their whole muscular system in a relaxed state while suffering such exquisite pain. Medical men are indeed better judges of the power of endurance and simulation than we can pretend to be; but to make their testimony conclusive they should have witnessed the operation. The elaborate research for causes explanatory of an unseen case lessens the weight of authority which would otherwise be very high. Many other minor cases such as teeth drawn and division of tendons are given; and though we have never had an opportunity of witnessing such effects we must say we think from their benefit to suffering humanity the possibility however remote of their truth deserves more calm and dispassionate enquiry than appears hitherto to have been given them. While doctors however seek to explain by various profound theories the efficient causes of asserted mesmeric cures a member of the Church of England and popular preacher at Liverpool the Rev. Hugh M. Neill M.A. has cut the Gordian knot by a sermon preached at St Jude's Church on April 10th 1842 and published in Nos. 599 and 600 of the _Penny Pulpit_ price twopence. By this sermon it appears to have occurred to the philosophic mind of the reverend divine that mesmeric marvels may be accounted for as accomplished by the direct agency of Satan! Doubtless Satan is as actively at work in this the nineteenth century as in any anterior period of our history; but we are inclined to think the progress of civilization has opened a sufficient number of channels for his ingenuity without rendering it necessary that he should alarm the devout by miraculously interfering to assuage human suffering. We have given above as many instances as our space will permit of the asserted phenomena of mesmerism; and now to return to Mr Townshend's book. In taking a general view of the lines of argument adopted by the author to support the possibility or probability of mesmerism we perceive they are of two sorts essentially different and in some measure inconsistent with each other. 1st It is very properly argued that our whole knowledge of the normal course of nature is derived from experience; that a law is a mere generalization from that experience and is not any thing intrinsically or necessarily true. Thus if the sun were to rise in the west to-morrow instead of in the east it would at first sight appear to be a deviation from natural laws; in other words a miracle. If however the latter circumstance were wanting after the first sensation of the marvellous had subsided the philosopher would enquire whether instead of being a deviation from a law it were not a subordinate instance of some higher law of which the period of history had been too short to give any co-ordinate instances; and were it found by a long course of experience that in every 4000 years a similar retrocession of the earth took place a new law would be established. Applying this to mesmerism it is said our notions of sleep and waking of sight and hearing and of the possible limits and modes of sensation are derived from experience alone; we cannot estimate or understand the _modus agendi_ of a new sensation because we have never experienced it. If then it be proved by the acts of A B or C that they attain cognizance of objects by other means than those which any known organ of sensation will permit you must admit the fact and by degrees its _rationale_ will become supported by the same means as all other truths are supported viz. by habitual experience. Its law is indeed nothing but its constant recurrence under similar circumstances. To take Mr Townshend's own mode of enunciating this-- ""Are we entitled to conclude in any case that because we have not hitherto been able to assign a law to certain operations they are therefore absolutely without law? Are we to assert that the orderly dispositions of the universe are deformed by a monstrous exception; or is it not wiser to believe that our own knowledge is in fault whenever Nature appears inconsistent with herself? Surely we have enough order around us to suggest that all which to us seems chance is 'direction which we cannot see;' that all apparent anomalies are but like those discords which in the most masterly music prepare the transitions from one noble passage to another and are actually essential to the general harmony. In many instances this is not mere conjecture. How much of fancied imperfection and disorder has fled before our investigation! The motions of comets at first appear to offer an exception to the exact arrangements of the universe.--'They traverse all parts of the heavens. Their paths have every possible inclination to the plane of the ecliptic; and unlike the planets the motion of more than half of those which have appeared has been retrograde--that is from east to west.' Yet have we been able to detect the elements of regularity in the midst of all this seeming confusion and to predict with certainty the day the hour and the minute of a comet's return to our region of the sky. ""Experience also shows that apparently insulated and lawless phenomena may not only be reduced to a law but to a well-known law; that many a familiar agent puts on strange disguises; and that events with which in their mazy channels we seem to be unacquainted may be perfectly recognised by us at their source. Thus galvanism and magnetic force are proved by recent discoveries to be only forms of electricity; showing that a fact may be altered not in itself but in the circumstances that surround it and that complexity of development is perfectly consistent with unity of design. Instances like these while they encourage us to enquiry should teach us to believe that all which is needed to vindicate the regularity of nature is a more extended observation on our parts.""--(Pp. 14-15.) This is the highest and safest ground for the advocate of mesmerism to tread; to support himself on this he has only to demonstrate his facts beyond the possibility of a doubt and the truth of the phenomena however inconsistent with previous experience must in the end be admitted. But to support him on this high ground his proof must be demonstrative; he must be able to say--I ask not for faith nor even a balanced mind; but doubt to the utmost examine with the most rigorous scepticism; I stand upon the facts alone; I offer no explanation or at least I make their truth dependent upon no explanation. They are or they are not. I will prove their existence and I will defy you to disprove them. It will not we conceive be denied that one essential attribute of the social mind a jealousy of credence in apparent anomalies is a just and necessary guard upon human knowledge. If mere assertion were believed every succeeding day would upset the knowledge of the preceding day; and however high the character of the assertor of new and abnormal facts may be he must not expect them to be received upon the strength of his assertion. The best men may be deceived and the best men may be led astray by enthusiasm. When the slightest discovery in physical science is published it is immediately assailed by doubts from every quarter; and its promulgator if he be accustomed to research and trained to scientific investigation never complains of these doubts because he knows the vast number of perplexing deceptions in which he has himself been entangled and the caution with which he himself would receive a similar announcement. It is vain to cite instances of truths unappreciated by the age in which they were advanced. We deprecate as much as any the persecution with which occasionally men who have seen far in advance of their age have been attacked; but the saying ""Malheureux celui qui est en avance de son siècle "" is not always true: if the new truth be difficult of demonstration it will be proportionately tardy of reception but if easy of proof it is very rapidly received. As an example of this we may instance the discovery of Volta. In the history of physical science never was a more sudden leap taken than by this illustrious man--that a juxtaposition of matter in its least organic form should produce such surprising effects upon the human organism was to the world as it existed in the year 1800 a most marvellous phenomenon; and had the link in the finest chain of proof been wanting men would have been justified in any degree of scepticism or incredulity. But it was easy of demonstration; any one with a dozen discs of iron and zinc and the same number of penny-pieces could satisfy himself; and the consequence was the discovery was instantly admitted. Let mesmerists put the same power of self-satisfaction into the hands of the world and doubt will be at once removed; if as they say their science is not of equal exactitude they must bide their time and not complain. Magnetism and electricity moreover often cited by Mr Townshend and undoubtedly the most surprising additions to human knowledge within the historical period though abnormal are not contradictory to experience--they were an entirely new series of facts added to our previous store--they did not destroy or lessen the force of any previously received truths. Not so mesmerism and therefore the more stringent should be and is the proof required. Come we now to the second class of arguments adopted in favour of mesmerism and by the same persons (Mr Townshend for instance) as support the first. Mr Townshend says (p. 29 ) ""to the mesmeriser the facts of mesmerism are no miracles;"" and yet he avers that mesmerism can make the blind see and the deaf hear. (Pp. xxxii. and 178.) We cannot very clearly see his notion of a miracle. Passing over this however and taking him to assert what the first branch of his argument requires to be asserted that there is no miracle or that there is nothing but the contradiction of a necessary truth such as that three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles which _may_ not fall within some natural law of which we have not all the data--we cannot see why in the second half of his book he so sedulously endeavours to prove that mesmerism is consistent with experience and may be supported upon similar grounds and accounted for by similar theories to those by which the agency of the imponderable forces is established and accounted for. After using every argument in his power to show the fallibility of experience and the reasons why we should not disbelieve mesmerism because contradictory to it which contradiction he admits in terms the author writes a chapter the title of which is ""Conformity of Mesmerism with General Experience.""--(P. 155.) As instances of these reverse modes of viewing the subject we quote the following passages--the one taken from the commencement of the book where the first line of argument is adopted; the other from the latter portion where the second is. ""Thus then till the initial step towards a comprehension of mesmerism be taken anew there is no hope that it will ever be understood or appreciated. Why unavailingly seek to reduce it to a formula of which it is unsusceptible? If we ascribe it to a power already ascertained why not treat it at least as an entirely new function of that power? Why limit it to what we know when possibly it may be destined to extend the boundaries of our knowledge? Why are we to be trammelled with foregone conclusions? Yet upon these very restrictions the opponents of mesmerism insist; thus taking away from men the means of investigating the agency in question by forcing them to set about it in the wrong way.""--(P. 12.) Having then thus expressed himself in the early part of the work towards the close we find the following sentence. ""Taking this simple view of sensation (that objects should be brought into a certain relation with us by something intermediate ) we find nothing in mesmerism contradictory of nature. Under its influence the human frame continues to be still a system of nerves acted upon by elastic media for the purpose of conveying to us the primal impulse of the Almighty Mind which made sustains and moves the universe--having as I trust shown the conformity of mesmerism in all essential points with the principles of nature and the inferences of reason "" &c. &c. If we are to admit mesmerism as a series of facts apparently inconsistent with experience it is most hasty and unphilosophical to attempt to generalize it by crude hypotheses. To rest its probable truth upon these hypotheses is to take a totally different ground and one much lower and more assailable. We have no desire to be hypercritical--to expose minor scientific inaccuracies in the work before us; but we do not hesitate to assert that independently of its inconsistency with the previous course of reasoning the hypothesis or hypotheses of Mr Townshend are most unsatisfactory. Heat light electricity magnetism are by some regarded as specific fluids; by others as undulations of one or more specific fluid; and by a third class as undulations or polarizations of ordinary matter. Thus by the first light would be viewed as a material emanation from the luminous body; by the second as an undulation of an imponderable ether existing between the luminous body and the recipient; and by the third as an undulation of the air glass or other matter placed between the luminous body and the object. The last would regard the ether in the planetary spaces not as a specific imponderable fluid but as a highly attenuated expansion of air gas or other matter having all the functions of ordinary matter. Whewell has indeed published a _demonstration_ that all matter is ponderable and that imponderable matter is not a conceivable idea. Be this as it may the diversity of opinion on this point shows the difficulty the mind finds in departing from the truths of phenomena to the uncertainties of hypothesis; but if hypothesis be justifiable which it is only on the ground of absolute necessity to link together and render conventionally intelligible certain undoubted undeniable facts which have been associated together under the terms _electricity_ _magnetism_ &c.--how difficult and dangerous it must be when the facts which it seeks to associate are denied by the mass of thinking men when they are confessed to be mysterious and irregular by their most strenuous advocates each of whom differs in many respects as to these facts! These difficulties have by no means been conquered by Mr Townshend. At p. 11 he objects to this mode of theorizing in the following strong terms:-- ""A certain school of German writers especially have theorized on our subject after the false method of explaining one class of phenomena in nature by its fancied resemblance to another. Wishing perhaps to avoid the error of the spiritualists who solve the problem in debate by the power of the soul alone they have ransacked the material world for analogies to mesmerism till the mind itself has been endued with its affinities and its poles. Such attempts as these have done the greatest disservice to the cause we advocate. They submit it to a wrong test. It is as if the laws of light should be applied to a question in acoustics. It is as if we should expect to find in a foreign kingdom the laws and customs of our own.""--(P. 11.) And yet in the subsequent parts of his book he asserts mesmerism to be capable of ""reflection like light""--to have ""the attraction of magnetism""--to be ""transferred like heat;"" to escape from a point like electricity and to have the sympathetic undulations of sound!--(Pp. 335 6 7 and 8.) Such general resemblances as the following are given:--- ""We know that electricity is capable of all that modification in its action which our case demands. Sometimes its effects are sudden and energetic; sometimes of indefinite and uninterrupted continuance. It is 'capable of moving with various degrees of facility through the pores or even the substance of matter;' and is not impeded in its action by the intervention of any substance whatever provided it be not in itself in an electric state. This capacity of varied action and of pervading influence has already been shown to characterize the mesmeric medium.""--(P. 335.) Why what is here stated of electricity may be said of heat of light of any force and its moving through the pores may be denied as easily as asserted; by many it is thought to be a molecular polarization and not a transmission. Zinc and silver are said (p. 237) to ""produce a taste resulting from the galvanic concussion and not from any actual flavour."" This is incorrect; zinc and silver produce a taste when in voltaic communication because they decompose the saliva and eliminate acid and alkaline constituents. Further on it is said (p. 237 ) ""A spark drawn by means of a pointed metal from the nose of a person charged with electricity will give him the sensation of smelling a phosphoric odour."" This is also an erroneous assumption; the electric spark in passing through the atmosphere combines its constituents and forms nitrous acid. This has a pungent smell; probably there are some other physical changes wrought upon the constituents of the atmosphere by the electric spark which are now objects of anxious enquiry to natural philosophers; yet none of them have any doubt that the electric smell is the result of a physical or chemical action of the spark by which either the air is decomposed or fine portions of metal carried off or both. So again-- ""The electric medium is a far more swift and subtle messenger of vision than is the luminous ether. 'A wheel revolving with celerity sufficient to render its spokes invisible when illuminated by a flash of lightning is seen for an instant with all its spokes distinct as if it were in a state of absolute repose because however rapid the motion may be the light has already come and ceased before the wheel has had time to turn through a sensible space.' Again some ingenious experiments by Professor Wheatstone demonstrate to a certainty that the speed of the electric fluid much surpasses the velocity of light. It is therefore a different medium; yet can it serve for all the purposes of vision and even in a superior manner. After hearing these things shall we start at the notion of mesmeric sensation being conveyed through another medium than that in ordinary action? Even should the sleep-waker perceive the most distant objects (as some are said to have done ) can we from the moment a means of communication is hinted to us be so much amazed? If his perception be more vivid there seems to be an efficient cause in his abjuring the grosser media for such as are more swift and subtle.""--(P. 272.) The electric medium is _not_ a messenger of vision. To call the light produced by the electric spark electricity would be the same as to call magnetism electricity heat electricity motion electricity--for all these are produced by it and it by them. All modes of force are capable of producing the other phenomenal effects of force. It is an obvious fallacy to call the medium which transmits electric light an electric medium; this if carried out would overthrow natural as well as conventional divisions would subvert ""the pales and forts of reason."" Mr Townshend accustomed to metaphysical abstractions shows in these and many other instances a want of acquaintance with physical science and entirely fails when he bases his reasoning upon it. Many of the arguments of Mr Townshend are of such a transcendental nature that we fear should we attempt to follow them our readers would lose their clairvoyance in the mist of metaphysical speculation. The following will give a fair specimen of the conclusion to which such reasoning tends:-- ""Indeed if we lay to heart the deceptiveness and mutability of all the external species of matter at the same time considering that we have no reason to deem it capable of change in its ultimate and imperceptible particles; if also we reflect that whatever is not palpable in itself is yet indicated by its effects forces us on pure reason by withdrawing at once the aid and the illusion of our external senses we shall perhaps come to the conclusion that the Invisible is the only true exclaiming with the old Latinist 'Invisibilia non decipiunt.'""--(P. 355.) And yet the facts of mesmerism are to be judged of by the very senses which mesmerism proves to be so fallacious. It is because we _see_ that E---- A---- reads when the book is presented to the back of his hand that we are to believe that he does not perceive with the usual organs. Upon the rule which the author adopts that ""the invisible is the only true "" we cannot rely upon our deceptive organs and should disbelieve mesmerism _because_ we see it. To analyse in detail the hypotheses of Mr Townshend would be quite impossible in our limited space. We might indeed adopt method sometimes used in controversial writing and string together a parallel column of minor contradictions. This would however not only be totally devoid of interest to the reader but is not the object we have in view. We seek not for critical errors or inconsistencies but merely to examine if there be any broad lines of truth or probability in his theory. It is summed up as follows:-- ""The real nature of vision is as shut to the vulgar as the mesmeric mode of sight is to the learned. ""By the eye we appreciate light and colour only: the rest is an operation of the judgment. ""Viewed metaphysically seeing is but a particular kind of knowledge: viewed physically seeing consists in certain nervous motions responsive to the motions of a medium. That medium in our ordinary condition is light the action of which seems cut off and intercepted in the case of mesmeric vision. ""When therefore we hear that a mesmerised person has correctly seen an object through obstacles which to us appear opaque we conceiving no means of communication between the person and the object exclaim that the laws of nature have been violated. But in all cases where information is conveyed through interrupted spaces show but the means of communication and astonishment ceases. ""When we know that there is a medium permeating in one or other of its forms all substances whatever and that this medium is eminently capable of exciting sensations of sight; and when we take this in conjunction with a heightened sensibility in the percipient person rendering him aware of impulses whereof we are not cognisant we are no longer inclined to deny a fact or suppose a miracle. ""Finally all sensation has but one principle. All that is required for its production is that objects should be brought into a certain relation with us by something intermediate; and this is effected by the impulsions of certain media upon nerves the last changes in which are the immediate forerunners of completed sensation.""--(P. 279.) In short we think we do not unfairly express the author's theory in the following query. As the application of the highest human powers (those of Newton for instance) have resolved the transmission of light to the sensorium into the vibrations of an all-pervading ether what is more probable than that a similar ethereal medium may convey sensations of objects through other channels? This may be but another important ingredient is wanting viz. organization or definite molecular arrangement. Prick the eye and by the resulting morbid derangement change the molecular arrangement of its particles and vision is destroyed; pulverise the glass through which you look and it is no longer transparent. The ether (if there be an ether) in the pores of these substances can only convey correct impressions when these particles have a definite arrangement; but the mesmeric ether is dependent upon no such necessity. Density and tenacity opacity and transparency homogeneous or heterogeneous bodies are all equally penetrable. And what is more strange the mesmeric ether conveys correct and not distorted impressions. The same perception of form which is conveyed through air is convoyed through the cover of a book through the bones of the skull or the muscles of the stomach. And still more extraordinary this impression is identical as to the mental idea it conveys with that conveyed in the normal manner through the eye. The mesmeric ether has therefore not only the power of conveying impressions but of preserving their continuity through any impediment. The formal impressions of a chair or table which are conveyed by ordinary vision in right lines to the retina if these lines be distorted by any intervening want of uniformity in the matter are proportionally distorted. Let striæ of glass of different density intervene in an optical lens and the objects are distorted; increase the number of striæ the object is more imperfect; and carry the molecular derangement further opacity is the result. Transparency and opacity then viewed apart from all hypotheses resolve themselves into organization or molecular arrangement. Yet by the mesmeric medium a chair or table is conveyed to the recipient in its distinct form or what amounts to the same thing for the argument of conformity they give to the mind distinct ideas of these objects. If then there be a mesmeric medium which being a purely hypothetic creation cannot be disproved its requisites must be so totally at variance with the requisites of ordinary ethereal media that none of the rules which can be applied to this can be applied to that. The arguments of Mr Townshend depend on analogy where there is no analogy. Many of the objects of vision all indeed by which reading is effected are purposely constructed to suit the peculiar organization of the eye--they are artifices specially appropriated to given sensations; thus _black_ letters are printed on _white_ paper because experience has told us that black reflects no light while white reflects all the incident light. If we wish to read by another sense we adapt our object to such a sense; thus for those who read by the finger raised letters are prepared differing from the matrix in position but not in colour; if we read by the ear we address it by sounds and not by forms or colours; and it would be far from impracticable to read by smell or taste by associating given odours or given tastes with given ideas. In all this however each sense requires a peculiar education and long training--it is only by constant association of the word _table_ with the thing _table_ that we connect the two ideas; but mesmeric clairvoyance not only conveys things as things in all their proper forms and colours (p. 164 ) without the intervention of the usual senses but it also dispenses with education or association or instantly adapts to a new sense the education hitherto specially and only adapted to another. Thus the mesmeric medium should and does according to Mr Townshend (pp. 97 99 101 ) convey to the person accustomed to read by the eye ideas and perceptions which he has hitherto associated with the sight--to him accustomed to read by touch ideas associated with touch--and so of the rest and that not of sight or touch of the object itself but of a mere arbitrary symbol of the object. _Table_ of five letters or forms--_table_ of two sounds bearing no resemblance to these letters or forms or to the thing--_table_ but a mere conventional substitute for the purpose of human convenience yet by the all-potent mesmeric medium for which they have not been previously framed are definitely conveyed and produce the require perception and the required association. We trust we need go no further to show that mesmeric clairvoyance has at all events no conformity with general experience; and that if it be true the proofs of its truth cannot be based on its analogy with other sensations. To sum up our arguments we say--1st That without undervaluing testimony mesmeric clairvoyance is not sufficiently proved by competent witnesses to be admitted as fact: 2d The reasoning in support of it is insufficient and in most cases fallacious. Perhaps the best arguments employed by Mr Townshend in favour of the possibility of clairvoyance are the authenticated cases of normal sleepwalking; these have been very little examined but appear in one respect strikingly to differ from mesmeric coma. The eyes of the somnambulist are said to be open and therefore there is every optical power of vision and an increase of ordinary visual perception is all that is requisite. The acts performed by the sleepwalker are moreover generally those to which he is habitually accustomed; and when this is not the case he fails as many disastrous accidents have too fatally testified. At the close of Mr Townshend's book is a short appendix containing some testimonials to the verity of mesmeric effects. Several of these are anonymous and the value of their authority cannot therefore be judged of. Others are testimonies to mesmeric effects produced upon the patients E---- A---- or Anna M----. None of these are from persons of very high authority; and they are certainly not such as would induce us to rest our faith upon them. We grant to them their full right to be convinced; but their testimony is not of sufficient force to produce conviction in others. The two last testimonials however are of a very different character. One of these is by Professor Agassiz and the other by Signor Ranieri of Naples. Both these are testimonials not to any effect produced upon an accustomed patient but upon the testifiers themselves; and the former coming from a man of high distinction and accustomed to physical research is undoubtedly of great weight. We therefore give it in full. ""Desirous to know what to think of mesmerism I for a long time sought for an opportunity of making some experiments in regard to it upon myself so as to avoid the doubts which might arise on the nature of the sensations which we have heard described by mesmerised persons. M. Desor yesterday in a visit which he made to Berne invited Mr Townshend who had previously mesmerised him to accompany him to Neufchatel and try to mesmerise me. These gentlemen arrived here with the evening courier and informed me of their arrival. At eight o'clock I went to them. We continued at supper till half past nine o'clock and about ten o'clock Mr Townshend commenced operating upon me. While we sat opposite to one another he in the first place only took hold of my hands and looked at me fixedly. I was firmly resolved to arrive at a knowledge of the truth whatever it might be; and therefore the moment I saw him endeavouring to exert an action upon me I silently addressed the Author of all things beseeching him to give me power to resist the influence and to be conscientious in regard to myself as well as in regard to the facts. I then fixed my eyes upon Mr Townshend attentive to whatever passed. I was in very suitable circumstances; the hour being early and one at which I was in the habit of studying was far from disposing me to sleep. I was sufficiently master of myself to experience no emotion and to repress all flights of imagination even if I had been less calm; accordingly it was a long time before I felt any effect from the presence of Mr Townshend opposite me. However after at least a quarter of an hour I felt a sensation of a current through all my limbs and from that moment my eyelids grew heavy. I then saw Mr Townshend extend his hands before my eyes as if he were about to plunge his fingers into them; and then make different circular movements around my eyes which caused my eyelids to become still heavier. I had the idea that he was endeavouring to make me close my eyes; and yet it was not as if some one had threatened my eyes and in the waking state I had closed them to prevent him. It was an irresistible heaviness of the lids whi
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h compelled me to shut them and by degrees I found that I had no longer the power of keeping them open; but did not the less retain my consciousness of what was going on around me; so that I heard M. Desor speak to Mr Townshend understood what they said and heard what questions they asked me just as if I had been awake; but I had not the power of answering. I endeavoured in vain several times to do so; and when I succeeded I perceived that I was passing out of the state of torpor in which I had been and which was rather agreeable than painful. ""In this state I heard the watchman cry ten o'clock; then I heard it strike a quarter past; but afterwards I fell into a deeper sleep although I never entirely lost my consciousness. It appeared to me that Mr Townshend was endeavouring to put me into a sound sleep; my movements seemed under his control for I wished several times to change the position of my arms but had not sufficient power to do it or even really to will it; while I felt my head carried to the right or left shoulder and backwards or forwards without wishing it; and indeed in spite of the resistance which I endeavoured to oppose and this happened several times. ""I experienced at the same time a feeling of great pleasure in giving way to the attraction which dragged me sometimes to one side sometimes to the other; then a kind of surprise on feeling my head fall into Mr Townshend's hand who appeared to me from that time to be the cause of the attraction. To his enquiry if I were well and what I felt? I found I could not answer but I smiled; I felt that my features expanded in spite of my resistance; I was inwardly confused at experiencing pleasure from an influence which was mysterious to me. From this moment I wished to wake and was less at my ease; and yet on Mr Townshend asking me whether I wished to be awakened I made a hesitating movement with my shoulders. Mr Townshend then repeated some frictions which increased my sleep; yet I was always conscious of what was passing around me. He then asked me if I wished to become lucid at the same time continuing as I felt the frictions from the face to the arms. I then experienced an indescribable sensation of delight and for an instant saw before me rays of dazzling light which instantly disappeared. I was then inwardly sorrowful at this state being prolonged--it appeared to me that enough had been done with me; I wished to awake but could not yet when Mr Townshend and M. Desor spoke I heard them. I also heard the clock and the watchman cry but I did not know what hour he cried. Mr Townshend then presented his watch to me and asked if I could see the time and if I saw him; but I could distinguish nothing. I heard the clock strike the quarter but could not get out of my sleepy state. Mr Townshend then woke me with some rapid transverse movements from the middle of the face outwards which instantly caused my eyes to open and at the same time I got up saying to him 'I thank you.' It was a quarter past eleven. He then told me and M. Desor repeated the same thing that the only fact which had satisfied them that I was in a state of mesmeric sleep was the facility with which my head followed all the movements of his hand although he did not touch me and the pleasure which I appeared to feel at the moment when after several repetitions of friction he thus moved my head at pleasure in all directions.""--(P. 385 to 388.) This we think a most interesting and valuable document and the best key we have ever seen to the _facts_ of mesmerism. It is the production of a resolute religious and philosophic mind and bears all the impress of truth; it proves that there are facts worthy of the most careful investigation--it proves a power of inducing a comatose or sleep-waking state--an influence exercised by one mind over another--and it goes far to prove a physical attraction subsisting between two persons in mesmeric relation. But on the other hand how strikingly do the phenomena here described differ from those exhibited by the other patients. In those cases to use the general proposition of Mr Townshend ""the sleep-waker seems incapable of analysing his new sensations while they last still more of remembering them when they are over. The state of mesmerism is to him as death.""--(P. 156.) Here on the other hand the patient analyses all the sensations he experienced and recollects them when they are over; here notwithstanding the efforts of the mesmeriser the production of the mesmeric effect and no resistance on the part of the mesmerisee the latter does not become clairvoyant; ""_je ne distinguais rien_ "" are the emphatic words of Professor Agassiz. Precisely similar is the testimony of Signor Ranieri the historian-- Having been mesmerised by my honourable friend Mr Hare Townshend I will simply describe the phenomena which I experienced before during and after my mesmerisation. Mr Townshend commenced by making me sit upon a sofa he sat upon a chair opposite me and keeping my hands in his placed them on my knees. He looked at me fixedly and from time to time let go my hands and placed the points of his fingers in a straight line opposite my eyes at an inch I should think from my pupils; then describing a kind of ellipse he brought his hands down again upon mine. After he had moved his hands thus alternately from my eyes to my knees for ten minutes I felt an irresistible desire to close my eyelids. I continued nevertheless to hear his voice and that of my sister who was in the same room. Whenever they put questions to me I always answered him correctly; but the whole of my muscular system was in a state of peculiar weakness and of almost perfect disobedience to my will; and consequently the pronunciation of the words with which I wished to answer had become extremely difficult. ""Whilst I experienced to a certain point the effects of sleep not only was I not a stranger to all that was passing around me but I even took more than usual interest in it. All my conceptions were more rapid; I experienced nervous startings to which I am not accustomed; in short my whole nervous system was in a state of perfect exaltation and appeared to have acquired all the superabundance of power which the muscular system had lost. ""The following are the principal phenomena which I was able to feel distinctly. Mr Townshend did not fail to ask me occasionally if I could see him or my sister without opening my eyelids; but this was always impossible and all that I could say I had seen was a glimmering of light interrupted by the black and confused images of the objects presented to me; a light which appeared to me a little less clear than that which we commonly see when we shut the eyelids opposite the sun or a candle. ""Mr Townshend at last determined to demesmerise me. He began to make elliptical movements with his hands the reverse of those which he had made at the commencement; I could now open my eyes without any kind of effort my whole muscular system became perfectly obedient to my will; I was able to get up and was perfectly awake; but I remained nearly an hour in a kind of stupefaction very similar to that which sometimes attacks me in the mornings if I rise two or three hours later than usual.""--(P. 388 to 390.) Similar as to the general conclusions are the reports of the French Academy and the testimonies of all rigorous and well-conducted scientific examination. These testimonies apply to facts which it is the duty of those experimentalists and physiologists who have time and opportunity at their disposal fairly to investigate. The insensibility to pain and to the effects of the galvanic shock are also within the limits of the credible--and the latter is the more easy of proof as being incapable of simulation. As we stated at the commencement so we repeat here; mesmerism has been too little investigated by competent persons and is too much mystified by charlatanism to enable us accurately to define the limits of the true and false far less to predict what may be the discoveries to which it may lead. With regard to the facts of clairvoyance we are at present entirely incredulous. Mr Townshend says p. 91-- ""Let then body after body of learned men deny the phenomena of mesmerism and logically disprove their existence; an appeal may ever and at any moment be made to the proof by experiment; and even should experiment itself fail a thousand times the success of the thousandth and first trial would justify further examination. Till the authority of observation can be wholly set aside the subject of our enquiry can never be said to have undergone its final ostracism."" This is certainly a strong proposition; nevertheless it is with the hope that observation may be directed to the _facts_ of mesmerism that we have written the preceding pages. In reasoning on a subject we can use only those lights which experience has given us. The efficacy of logical disproof somewhat contemptuously treated by Mr Townshend in the above passage is yet fully vindicated by the latter half of the book itself which is an endeavour logically to bring home mesmerism to the understanding of men of experience. It is vain to make light of logic when the parties who set it at nought are themselves obliged to use it to prove its own worthlessness. You must not exalt _reason_ and we will give you the _reason_ why--this cuts their own ground from under them. We so far agree with the last quoted sentence as to admit that when experiments fairly tried by competent parties have and do succeed mesmerism will be established--hitherto they have _not_ succeeded. The alleged proofs are not brought home to the observation of cautious thinking men; and reason thus at once derided and appealed to is unsatisfied. Time ""may bring in its revenges "" may show things which would be to us marvellous; and we deny no future possibilities. At present we admit some very curious phenomena which we would willingly see further examined; but we are unconvinced of those facts of mesmerism enounced by its professors which wholly contradict our previous experience. Upon what we consider the only safe grounds for the general admission of newly asserted facts the evidence in support of these should more than counterpoise the evidence for their rejection. Up to the present time balancing as we have endeavoured to do impartially the evidence in favour of clairvoyance and the preternatural powers of mesmerism against those of an opposite tendency the former seems to us inordinately outweighed. On the other hand the production by external influence either of absolute coma or of sleep-waking whether resulting from imagination in the patient or from an effort of the will on the part of the mesmeriser or from both conjointly has been too lightly estimated and too little examined. This alone is in itself an effect so novel so mysterious and apparently so connected with the mainsprings of sentient existence as to deserve and demand a rigorous impartial and persevering scrutiny. * * * * * Since this article was written the letters of Miss Martineau have appeared. Had these been published earlier we should undoubtedly have noticed them at some length; they have not however induced us to alter any thing we have written; they have indeed confirmed one remark made above. The effects described by Miss Martineau as produced upon herself are credible and not preternatural while the second-sight of the girl J---- is preternatural and not credible; _i. e._ not credible as preternatural otherwise easily explicable. In this as in every mesmeric case the marvellous effects are developed by the uneducated--the most easily deceived and the most ready to be deceivers. The clairvoyant writers have greatly the advantage of the sceptics in one respect viz. the public interest of their communications. Every one reads the description of new marvels few care to examine the arguments in contravention of them. ""Pol me occidistis amici Non servastis ait cui sic extorta voluptas Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error."" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: For an account of one of the most notorious of the public exhibitions of mesmeric clairvoyance we refer the reader who may feel sufficiently interested in the matter to the papers of Dr Forbes in the _Lancet_ New Series Vol. i. p. 581 and to the counter statement in the _Zoist_ Vol. ii. No. 7.] [Footnote 4: P. 316.] ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS. NO. II. ABOUT A BONNET. So then having ""put down"" hats we come to bonnets; this is the due order of things--hats should be taken off before bonnets always; ""common politeness makes us stop and do it."" And here as the immortal Butler found it necessary in olden times to lament the perils that environed a man meddling with a hard subject so we might well indulge in an ejaculation at what may be our fate if we presume to take liberties with the head-dress of the ladies. Actæon when he contemplated Diana _simplicem munditiis_ paid a severe penalty in the transformation of his own head; and so perhaps we may incur--but never mind; the task worthy of a Hercules (for the hydra of female fashion is more than hundred-headed ) must be gone through with and the _scrivano umillimo_ must push his pen even under the pole of a lady's bonnet. The best-dressed woman in the world was our great-great-great progenitrix; we really cannot trace up the pedigree but you all know whom we mean--your common mother and ours: we have the highest authority among our own poets for saying so. There can be no doubt that her _coiffure_ was perfect. It is a law of nature--it was true then--it has been true ever since--it is indisputable at the present day--the expressive beauty of a woman lies in her face: whatever therefore conceals the face is a disfigurement and inherits the principle of the ugly. Ye who would study the æsthetics of human habiliments look at the lovely lines of the female face; contemplate that fairest type of the animated creation; observe the soft emotions of her gentle soul now shooting forth rays of tender light from between her long enclasping eyelashes now arching her rosy lips into the playful lineaments of Cupid's mortal bow; or gaze upon the subdued and affectionate contentment of the maternal countenance--remember while you were yet young your mother's look of love that look which was all-powerful to master your fiercest passions in your wildest mood--who will say that the female face ought to be concealed? As far as we the more powerful though not the better portion of the human race are concerned--off with the bonnet! off with the veil! say we. But there are others to be consulted in settling this preliminary dogma of taste--the feelings and the inclinations of woman herself are entitled to at least as much regard as the imperious wishes of man. She who possesses the bright but fleetly fading gift of beauty has also that inestimable indefinable accompaniment of it--modesty. Beauty is too sensitive a gem to be always exposed to the light of admiration; it must be ensheathed in modesty for its rays to retain their primitive lustre; it would perish from exposure to the natural changes of the atmosphere but it would die much sooner from the incomprehensible yet positive effects of moral lassitude. To use a commonplace simile gentle reader woman's beauty is like champagne it gets terribly into a man's head: do not however leave the cork out of your champagne bottle--the sparkling spirit will all evaporate; and do not quarrel with your sweet-heart if she muffles up her face sometimes and will not let you look at it for a week together--her eyes will be all the brighter when you next see them. There is a good cause for it; man is an ungrateful hardly-pleased animal; every indulgence that woman grants him loosens her power over him. Women have an innate right to conceal their heads! We arrive then at the foundation of taste for a lady's head-dress. Her face her head is naturally so beautiful that the less it is concealed--as far as the mere gratification of the eye is concerned--the better; but the necessity for veiling and protecting this precious object is so inevitable that a suitable extraneous covering must be provided; let that covering be as consonant to her natural excellence as it is possible to make it. Now we are not going to write a history of all the changes of female head-dress that have taken place since the world began: nothing at all of the kind. We refer the curious amateur to the work of that learned Dutchman--we forget his name 'tis all the same--_De Re Vestiaria_; or he may look into Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians_--there is a pretty considerable variety of bonnets or caps to be seen therein we calculate. If he be a decided _cognoscente_ let him rather go to the Attic gallery in the British Museum and examine the Panathenaic procession where the virgins are in the simple attire of the best days of Greece: but here or in any of the monuments of that foster-country of art and in all the series of Roman sculpture and coins he will find no head-dress for a female beyond that of the veil. The great artists and the great conquerors of the world never tolerated any thing beyond this flowing drapery of the veil as the covering for their wives' or daughters' heads. They were satisfied with the beautiful contrast given by the curving lines of its graceful folds; they admired its simplicity; and they saw the perfect suitableness of its nature to its purpose. The veil could be hastily drawn over the head so as to conceal every feature and protect it from the gaze of man or the roughness of the seasons--and it could as easily be withdrawn partially to allow of ""a sidelong glance of love "" or wholly to give ""a gaze of welcome "" to a relation and a friend. Happy men those old Greeks and Romans! they had no bills for milliners--whatever their jewellers' accounts might have come to! When they travelled their slaves were not pestered with bonnet-boxes and similar abominations--a clean yard or two of Phoenician gauze or Asian linen set up Mrs Secretary Pericles or Mrs General Cæsar with a braw new veil. There was little caprice of fashion--the veil would always fall into something like the same or at least similar folds; and we do believe that for a thousand years or more the type of the _mode_ remained fixed. Whether the ancient Asiatics made their women wear precisely the same mask-veils as those jealous rascals the Turks and Arabs do at the present day we do not know and we are not now going to enquire: we only wish to protest _en passant_ against these same modern Eastern veils; they are the most frightful unclassical unbecoming things ever invented as face-cases. Our present purpose is with the head-dress of modern British ladies--let us look into their bonnets. And truly a bonnet taken by itself without the jewel that often lies under it--a bonnet _per se_--is as bad a thing as a hat; something between a coal-scuttle and a bread-basket; it is only fit to be married to the hat and let us add--settled in the country. But it is nevertheless capricious in its ugliness just as its possessor is capricious in her prettiness; for look at it from behind its lines do not greatly deviate from the circular form of the head; it seems like a smart case;--look at it from before; there it is seen to best advantage as an oval frame set with ribands flowers and laces for the sweet picture within; but look at it from the side and the genuine vulgar cookmaid form of the coal-scuttle is instantly perceived. It serves in this view evidently as blinkers do to a horse in harness just to keep the animal from shying or to guard off a chance stroke of the whip. But it is uncommonly tantalizing into the bargain. You walk along Regent Street some fine day and for a hundred paces or more you are troubled by the crowd keeping you always in the rear of an old faded frumpy bonnet that hinders you from watching a sweet little _chapeau-de-soie_ immediately beyond. Your patience is exhausted and your curiosity driven to the highest pitch of anxiety; you make a desperate stride push by the old bonnet and look round with indignation to see what beldam had thus been between you and the ""cynosure of neighbouring eyes:""--whew! 'tis the pretty young shop-girl that served you with your last pair of gloves and measured them so fascinatingly along your hand that your heart still palpitates with the electrical touch of her fingers. You pocket your indignation exchange one of your blandest smiles and pass on still striding to see what lovely features grace that exquisite _chapeau_. Half afraid of course--for she is a lady evidently and you pique yourself on being a perfect gentleman--you venture as you pass to let your eye just glance within the sacred enclosure of blonde and primroses;--pshaw! it's old Miss Thingamy that you had to hand down to dinner the other day at Lady Dash's; and instantly catching your eye she gives you a condescending nod and you're forced to escort her all the way up to Portland Place! It's enough to make a man hang himself; and to say the truth many a poor fellow has been ruined by bonnets before now--even Napoleon himself had to pay for _thirty-six_ new bonnets within _one month_ for Josephine! Bonnets however have more to do with women than with men; and we defy our fair friends to prove that these articles of dress about which they are always so anxious (a woman--a regular genuine woman reader--will sacrifice a great deal for a bonnet ) are either useful or ornamental. And first for their use; if they were good for any thing they would protect the head from cold wet and sunshine. Now as far as cold is concerned they do so to a certain degree but not a tenth part so well as something else we shall talk of by and by; as for wet--what woman ever trusted to her bonnet in a shower of rain? What woman does not either pop up her parasol or green cotton umbrella or if she has not these female arms ties over it her pocket-handkerchief in a vain attempt to keep off the pluvious god? Women are more frightened at spoiling their bonnets than any other article of their dress: let them but once get their bonnets under the dripping eaves of an umbrella and like ostriches sticking their heads under ground they think their whole persons safe;--we appeal to any man who has walked down Cheapside with his eyes open on a rainy day whether this be not true. And then for the sun--who among the ladies trust to her bonnet for keeping her face from freckling? Else why all the paraphernalia of parasols? why all these endless patents for sylphides and sunscreens of every kind form and colour? why can you never meet a lady in a summerwalk without one of these elegant little contrivances in her hand? Comfort we apprehend does not reside in a bonnet: look at a lady travelling whether in a carriage or a railroad diligence--she cannot for a moment lean back into one of the nice pillowed corners of the vehicle without running imminent risk of crushing her bonnet; her head can never repose; she has no travelling-cap like a man to put on while she stows away her bonnet in some convenient place: the stiffened gauze or canvass or paper of which its inner framework is composed rustles and crackles with every attempt at compression; and a pound's worth or two of damage may be done by a gentle tap or squeeze. Women if candid would allow that their bonnets gave them much more trouble than comfort and that they have remained in use solely as conventional objects of dress--we will not allow of ornament. The only position in which a bonnet is becoming--and even then it is only the modern class of bonnets--is when they are viewed full front: further as we observed before they make a nice _encadrement_ for the face: and with their endless adjuncts of lace ribands and flowers they commonly set off even moderately pretty features to advantage. But is only the present kind of bonnet that does so; the old-fashioned poking flaunting square-cornered bonnet never became any female physiognomy: it is only the small tight come-and-kiss-me style of bonnet now worn by ladies that is at all tolerable. All this refers however only to that portion of the fairer half of the human race which is in the bloom and vigour of youth and womanhood: those that are still in childhood or sinking into the vale of years cannot have a more inappropriate more useless covering for the head than what they now wear at least in England. Simplicity which should be the attribute of youth and dignity which should belong to age cannot be compatible with a modern bonnet: fifty inventions might be made of coverings more suitable to these two stages of life. How then has it come to pass that women have persuaded themselves or have been overpersuaded into the belief that a bonnet is the highest point of perfection in their dress? It has all been done by a foolish imitation of the caprices of French milliners themselves actuated by millions of caprices and fancies--but at the same time by one steadily-enduring principle that novelty and change no matter how useless how extravagant form the soul of their peculiar trade. For note it down--the bonnet mania has not mounted upwards from the lower to the higher ranks of society; on the contrary it has been a regular plant sown as a trifling casual seed in the hotbed of some silly creature's brain and then sending down its roots into many an inferior class. Any one who has crossed the British Channel knows that the bonnet--as we understand the word in England--is not an article of national costume in any portion of the world except our own island--America and Australia we place of course out of the pale of taste. In France itself the peasantry and all classes of women immediately under the conventional denomination of ladies wear _bonnets_. This word does not signify the same thing as with us gentle reader. The French word _bonnet_ means a snow-white cap whether rising into an enormous cone like those of the Norman beauties or limited to a jaunting frill and lappels like those of the Parisian grisettes. The real bonnets the French female _chapeau_ is worn only by those who call themselves ladies; and this difference of costume marks a most decided difference of rank and self-esteem in the various grades of Gallic society. In the Bourbonnois it is true and in some parts of Switzerland and Germany straw-hats of various sizes are worn by the peasantry; but these do not resemble the actual bonnet of the nineteenth century. Who does not know the exquisite national head-dresses of the Italian and Spanish women from pictorial representation if not from actual inspection? Who has not read of the Greek cap and veil? Who has not heard of the national caps of Poland Hungary and Russia? Not the slightest approximation to the eccentricity of the bonnet is to be found in any of these. In all of them not caprice but the more rational qualities of use and ornament have been studiously regarded. It is in England only that our lower classes of women have abandoned their national costume and are content to suffer the inconvenient consequences of imitating their superiors. Let any one who has traversed Europe only recall to his mind the appearances of the female peasants as to their head-dress whether in their houses or in the fields and comparing them with the tattered dirty things worn by the labourers' wives and daughters of England say which are to be preferred in point of taste--which are the cleanest--which are the most becoming. Not to go too far back into the mist of antiquity the earliest traces that we can find of hats being commonly worn in England are to be met with somewhere in the first half of the last century. Previous to that time ladies wore hoods and caps; and in the Middle Ages muffled their heads in wimples and veils; but some time or other--in the reign of the second George we believe--some lady or other stuck on her head a round silk hat with a low crown and a broad brim perfectly circular and the brim or ledge at right angles to the crown or head-piece. This she subsequently changed into a straw one and this was the root of the evil--_hinc illæ lachrymæ!_ We are aware that at the gay court of Louis XIV. and even before he had a court Mademoiselle de Montpensier when she went to battle or to hunt wore a gold-laced semi-cocked hat: so did Madame de Montespan when she accompanied the king to one of his grand _parties de chasse_. But then at the same time these illustrious ""leaders of _ton_"" put on gold-embroidered male coats and evidently endeavoured to transform themselves into men while partaking in manly sports and dangers. Their hunting-hats bore no more relation to the bonnets of their descendants than do the black beaver hats of the latter when they mount their horses in Hyde Park or the Bois de Boulogne. Indeed this very custom of wearing the male hat is derived by our modern belles from the times we are speaking of. Plain beaver or felt hats were worn by some of our farmers' wives as early as the reign of Charles I.; but to judge from the prints of that date they borrowed them from their husbands. And to a period like this is to be traced the custom still extant throughout most parts of Wales for the women to wear the same head-costume as the men. The round ladies' hat however of the middle and end of the last century may be seen in its primitive state in those enormous circles of straw brought from Tuscany and sold in our milliners' shops fit to be pinched and cut into the prevailing fashion. The hats both of men and women--when once they had quitted the becoming costume of the Middle Ages--arose out of one and the same type; a large circle of stuff with a projecting central cap for the skull. Human invention in the matter of hats seems for several centuries to have rested in this solitary idea. When this circular adumbral and pluvial roofing had to be adapted to the female head it was found advisable to fasten it down to the cranium--not indeed by any screw driven therein nor by any intriguing with the locks of woman's hair but by the simple expedient of ribands passing under the chin. The difficulty consisted in attaching the upper ends of these ribands; for if they were sewn on under the overlapping brim the same brim would take liberties on a windy day and would flap up and down like an Indian punka. If they were sewn outside they acted like the sheets of a ship's sail and pulled down the struggling circumference into two ugly projections bellying out before and behind. However women for comfort's sake having got an awkward article to deal with preferred the latter alternative--tied down their hats with ribands (men be it remembered at the same time tied _up_ their brims into the prim high cocked shape ) and called these ugly coverings ""gipsy hats."" We remember something like them dear reader ""When first we went a-gipsying long long ago."" Before matters had arrived at this pitch of ugliness the ladies of the court of George III.--the very antipodes of that of Louis XIV.--had essayed under the auspices of good Queen Charlotte to render the round hat with the straight-projecting brim less ugly; but their invention carried them no further than to surround it at one time with a deep ruff of ribands or they crushed it into an untidy rumble-tumble shape; at another they let copious streamers float from the crown down their backs; or again they gave it a monstrous pitch up behind. There is this to be said in their excuse--they hardly knew what parasols and umbrellas were. They wielded enormous fans nearly two feet long; they had capuchins to their cloaks; and they delighted in the rotundity of hoops. Peace be with the souls of our grandmothers! Good old creatures! they were not very tasty to be sure; but they wore glorious stiff taffety fardingales and they have left us many an ample commode full of real china. As times wore on and as the free-and-easy revolutionary school came to inculcate their loose doctrines on women as well as men the ladies began to find the hinder pokes of their hats uncommon nuisances; and so in a fit of spleen one day the Duchess of G---- or some other woman of fashion cut off this hinder protuberance and appeared to the scandal of her neighbours _plus_ the front poke _minus_ the back one. This was a daring free-thinking revolutionary innovation. Somebody had probably done it at Paris before her; but the startling idea had gone forth--women began to see daylight through their hats--the dawn of emancipation appeared--clip clip went the scissors and for the time being the dynasty of gipsy hats had ceased to reign. Hereupon--the conse
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uence of all changes of dynasties--whether of bonnets or Bourbons 'tis much the same--a fearful period of anarchy ensued: every milliner's shop in Paris and London was pregnant with new shapes--bonnets periodically overturned bonnets numbers were devoted to the block every week and each succeeding month saw fresh competitors for public favour coming to the giddy vortex of fashion. Husbands suffered dreadfully during those troublous times: many a man's temper and purse were then irremediably damaged; and there seemed to be no means of escaping from this reign of female terror this bonnetian chaos until the great peace of 1814 brought about a prompt solution. Here to be classical in so grave a matter we may observe that just as Virgil in his Georgics represents a civil tumult even in its loudest hubbub to be suddenly calmed by the appearance of some man of known virtue and authority so in London--and therefore in England--the visit of an illustrious lady and the cut of her bonnet appeased the agitated breasts of our fair countrywomen and reduced their fancy to a fixed idea. The Grand-duchess of Oldenburg came over with her brother the Emperor of all the Russias and wore on her head not a coronet--but such a bonnet! ""Ye powers who dress the head if such there are And make the change of woman's taste your care!"" --so Cowper might well have exclaimed had he been then living. Tell us ye gods whence did her imperial highness derive the idea of her bonnet? Truly we can conjecture no other source than these very words designating her rank for the bonnet was imperial--none but such a lady would have dared to originate it; and it was also high--high indeed! The crown rose eighteen inches in perpendicular altitude from the nape of the neck while the front poke retained the modest dimensions of the original gipsy hat. We recollect the duchess in Hyde Park with this monstrous headgear and the women all in ecstacy at the delightful novelty. The success of this bonnet was universal--it was a ""tremendous hit "" as they say in the play-bills; every woman that could afford it raised her crown and Oldenburgized her head. Well this fashion lasted tolerably long; it had the great value of rendering public opinion nearly uniform; but it got old as all fashions must do and died a natural death--not without an heir a worthy heir. The new idea you will perceive was that of inordinate length in one way or the other. The duchess had got it all up aloft--up in her top-royals--the new bonnet (we really do not know who invented it but some wicked little hussy at Paris no doubt) had it all down below in the main-sail; the crown dwindled to nothing and out went the front poke to exactly the same length eighteen inches. This was truly exquisite--every body was in raptures. The bonnet was tied tight under the chin and to see a woman's face you had to look down a sort of semi-funnelled hollow where the ambiguous shade of her countenance was illuminated only by the radiance of her eyes. Here too the success was immense; the mothers of us the young bloods the choice spirits of the present day all wore bonnets of this kind when our governors went wooing them in narrow-brimmed overtopping hats. The next change of any note worth mentioning was one of comparatively recent times such as some of us may remember their first loves in; it was derived from a partial return to the primitive round expanded hat and was in its chief glory when that last great piece of French dirty work the Revolution of 1830 was perpetrated. Women had retrograded to the old circular idea; they had given up their pokes. It was too much--female folly had it was supposed worn itself out--a revolution was wanted and it came. To wear the hat however in its primitive rotundity was impossible--it would have suited a lady in the West Indies but not in Europe; to tie down the brim would not do it would have been re-adopting the worn-out fashions; so just as was done in the Parisian political revolution a compromise of principles was resorted to--women cut off part of their brims turned the circle into a sort of eccentric oval and rejoiced in the redundant curve projecting now from the left now on the right side of their heads. Ribands stiffened out into gigantic bows set forth the ample _chapeau_ right gaily; the brim stretched itself out with all the insolence of a public favourite; and at length Tom Hood showed us how a lady might go to church on a rainy day and shelter the whole family beneath her maternal hat. The present queen of the French wore an enormous chapeau of this kind at the audience which Louis Philippe gave to the peers and deputies that came to offer him the throne; every lady in England of a certain age has worn a hat of the same sort. We are bound to allow that this hat had something of the useful in it: the ample size of the brim effectually warded off both sun and rain; and we much question whether the parasol trade did not rather languish under its influence. But then it had corresponding disadvantages; it was unbearable in a windy day and rendered any thing like close contact with a friend impossible. To get a kiss from your pretty cousin or your maiden aunt if you met them in the street was quite out of the question unless you previously doffed your hat; and as for two young ladies laying their heads together and whispering soft secrets no such thing was practicable. The downfall therefore of such stiff and unwieldy hats might have been foretold from an early period of their existence; it came and with it a counter-revolution--a restoration of the legitimist bonnet. But mark the malignity of a certain elderly personage whose name and residence we never mention in ears polite; a change a final change came and it came from the source of all abominations--Paris! Yes! 'twas a pure and genuine invention of the fickle people--of _la jeune France_! We gave up the restored bonnet and we adopted the little reduced cut-away impudent bonnet of the present moment. Now with regard to the actual origin of this same form of bonnet which has met with universal approbation but which has no really good qualities to recommend it except those of portability and warmth to the ears of the wearer--we make with some regret the following assertion upon the accuracy of which we stake our æsthetic reputation. We were witnesses of the fact; any man in Paris who had his eyes about him must have witnessed the same thing; we appeal to all the _lions_ of the Bois or the Boulevard des Italiens: these small bonnets and the peculiar mode of wearing them at the back of the head were first introduced in Paris by a class of persons to whom we cannot make any more definite allusion than to say that their names must not be mentioned. These people invented these bonnets and wore them for nearly six months before they were imitated; and then the fashion being taken up by the milliners became general both in France and England. A corresponding change in the cut of the upper portions of ladies' gowns and in the manner of putting on the shawl--that very cut and manner now universally adopted--came from the same source and at the same time. These changes added greatly to female comfort we admit; and they were founded mainly on principles of good taste; but they had also other causes obvious to the æsthetician and the ethnologist which we abstain from noticing. Once more having been eye-witnesses to the change and having at the time maliciously speculated within our own breasts as to how long it would take for such a _mode_ to run the round of women's heads--our anticipations having been fully realized--we pledge ourselves to the accuracy of this statement. Well then having thus run a-muck against bonnets what reparation are we to make to the fair sex for abusing their taste and condemning their practice? We will try to point out to them certain leading ideas which may bring them back to sounder principles and make the covering of their heads worthy of the beauty of their faces. And here as in the case of hats the first thing to be aimed at must be utility--the second ornament. Be it observed too that we are writing for the latitude of England; because in this respect as in most others the climate ought to decide upon the basis of national costume. Now an Englishwoman of whatever grade she may be requires when she goes out of doors protection principally from wet next from cold and lastly from heat. Her head-dress to be really useful ought to comprise qualities that will effect these three objects. The substance therefore of the covering cannot consist of cotton linen or silk at _all_ times of the year; these substances will do for the more temperate or the hotter seasons but not in winter--that is to say they will not be serviceable during five months out of the twelve. In this inclement season nothing but woollen cloth or fur ought to be the principal article of female head-dress; only these two substances will effectually keep off wet and cold. They may be lined with silk or any other soft substance but the foundation we repeat ought to be fur or woollen cloth; both of them articles of English manufacture or preparation--one varying through all degrees of price; the other within the reach of most persons even in the middling classes of society. In the summer silk linen cotton or any other light fabric will effect the purpose proposed--protection from the rays of the sun and from the casual wet that may occur--though from the last less than from the first inconvenience. So much for the common _substance_ of an Englishwoman's out-of-door head-dress--for the _material_ that is to say: its use should always be modified by the rank and occupation of the wearer. The _form_ must be ascertained from a reference to the principles laid down above as to the combining a proper degree of concealment with the due exhibiting of the beautiful features of the female face; the covering should afford ample concealment when wanted but should also admit of the head being completely exposed when required. Now the veil gives abundant concealment but does not admit of total removal and is rather inconvenient to the wearer; it is apt to get in the way and is in danger of causing a slovenly or even a dirty appearance; it is more suited for in-door than for out-of-door use--more for a warm than a cold climate. The _hood_ is the best thing we know of for combining the two requisites of complete concealment and complete exposure. It unites by its shape all the purposes of form to the applicability of any kind of soft material; and it is suitable to the climate of this country at any period of the year. But ""how ugly!"" the ladies will exclaim--""who could bear to tie her head up in a pudding-bag?--Does not the very form of the hood approach too nearly to that of the head and thus violate a fundamental principle of æsthetics?"" Our reply must be that there are various kinds of hoods and that if they be considered ugly it is more from their strangeness through long disuse than from any fault in their natural form. Besides the very principle of concealment so essential to a woman's modesty militates rather against the principle of beauty; we admit it to be a difficulty--we would even say that the head of the female while out-of-doors amid the busy throng does not admit of the same degree of ornament as the head of the male. If we can make woman's covering graceful it is enough; the beauty of it should be reserved for the drawing-room and the boudoir--it should not be exhibited in the street. And after all beauty for beauty we will back a hood against a bonnet any day in the week. Bear with us however gentle ladies while we explain to you how we would have you make and wear your hoods; and to do so the better examine with us some of those delightful portraits of the time of Rubens and Vandyke when among the nobler classes of females dress had certainly attained a high if not its highest point of picturesque and elegant effect. Look at some of those admirable Flemish pictures where you will see many a pretty face enveloped in a fur-trimmed hood and observe how much grace and modest dignity is given by that simple habiliment. It is something of this kind which we would recommend. For example--if a hood so cut as not to admit of too close a conformation to the shape of the head were attached to a tippet which might descend and protect the shoulders or come even lower at the fancy of the wearer and were fastened round the neck the hood itself might be elevated so as to cover the head and might be drawn even over the face; or it might be instantly thrown back and would lie on the upper part of the neck in picturesque and graceful folds. The lines of such a covering not so flowing indeed as those of a veil would yet be not inelegant; and they would afford sufficient contrast to the features of the face while they would be far superior to the unmeaning rigidity of the bonnet. Hoods such as those are even now worn by some ladies for carriage purposes or while going to evening parties; and they would look just as well in the bright light of the sun as by the pale rays of the moon. Consider for a moment the comfort and the utility of such a dress; what a complete protection from cold and if necessary from wet! Even in summer the hood would keep off the sun's beams much more effectually than any bonnet; it would be light warm portable--useable at pleasure always ornamental always becoming. These hoods would be of service whether for a walk or for a journey in a carriage; they would not need to be disentangled from the person like bonnets; they would merely have to be thrown back; they never could get spoiled by crushing; they never would need cumbrous boxes to be carried in; and what is worthy of consideration their cost might always be suited to the means of the wearer. They would admit of any kind of ornament that would not destroy their principle of utility;--for ornament ceases to be ornament when it negatives the purpose of the object to which it is applied--it becomes in such a case a mere excrescence: they might be edged and lined with any the most sumptuous or the plainest materials: they might be attached round the neck by rich cords of gold and jewelled clasps; or they might be fastened with simple ribands. Thus in spring time a young and high-born damsel might wear her hood and tippet of light-coloured silk or brocade edged with ermine or swan's-down and attached with silver cords and clasps of pearl--while the noble matron might wear the same of crimson or purple velvet edged with sable and attached with golden cords and diamonds. The peasant's wife and daughter might use hoods of black blue or grey woollen cloth lined with grey linen edged with plain riband and fastened with a simple button. How much better how much more rational how much more becoming such head-dresses as these than the gay but useless ribands feathers and chapeaux of the one class or the misshapen uncomfortable untidy-looking bonnets of the other! According to the present system it is almost impossible to infer the rank of a lady from her external costume--many a milliner's girl has passed for a duchess before now--whereas by the adoption of articles of dress founded on principles like those of the hood some decisive marks of distinction might be obtained. Thus the rich furs and the jewels or the gold brocade of the princess might indeed be imitated by the merchant's wife--who at the present day is nearly her equal in wealth--the representative of political power in what is called a constitutional government; but the shop-girl and the dancing-mistress might break their hearts with spite ere they could set up a system of dress in keeping with hoods of the kind alluded to. We do not recommend that distinction of dress according to difference of rank should be carried to an undue limit; for in the present age of the world and especially in our country where the basis of society is shifting and where the pivots of the commonweal are loose too little distinction of rank is allowed; rank is not respected as it ought to be; but nevertheless the promiscuous jumbling together and confounding of all men is carried too far; it is one of the elements of republicanism and anarchy that we should do well to discourage. To ladies more than to men would distinctions of dress be useful and with them they would be more practicable of reintroduction; any thing that would tend to augment the outward respect of men for women and of women for each other would be so much gained toward a revival of some of the soundest maxims of former days. Bonnets then to Orcus! Hoods to the seventh heaven! H. L. J. GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES. THE VICEROY AND THE ARISTOCRACY OR MEXICO IN 1812. PART THE FIRST. The most obvious defect of the German school of romance is the universal tendency of its writers to the indefinite and periphrastic and the consequent absence of the characteristic and the true in their descriptions both of human and of external nature. Much of this prevailing habit may perhaps be attributed to the example of Goethe who in his works of fiction narrates the adventures of A and B residing in the town of C situate in some nameless and inscrutable section of Germany. And when to all this mystery is superadded the ponderous and ungraceful style of most German writers and the Latin construction of their interminable sentences for the solution of which the reader must wade to the final word the lack of good original novels and the universal preference in Germany of translations from French and English authors will be readily accounted for. The main source of these defects in the German writers may be found in their retired and bookish habits. Shut up in their studies with no companions but their books and their meerschaums and viewing the eternal world through the loopholes of retreat often anxious too to advance and illustrate some pet theory of their own their writings smell horribly of the lamp and are long-winded tedious and unnatural. Another cause of the deficiencies above-named may perhaps be discovered in the severity of German censorship and the apprehension that more clearness and identity in their descriptions of persons and places might be twisted into political and personal allusions. The admitted superiority of French and English works of fiction may be attributed to the widely different habits of the writers. Nearly all the French and many of the English writers of the present day are men of the world eschewing solitude and mixing largely in society. The good effects of this frequent collision with their fellow-men are visible in their works many of which display a deep knowledge of human nature a vivid power of description and a command of dialogue not only spirited and natural but often rising with the occasion into dramatic point and brilliancy. At length however a new and radiant star has arisen in the cloudy firmament of German fiction--a novel-writer whose works exhibit a striking example of entire exemption from the defects so evident in the great majority of his brethren. This is a nameless personage known among German reviewers as Der Unbekannte or the Unknown and who has broken ground that no German writer had hitherto ventured upon. Some have supposed him to be a Pennsylvanian a considerable part of which state was originally colonized by Germans whose descendants still to a large extent preserve the language and habits of the mother country. Another report stated him to be a native German who had emigrated to Louisiana and established himself there as a planter. Nothing definite in short is known; but what is certain is that he has been long resident in the United States and in Mexico and has made excellent use of his opportunities for becoming acquainted with those countries and their inhabitants. His subjects are with slight exceptions Transatlantic his materials original his style singularly natural and forcible; proving that however rugged the German language may appear in the works of others it will yield to the hand of a master and readily adapt itself to every subject. Our readers will probably not have forgotten a series of American Texian and Mexican tales and sketches which have appeared during the last few months in the pages of this magazine. With some alterations and adaptations intended to render them more acceptable to English tastes they are selections from the works of the writer above described. These works being published as already mentioned anonymously and at prices beyond the means of most German readers are but partially known and read even in Germany; and in this country they are entirely unknown such portions excepted as have appeared without a name in our recent numbers. Having there presented our readers with specimens only and for the most part of his latest works we will now proceed to give them some account of one of his earliest and most important productions--a Mexican historical romance of striking interest dated two years subsequently to the first revolutionary outbreak in Mexico and exhibiting a degree of descriptive and dramatic power unparalleled in the whole range of German fiction. When in the year 1776 the British colonies now known as the United States of America made their declaration of independence the struggle that ensued was unmarked by any circumstances of particular atrocity or blood-thirstiness except perhaps occasionally on the part of the Indian allies of either party. The fight was between men of the same race who had been accustomed to look upon each other as countrymen and brothers and whose sympathies and feelings were in many respects in unison; it was fought manfully and fairly as beseemed civilized men in the eighteenth century of the Christian era. Whatever wrongs real or imaginary the British Americans had to complain of they had none that sufficed even in their own eyes to justify reprisals or cruelties beyond those which the most humanely conducted and least envenomed wars inevitably entail. But it was under strikingly different circumstances that the second of the two great republics which with the exception of British possessions now comprise the whole civilized portion of the North American continent started into existence. In the former instance was seen the young and vigorous country which having attained its majority and feeling itself able to dispense with parental guardianship asserted its independence and vindicated it with a strong hand it is true but yet with a warm heart and a cool judgment. In the latter case it was the spring of the caged tiger that for years had pined in narrow prison beneath the scourge of its keeper whom it at last turned upon and rent in its fury. Subdued by the fierce assault of a handful of desperate adventurers the history of Mexico from the earliest period of its conquest is one continuous record of oppression and cruelty on the one hand of long and bitter suffering on the other. Deprived of its religious and customs its priesthood and legitimate sovereigns mercilessly tortured and slain its temples and institutions annihilated its very history and traditions blotted out Mexico in the hands of the Spaniards was rapidly transformed from a flourishing and independent empire into a huge province; while its inhabitants became a disposable horde on whom the conquerors seemed to think they were conferring a benefit when they made gift of them by hundreds and thousands like sheep or oxen to a lawless and reckless soldiery. Their houses and lands sometimes even their wives and children were snatched from them and they were driven in herds to labour in the mines or condemned to carry burdens over pathless and precipitous mountains; like the Gibeonites of old they were made hewers of wood and drawers of water to all the congregation. Expelled from the towns and confined to hamlets and villages whence they were only summoned to toil in the service of their oppressors they became in time entirely brutalized losing the finer and more noble qualities that distinguish man from the beast of the forest and retaining only a bitter sense of their degradation a vivid impression of the sufferings they daily endured and a gloomy instinctive longing after a bloody revenge. With these Indians who at the commencement of the present century composed two-fifths of the population of Mexico may be classed a race of beings equally numerous equally unfortunate and destitute and still wilder and more despised--namely the various castes sprung from the intercourse of the conquerors of the country of their successors and slaves with the aborigines. These half-bloods who united the apparent stupidity and real apathy of the Indian with the lawlessness and impatience of restraint of their white fathers found themselves driven out into a world that branded them for the accident of their birth; deprived of all property and reduced to the most ignoble employments; continual objects of fear and detestation to the better classes because they had nothing to risk and every thing to gain by a political convulsion. Such were the principal elements of a population which after centuries of patient endurance was at last roused to enter the lists and struggle for its independence with all the fury of the captive who breaks the long-worn fetters from his chafed and bleeding limbs and seeks his deliverance in the utter extermination of his jailers. For three hundred years had the Mexicans groaned under the lash of their taskmasters ruled by monarchs whom they never beheld and enduring innumerable evils without nourishing a single rebellious or revolutionary thought. If the breeze of liberty that blew over from the north occasionally awakened in their minds the idea of an improved state of things the hope or rather wish speedily died away crushed and annihilated under the well-combined system of oppression employed by the Spaniards. The nobles had ranged themselves entirely on the side of the government the middle classes had followed their example and the people were compelled to obey. All was quiet in Mexico long after insurrections had broken out in Spanish colonies further south; and this state of tranquillity was not even disturbed when news were brought of the invasion of Spain by its hereditary foe of the occupation of Madrid by French armies and of the scenes of butchery that took place in that capital on the second day of May 1808. The Mexicans far from availing themselves of this favourable opportunity to proclaim their own independence hastened to give proofs of their sympathy with the aggrieved honour of the mother country; and on all sides resounded curses upon the head of the powerful usurper who had ousted their legitimate but unknown monarch from his throne and now detained him in captivity. Intelligence of the Junta's declaration of war against Napoleon was received with unbounded applause and all were striving to demonstrate their enthusiasm in the most efficient manner when a royal decree arrived issued by the very prince whose misfortunes they were deploring and by which Mexico was ordered to recognise as its sovereign the brother of that usurper who had dispossessed its rightful king. A stronger proof of Ferdinand's unworthiness to rule could hardly have been given to the Mexicans than the decree in question. Loyalty had long been an article of faith with the whole nation; but even as the blindest superstition is sometimes metamorphosed on a sudden into total infidelity passing from one extreme to the other so was all feeling of loyalty utterly extinguished in the breast of the Mexican people by this instance of regal abjectness. It would have been long before they revolted against their hereditary Spanish ruler; but to find themselves given away by him in so ignominious a manner was a degradation which they felt the more deeply from its being almost the only one that had been hitherto spared them. Discontent was universal; and by a unanimous and popular movement the decree was publicly burned. With just indignation did the Mexicans now discover that those persons who had hitherto most prided themselves on their loyalty and fidelity to the king and the reigning dynasty were precisely the first to transfer their allegiance to the new sovereign. The whole of the government officers Spaniards nearly to a man hastened to take measures for the surrender of the nation to its new ruler without even enquiring whether it approved of the change. One man only was in favour of a more honourable expedient and that man was Iturrigaray the viceroy. Well acquainted with the cowardice and cunning of his captive sovereign the former of which qualities had dictated the decree he had nevertheless formed a plan to preserve Mexico for him in accordance with the wish of its population. A junta composed of Spaniards and of the most distinguished Mexicans was to represent the nation till the arrival of further news or orders from Europe. This plan was generally approved of by the Mexicans who looked forward with unbounded delight to the moment when they should have a voice in the public affairs of their country. The joy was universal; but in the very midst of this joy and of the preliminaries to the carrying out of this project the author of it the viceroy himself was seized in his palace by his own countrymen conducted with his family to Vera Cruz and slipped off to Spain as a state prisoner. By this lawless proceeding it was made evident to the weakest comprehension that so long as the Spaniard ruled the Mexican must remain in a state of unconditional slavery; that he could never hope to obtain a share in the management of his country; and that the act of violence of which Iturrigaray had been the victim had been solely caused by the disposition he had shown to pave the way for the gradual emancipation of the Creoles. From this moment may be dated the decision of the Mexicans to get rid of the Spaniards at any price; and a conspiracy was immediately organized which was joined by at least a hundred of the principal Creoles and by a far larger number of the middle classes and of the military--the object being to shake off the ignominious yoke that pressed so heavily upon them. The treason of one of the conspirators who on his death-bed in confession betrayed his confederates accelerated the outbreak of the plot. It was at nine o'clock on the evening of the 15th September 1810 that Don Ignacio Allende y Unzaga captain in the royal regiment _de la Reyna_ came in all haste from Gueretaro to Dolores and burst into the dwelling of Padre Hidalgo the parish priest of the latter place with news that the conspiracy had been discovered and an order issued to take prisoners dead or alive all those concerned in it. With the prospect of certain death before their eyes the two conspirators held a short consultation and then hastened to announce to their friends their firm decision to stake their lives upon the freedom of their country. Two officers the lieutenants Abasalo and Aldama and several musicians friends and companions of the cura joined them and by these men thirteen in number was the great Mexican revolution begun. Whilst Hidalgo a crucifix in his left hand a pistol in his right hurried to the prison and set at liberty the criminals confined there Allende proceeded to the houses of the Spanish inhabitants and compelled them to deliver up their plate and ready money. Then with the cry of ""_Viva la Independencia y muera el mal gobierno!_"" the insurgents paraded the streets of Dolores. The whole of the Indian population ranged themselves under the banner of their beloved curate who in a few hours found himself at the head of some thousand men. They took the road to Miguel el Grande and before reaching that place were joined by eight hundred recruits from Allende's regiment. Shouting their war-cry of ""Death to the Gachupins!""[5] the rebels reached San Felipe; in three days their numbers amounted to twenty thousand; at Zelaya a whole regiment of Mexican infantry and a portion of the cavalry regiment of the Principe came over to them. On they went ""Mueran los Gachupinos!"" still their cry to Guanaxato the richest city in Mexico where they were joined by some more troops. Indians kept flowing in from all sides and the mob for it was little more soon reached fifty thousand men. The fortified alhondega or granary at Guanaxato was taken by storm; the Spaniards and Creoles who had shut themselves up there with their treasures were massacred; upwards of five millions of hard dollars fell into the hands of the insurgents. This success broug
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t more Indians from all parts of the country. There were soon eighty thousand men collected together but amongst them were hardly four thousand muskets. Pressing forward by way of Valladolid towards Mexico they totally defeated Colonel Truxillo at Las Cruces and on the 31st October looked down from the rising ground of Santa Fé upon the capital city within the walls of which were thirty thousand Léperos [6] who awaited but the signal to break into open insurrection. Only two thousand troops of the line garrisoned Mexico; Calleja the commander-in-chief was a hundred leagues off; another general the Count of Cadena sixty; in the mountains the people were rising in favour of the revolution; another patriot chief was marching from Tlalnepatla to support Hidalgo while the viceroy was preparing to retire to Vera Cruz. The fate of Mexico was according to all appearance about to be decided; one bold assault and the Indians would again be the rulers of the country. But on the very day after their arrival within sight of Mexico Hidalgo with his hundred and ten thousand men commenced a retreat. The capital was saved; and from that day may be dated the sufferings and reverses of the patriots. Or the 7th November at Aculco Hidalgo met the united Spanish and Creole army and was defeated in the combat that ensued. Soon afterwards Allende experienced a like misfortune at Marfil; and a third action near Calderon decided the fate of the campaign. Hidalgo himself was betrayed at Acalito with fifty of his companions and put to death. The first act of the revolutionary drama was over within six months after the bloody curtain had been raised; but the torch of insurrection far from being extinguished by the fall of its bearer had divided and multiplied itself as if to spread the conflagration with more certainty. Thousands of those who had escaped from the battle-fields of Aculco Marfil and Calderon now spread themselves through the different provinces and commenced a war of extermination that was destined slowly but surely to sweep away their unappeasable tyrants. Most of these bands were commanded by priests lawyers or adventurers who acted without plan or concert and possessed little or no qualification for their post as leaders save their hatred of the Gachupins. But few of the better class of Creoles were to be found amongst the insurgents; and the strife was to all appearance between the Indians and half-bloods on the one hand and the property and intelligence of the country represented by the Spaniards and Creoles on the other. The Creoles although considerably less oppressed than the coloured races had felt themselves more so; because being more enlightened and civilized they had a livelier feeling and perception of the yoke than the Indians and half-castes. Children and descendants of the Spaniards who looked with sovereign contempt upon every thing Creole even to their own offspring the white Mexicans imbibed hatred of Spain almost with their mothers' milk. Far from enjoying what the letter of the law gave them the same rights as their European fathers they found themselves driven back among the people; while all offices and posts were filled by Spaniards who for the most part came to Mexico in rags and left it possessed of immense wealth. Even the possession of magnificent estates with their incalculable subterranean treasures was of precarious benefit to the Creoles; for the Spaniards paid small respect to the laws of property and in the name of their royal master assumed unlimited power over the land. The bitterness of feeling consequent on this state of things at length roused into activity the latent desire of freedom from the Spanish rule a freedom which was to have been obtained by the conspiracy already referred to. On a given day there was to have been a general rising throughout Mexico; all the Spanish officers and _employés_ were to have been arrested and their places filled by Creoles; the seaports were to have been seized and garrisoned so as to prevent succours coming to the Spaniards from the neighbouring island of Cuba. The discovery and premature outbreak of the plot as already mentioned were the causes of its failure. Hidalgo who was too deeply compromised to recede had put himself at the head of the revolution and enraged against the Creoles who had for the most part managed to draw their heads out of the noose commenced with his Indians a war of extermination that spared neither Spaniards nor Creoles. This terrible blunder on the part of the soldier-priest of itself decided the fate of the outbreak. The Creoles were compelled to unite with the very Spaniards whose downfall they had been plotting; and it was mainly through their co-operation that the three battles with the rebels had been won. The Spaniards however instead of being grateful for the assistance they had received from the Creoles persisted in looking upon the latter as a pack of unlucky rebels whose treason had not even been rendered respectable by success. Enraged at the revolt that had threatened to deprive their king of his supremacy and themselves of the plunder of the richest country in the world the Spaniards applied themselves to obviate the possibility of any future rebellion by pretty much the same measures that a bee-hunter takes to secure himself against the stings of the bees before seizing their honey namely by fire and the axe. Twenty-four cities both large and small and innumerable villages were razed to the ground during the first eighteen months of the revolution and their inhabitants utterly exterminated as a punishment for having favoured the insurgents. Even then these bigoted and barbarous servants of legitimacy were not satisfied with this wholesale slaughter. Through the medium of the church and in the name of the divine Trinity and of the blessed Virgin they proclaimed a solemn amnesty and those among the credulous and unfortunate rebels who availed themselves of it were mercilessly massacred. This infamous and blasphemous piece of bad faith rendered any pacification of the country impossible and went far towards uniting the whole population against its contemptible and blood-thirsty tyrants. Amongst the adventurers who had joined Hidalgo on his triumphant march from Guanaxato to Mexico was his old friend and schoolfellow Morellos rector of Nucupetaro. Hidalgo received him as a brother and comnissioned him to raise the standard of revolt in the south-western provinces of Mexico. Morellos who was then sixty years of age repaired to his appointed post with only five followers. In Petalan he was joined by twenty negroes to whom he promised their freedom; and soon afterwards several Creoles ranged themselves under his banner. Unlike the unfortunate Hidalgo he began the war on a small scale and after the fashion of those guerillas who in Spain had done so much mischief to the French armies. Gradually enlarging the sphere of his operations he had during a sixteen months' warfare gained several not unimportant advantages over the Spanish generals. Report represented him as a man of grave and earnest character--quite the converse of the hasty and unreflecting Hidalgo--of sound judgment irreproachable morals and far more liberal and extended views than could have been expected from the confined education of a Mexican priest. The influence he possessed over the Indians was said to be unbounded. At the time at which the action of the book now before us commences namely upon a carnival day of the year 1812 Morellos had marched into the vicinity of Mexico at the head of his little army. The principal leaders of the patriots Vittoria Guerero Bravo Ossourno and others had placed themselves under his orders; and the moral weight of his name seemed to be at last producing what had been wanting since the death of Hidalgo--namely that unanimity in the operations of the patriots and that degree of discipline amongst their troops which were calculated to gain them the confidence of the nation. The first two chapters of the ""Viceroy"" are of so striking a nature and give such strange and startling glimpses of the state of Mexican society and feeling at that period that with some slight abridgement we shall here translate them both. CHAPTER THE FIRST. ""'Tis known at least it should be that throughout All countries of the Catholic persuasion Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about The people take their fill of recreation And buy repentance ere they grow devout However high their rank or low their station With fiddling feasting dancing drinking masking And other things which may be had for asking."" BYRON. The siesta was over; and the profound stillness in which the capital of New Spain had been buried during the preceding two hours was suddenly broken by the hum of innumerable voices. The noise which commenced in the suburbs extended itself rapidly and increased almost to a roar scaring away the gallinazos and other birds of prey that were as usual seeking food in the streets and squares of the city of Mexico. Thousands of the inhabitants arose from their resting-places under the porticoes of houses churches and palaces or hurried forth from the great bazar eager to celebrate the carnival with that boundless mirth and license by which Roman Catholic nations seem to console themselves for the fasts and privations that are to succeed it. The variety of the costumes in which the maskers had arrayed themselves was endless while the profanity of some of them was no less remarkable. Here might be seen a gigantic _tenatero_ or porter in a sergeant's jacket and with the enormous cocked hat of a Spanish general upon his head a globe and sceptre in one hand in the other a pasteboard cross strutting proudly about in the character of the Redeemer of Atolnico;[7] while around him a party of Indians Zambos and Metises metamorphosed into Apostles Pharisees and Jewish women performed dances of very questionable propriety in honour of their divine master. In another place Adam and Eve were incessantly driven out of Paradise by an angel with a flaming sword--the three figures resembling very much the same persons as they used to be represented in the halfpenny woodcuts of the past century. Beside them _Dios el Padre_ led off a dance to the sound of a cracked guitar which St Cecilia was twanging as an accompaniment to the nasal melody of the gangaso;[8] and a little further on the child Jesus mounted on a jackass was flying into Egypt and squirting as he went streams of water into the open windows of houses and into the faces of the passers-by. Mingled with the mummers were crowds of loathsome _léperos_; and again amongst these might be seen numerous groups of perfumed dandies and elegantly dressed ladies who contrasted with the throng of Indians as swamp-lilies do with the filth and corruption of a pestilential marsh. In spite of the broad sunlight rockets were going off on all sides to the great amusement of the Indians who burst out into screams of wild delight each time that one of the fiery missiles caused alarm and confusion amongst the gaily attired dames who thronged the balconies and gazed down from their windows upon the motley scene. The contrast of all this movement and uproar with the silence and solitude that had reigned so few moments before was startling. It was as if the earth had suddenly opened and vomited forth the thousands of Mulattoes and Zambos Indians Metises and Creoles [9] that now sang danced chattered screamed and shouted--doing their utmost worthily to play their part in the time-honored saturnalia of the Romish church. Differing from the custom of more refiled although perhaps not more enlightened countries only a very few of the numerous parties of maskers seemed to aim by their costume or action at a satire on the follies foibles or occurrences of the times. Now and then however an exception was to be met with; and this was especially remarkable in a group which it becomes necessary here to describe. It consisted of twelve persons the majority of whom were fantastically attired in the national costumes of the various Indian tribes. These were grouped round a _carro_ or two-wheeled cart in so picturesque a manner that it was easy to see that their performance had been preconcerted and rehearsed. They wore symbols of mourning and seemed acting as pall-bearers and followers of a funeral; while upon the cart itself were two figures in which the horrible and the comic were blended after a most extraordinary fashion. One of them was a Torso from whose breast and headless neck and on the stumps of his arms and legs blood was incessantly dropping and as fast as it dropped it was greedily licked up by several persons in Spanish masks and dresses. The mutilated form seemed still to have life in it for it groaned and gave out hollow sounds of agony and complaint; at the same time struggling but in vain to shake off a monster that sat vampire-like upon its body and dug its tiger claws into the breast of the sufferer. The aspect of this monster was as strange as that of its victim. It had the cowl and the sleek but sinister countenance of well-fed Dominican friar; on its right hand was fixed a blazing torch on its left stood a dog that barked continually; its head was covered with a brass basin apparently meant to represent the barber helmet of the knight of La Mancha. From the shoulders of the figure protruded a pair of dusky wings not unlike those with which griffins and other fabulous monsters are represented in old books of heraldry; its back was terminated by the tail of the coyote or Mexican wolf; while the claws with which it seemed digging into the very bowels of the Torso were those of caguar or tiger. This singular pageant passed through the Tacuba street into that of San Agustin thence through the Plateria and the Calle Aguila into the quarter of the city known as the Trespana where it came to a halt before the hotel of the same name. During this progress the crowd of Indians Metises and other coloured races had been augmented by numerous parties of Creoles; while the Spaniards contented themselves with gazing distrustfully at the procession from the windows of their houses. The strange group was now surrounded by thousands of Zambos Creoles Metises and Indians presenting a variety and originality of costume physiognomy and colour--a contact and contrast of the most costly and sumptuous habiliments with the meanest and most disgusting rags such as it would be in vain to seek in any other country than Mexico. Amongst the most elegantly dressed of those whom the enigmatical masquerade attracted was a young man of whom it would have bee difficult to say to what race he belonged. His face was covered by a closely-fitting silken mask in which every hue of the rainbow was blended but which nevertheless was adapted so admirably to his features as at first to leave the spectators in doubt whether it were not the real colour of his skin. He skipped airily out of the fonda of Trespana into the street cast a keen but hasty glance around him and then began to make his way through the mob that surrounded the pageant. There was a nameless something in his manner and appearance that caused the throng to open him a willing passage towards the object of general curiosity. ""Foolish mob! brainless mob! swinish mob!"" cried the stranger when he at length stood beside the cart upon which the monster was still rending its hapless victim; ""whither are ye running and pressing and crowding and what are ye come to see? Know ye not that in Mexico it is forbidden to see especially to see clearly?"" The tone of the speaker his sudden appearance and the bold originality of his manner contrasted strongly with the timidity of the other Creoles who had all in their turn approached the cart cautiously viewed it for a few moments with an air of mistrust and then withdrawn themselves to a distance in order to await in safety what might next ensue. The daring address of the new-comer so different from this prudent behaviour did not fail to attract universal attention. ""What now men of Mexico or of Anahuac if you prefer that name Aztecs and Tenochtitlans and Othomites and Metises and Zambos and Salta-atras and whites whom the devil fly away with "" added he in a lower tone ""or at least with one-twentieth of them?""[10] ""Bravo!"" vociferated hundreds of Metises and Zambos whom the last few words had suddenly enlightened as to the political opinions of the speaker. ""Bravo! _Escuchad!_ Hear him!"" The object of this applause was apparently busied examining the composition of the pageant. When silence was restored he again turned to the crowd. ""And so you would like to know what it means?"" said he. ""Fools! know ye not that knowledge is forbidden? And yet if you are any better than a parcel of mules you may see and understand."" ""And if we _are_ no better than mules?"" cried a voice. ""Then will I be your _arriero_ and drive you "" replied the stranger laughing and tripping round the cart. ""Mules! ay _Madre de Dios!_ that are ye and have been all the days of your lives ever since the gloomy Gachupin yonder""--and he pointed to the monster half monk half beast--""has chosen for his resting-place the body of the poor unhappy creature whom some call Anahuac some Mexitli and some Guatemozin.[11] Mules ay threefold mules! Poor mules!"" added he in a tone of mingled compassion and contempt. ""Poor mules!"" sighed the surrounding spectators gazing alternately at the speaker and at the bleeding Torso. On a sudden the masked cavalier raised the cowl of the monster-monk and the severed head of the Torso rolled out from it. The features were Indian modelled and coloured in so masterly a manner that the resemblance they were intended to convey struck every body and hundreds of voices simultaneously exclaimed-- ""Guatemozin!"" ""Guatemozin!"" was repeated from mouth to mouth while the _pregonero_ or crier as the crowd had already christened the speaker continued to lift the veil from the significant allegory before him. ""See!"" cried he ""here have his claws struck deepest. 'Tis in Guanaxato and Guadalajara."" A shudder seemed to run through the crowd. ""'Tis Tio Gachupin "" continued the pregonero with a strange laugh ""who would fain play with you the same game that he did three centuries since with poor Guatemozin. And see! 'tis Guatemozin's ghost that appears bleeding before ye and claims vengeance at your hands!"" It had now become evident to the surrounding crowd that the pageant had a deep and dangerous political meaning. The spectators had greatly increased and were each moment increasing in number; the flat roofs and the _miradores_ or latticed balconies of the surrounding houses were crowded with gazers while the street presented the appearance of a sea of heads. A deep silence reigned broken only by an occasional whisper or by the peculiar kind of low shuddering murmur that the Indian is apt to utter when reminded of the power and prosperity of his forefathers. Suddenly there was a loud cry. ""Vigilancia! Vigilancia!"" was shouted from a distant balcony. The word passed from mouth to mouth. ""Vigilancia!"" repeated the pregonero; ""_gracias_ thanks Señoras y Señores "" added he with a laugh and a slight bow and then was lost in the crowd. There was a movement round the ghastly group upon the cart which the next instant disappeared; and when the alguazils by the aid of their staves had forced themselves a passage to the spot where the pageant had been no trace of it remained save fragments of wood and pasteboard that were showered from all sides upon their detested heads. The crowd itself separated and dispersed in different directions; no inconsiderable portion of it entering the hotel in front of which the scene had passed. This hotel or _fonda_ the first in Mexico at that time was then as now a great resort of the highest and lowest classes of the population--that is to say of the greatest luxury and most squalid misery that the world can show. The ground floor was used as a sort of bazar in which various articles of Mexican manufacture were exposed for sale; while the rooms on the upper story were appropriated to the reception of guests and furnished with a sumptuousness that contrasted strangely with the appearance of the majority of those who frequented them. In the first of these rooms stood a long and broad table somewhat resembling a billiard-table but upon which instead of balls and cues were piles of silver and gold amounting to thousands of dollars; while the wardrobe of the players who sat and stood around did not appear to be worth as many farthings. Excepting the jingle of the money and the words _Señor_ and _Señoria_ occasionally uttered scarcely a sound was heard; but upon the excited and eager countenances of the gamblers which varied with every change in their luck might be read the flushed exultation of the winners and the suppressed fury of the less fortunate--a fury that to judge from their fiery glances and set teeth might momentarily be expected to break out into fierce and deadly strife. The occupants of the second saloon were if possible still more repulsive than those of the first. Men women and children--some half naked--some with the most loathsome rags for a covering--were lying sitting squatting and crouching in every part of the room--some sunk into a kind of doze--others on the contrary actively engaged in ridding their own and their children's heads of those inhabitants that seemed to constitute the sole wealth of this class of people--an occupation which they pursued with as great zeal and apparent interest as if it had been absolutely essential to the proper celebration of the festival-day. A third room was devoted to the chocolate and sangaree drinkers who might be seen emptying their cups and glasses with as much satisfaction and relish as if the sight of the poverty and squalor that surrounded them gave additional zest to the draught; while all about them between and under chairs tables and benches the wretched Léperos lay grovelling. Parties of richly-dressed Spaniards and Creoles both men and women their eyes still heavy from the siesta were each moment entering preceded by negro or mulatto girls carrying cigars and sweetmeats and screaming out ""_Plaza plaza por nuestras señoras!_--Make way for our ladies!"" A summons or rather command which the _cortejos_ with their sticks and sabres were ever ready to enforce. ""_Caramba! Que bella y querida compania!_"" exclaimed on a sudden the same voice that a short time previously had explained the dangerous allegory in the street below. The owner of the voice however wore another mask and dress although his present costume like his previous one was that of a _caballero_ or gentleman. He glanced round the room with that supercilious air which young men of fashion and quality are apt to assume when amongst persons whom they consider immeasurably inferior to themselves. ""_C--jo à la bonanza!_ Here's to try my luck!"" cried he stepping up to the gambling table and placing a rouleau of dollars on a card which the next moment won. ""Bravo bravissimo! Doble!"" He won a second time and placed the stake which was now a heavy one upon a fresh card. ""Triplo!"" cried he. Fortune again favoured him. His luck still holding good he won a fourth time; and the banker rising from his seat with a savage curse upon his lips pushed over the whole of his bank to the fortunate player and left the table with a look of hate and rage that one would have thought must be the prelude to a stab. Nothing of the sort however ensued. The man removed from his ears the two reals which according to Mexican usage he had stuck there for luck; called to the waiter and uttered the word ""_cigarros!_"" as he showed one coin and ""_aguardiente de caña!_"" as he exhibited the other. Having thus disposed of his last real he draped his cloak over his shoulder with such skill that the end of it hung down to his heels concealing the tattered condition of that very essential part of his dress called trousers. He then awaited with perfect composure the refreshment he had ordered. Meanwhile the fortunate winner took a couple of reals from a small purse stuck one in each ear accompanying the action with the sign of the cross and prepared in his turn to hold the bank. ""_Plaza gavillas!_"" cried several voices just at this moment. ""Make room knaves for the señoras!"" and in came a party of Spanish soldiers accompanied by their mistresses--the latter dressed out in a style that many European ladies of the highest rank might well have envied. Before each of them walked three mulatto girls whose sole dress consisted of a short and loosely-fitting silk petticoat reaching to the knees; their hair being confined in nets of gold thread and their arms encircled with bracelets of the same metal. One of these hand-maidens bore an open box of cigars out of which the lady and her cortejo from time to time helped themselves; another had a basket with various comfits which was also frequently put in requisition and the third carried the purse. ""Plaza!"" was again the cry; and at the same time the companions of the ladies well-conditioned sub-officers of the Spanish troops swung their canes and sabres and the terrified Indians and Metises and Zambos tumbled and rolled off their benches and chairs as if they had been mowed down. ""_Demonio!_ What is all this?"" exclaimed the new banker who had already taken his seat at the table but now sprang suddenly up. ""_Por todos bastos et bastas de todo el mundo_--By every card in the pack!""---- He spoke in so threatening a tone and his gesticulation was so thoroughly Mexican in its vehemence that three of the sergeants sprang upon him at once. ""_Gojo que quieres?_ Dog! what do you mean?"" ""Dog!"" repeated the Mexican and his right hand disappeared under his cloak--a movement which was immediately imitated by the owners of the white black brown and greenish physiognomies by which he was surrounded. The three Spaniards stepped back as precipitately as they had advanced. Meanwhile the fourth sergeant approached the table and seizing upon the cards invited the company to stake their money against a bank which he put down. The effect of this invitation was no less extraordinary than rapid. The same men who an instant before had been ready to espouse their countryman's quarrel to the death--for such had been the meaning of the mysterious fumbling under the cloaks--no sooner perceived that the cards had changed masters than they called to the Mexican with one voice-- ""_Por el amor de Dios señor_--leave us in peace and God be with your señoria!"" ""Ay go and the devil take you!"" growled the Spaniards. The young man gazed in turn at his countrymen and at the sergeants; and then as if struck by the curious contrast between the courtesy of the former and the rudeness of the latter he laughed right out swept together his winnings and walked away from the table whistling a bolero. The sort of ramble which the masked cavalier now commenced through the adjoining saloons seemed for some time to have no particular object. He strutted across one paused for a moment in the next to take a sip out of a friend's liqueur glass dipped a biscuit into the chocolate of one acquaintance and helped another to finish his sangaree; and so lounged and loitered about till he found himself in the last of the suite of rooms which was then unoccupied. Stepping up to a door at the further end of the apartment he knocked at it at the same time uttering the words ""_Ave Maria purissima!_"" The door was opened. ""_Sin peccado concebida!_"" added the Mexican when he saw that the occupants of the room did not make the usual reply to his pious but customary salutation. ""For God's sake señores is there neither piety nor politeness among ye? Could you not say '_Sin peccado concebida?_'"" CHAPTER THE SECOND. ""Verdades diré en camisa Poco menos que desnuda."" QUEVEDO. The company assembled in the room which the masked cavalier entered consisted of some five-and-twenty young men in whose picturesque Spanish-Mexican costume velvets silk and gold embroidery had been employed with lavish profusion. The air of scornful superciliousness with which they glanced at the intruder and the indifference with which they seemed to regard the heaps of gold that lay glittering on the table denoted them to be practised gamblers or which in Mexico is the same thing noblemen of the highest rank. The saloon was richly furnished; chairs sofas and tables of the most costly woods and splendidly gilt cushions drapery and chandeliers after the newest fashion. ""Sixteen to the doubloon!"" cried the new-comer apparently noways abashed by the contemptuous manner of his reception as he stepped up to the table and placed a roll of dollars upon a card. ""_No pueden._ It cannot be "" replied the banker pushing back the silver with his wooden rake. ""It cannot be "" echoed several of the players in the same short contemptuous tone. ""_Una sociedad con fuero._ A private and privileged society."" ""_Una sociedad con fuero!_"" repeated the stranger shaking his head. ""All due respect for _fueros_ so long as they are respected and respectable. But know you not Señores that _our_ fuero is the older one?"" ""Thy fuero older _gato_?"" drawled one of the noblemen. ""Ay truly is it. 'Tis the fuero of the carnival and dates from the time that Mother Church first fell into her dotage."" ""Mother Church in her dotage! Knave what mean ye?"" ""Your Señorias need only look into the street to see what I mean. She has practised folly till she has become a fool. 'Tis just like the mother country who has drunk Mexican blood till she has grown bloodthirsty."" The young cavaliers became suddenly attentive. ""_Paz! Señor_;"" said the banker ""such words are dangerous. Begone in God's name and beware of the alguazils and the Cordelada.""[12] ""_Paz!_"" replied the stranger; ""peace do you say? Would you have peace and quiet? They are no more to be found in Mexico. Quiet!"" repeated he with a fiery enthusiasm in his voice and gesture ""you will have as little of it as Pedrillo had-- ""No rest by day No sleep by night For poor Pedrillo The luckless wight."" And he broke on a sudden into the beautiful and piquant air of Pedrillo which he sang with a taste and spirit that made the assembled cavaliers gaze at him open-mouthed. At the same moment a guitar and castanets were heard in the adjoining room accompanying the song. Either the charm of the surprise or the originality of the individual who thus appositely introduced this popular fragment from the masterpiece of a favourite composer produced an electrifying effect upon the young noblemen. They sprang from their chairs and at the conclusion of the song a score of doubloons fell ringing at the feet of the singer. ""_Otra vez!_ Encore encore!"" was the universal cry. ""Señorias "" said the banker who alone appeared dissatisfied at this interruption and now approached the stranger; ""I warn you Señorias! I recognise in this _caballero_""--he spoke the word in an ironical and depreciating tone--""the same _gentilhombre_ whom the alguazils were so lately seeking. Beware! his presence may get us into trouble."" ""Ha! are you the fellow who played the alguazils such a trick?"" cried several of the young men. Instead of replying the stranger stamped with his foot; and as if the stamp had been the blow of an enchanter's wand two folding-doors opposite to those by which he had entered the apartment suddenly opened and four dancing figures with flesh-coloured silk masks upon their faces and clothed in tightly-fitting dresses of the same material bounded into the room. ""Señorias! _Por el amor de Dios!_"" cried the banker imploringly. As he spoke two guitar-players who accompanied the dancers began twanging their instruments; and the young men absorbed in contemplation of the graceful and luxuriant forms of the two female dancers paid no attention to his entreaties and warnings. Hastily gathering up his bank he packed it into a box and left the saloon with all possible despatch. And now to the music of the guitars and the clatter of the castanets the two couples of dancers began a performance of which the most vivid pen would fail to portray the graceful and fascinating voluptuousness. They commenced with the bolero and thence glided with a stamping of the feet and whirling of the arms into the more licentious fandango. But the sensual character of the latter dance was so far veiled and refined by the grace and elegance of the dancers that
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hat is usually a mere appeal to the senses became in their performances the very poetry of motion. The young noblemen remained as though entranced their eyes fixed upon the dancers and totally unable to give utterance to their delight. While thus absorbed they were suddenly startled by a hoarse inarticulate sound proceeding from the further corner of the room. At the same moment the dance ceased; dancers and musicians retired through the door by which they had entered and a figure became visible that will probably excite the astonishment of the reader as much as it did that of the young cavaliers who now first perceived it. Upon an ottoman extending along one side of the apartment there reclined in a half-lying half-sitting posture a person whose dress was that of a Moslem of the highest rank. His robe and turban were both green and in the folds of the latter was interwoven a chain or wreath of precious stones of extraordinary beauty and apparent value. In striking contrast with this rich attire were the features of the Turk which were singularly repulsive. A low forehead receded from above a pair of bluish-grey eyes in the glazed hard look of which perfidy cruelty and pride seemed to have taken up their abode. From between the eyes protruded a long nose curved like that of a bird of prey over an upper lip indicative of gluttony and the coarsest animal propensities; the mouth was large the lower lip hung relaxed and slavering over a long square chin. The complexion was in good keeping with the false and malignant expression of the countenance being of an indefinite tint that could be classed under no particular colour. ""_Por el amor de Dios!_"" cried the young noblemen now really alarmed. ""What is this? What does it mean?"" And they hesitatingly approached the ottoman and then again shrunk back as if scared by some loathsome and unnatural object. Beside the figure two other Moslems were kneeling one in a green the other in a snow-white turban. Their hands were folded upon their breasts and their faces bowed till they almost touched the carpet. ""Brr!"" growled the Moslem in a tone more like the grunt of a wild boar than the voice of a human being and stretching himself peevishly out upon the ottoman. His kneeling attendants started rose respectfully to their feet and taking a step backwards began conversing in a subdued tone and without appearing aware of the presence of the Mexicans who on their part were so bewildered by this strange scene that they seemed to have lost the power of speech and movement. ""Zil ullah!"" exclaimed he of the white turban. ""Allah be with us! His sublimity has again spoken! Spoken but how little!"" added he in a disconsolate tone. ""Right willingly would Ben Haddi commence this very day a barefooted pilgrimage""---- ""And Bultshere "" interrupted the other ""would kiss the black stone of Ararat""---- ""If "" resumed the first speaker ""his sublimity might be thereby healed of his malady. Zil ullah! 'Tis three days since his highness tasted of the bean of Mocha or of the glorious juice that transports the true believer while yet living into the realms of Paradise."" ""Three days "" continued his companion ""since he deigned to permit the soft caresses of the beauteous Zuleima or the ardent embraces of the dark-eyed Fatima. What can be the cause?"" ""Indigestion "" quoth Green-turban. ""Cares of state "" rejoined White-turban. ""We must amuse his highness. There are new Almas and Odalisques arrived. He will perhaps deign to witness their performance."" And so saying he approached the Caliph for such was the high rank of the personage whom the sitting Moslem was intended to represent and throwing himself prostrate on the ground preferred his request. A reply was returned in a sort of affirmative grunt whereupon the vizier arose in great joy stepped back to his former place and after giving three distinct but not loud stamps upon the floor retreated with his companion into a corner of the room. Scarcely had he done so when to the redoubled astonishment of the Mexican cavaliers the folding-doors again flew open and four couples of dancers tripped in attired in costumes so rich and magnificent as to eclipse even that of the Caliph. They were followed by four negroes two of whom bore guitars of Moorish make and appearance the third the East Indian _tomtom_ or drum and the fourth the Persian flute. For a brief space the eight dancers stood in mute expectation awaiting a signal to begin. This was given by a Brr! from the Sultan who at the same time vouchsafed to raise his head and manifest an intention of witnessing the entertainment offered him. An adagio on the guitars gradually increasing in volume and in which the tap of the tomtom mingled like the rolling of distant thunder opened the dance. Then came the sharp and yet mellow clack of the dancers' castanets and finally the soft tones of the flute blending the whole into harmony. The dancers seemed to follow and imitate by their action each change of the music: at first and with wonderful grace and elegance they fell into a group or _tableau_ their silken scarfs of transparent texture and bright and varied colours floating in the air like rainbows behind which glanced the houri-like forms of the women. Presently the music glided from the adagio into the allegro; the steps of the dancers became quicker their gestures more animated the play of their limbs more voluptuous. With the exception of one couple every glance and movement of the performers seemed directed or aimed at the Caliph. This couple consisted of the most sylph-like and exquisitely formed of the four female dancers and of a Persian warrior who was pursuing her and from whom she strove coyly to escape. With admirable grace and skill did these two figures detach themselves from their companions in order to continue a while their simulated flight and pursuit. The fairy feet of the fugitive scarcely touched the ground and such charm and fascination were in her movements that the Caliph several times raised his eyelids and gave a grunt of approval. At each of these indications on the part of the despot the anxiety of the poor Persian seemed to increase till it bordered on despair and so naturally was this despair portrayed as to draw a loud bravo from the spectators: only the Caliph appeared insensible to the refined play of these elegant dancers. Once or twice indeed his dull eyes seemed to emit a ray of animal delight but this quickly faded away; and even the triumph of the Persian when his mistress finally fell panting and yielding into his arms was insufficient to rekindle it. ""Brr!"" cried the Commander of the Faithful in the same harsh grunting voice as before; ""and you call that pastime that which we have seen a thousand and one times? By the beard of the Prophet vizier "" he continued in a louder tone ""if I have no sleep to-day nor appetite to-morrow there is the bowstring for you and the stake for your Almas!"" At this terrible threat the vizier stood speechless with horror while the mouth of the alarmed emir gaped to an unnatural extent: the dancers paused as though suddenly turned to stone in the very same posture in which the menace of the Caliph had surprised them. One of the _bayadères_ remained with her leg in a horizontal position the point of her toe almost in her partner's open mouth; another in the terror of the moment had entangled her foot in the ample robe of the emir who now began to run up and down in his extremity of consternation compelling her to dance after him on one leg; in short all the actors in this strange scene expressed so naturally by dumb show their amazement and alarm that the Caliph burst into a loud fit of laughter. ""Allah Akbar!"" cried vizier and emir and dancers with one voice and then all burst forth in loud praises of the goodness of Allah who through the agency of his slaves had done so great a wonder and extracted a refreshing laugh from his highness. This unanimous demonstration of affection on the part of his loving subjects seemed pleasing to the potentate. He nodded and the emir encouraged by this sign of approbation ventured to draw nearer. ""With all submission""--he began. ""By the Prophet's beard!"" interrupted the Caliph ""we know what thou wouldst say before it is spoken. We require not a vizier to talk but to act as a leech and draw blood where it is too rich or corrupt. How thinkest thou? If I were to impale one of these lazy dancers would terror make the others dance better?"" ""On the contrary please your highness it would lame them. 'Twere better to impale a swine from the herd called the people--one who possesses zechins. Your highness's treasury is empty and these Almas are as poor as the mice in the churches of the Giaours and withal right useful servants of the state."" ""Thou sayest well; by the Prophet they _are_ useful servants of the state "" cried the Caliph stroking his belly as he spoke ""and they may be assured of our grace and favour. Strike off the heads of some dozen or two knaves in the quarter of the Bezestein and let the half of their zechins be given to these poor devils."" There was a gentle tapping at the door which the vizier hastened to open and returned with the news that the chief of the mollahs humbly solicited the favour of an audience. ""Again cares of state and nothing but cares of state!"" groaned the Caliph allowing his head to fall on his breast as if in reflection. ""'Tis well "" he said at last in a peevish tone. ""We will receive the spiritual shepherd of our kingdom. Away with these mummers! 'tis not fitting that the expounder of the Koran should find us in such carnal company."" Dancers and musicians now stepped into the background and the doors opened to admit the tall figure of the head mollah who entered with eyes fixed upon the floor; and on finding himself in presence of the Caliph knelt down and touched the carpet with his forehead. ""Speak thy business "" said the Sultan ""and quickly. We have been already much engrossed with affairs of government more perhaps than is good for the feeble state of our bodily health."" ""Bismillah!"" quoth the high priest gravely ""we have caused prayers to be offered up from each minaret of the mosques and have commanded that all true believers should bestrew themselves with dust and ashes. We have sent men upon the holy pilgrimage and to kiss the black stone of Ararat in order that the sufferings of your sublimity may be alleviated."" ""Thou hast done well oh mollah!"" replied the Sultan. ""Luminary of the World whose light is brighter than the sun "" continued the head mollah; ""we have also with regard to this malady of your highness consulted the book that serves us instead of all the wisdom of the Giaour and therein have we found that Haroun al Raschid was afflicted with a like evil which he unquestionably brought on himself through too great attention to the duties of his government."" ""Hold there mollah!"" interrupted the Caliph in a voice of thunder ""and weigh thy words before thou speakest. Duties of government sayest thou? Duties! Who has duties? A worm like myself that we have been pleased to exalt out of the dust; but we have nought to do either with such reptiles or with duty; we the vicar of the Prophet. Our pleasure is your duty and our will your law."" ""Doubtless doubtless Light of the World "" cried the mollah hastening to correct his error. ""Thy unworthy servant meant to say pleasures. When Haroun al Raschid found himself in similar moments of suffering and despondency which he unquestionably brought on by too great attention to his pleasures""-- ""Slave!"" again interrupted the Caliph ""dost thou mock us saying that our glorious ancestor exhausted himself with pleasures thus striving to make it appear that we do the same? Do we not each day perform nine times nine prostrations our face towards Mecca? Did we not no longer back than yesterday sign our name full twenty times to the death-warrants of those scurvy and unbelieving hounds who dared to blaspheme us the Prophet's vicegerent and to say in the Bezestein--What said the dogs? Have we not given orders to hang impale and exterminate like noisome vermin all those who dare in any way to think or have an opinion? Have we not made this order public to the great glorification of the Prophet and of our own name?"" The Caliph paused for a moment. Then turning suddenly to the mollah--""You may inform us "" said he ""what our ancestor Haroun al Raschid was wont to do when afflicted like ourselves with heaviness of spirit."" ""Bismillah!"" again began the mollah. ""When Haroun al Raschid was thus afflicted he applied to the book which we have brought with us and which your highness if he so pleases can see and even read""-- ""Miserable wretch!"" thundered the Caliph with a glance of scorn at the speaker and his book. ""Wherefore do we maintain you and those like you if it is not to do for us what we hold it beneath our dignity to do for ourselves? And is not the reading of books beneath our dignity? Do not all books contain the ideas and notions of a pack of scoundrels who talk about things which they do not understand and that in no wise concern them? Have we not decreed that the bowstring should be the portion of all those who are reported to be either writers or readers of books? And have we not therefore taken into our service a parcel of idlers of whom thou art the chief and whose duty it is to read and think for the whole of our people?"" ""And why should the Light of the World read?"" replied the mollah after a respectful pause. ""He who is already the source of all earthly wisdom the joy and admiration of all nations? How shall I express my wonder--how shall I sufficiently praise his high qualities?""-- ""Stop mollah!"" cried the Caliph. ""Know that it does not please us to be praised or wondered at by such as thou. Truly thy praises stink in our nostrils and are as discords in our ears. It becometh not worms like thyself whom we have raised from the dirt and can again dash back into it to seek to spy out our good qualities lest at the same time they should discern""--our bad ones the Caliph would probably have said but he left the sentence unfinished. ""Thou shouldst look up at us "" continued he ""as to the sun in which neither good nor evil can be seen but of which the presence is known by its effects. And now tell us what Haroun al Raschid did when assailed by despondency even as we ourselves are."" ""Allah Akbar! Haroun al Raschid when afflicted like your highness was wont to disguise himself in various ways as a merchant a soldier or a sailor""---- ""All that is well known to us "" interposed the Caliph; ""but although we are disposed to follow the example of our glorious ancestor so far as we can without too great exertion of mind or body yet we doubt whether just now we---- Thou knowest "" he continued interrupting himself and in a lower tone ""that although Haroun al Raschid was certainly our forefather yet our blood improving by descent is even purer and more illustrious than his. We cannot therefore condescend to imitate him in the way you speak of. But we will undertake a work that shall be far more pleasing to the Prophet. With our own hands will we embroider a twelfth under petticoat for his blessed mother so that she may have one for each month in the year."" During the latter part of this dialogue a whispering had been more than once audible at the door of the apartment. This circumstance implying the presence of listeners might well endanger the necks of the daring representatives of the Caliph and his courtiers; but nevertheless without allowing themselves to be discomposed by the vicinity of spies the Moslems had played out their parts and the Caliph now rose from his ottoman with all the dignity of an eastern despot repeating as he did so to his attendants what great things he would do and how he would stitch with his own hands a twelfth under petticoat for the mother of the Prophet. The procession had nearly reached the door by which it had entered when one of the young Mexicans recovering apparently from the state of inaction in which this extraordinary scene had plunged him and his companions suddenly sprang forward gazed earnestly in the face of the Caliph and then started back again with a cry of horror. ""_Por el amor de Dios! Fernando el Rey!_ 'Tis his majesty King Ferdinand!"" cried the young nobleman. ""Stop traitor!"" he exclaimed again advancing and endeavouring to seize the Caliph. But even in this moment of peril the latter did not forget his assumed dignity. With a look of the most profound contempt he strode out of the apartment while the gigantic mollah seizing the Creole by the collar raised him from the ground like a feather and hurling him back into the room followed the Commander of the Faithful and shut the door. Before the Mexican cavaliers had recovered from their alarm at the daring and treasonable dramatic satire of which they had so unwittingly been made spectators the other doors were thrown violently open and several alguazils burst into the apartment. After a hurried glance round the room perceiving that the objects of their search had disappeared they darted out again at the opposite door and hastened through the adjacent saloons uttering loud curses and cries of treason. This furious but fruitless chase led them through the whole suite of apartments till they came round again to the room where the young noblemen were still assembled. ""_Todos diabolos!_"" cried one of the police agents running to the window ""yonder go the villains they have escaped us this time.--Demonio!"" vociferated he with a fury that made the foam fly from his lips. ""And so Caballeros!"" snarled he to the Creoles who now stood in trembling alarm and fully enlightened by the rage of the alguazils as to the enormity of the treasonable pasquinade they had witnessed; ""so you have been pleased to take the person of his most sacred majesty for your sport and laughing-stock?"" ""Don Bautista on our honour we knew not."" ""By _our_ honour "" yelled another alguazil ""you shall pay for this with your heads Creole hounds that ye are!"" ""Don Iago "" cried the insulted cavaliers in a threatening tone ""we say that on our _honour_""---- ""Say what you please "" interrupted the alguazil ""but I tell you that if I were viceroy""---- ""Your turn may come. You are a born Gachupin "" cried one of the cavaliers with a bitter sneer. ""I am a Spaniard "" retorted the other; ""and you are nothing but wretched Creoles; vile miserable Creoles; _y basta!_"" The very earth-worm will turn when trodden upon and this last insult was too much even for Creole endurance. The young men made a furious rush at the alguazil; but he had foreseen the storm and effected a timely retreat. Hundreds of Creoles of the middle classes Metises Zambos and Spaniards had assembled in the adjoining apartment and looked on at the scene without showing any sympathy either with the police or the young Mexicans. The latter gazed for a second or two at each other in perplexity and dismay and then separating disappeared through the different doors. Some extraordinary scenes and incidents grow out of this masquerade or rather out of the punishment to which the young noblemen who witnessed it are sentenced. But lest we should exceed our limits we must reserve further extracts for a second notice of this very remarkable book. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: Gachupin is an untranslatable word of Mexican origin. The Spaniards asserted it to mean a hero on horseback; the Indians and coloured races who applied it as a term of contempt and reproach to the Spaniards and their dependent Creoles understood by it a thief.] [Footnote 6: The word Léperos which literally translated means lepers is the term applied to the homeless and houseless wretches who are to be seen wandering by thousands about the city and suburbs of Mexico. They consist of beggars mechanics writers and even artists. The most industrious amongst them work one or at most two days in the week and the dress of these consists of thin trousers a sort of cloak and a straw hat. Their dwelling is in any hole or corner under the arcades of the houses or in the mud cottages of the suburbs. Some of the work they produce is wonderful for its beauty and ingenuity. They manufacture the finest gold chains surpassing any thing of the kind that is to be found in Europe. Their statuettes and images of saints are often masterpieces. During the revolution their character as a class became materially worse. There are more than ten thousand of them who do literally nothing possess nothing and lie about the streets stark naked with the exception of a tattered woollen blanket.] [Footnote 7: The chapel of the Redeemer of Atolnico is situated on the summit of a steep and high mountain two and a half leagues from Miguel el Grande and is much resorted to by pilgrims. On the high altar are statues of the Saviour the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalen of solid silver studded with rubies and emeralds. There are also in the same church thirty other altars with statues as large as life pillars crosses and candlesticks all of the same metal. The sums that are each year offered up at this shrine are said to amount to considerably more than one hundred thousand dollars.] [Footnote 8: A monotonous species of dance.] [Footnote 9: Creoles are born in Mexico of white parents. The Metises are the descendants of whites and Indians the Mulattoes of whites and Negroes the Zambos or Chinos of Negroes and Indians. The unmixed races are Spaniards Creoles Indians and Negroes. _Salta-atras_ literally a spring backwards is the term applied to those of whom the mothers were of a whiter race than the fathers.] [Footnote 10: The Spaniards at the period here referred to (1812 ) the rulers and tyrants of Mexico were estimated at 60 000 souls or one-twentieth of the white population of the country.] [Footnote 11: Anahuac the ancient name of Mexico. Mexitli the god of war of the Mexicans. Guatemozin the last Mexican emperor. He was tortured in the time of Cortes to induce him to reveal the place where his treasures were concealed; and subsequently hung for conspiracy by order of the same Spanish chief.] [Footnote 12: One of the three principal prisons in Mexico.] _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ "
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file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCLIII. MARCH 1845. VOL. LVII. CONTENTS. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 269 MRS POOLE'S "ENGLISHWOMAN IN EGYPT " 286 PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE--STEPHENS' BOOK OF THE FARM &C. 298 STANZAS 314 LORD MALMESBURY'S DIARIES AND CORRESPONDENCE 315 GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES. PART II. 331 BRITISH HISTORY DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 353 NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. II--DRYDEN AND POPE 369 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. CCCLIII. MARCH 1845. VOL. LVII. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. In 1821 as a contribution to a periodical work--in 1822 as a separate volume--appeared the "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater." The object of that work was to reveal something of the grandeur which belongs _potentially_ to human dreams. Whatever may be the number of those in whom this faculty of dreaming splendidly can be supposed to lurk there are not perhaps very many in whom it is developed. He whose talk is of oxen will probably dream of oxen: and the condition of human life which yokes so vast a majority to a daily experience incompatible with much elevation of thought oftentimes neutralizes the tone of grandeur in the reproductive faculty of dreaming even for those whose minds are populous with solemn imagery. Habitually to dream magnificently a man must have a constitutional determination to reverie. This in the first place; and even this where it exists strongly is too much liable to disturbance from the gathering agitation of our present English life. Already in this year 1845 what by the procession through fifty years of mighty revolutions amongst the kingdoms of the earth what by the continual development of vast physical agencies--steam in all its applications light getting under harness as a slave for man [1] powers from heaven descending upon education and accelerations of the press powers from hell (as it might seem but these also celestial) coming round upon artillery and the forces of destruction--the eye of the calmest observer is troubled; the brain is haunted as if by some jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us; and it becomes too evident that unless this colossal pace of advance can be retarded (a thing not to be expected ) or which is happily more probable can be met by counter-forces of corresponding magnitude forces in the direction of religion or profound philosophy that shall radiate centrifugally against this storm of life so perilously centripetal towards the vortex of the merely human left to itself the natural tendency of so chaotic a tumult must be to evil; for some minds to lunacy for others to a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much this fierce condition of eternal hurry upon an arena too exclusively human in its interests is likely to defeat the grandeur which is latent in all men may be seen in the ordinary effect from living too constantly in varied company. The word _dissipation_ in one of its uses expresses that effect; the action of thought and feeling is too much dissipated and squandered. To reconcentrate them into meditative habits a necessity is felt by all observing persons for sometimes retiring from crowds. No man ever will unfold the capacities of his own intellect who does not at least chequer his life with solitude. How much solitude so much power. Or if not true in that rigour of expression to this formula undoubtedly it is that the wise rule of life must approximate. Among the powers in man which suffer by this too intense life of the _social_ instincts none suffers more than the power of dreaming. Let no man think this a trifle. The machinery for dreaming planted in the human brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty in alliance with the mystery of darkness is the one great tube through which man communicates with the shadowy. And the dreaming organ in connexion with the heart the eye and the ear compose the magnificent apparatus which forces the infinite into the chambers of a human brain and throws dark reflections from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the sleeping mind. But if this faculty suffers from the decay of solitude which is becoming a visionary idea in England on the other hand it is certain that some merely physical agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming almost preternaturally. Amongst these is intense exercise; to some extent at least and for some persons: but beyond all others is opium which indeed seems to possess a _specific_ power in that direction; not merely for exalting the colours of dream-scenery but for deepening its shadows; and above all for strengthening the sense of its fearful _realities_. The _Opium Confessions_ were written with some slight secondary purpose of exposing this specific power of opium upon the faculty of dreaming but much more with the purpose of displaying the faculty itself; and the outline of the work travelled in this course. Supposing a reader acquainted with the true object of the Confessions as here stated viz. the revelation of dreaming to have put this question:-- "But how came you to dream more splendidly than others?" The answer would have been:--"Because (_præmissis præmittendis_) I took excessive quantities of opium." Secondly suppose him to say "But how came you to take opium in this excess?" The answer to _that_ would be "Because some early events in my life had left a weakness in one organ which required (or seemed to require) that stimulant." Then because the opium dreams could not always have been understood without a knowledge of these events it became necessary to relate them. Now these two questions and answers exhibit the _law_ of the work _i.e._ the principle which determined its form but precisely in the inverse or regressive order. The work itself opened with the narration of my early adventures. These in the natural order of succession led to the opium as a resource for healing their consequences; and the opium as naturally led to the dreams. But in the synthetic order of presenting the facts what stood last in the succession of development stood first in the order of my purposes. At the close of this little work the reader was instructed to believe--and _truly_ instructed--that I had mastered the tyranny of opium. The fact is that _twice_ I mastered it and by efforts even more prodigious in the second of these cases than in the first. But one error I committed in both. I did not connect with the abstinence from opium--so trying to the fortitude under _any_ circumstances--that enormity of exercise which (as I have since learned) is the one sole resource for making it endurable. I overlooked in those days the one _sine quâ non_ for making the triumph permanent. Twice I sank--twice I rose again. A third time I sank; partly from the cause mentioned (the oversight as to exercise ) partly from other causes on which it avails not now to trouble the reader. I could moralize if I chose; and perhaps _he_ will moralize whether I choose it or not. But in the mean time neither of us is acquainted properly with the circumstances of the case; I from natural bias of judgment not altogether acquainted; and he (with his permission) not at all. During this third prostration before the dark idol and after some years new and monstrous phenomena began slowly to arise. For a time these were neglected as accidents or palliated by such remedies as I knew of. But when I could no longer conceal from myself that these dreadful symptoms were moving forward for ever by a pace steadily solemnly and equably increasing I endeavoured with some feeling of panic for a third time to retrace my steps. But I had not reversed my motions for many weeks before I became profoundly aware that this was impossible. Or in the imagery of my dreams which translated every thing into their own language I saw through vast avenues of gloom those towering gates of ingress which hitherto had always seemed to stand open now at last barred against my retreat and hung with funeral crape. As applicable to this tremendous situation (the situation of one escaping by some refluent current from the maelstrom roaring for him in the distance who finds suddenly that this current is but an eddy wheeling round upon the same maelstrom ) I have since remembered a striking incident in a modern novel. A lady abbess of a convent herself suspected of Protestant leanings and in that way already disarmed of all effectual power finds one of her own nuns (whom she knows to be innocent) accused of an offence leading to the most terrific of punishments. The nun will be immured alive if she is found guilty; and there is no chance that she will not--for the evidence against her is strong--unless something were made known that cannot be made known; and the judges are hostile. All follows in the order of the reader's fears. The witnesses depose; the evidence is without effectual contradiction; the conviction is declared; the judgment is delivered; nothing remains but to see execution done. At this crisis the abbess alarmed too late for effectual interposition considers with herself that according to the regular forms there will be one single night open during which the prisoner cannot be withdrawn from her own separate jurisdiction. This one night therefore she will use at any hazard to herself for the salvation of her friend. At midnight when all is hushed in the convent the lady traverses the passages which lead to the cells of prisoners. She bears a master-key under her professional habit. As this will open every door in every corridor --already by anticipation she feels the luxury of holding her emancipated friend within her arms. Suddenly she has reached the door; she descries a dusky object; she raises her lamp; and ranged within the recess of the entrance she beholds the funeral banner of the Holy Office and the black robes of its inexorable officials. I apprehend that in a situation such as this supposing it a real one the lady abbess would not start would not show any marks externally of consternation or horror. The case was beyond _that_. The sentiment which attends the sudden revelation that _all is lost_! silently is gathered up into the heart; it is too deep for gestures or for words; and no part of it passes to the outside. Were the ruin conditional or were it in any point doubtful it would be natural to utter ejaculations and to seek sympathy. But where the ruin is understood to be absolute where sympathy cannot be consolation and counsel cannot be hope this is otherwise. The voice perishes; the gestures are frozen; and the spirit of man flies back upon its own centre. I at least upon seeing those awful gates closed and hung with draperies of woe as for a death already past spoke not nor started nor groaned. One profound sigh ascended from my heart and I was silent for days. It is the record of this third or final stage of opium as one differing in something more than degree from the others that I am now undertaking. But a scruple arises as to the true interpretation of these final symptoms. I have elsewhere explained that it was no particular purpose of mine and _why_ it was no particular purpose to warn other opium-eaters. Still as some few persons may use the record in that way it becomes a matter of interest to ascertain how far it is likely that even with the same excesses other opium-eaters could fall into the same condition. I do not mean to lay a stress upon any supposed idiosyncrasy in myself. Possibly every man has an idiosyncrasy. In some things undoubtedly he has. For no man ever yet resembled another man so far as not to differ from him in features innumerable of his inner nature. But what I point to are not peculiarities of temperament or of organization so much as peculiar circumstances and incidents through which my own separate experience had revolved. Some of these were of a nature to alter the whole economy of my mind. Great convulsions from whatever cause from conscience from fear from grief from struggles of the will sometimes in passing away themselves do not carry off the changes which they have worked. _All_ the agitations of this magnitude which a man may have threaded in his life he neither ought to report nor _could_ report. But one which affected my childhood is a privileged exception. It is privileged as a proper communication for a stranger's ear; because though relating to a man's proper self it is a self so far removed from his present self as to wound no feelings of delicacy or just reserve. It is privileged also as a proper subject for the sympathy of the narrator. An adult sympathizes with himself in childhood because he _is_ the same and because (being the same) yet he is _not_ the same. He acknowledges the deep mysterious identity between himself as adult and as infant for the ground of his sympathy; and yet with this general agreement and necessity of agreement he feels the differences between his two selves as the main quickeners of his sympathy. He pities the infirmities as they arise to light in his young forerunner which now perhaps he does not share; he looks indulgently upon errors of the understanding or limitations of view which now he has long survived; and sometimes also he honours in the infant that rectitude of will which under _some_ temptations he may since have felt it so difficult to maintain. The particular case to which I refer in my own childhood was one of intolerable grief; a trial in fact more severe than many people at _any_ age are called upon to stand. The relation in which the case stands to my latter opium experiences is this:--Those vast clouds of gloomy grandeur which overhung my dreams at all stages of opium but which grew into the darkest of miseries in the last and that haunting of the human face which latterly towered into a curse--were they not partly derived from this childish experience? It is certain that from the essential solitude in which my childhood was passed; from the depth of my sensibility; from the exaltation of this by the resistance of an intellect too prematurely developed it resulted that the terrific grief which I passed through drove a shaft for me into the worlds of death and darkness which never again closed and through which it might be said that I ascended and descended at will according to the temper of my spirits. Some of the phenomena developed in my dream-scenery undoubtedly do but repeat the experiences of childhood; and others seem likely to have been growths and fructifications from seeds at that time sown. The reasons therefore for prefixing some account of a "passage" in childhood to this record of a dreadful visitation from opium excess are--1st That in colouring it harmonizes with that record and therefore is related to it at least in point of feeling; 2dly That possibly it was in part the origin of some features in that record and so far is related to it in logic; 3dly That the final assault of opium being of a nature to challenge the attention of medical men it is important to clear away all doubts and scruples which can gather about the roots of such a malady. Was it opium or was it opium in combination with something else that raised these storms? Some cynical reader will object--that for this last purpose it would have been sufficient to state the fact without rehearsing _in extenso_ the particulars of that case in childhood. But the reader of more kindness (for a surly reader is always a bad critic) will also have more discernment; and he will perceive that it is not for the mere facts that the case is reported but because these facts move through a wilderness of natural thoughts or feelings; some in the child who suffers; some in the man who reports; but all so far interesting as they relate to solemn objects. Meantime the objection of the sullen critic reminds me of a scene sometimes beheld at the English lakes. Figure to yourself an energetic tourist who protests every where that he comes only to see the lakes. He has no business whatever; he is not searching for any recreant indorser of a bill but simply in search of the picturesque. Yet this man adjures every landlord "by the virtue of his oath " to tell him and as he hopes for peace in this world to tell him truly which is the _nearest_ road to Keswick. Next he applies to the postilions--the Westmoreland postilions always fly down hills at full stretch without locking--but nevertheless in the full career of their fiery race our picturesque man lets down the glasses pulls up four horses and two postilions at the risk of six necks and twenty legs adjuring them to reveal whether they are taking the _shortest_ road. Finally he descries my unworthy self upon the road; and instantly stopping his flying equipage he demands of me (as one whom he believes to be a scholar and a man of honour) whether there is not in the possibility of things a _shorter_ cut to Keswick. Now the answer which rises to the lips of landlord two postilions and myself is this--"Most excellent stranger as you come to the lakes simply to see their loveliness might it not be as well to ask after the most beautiful road rather than the shortest? Because if abstract shortness if [Greek: to] brevity is your object then the shortest of all possible tours would seem with submission--never to have left London." On the same principle I tell my critic that the whole course of this narrative resembles and was meant to resemble a _caduceus_ wreathed about with meandering ornaments or the shaft of a tree's stem hung round and surmounted with some vagrant parasitical plant. The mere medical subject of the opium answers to the dry withered pole which shoots all the rings of the flowering plants and seems to do so by some dexterity of its own; whereas in fact the plant and its tendrils have curled round the sullen cylinder by mere luxuriance of _theirs_. Just as in Cheapside if you look right and left the streets so narrow that lead off at right angles seem quarried and blasted out of some Babylonian brick kiln; bored not raised artificially by the builder's hand. But if you enquire of the worthy men who live in that neighbourhood you will find it unanimously deposed--that not the streets were quarried out of the bricks but on the contrary (most ridiculous as it seems ) that the bricks have supervened upon the streets. The streets did not intrude amongst the bricks but those cursed bricks came to imprison the streets. So also the ugly pole--hop pole vine pole espalier no matter what--is there only for support. Not the flowers are for the pole but the pole is for the flowers. Upon the same analogy view me as one (in the words of a true and most impassioned poet[2]) "_viridantem floribus hastas_"--making verdant and gay with the life of flowers murderous spears and halberts--things that express death in their origin (being made from dead substances that once had lived in forests ) things that express ruin in their use. The true object in my "Opium Confessions" is not the naked physiological theme--on the contrary _that_ is the ugly pole the murderous spear the halbert--but those wandering musical variations upon the theme--those parasitical thoughts feelings digressions which climb up with bells and blossoms round about the arid stock; ramble away from it at times with perhaps too rank a luxuriance; but at the same time by the eternal interest attached to the _subjects_ of these digressions no matter what were the execution spread a glory over incidents that for themselves would be--less than nothing. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS. PART I. THE AFFLICTION OF CHILDHOOD. It is so painful to a lover of open-hearted sincerity that any indirect traits of vanity should even _seem_ to creep into records of profound passion; and yet on the other hand it is so impossible without an unnatural restraint upon the freedom of the narrative to prevent oblique gleams reaching the reader from such circumstances of luxury or elegance as did really surround my childhood that on all accounts I think it better to tell him from the first with the simplicity of truth in what order of society my family moved at the time from which this preliminary narrative is dated. Otherwise it would happen that merely by moving truly and faithfully through the circumstances of this early experience I could hardly prevent the reader from receiving an impression as of some higher rank than did really belong to my family. My father was a merchant; not in the sense of Scotland where it means a man who sells groceries in a cellar but in the English sense a sense severely exclusive--viz. he was a man engaged in _foreign_ commerce and no other; therefore in _wholesale_ commerce and no other--which last circumstance it is important to mention because it brings him within the benefit of Cicero's condescending distinction[3]--as one to be despised certainly but not too intensely to be despised even by a Roman senator. He this imperfectly despicable man died at an early age and very soon after the incidents here recorded leaving to his family then consisting of a wife and six children an unburthened estate producing exactly £1600 a-year. Naturally therefore at the date of my narrative if narrative it can be called he had an income still larger from the addition of current commercial profits. Now to any man who is acquainted with commercial life but above all with such life in England it will readily occur that in an opulent English family of that class--opulent though not rich in a mercantile estimate--the domestic economy is likely to be upon a scale of liberality altogether unknown amongst the corresponding orders in foreign nations. Whether as to the establishment of servants or as to the provision made for the comfort of all its members such a household not uncommonly eclipses the scale of living even amongst the poorer classes of our nobility though the most splendid in Europe--a fact which since the period of my infancy I have had many personal opportunities for verifying both in England and in Ireland. From this peculiar anomaly affecting the domestic economy of merchants there arises a disturbance upon the general scale of outward signs by which we measure the relations of rank. The equation so to speak between one order of society and another which usually travels in the natural line of their comparative expenditure is here interrupted and defeated so that one rank would be collected from the name of the occupation and another rank much higher from the splendour of the domestic _ménage_. I warn the reader therefore (or rather my explanation has already warned him ) that he is not to infer from any casual gleam of luxury or elegance a corresponding elevation of rank. We the children of the house stood in fact upon the very happiest tier in the scaffolding of society for all good influences. The prayer of Agar--"Give me neither poverty nor riches"--was realized for us. That blessing had we being neither too high nor too low; high enough we were to see models of good manners; obscure enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Amply furnished with the nobler benefits of wealth _extra_ means of health of intellectual culture and of elegant enjoyment on the other hand we knew nothing of its social distinctions. Not depressed by the consciousness of privations too sordid not tempted into restlessness by the consciousness of privileges too aspiring we had no motives for shame we had none for pride. Grateful also to this hour I am that amidst luxuries in all things else we were trained to a Spartan simplicity of diet--that we fared in fact very much less sumptuously than the servants. And if (after the model of the emperor Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation these four I would single out as chiefly worthy to be commemorated--that I lived in the country; that I lived in solitude; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters not by horrid pugilistic brothers; finally that I and they were dutiful children of a pure holy and magnificent church. * * * * * The earliest incidents in my life which affected me so deeply as to be rememberable at this day were two and both before I could have completed my second year viz. a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a favourite nurse which is interesting for a reason to be noticed hereafter; and secondly the fact of having connected a profound sense of pathos with the re-appearance very early in spring of some crocuses. This I mention as inexplicable for such annual resurrections of plants and flowers affect us only as memorials or suggestions of a higher change and therefore in connexion with the idea of death; but of death I could at that time have had no experience whatever. This however I was speedily to acquire. My two eldest sisters--eldest of three _then_ living and also elder than myself--were summoned to an early death. The first who died was Jane--about a year older than myself. She was three and a half I two and a half _plus_ or _minus_ some trifle that I do not recollect. But death was then scarcely intelligible to me and I could not so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad perplexity. There was another death in the house about the same time viz. of a maternal grandmother; but as she had in a manner come to us for the express purpose of dying in her daughter's society and from illness had lived perfectly secluded our nursery party knew her but little and were certainly more affected by the death (which I witnessed) of a favourite bird viz. a kingfisher who had been injured by an accident. With my sister Jane's death [though otherwise as I have said less sorrowful than unintelligible] there was however connected an incident which made a most fearful impression upon myself deepening my tendencies to thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond what would seem credible for my years. If there was one thing in this world from which more than from any other nature had forced me to revolt it was brutality and violence. Now a whisper arose in the family that a woman-servant who by accident was drawn off from her proper duties to attend my sister Jane for a day or two had on one occasion treated her harshly if not brutally; and as this ill treatment happened within two days of her death--so that the occasion of it must have been some fretfulness in the poor child caused by her sufferings--naturally there was a sense of awe diffused through the family. I believe the story never reached my mother and possibly it was exaggerated; but upon me the effect was terrific. I did not often see the person charged with this cruelty; but when I did my eyes sought the ground; nor could I have borne to look her in the face--not through anger; and as to vindictive thoughts how could these lodge in a powerless infant? The feeling which fell upon me was a shuddering awe as upon a first glimpse of the truth that I was in a world of evil and strife. Though born in a large town I had passed the whole of my childhood except for the few earliest weeks in a rural seclusion. With three innocent little sisters for playmates sleeping always amongst them and shut up for ever in a silent garden from all knowledge of poverty or oppression or outrage I had not suspected until this moment the true complexion of the world in which myself and my sisters were living. Henceforward the character of my thoughts must have changed greatly; for so _representative_ are some acts that one single case of the class is sufficient to throw open before you the whole theatre of possibilities in that direction. I never heard that the woman accused of this cruelty took it at all to heart even after the event which so immediately succeeded had reflected upon it a more painful emphasis. On the other hand I knew of a case and will pause to mention it where a mere semblance and shadow of such cruelty under similar circumstances inflicted the grief of self-reproach through the remainder of life. A boy interesting in his appearance as also from his remarkable docility was attacked on a cold day of spring by a complaint of the trachea--not precisely croup but like it. He was three years old and had been ill perhaps for four days; but at intervals had been in high spirits and capable of playing. This sunshine gleaming through dark clouds had continued even on the fourth day; and from nine to eleven o'clock at night he had showed more animated pleasure than ever. An old servant hearing of his illness had called to see him; and her mode of talking with him had excited all the joyousness of his nature. About midnight his mother fancying that his feet felt cold was muffling them up in flannels; and as he seemed to resist her a little she struck lightly on the sole of one foot as a mode of admonishing him to be quiet. He did not repeat his motion; and in less than a minute his mother had him in her arms with his face looking upwards. "What is the meaning " she exclaimed in sudden affright "of this strange repose settling upon his features?" She called loudly to a servant in another room; but before the servant could reach her the child had drawn two inspirations--deep yet gentle--and had died in his mother's arms. Upon this the poor afflicted lady made the discovery that those struggles which she had supposed to be expressions of resistance to herself were the struggles of departing life. It followed or seemed to follow that with these final struggles had blended an expression on _her_ part of displeasure. Doubtless the child had not distinctly perceived it; but the mother could never look back to the incident without self-reproach. And seven years after when her own death happened no progress had been made in reconciling her thoughts to that which only the depth of love could have viewed as any offence. So passed away from earth one out of those sisters that made up my nursery playmates; and so did my acquaintance (if such it could be called) commence with mortality. Yet in fact I knew little more of mortality than that Jane had disappeared. She had gone away; but perhaps she would come back. Happy interval of heaven-born ignorance! Gracious immunity of infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its strength! I was sad for Jane's absence. But still in my heart I trusted that she would come again. Summer and winter came again--crocuses and roses; why not little Jane? Thus easily was healed then the first wound in my infant heart. Not so the second. For thou dear noble Elizabeth around whose ample brow as often as thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness I fancy a tiara of light or a gleaming _aureola_ in token of thy premature intellectual grandeur--thou whose head for its superb developments was the astonishment of science[4]--thou next but after an interval of happy years thou also wert summoned away from our nursery; and the night which for me gathered upon that event ran after my steps far into life; and perhaps at this day I resemble little for good or for ill that which else I should have been. Pillar of fire that didst go before me to guide and to quicken--pillar of darkness when thy countenance was turned away to God that didst too truly shed the shadow of death over my young heart--in what scales should I weigh thee? Was the blessing greater from thy heavenly presence or the blight which followed thy departure? Can a man weigh off and value the glories of dawn against the darkness of hurricane? Or if he could how is it that when a memorable love has been followed by a memorable bereavement even suppose that God would replace the sufferer in a point of time anterior to the entire experience and offer to cancel the woe but so that the sweet face which had caused the woe should also be obliterated--vehemently would every man shrink from the exchange! In the _Paradise Lost_ this strong instinct of man--to prefer the heavenly mixed and polluted with the earthly to a level experience offering neither one nor the other--is divinely commemorated. What worlds of pathos are in that speech of Adam's--"If God should make another Eve " &c.--that is if God should replace him in his primitive state and should condescend to bring again a second Eve one that would listen to no temptation--still that original partner of his earlies
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solitude-- ""Creature in whom excell'd Whatever can to sight or thought be form'd Holy divine good amiable or sweet""-- even now when she appeared in league with an eternity of woe and ministering to his ruin could not be displaced for him by any better or happier Eve. ""Loss of thee!"" he exclaims in this anguish of trial-- ""Loss of thee Would never from my heart; no no I feel The link of nature draw me; flesh of flesh Bone of my bone thou art; and from thy state Mine never shall be parted bliss or woe.""[5] But what was it that drew my heart by gravitation so strong to my sister? Could a child little above six years of age place any special value upon her intellectual forwardness? Serene and capacious as her mind appeared to me upon after review was _that_ a charm for stealing away the heart of an infant? Oh no! I think of it _now_ with interest because it lends in a stranger's ear some justification to the excess of my fondness. But then it was lost upon me; or if not lost was but dimly perceived. Hadst thou been an idiot my sister not the less I must have loved thee--having that capacious heart overflowing even as mine overflowed with tenderness and stung even as mine was stung by the necessity of being loved. This it was which crowned thee with beauty-- ""Love the holy sense Best gift of God in thee was most intense."" That lamp lighted in Paradise was kindled for me which shone so steadily in thee; and never but to thee only never again since thy departure _durst_ I utter the feelings which possessed me. For I was the shiest of children; and a natural sense of personal dignity held me back at all stages of life from exposing the least ray of feelings which I was not encouraged _wholly_ to reveal. It would be painful and it is needless to pursue the course of that sickness which carried off my leader and companion. She (according to my recollection at this moment) was just as much above eight years as I above six. And perhaps this natural precedency in authority of judgment and the tender humility with which she declined to assert it had been amongst the fascinations of her presence. It was upon a Sunday evening or so people fancied that the spark of fatal fire fell upon that train of predispositions to a brain-complaint which had hitherto slumbered within her. She had been permitted to drink tea at the house of a labouring man the father of an old female servant. The sun had set when she returned in the company of this servant through meadows reeking with exhalations after a fervent day. From that time she sickened. Happily a child in such circumstances feels no anxieties. Looking upon medical men as people whose natural commission it is to heal diseases since it is their natural function to profess it knowing them only as _ex-officio_ privileged to make war upon pain and sickness--I never had a misgiving about the result. I grieved indeed that my sister should lie in bed: I grieved still more sometimes to hear her moan. But all this appeared to me no more than a night of trouble on which the dawn would soon arise. Oh! moment of darkness and delirium when a nurse awakened me from that delusion and launched God's thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister _must_ die. Rightly it is said of utter utter misery that it ""cannot be _remembered_.""[6] Itself as a remembrable thing is swallowed up in its own chaos. Mere anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deaf and blind I was as I reeled under the revelation. I wish not to recal the circumstances of that time when _my_ agony was at its height and hers in another sense was approaching. Enough to say--that all was soon over; and the morning of that day had at last arrived which looked down upon her innocent face sleeping the sleep from which there is no awaking and upon me sorrowing the sorrow for which there is no consolation. On the day after my sister's death whilst the sweet temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human scrutiny I formed my own scheme for seeing her once more. Not for the world would I have made this known nor have suffered a witness to accompany me. I had never heard of feelings that take the name of ""sentimental "" nor dreamed of such a possibility. But grief even in a child hates the light and shrinks from human eyes. The house was large; there were two staircases; and by one of these I knew that about noon when all would be quiet I could steal up into her chamber. I imagine that it was exactly high noon when I reached the chamber door; it was locked; but the key was not taken away. Entering I closed the door so softly that although it opened upon a hall which ascended through all the stories no echo ran along the silent walls. Then turning round I sought my sister's face. But the bed had been moved; and the back was now turned. Nothing met my eyes but one large window wide open through which the sun of midsummer at noonday was showering down torrents of splendour. The weather was dry the sky was cloudless the blue depths seemed the express types of infinity; and it was not possible for eye to behold or for heart to conceive any symbols more pathetic of life and the glory of life. Let me pause for one instant in approaching a remembrance so affecting and revolutionary for my own mind and one which (if any earthly remembrance) will survive for me in the hour of death --to remind some readers and to inform others that in the original _Opium Confessions_ I endeavoured to explain the reason[7] why death _cæteris paribus_ is more profoundly affecting in summer than in other parts of the year; so far at least as it is liable to any modification at all from accidents of scenery or season. The reason as I there suggested lies in the antagonism between the tropical redundancy of life in summer and the dark sterilities of the grave. The summer we see the grave we haunt with our thoughts; the glory is around us the darkness is within us. And the two coming into collision each exalts the other into stronger relief. But in my case there was even a subtler reason why the summer had this intense power of vivifying the spectacle or the thoughts of death. And recollecting it often I have been struck with the important truth--that far more of our deepest thoughts and feelings pass to us through perplexed combinations of _concrete_ objects pass to us as _involutes_ (if I may coin that word) in compound experiences incapable of being disentangled than ever reach us _directly_ and in their own abstract shapes. It had happened that amongst our nursery collection of books was the Bible illustrated with many pictures. And in long dark evenings as my three sisters with myself sate by the firelight round the _guard_ of our nursery no book was so much in request amongst us. It ruled us and swayed us as mysteriously as music. One young nurse whom we all loved before any candle was lighted would often strain her eyes to read it for us; and sometimes according to her simple powers would endeavour to explain what we found obscure. We the children were all constitutionally touched with pensiveness; the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of the room by fire-light suited our evening state of feelings; and they suited also the divine revelations of power and mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all the story of a just man --man and yet _not_ man real above all things and yet shadowy above all things who had suffered the passion of death in Palestine slept upon our minds like early dawn upon the waters. The nurse knew and explained to us the chief differences in Oriental climates; and all these differences (as it happens) express themselves in the great varieties of summer. The cloudless sunlights of Syria--those seemed to argue everlasting summer; the disciples plucking the ears of corn--that _must_ be summer; but above all the very name of Palm Sunday (a festival in the English church ) troubled me like an anthem. ""Sunday!"" what was _that_? That was the day of peace which masqued another peace deeper than the heart of man can comprehend. ""Palms!""--what were they? _That_ was an equivocal word: palms in the sense of trophies expressed the pomps of life: palms as a product of nature expressed the pomps of summer. Yet still even this explanation does not suffice: it was not merely by the peace and by the summer by the deep sound of rest below all rest and of ascending glory --that I had been haunted. It was also because Jerusalem stood near to those deep images both in time and in place. The great event of Jerusalem was at hand when Palm Sunday came; and the scene of that Sunday was near in place to Jerusalem. Yet what then was Jerusalem? Did I fancy it to be the _omphalos_ (navel) of the earth? That pretension had once been made for Jerusalem and once for Delphi; and both pretensions had become ridiculous as the figure of the planet became known. Yes; but if not of the earth for earth's tenant Jerusalem was the _omphalos_ of mortality. Yet how? there on the contrary it was as we infants understood that mortality had been trampled under foot. True; but for that very reason there it was that mortality had opened its very gloomiest crater. There it was indeed that the human had risen on wings from the grave; but for that reason there also it was that the divine had been swallowed up by the abyss: the lesser star could not rise before the greater would submit to eclipse. Summer therefore had connected itself with death not merely as a mode of antagonism but also through intricate relations to Scriptural scenery and events. Out of this digression which was almost necessary for the purpose of showing how inextricably my feelings and images of death were entangled with those of summer I return to the bedchamber of my sister. From the gorgeous sunlight I turned round to the corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure there the angel face: and as people usually fancy it as said in the house that no features had suffered any change. Had they not? The forehead indeed the serene and noble forehead _that_ might be the same; but the frozen eyelids the darkness that seemed to steal from beneath them the marble lips the stiffening hands laid palm to palm as if repeating the supplications of closing anguish could these be mistaken for life? Had it been so wherefore did I not spring to those heavenly lips with tears and never-ending kisses? But so it as _not_. I stood checked for a moment; awe not fear fell upon me; and whilst I stood a solemn wind began to blow--the most mournful that ear ever heard. Mournful! that is saying nothing. It was a wind that had swept the fields of mortality for a hundred centuries. Many times since upon a summer day when the sun is about the hottest I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering the same hollow solemn Memnonian but saintly swell: it is in this world the one sole _audible_ symbol of eternity. And three times in my life I have happened to hear the same sound in the same circumstances viz. when standing between an open window and a dead body on a summer day. Instantly when my ear caught this vast Æolian intonation when my eye filled with the golden fulness of life the pomps and glory of the heavens outside and turning when it settled upon the frost which overspread my sister's face instantly a trance fell upon me. A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky a shaft which ran up for ever. I in spirit rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft for ever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but _that_ also ran before us and fled away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on for ever and ever. Frost gathering frost some Sarsar wind of death seemed to repel me; I slept--for how long I cannot say; slowly I recovered my self-possession and found myself standing as before close to my sister's bed. Oh[8] flight of the solitary child to the solitary God--flight from the ruined corpse to the throne that could not be ruined!--how rich wert thou in truth for after years. Rapture of grief that being too mighty for a child to sustain foundest a happy oblivion in a heaven-born sleep and within that sleep didst conceal a dream whose meanings in after years when slowly I deciphered suddenly there flashed upon me a new light; and even by the grief of a child as I will show you reader hereafter were confounded the falsehoods of philosophers.[9] In the _Opium Confessions_ I touched a little upon the extraordinary power connected with opium (after long use) of amplifying the dimensions of time. Space also it amplifies by degrees that are sometimes terrific. But time it is upon which the exalting and multiplying power of opium chiefly spends its operation. Time becomes infinitely elastic stretching out to such immeasurable and vanishing termini that it seems ridiculous to compute the sense of it on waking by expressions commensurate to human life. As in starry fields one computes by diameters of the earth's orbit or of Jupiter's so in valuing the _virtual_ time lived during some dreams the measurement by generations is ridiculous--by millennia is ridiculous: by æons I should say if æons were more determinate would be also ridiculous. On this single occasion however in my life the very inverse phenomenon occurred. But why speak of it in connexion with opium? Could a child of six years old have been under that influence? No but simply because it so exactly reversed the operation of opium. Instead of a short interval expanding into a vast one upon this occasion a long one had contracted into a minute. I have reason to believe that a _very_ long one had elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my perfect mind. When I returned to myself there was a foot (or I fancied so) on the stairs. I was alarmed. For I believed that if any body should detect me means would be taken to prevent my coming again. Hastily therefore I kissed the lips that I should kiss no more and slunk like a guilty thing with stealthy steps from the room. Thus perished the vision loveliest amongst all the shows which earth has revealed to me; thus mutilated was the parting which should have lasted for ever; thus tainted with fear was the farewell sacred to love and grief to perfect love and perfect grief. Oh Ahasuerus everlasting Jew![10] fable or not a fable thou when first starting on thy endless pilgrimage of woe thou when first flying through the gates of Jerusalem and vainly yearning to leave the pursuing curse behind thee couldst not more certainly have read thy doom of sorrow in the misgivings of thy troubled brain than I when passing for ever from my sister's room. The worm was at my heart: and confining myself to that stage of life I may say--the worm that could not die. For if when standing upon the threshold of manhood I had ceased to feel its perpetual gnawings _that_ was because a vast expansion of intellect it was because new hopes new necessities and the frenzy of youthful blood had translated me into a new creature. Man is doubtless _one_ by some subtle _nexus_ that we cannot perceive extending from the newborn infant to the superannuated dotard: but as regards many affections and passions incident to his nature at different stages he is _not_ one; the unity of man in this respect is coextensive only with the particular stage to which the passion belongs. Some passions as that of sexual love are celestial by one half of their origin animal and earthy by the other half. These will not survive their own appropriate stage. But love which is _altogether_ holy like that between two children will revisit undoubtedly by glimpses the silence and the darkness of old age: and I repeat my belief--that unless bodily torment should forbid it that final experience in my sister's bedroom or some other in which her innocence was concerned will rise again for me to illuminate the hour of death. On the day following this which I have recorded came a body of medical men to examine the brain and the particular nature of the complaint for in some of its symptoms it had shown perplexing anomalies. Such is the sanctity of death and especially of death alighting on an innocent child that even gossiping people do not gossip on such a subject. Consequently I knew nothing of the purpose which drew together these surgeons nor suspected any thing of the cruel changes which might have been wrought in my sister's head. Long after this I saw a similar case; I surveyed the corpse (it was that of a beautiful boy eighteen years old who had died of the same complaint) one hour _after_ the surgeons had laid the skull in ruins; but the dishonours of this scrutiny were hidden by bandages and had not disturbed the repose of the countenance. So it might have been here; but if it were _not_ so then I was happy in being spared the shock from having that marble image of peace icy and rigid as it was unsettled by disfiguring images. Some hours after the strangers had withdrawn I crept again to the room but the door was now locked--the key was taken away--and I was shut out for ever. Then came the funeral. I as a point of decorum was carried thither. I was put into a carriage with some gentlemen whom I did not know. They were kind to me; but naturally they talked of things disconnected with the occasion and their conversation was a torment. At the church I was told to hold a white handkerchief to my eyes. Empty hypocrisy! What need had _he_ of masques or mockeries whose heart died within him at every word that was uttered? During that part of the service which passed within the church I made an effort to attend but I sank back continually into my own solitary darkness and I heard little consciously except some fugitive strains from the sublime chapter of St Paul which in England is always read at burials. And here I notice a profound error of our present illustrious Laureate. When I heard those dreadful words--for dreadful they were to me--""It is sown in corruption it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour it is raised in glory;"" such was the recoil of my feelings that I could even have shrieked out a protesting--""Oh no no!"" if I had not been restrained by the publicity of the occasion. In after years reflecting upon this revolt of my feelings which being the voice of nature in a child must be as true as any mere _opinion_ of a child might probably be false I saw at once the unsoundness of a passage in _The Excursion_. The book is not here but the substance I remember perfectly. Mr Wordsworth argues that if it were not for the unsteady faith which people fix upon the beatific condition after death of those whom they deplore nobody could be found so selfish as even secretly to wish for the restoration to earth of a beloved object. A mother for instance could never dream of yearning for her child and secretly calling it back by her silent aspirations from the arms of God if she were but reconciled to the belief that really it _was_ in those arms. But this I utterly deny. To take my own case when I heard those dreadful words of St Paul applied to my sister--viz. that she should be raised a spiritual body--nobody can suppose that selfishness or any other feeling than that of agonizing love caused the rebellion of my heart against them. I knew already that she was to come again in beauty and power. I did not now learn this for the first time. And that thought doubtless made my sorrow sublimer; but also it made it deeper. For here lay the sting of it viz. in the fatal words--""We shall be _changed_."" How was the unity of my interest in her to be preserved if she were to be altered and no longer to reflect in her sweet countenance the traces that were sculptured on my heart? Let a magician ask any woman whether she will permit him to improve her child to raise it even from deformity to perfect beauty if that must be done at the cost of its identity and there is no loving mother but would reject his proposal with horror. Or to take a case that has actually happened if a mother were robbed of her child at two years old by gipsies and the same child were restored to her at twenty a fine young man but divided by a sleep as it were of death from all remembrances that could restore the broken links of their once-tender connexion would she not feel her grief unhealed and her heart defrauded? Undoubtedly she would. All of us ask not of God for a better thing than that we have lost; we ask for the same even with its faults and its frailties. It is true that the sorrowing person will also be changed eventually but that must be by death. And a prospect so remote as that and so alien from our present nature cannot console us in an affliction which is not remote but present--which is not spiritual but human. Lastly came the magnificent service which the English church performs at the side of the grave. There is exposed once again and for the last time the coffin. All eyes survey the record of name of sex of age and the day of departure from earth--records how useless! and dropped into darkness as if messages addressed to worms. Almost at the very last comes the symbolic ritual tearing and shattering the heart with volleying discharges peal after peal from the final artillery of woe. The coffin is lowered into its home; it has disappeared from the eye. The sacristan stands ready with his shovel of earth and stones. The priest's voice is heard once more--_earth to earth_ and the dread rattle ascends from the lid of the coffin; _ashes to ashes_ and again the killing sound is heard; _dust to dust_ and the farewell volley announces that the grave--the coffin--the face are sealed up for ever and ever. * * * * * Oh grief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it is that thou humblest to the dust but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest as with ague but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the heart but also thou healest its infirmities. Among the very foremost of mine was morbid sensibility to shame. And ten years afterwards I used to reproach myself with this infirmity by supposing the case that if it were thrown upon me to seek aid for a perishing fellow-creature and that I could obtain that aid only by facing a vast company of critical or sneering faces I might perhaps shrink basely from the duty. It is true that no such case had ever actually occurred so that it was a mere romance of casuistry to tax myself with cowardice so shocking. But to feel a doubt was to feel condemnation; and the crime which _might_ have been was in my eyes the crime which _had_ been. Now however all was changed; and for any thing which regarded my sister's memory in one hour I received a new heart. Once in Westmoreland I saw a case resembling it. I saw a ewe suddenly put off and abjure her own nature in a service of love--yes slough it as completely as ever serpent sloughed his skin. Her lamb had fallen into a deep trench from which all escape was hopeless without the aid of man. And to a man she advanced boldly bleating clamorously until he followed her and rescued her beloved. Not less was the change in myself. Fifty thousand sneering faces would not have troubled me in any office of tenderness to my sister's memory. Ten legions would not have repelled me from seeking her if there was chance that she could be found. Mockery! it was lost upon me. Laugh at me as one or two people did! I valued not their laughter. And when I was told insultingly to cease ""my girlish tears"" that word ""_girlish_"" had no sting for me except as a verbal echo to the one eternal thought of my heart--that a girl was the sweetest thing I in my short life had known--that a girl it was who had crowned the earth with beauty and had opened to my thirst fountains of pure celestial love from which in this world I was to drink no more. Interesting it is to observe how certainly all deep feelings agree in this that they seek for solitude and are nursed by solitude. Deep grief deep love how naturally do these ally themselves with religious feeling; and all three love grief religion are haunters of solitary places. Love grief the passion of reverie or the mystery of devotion--what were these without solitude? All day long when it was not impossible for me to do so I sought the most silent and sequestered nooks in the grounds about the house or in the neighbouring fields. The awful stillness occasionally of summer noons when no winds were abroad the appealing silence of grey or misty afternoons--these were fascinations as of witchcraft. Into the woods or the desert air I gazed as if some comfort lay hid in _them_. I wearied the heavens with my inquest of beseeching looks. I tormented the blue depths with obstinate scrutiny sweeping them with my eyes and searching them for ever after one angelic face that might perhaps have permission to reveal itself for a moment. The faculty of shaping images in the distance out of slight elements and grouping them after the yearnings of the heart aided by a slight defect in my eyes grew upon me at this time. And I recal at the present moment one instance of that sort which may show how merely shadows or a gleam of brightness or nothing at all could furnish a sufficient basis for this creative faculty. On Sunday mornings I was always taken to church: it was a church on the old and natural model of England having aisles galleries organ all things ancient and venerable and the proportions majestic. Here whilst the congregation knelt through the long Litany as often as we came to that passage so beautiful amongst many that are so where God is supplicated on behalf of ""all sick persons and young children "" and that he would ""show his pity upon all prisoners and captives""--I wept in secret and raising my streaming eyes to the windows of the galleries saw on days when the sun was shining a spectacle as affecting as ever prophet can have beheld. The sides of the windows were rich with storied glass; through the deep purples and crimsons streamed the golden light; emblazonries of heavenly illumination mingling with the earthly emblazonries of what is grandest in man. There were the apostles that had trampled upon earth and the glories of earth out of celestial love to man. There were the martyrs that had borne witness to the truth through flames through torments and through armies of fierce insulting faces. There were the saints who under intolerable pangs had glorified God by meek submission to his will. And all the time whilst this tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep chords from an accompaniment in the bass I saw through the wide central field of the window where the glass was uncoloured white fleecy clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky; were it but a fragment or a hint of such a cloud immediately under the flash of my sorrow-haunted eye it grew and shaped itself into a vision of beds with white lawny curtains; and in the beds lay sick children dying children that were tossing in anguish and weeping clamorously for death. God for some mysterious reason could not suddenly release them from their pain; but he suffered the beds as it seemed to rise slowly through the clouds; slowly the beds ascended into the chambers of the air; slowly also his arms descended from the heavens that he and his young children whom in Judea once and for ever he had blessed though they _must_ pass slowly through the dreadful chasm of separation might yet meet the sooner. These visions were self-sustained. These visions needed not that any sound should speak to me or music mould my feelings. The hint from the Litany the fragment from the clouds those and the storied windows were sufficient. But not the less the blare of the tumultuous organ wrought its own separate creations. And oftentimes in anthems when the mighty instrument threw its vast columns of sound fierce yet melodious over the voices of the choir--when it rose high in arches as might seem surmounting and overriding the strife of the vocal parts and gathering by strong coercion the total storm into unity--sometimes I seemed to walk triumphantly upon those clouds which so recently I had looked up to as mementos of prostrate sorrow and even as ministers of sorrow in its creations; yes sometimes under the transfigurations of music I felt[11] of grief itself as a fiery chariot for mounting victoriously above the causes of grief. I point so often to the feelings the ideas or the ceremonies of religion because there never yet was profound grief nor profound philosophy which did not inosculate at many points with profound religion. But I request the reader to understand that of all things I was not and could not have been a child trained to _talk_ of religion least of all to talk of it controversially or polemically. Dreadful is the picture which in books we sometimes find of children discussing the doctrines of Christianity and even teaching their seniors the boundaries and distinctions between doctrine and doctrine. And it has often struck me with amazement that the two things which God made most beautiful among his works viz. infancy and pure religion should by the folly of man (in yoking them together on erroneous principles ) neutralize each other's beauty or even form a combination positively hateful The religion becomes nonsense and the child becomes a hypocrite. The religion is transfigured into cant and the innocent child into a dissembling liar.[12] God be assured takes care for the religion of children wheresoever his Christianity exists. Wheresoever there is a national church established to which a child sees his friends resorting; wheresoever he beholds all whom he honours periodically prostrate before those illimitable heavens which fill to overflowing his young adoring heart; wheresoever he sees the sleep of death falling at intervals upon men and women whom he knows depth as confounding to the plummet of his mind as those heavens ascend beyond his power to pursue--_there_ take you no thought for the religion of a child any more than for the lilies how they shall be arrayed or for the ravens how they shall feed their young. God speaks to children also in dreams and by the oracles that lurk in darkness. But in solitude above all things when made vocal by the truths and services of a national church God holds ""communion undisturbed"" with children. Solitude though silent as light is like light the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world _alone_--all leave it _alone_. Even a little child has a dread whispering consciousness that if he should be summoned to travel into God's presence no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead him by the hand nor mother to carry him in her arms nor little sister to share his trepidations. King and priest warrior and maiden philosopher and child all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude therefore which in this world appals or fascinates a child's heart is but the echo of a far deeper solitude through which already he has passed and of another solitude deeper still through which he _has_ to pass: reflex of one solitude--prefiguration of another. Oh burthen of solitude that cleavest to man through every stage of his being--in his birth which _has_ been--in his life which _is_--in his death which _shall_ be--mighty and essential solitude! that wast and art and art to be;--thou broodest like the spirit of God moving upon the surface of the deeps over every heart that sleeps in the nurseries of Christendom. Like the vast laboratory of the air which seeming to be nothing or less than the shadow of a shade hides within itself the principles of all things solitude for a child is the Agrippa's mirror of the unseen universe. Deep is the solitude in life of millions upon millions who with hearts welling forth love have none to love them. Deep is the solitude of those who with secret griefs have none to pity them. Deep is the solitude of those who fighting with doubts or darkness have none to counsel them. But deeper than the deepest of these solitudes is that which broods over childhood bringing before it at intervals the final solitude which watches for it and is waiting for it within the gates of death. Reader I tell you a truth and hereafter I will convince you of this truth that for a Grecian child solitude was nothing but for a Christian child it has become the power of God and the mystery of God. Oh mighty and essential solitude that wast and art and art to be--thou kindling under the torch of Christian revelations art now transfigured for ever and hast passed from a blank negation into a secret hieroglyphic from God shadowing in the hearts of infancy the very dimmest of his truths! MRS POOLE'S ""ENGLISH
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OMAN IN EGYPT.""[13] An ""Englishwoman in Egypt "" thanks to the Mediterranean steamers and the overland route to India is no longer so unusual or astounding a spectacle as it would appear to have been five-and-twenty years ago when that dilettante traveller Monsieur le Comte de Forbin made a precipitate retreat from Thebes in consequence of the shock sustained by his nerves from encountering among the ruins ""une femme-de-chambre Anglaise en petit _spencer_ couleur de rose "" in the person of the Countess of Belmore's lady's-maid; though the Quarterly Reviewers who in those days had no mercy for a French misstatement even in the colour of a soubrette's dress triumphantly declared the offending garment to have been ""a pale-blue pelisse;"" and proceeded to demolish the hapless Count accordingly--(_Quarterly Review_ Vol. xxiii. p. 92.) Since the period of this rencontre the _ill-omened_ blue eyes [14] as well as blue pelisses of our countrywomen have been seen with sufficient frequency on the banks of the Nile to render the one it is to be hoped no longer an object of alarm to the natives nor the latter to errant members of the Institute: but a narrative of the impressions produced on a cultivated female mind by a residence among the modern inhabitants of the land of the pyramids was still a desideratum. The ""Notes"" (published in 1840 in the _Asiatic Journal_) of the late lamented Emma Roberts than whom no one would have been better qualified to fill up the void though replete with interest and information are merely those of a traveller hastening through the country on her way to India; and except the fugitive sketches of Mrs Dawson Damer we cannot call to mind a single one among all the lady-tourists with whose tours and voyages the press has lately teemed who has touched on this hitherto unbroken ground. In such a dearth of information we may deem ourselves doubly fortunate in finding the task undertaken by a lady possessing such peculiar advantages as must have been enjoyed by the sister of the well-known Orientalist to whose pen we are indebted for perhaps the most comprehensive and accurate account ever published of the habits and manners of any nation and under whose immediate superintendence as we are informed the work before us was prepared. The title of the ""Englishwoman in _Cairo_ "" would perhaps have more appropriately designated the character of Mrs Poole's volumes than that which she has adopted; since her opportunities of personal observation after her arrival in the capital from Alexandria were bounded by the environs of the city her excursions from which do not appear to have extended further than the pyramids. A considerable portion of the first volume is occupied by an abstract of Egyptian history from the time of the Arab conquest an account of the foundation of Cairo an agricultural and general calendar for each month of the year and various matters connected with the physical features statistics &c. of the country. These dissertations form a sort of supplement to the work of her brother from whose MS. notes they are avowedly taken; being introduced (as Mrs Poole with much _naïveté_ confesses) ""in the hope of obtaining a more favourable reception for her letters for the sake of the more solid matter with which they are interspersed;"" but though they certainly convey much valuable additional information to the readers of the ""Modern Egyptians "" they are scarcely ""germane to the matter "" as interpolations in the work of a lady. The authoress can very well afford to rest her claim to popularity on her own merits; and we prefer to follow her in her own peculiar sphere into those mysterious recesses of an Oriental establishment whither no male footstep can ever penetrate. Mrs Poole is probably the first English lady who has been admitted not merely as a passing visitor but as a privileged friend into the hareems of those of the highest rank in the Egyptian capital. We find her threading the narrow and crowded thoroughfares of Cairo borne aloft on the ""high ass ""[15] (the usual mode of conveyance for morning calls;) and are introduced to the wives and daughters of the viceroy and even (in the hareem of Habeeb Effendi) to ladies of the imperial house of Othman in the ease and _disinvoltura_ of their domestic circles amid that atmosphere of _dolce far niente_ and graceful etiquette in which the hours of an Oriental princess appear to be habitually passed. With the exception of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's piquant sketches of the Turkish hareems and their inmates and the singular narrative of her personal experience of life in an Indian zenana by _Mrs Meer Hassan Ali_ [16] we know no female writer who has enjoyed such opportunities for the delineation of the scenes of domestic privacy of the East and who has so well availed herself of them as the sister of _Mansoor Effendi_ in the pages before us. The narrative opens with the landing of the authoress and her companions at Alexandria in July 1842; but that city with its double harbour its quays crowded with a motley assemblage of every nation and language in Europe and the Levant and the monuments of antiquity in its environs has been too often described to present too much opportunity for novelty of remark. Passing over therefore the details given of these well-known objects we find the party after a rapid passage along the Mahmoodiyeh canal in an iron track-boat drawn by four horses and a vexatious delay of two days at the junction of the canal and the river (during which the want of musquitto-curtains gave them an ample foretaste of the quantity and quality of the insect plagues of Egypt ) fairly embarked on the broad stream of the Nile. The voyage to Cairo was performed in a _kanjeh_ or passage-boat of the kind usual on the river--a long narrow craft with two masts bearing large triangular sails; and Mrs Poole in common with most travellers arriving for the first time in the East was greatly impressed by the simple devotion with which the Reyyis (or Arab captain) and his crew commended themselves on setting sail to the protection of Providence by reciting altogether in a low voice the short prayer of the _Fathah_ or opening chapter of the Koran. ""The sight of the Muslim engaged in his devotions is I think most interesting; the attitudes are particularly striking and impressive; and the solemn demeanour of the worshipper who even in the busy market-place appears wholly abstracted from the world is very remarkable. The practice of praying in a public place is so general in the East and attracts so little notice from Muslims that we must not regard it as the result of hypocrisy or ostentation."" As the kanjeh lay to at night to avoid danger from sand-banks the travellers were three days in reaching Cairo; and found little to interest them in the contemplation of the banks of the Nile which at this season are destitute of the brilliant verdure which clothes them for some time after the inundation. On arriving at Boulak the authoress for the first time shrouded herself in the cumbrous folds of a Turkish riding-dress ""an overwhelming covering of black silk extending in my idea in every direction;"" and mounted on a donkey she followed her janissary guide through the dilapidated suburb ""and at length we fairly entered Cairo.... The first impression on entering this celebrated city is that it has the appearance of having been deserted for perhaps a century and suddenly re-peopled by persons unable from poverty or some other cause to repair it and clear away its antiquated cobwebs.... I wrote to you that the streets of Alexandria were narrow; they are _wide_ compared to those of Cairo. The _meshreebeyehs_ or projecting windows facing each other above the ground floor literally touch in _some_ instances and in _many_ the opposite windows are within reach.... After passing through several of the streets into which it appeared as though the dwellings had turned out nearly all their inhabitants we arrived at an agreeable house in the midst of gardens in which we are to take up our temporary residence."" The plan of these gardens however intersected by parallel walks with gutters on each side to convey water into the intermediate squares was so much at variance with Mrs Poole's English notions of horticulture that she was almost tempted to conclude ""that a garden in Egypt was not worth cultivation--so much for national prejudice!"" As it was indispensable for the health of the children that their residence should be fixed in the outskirts of the city some delay was experienced in finding a permanent abode; but at the end of a month they considered themselves fortunate in engaging a house ""infinitely beyond the usual run "" in the most healthy and cheerful quarter for which the rent demanded by the landlady (who bore the picturesque name of Lalah-Zar or _Bed of Tulips_ ) was only L.12 per annum. The arrangement of the apartments was nearly as described by Mr Lane in his account of the private houses in Cairo--(_Modern Egyptians_ i. p. 11:) on the ground-floor a court open to the sky round which were the rooms appropriated to the male inhabitants while a gallery running round the first floor conducted to the hareem consisting of two principal apartments and ""three small marble paved rooms forming _en suite_ an antechamber a reclining chamber and a bath. Above are four rooms the principal one opening to a delightful terrace considerably above most of the surrounding houses and on this we enjoy our breakfast and supper under the clearest sky in the world."" But scarcely had the establishment been removed into this new residence when it became evident that something was _not right_. The two maid-servants Amineh and Zeyneb disappeared one after the other without giving warning--strange noises were heard which were at first ascribed to the wedding rejoicings of a neighbour but an explanation was at last elicited from the doorkeeper. The house was haunted by an 'Efreet (ghost or evil spirit ) in consequence of the murder of a poor tradesman and two slave girls by the previous owner who had bequeathed it to Lalah-Zar with reversion (perhaps in hope of expiating his crimes) to a mosque. One of the victims had perished in the bath and like Praed's[17] Abbess of St Ursula who ""From evensong to matins In gallery and scullery And kitchen and refectory Still tramp'd it in her pattens "" the angry spirit stalked at night apparently in heavy clogs like those worn in the bath knocking at the doors and uttering unearthly sounds which allowed no sleep to the inmates. In vain had poor Lalah-Zar endeavoured to appease this unwelcome intruder which had driven tenant after tenant from the house by distributing bread to the poor at the tomb of the late owner; the annoyance continued undiminished--pieces of charcoal were left at the doors equivalent to the imprecation ""May your faces be blackened!"" and no female servant would remain in the house it being universally believed that the touch of an 'Efreet renders a woman a demoniac. The Ramadan (during which it is held that all 'Efreets are chained up ) brought a temporary respite; and they flattered themselves that they had succeeded in barring out the intruder; but with the conclusion of the fast the disturbances were resumed with increased violence. At length a new doorkeeper worn out with want of sleep obtained permission to fire at the phantom which he said he saw every night in the gallery alleging that 'Efreets were always destroyed by the discharge of fire-arms. At midnight the house was startled by the report of a pistol which it afterwards appeared had been loaded contrary to orders with a brace of bullets: the voice of the doorkeeper was heard crying ""There he lies the accursed;"" and sounds and cries were heard which convinced them all that _somebody_ had been shot. ""It passed me in the gallery "" said the doorkeeper ""when I thus addressed it 'Shall we quit this house or will you do so?' 'You shall quit it ' he answered; and he threw dust into my right eye: this proved it was a devil. It stopped in that corner and I observed it attentively. It was tall and perfectly white. Before it moved again I discharged the pistol and the accursed was struck down before me and here are the remains."" So saying he picked up a small burnt mass resembling more the sole of a shoe than any thing else but perforated by fire in several places and literally burnt to a cinder. This he asserted (agreeably with a popular opinion) was always the relic when a devil was destroyed. The mystery remained unexplained though we fear that most sober Franks (in spite of the corroboration afforded to the doorkeeper's theory by the high authority of the _Thousand and One Nights_[18]) will be tempted to share Mrs Poole's scepticism as to the remains of a devil assuming the shape of the calcined sole of an old shoe: but after an interval of peace they were eventually compelled by a renewal of the attack to abandon the haunted house--and those who succeeded them fared even worse. Six families were driven out in as many weeks--their windows broken and their china demolished by invisible hands not only by night but in broad day--""and now "" says Mrs Poole ""I have done with this subject. I have said much upon it; but I must be held excusable as ''tis passing strange.'"" The annoyance of this spectral warfare which continued many months had not prevented Mrs Poole (in spite of the _desagrémens_ of flies ""black thick-legged spiders "" and handmaidens ""who scarcely ever wash themselves except when they go to the bath which is once in about ten days or a fortnight"") from becoming gradually at home in her Egyptian residence and tolerably familiarized with the language and manners of the country. She had even adopted the native manner of eating; and had habituated herself to wear the Turkish dress with such ease as to witness unsuspected the splendid procession of the _Mahmal_ [19] or emblem of royalty which precedes the march of the pilgrim caravan to Mekka--an occasion on which the boys of Cairo enjoy a kind of saturnalia and are privileged to maltreat any Christian or Jew who may be detected near the route. Under the guidance of an elderly Muslim friend of her brother she had also entered the principal mosques of Cairo including that of the Hasaneyn (the grandsons of the prophet Hasan and Hoseyn) and the Zamé-el-Azhar the two most sacred edifices of Cairo. But the Azhar (splendid mosque) is not only the _cathedral_ mosque of the Egyptian capital but the principal and perhaps in the present day the only Moslem university. In the _riwaks_ or apartments appropriated to students from different countries chiefly poor scholars supported by the funds of the mosque ""after passing successively among natives of different divisions of Egypt we find ourselves in the company of people of Mekkeh and El-Medeeneh; then in the midst of Syrians; in another minute among Muslims of Central Africa; next among Magharbeh (or natives of Northern Africa west of Egypt;) then with European and Asiatic Turks; and quitting these we are introduced to Persians and Muslims of India; we may almost fancy ourselves transported through their respective countries. No sight in Cairo interested me more than the interior of the Azhar; and the many and great obstacles which present themselves when a Christian and more especially a Christian lady desires to obtain admission into this celebrated mosque make me proud of having enjoyed the privilege of walking leisurely through its extensive porticoes and observing its heterogeneous students engaged in listening to the lectures of their professors."" A far different _locale_ from the cloisters of the Azhar into which Mrs Poole was perhaps induced to penetrate by the example of Mrs Dawson Damer was the _maristan_ or madhouse perhaps the oldest public establishment of the kind in the world as it was attached by the Baharite Sultan Kalaoon to the mosque which he founded in 1284. ""Our ears were assailed by the most discordant yells as soon as we entered the passage leading to the cells "" where the lunatics were chained like wild beasts the men in one court and the women in another. Each was confined in a separate cell with a small grated window and with nothing but the bare floor to rest upon--while many especially of the women had not an article of clothing--yet they appeared to be sufficiently supplied with food and mildly treated by their guardians; ""and I think this gentleness of manner in the keepers was not assumed for the time for the lunatics did not appear to fear them.""--""I was ill prepared for the sight of such misery and was leaving the court when I heard a voice exclaiming in a melancholy tone of supplication 'Stay O my mistress; give me five paras for tobacco before you go.' I turned and the entreaty was repeated by a very nice-looking old woman who was very grateful when I assured her that she should have what she required; and the woman who was the superintendent gave her the trifle for me."" This establishment was then however on the point of being broken up as the patients were to be removed to another hospital where they would be placed under the care of the pasha's French surgeon-general Clot Bey. ""The Turkish is the only European language "" says Mr Urquhart in his eloquent but fanciful work the _Spirit of the East_ ""which possesses in the word _harem_ a synonyme for home but it implies a great deal more.... To picture a Turkish woman I would beg the reader if possible to fancy to himself a women without vanity or affectation perfectly simple and natural and preserving the manners and the type of her childhood in the full blossom and fructification of her passions and her charms."" This is indeed the language of an enthusiast in whose eyes all is light which comes from the East; but the winning grace and gentle courtesy of the Turco-Egyptian ladies of rank as portrayed in Mrs Poole's interesting sketches of the domestic life of the hareems which she visited go far to justify the character given of them by their eulogist. For her introduction to these the _exclusive_ circles of Cairo as well as for the more than friendly reception which she there met with Mrs Poole professes herself indebted ""to the kindness of Mrs Sieder the lady of our excellent resident missionary who has gained the confidence of the most distinguished hareems "" aided in no small degree we have reason to believe by the general estimation in which her brother was held among his Muslim acquaintance. In this novel species of social intercourse Mrs Poole showed much tact wearing the Turkish dress which is admirably adapted to the climate in her visits to ladies of the middle class as well as at home; ""but in visiting those who are considered the noble of the land I resume under my Eastern riding-costume my English dress. In the Turkish dress the manner of my salutation must have been more submissive than I should have liked; while as an Englishwoman I am entertained by the most distinguished not only as an equal but generally as a superior."" Thus at the hareem of Habeeb Effendi the ex-governor of Cairo she was received at the door of the first apartment on dismounting from the ""high ass"" on which all visits of ceremony must be paid by the eldest daughter of the house who herself disencumbered her of her riding-dress--an office left to slaves in families of rank except in the case of a visitor of high distinction--and was then placed by her on the divan at the right hand of her mother the first cousin of the late Sultan Mahmood. The second daughter appeared soon after and Mrs Poole proceeds to describe her dress. ""She wore on her head a dark handkerchief twisted round a _tarboosh_ (red cap ) with a very splendid sprig of diamonds attached to the right side and extending partly over her forehead. It was composed of very large brilliants disposed in the form of three lutes in the centre from each of which a branch extended forming an oval shape at least five inches in length. High on the left side of her head she wore a knot or slide of diamonds through which was drawn a bunch of ringlets which from their position appeared to be artificial; her tarboosh had the usual blue silk tassel but divided and hanging on either side. Her long vest and trousers were of a dark-flowered India fabric; she wore round her waist a large and rich Cashmere shawl; and her neck was decorated with many strings of very large pearls confined at intervals with gold beads. She was in one respect strangely disfigured--her eyebrows being painted with _kohl_ and united by the black pigment in a very broad and unbecoming manner. Many women of all classes here assume this disguise. Some apply the _kohl_ to the eyebrows as well as the eyes with great delicacy; but this lady had her eyebrows so remarkable that her other features were deprived of their natural expression and effect."" The same graceful kindness which had marked the reception was continued throughout the interview. After the usual refreshments of sweetmeats and coffee had been handed round by the slaves the eldest daughter throwing her arm round the neck of their guest (the Oriental equivalent for walking arm-in-arm ) conducted her through the various apartments of the house; and was preparing on her departure to re-equip her with her riding-dress when the younger sister remarked ""You took them off: it is for me to put them on."" The friendship thus commenced with the amiable family of Habeeb Effendi continued uninterrupted during Mrs Poole's stay in Egypt; and the honours with which she was received were almost embarrassing--the chief lady on her second visit even resigning her own seat and placing herself below her. The ladies of this hareem were particularly well informed. They had heard of the publication of Mrs Dawson Damer's ""Tour "" all were very curious to know what had been said of them expressing much gratification on hearing the terms in which she had described them. Of the eldest daughter [20] in particular Mrs Poole speaks in language of the warmest personal regard:--""I have not met with her equal in Eastern female society in gentleness sweetness and good sense; and withal she has decidedly a cultivated mind."" She made a copy in colours of the portrait of the present Sultan in Mrs Damer's book ""which will doubtless excite great interest in every visiter; and unless protected by a glass it will perhaps in the course of a few weeks be kissed entirely away like a miniature portrait of a Turkish grandee of which I was lately told."" The political relations of the Porte with England and Russia frequently became the subject of conversation; and on one occasion when the concession lately exacted from the Porte of allowing converts to Islam to return unmolested to their original faith--a concession of all others most galling to the Moslem pride--was brought on the tapis this lady remarked ""with an earnestness of manner which interested me and my friend extremely--'It is but the fulfilment of prophecy! When I was a little child I was taught that in this year great things would commence which would require three years for their completion!' Surely she drew a beautiful conclusion "" adds Mrs Poole ""and under circumstances of painful feelings to one strictly attached to the laws of her religion."" But the allusion appears to have been a belief long current in the East that a mysterious combination was involved in the number 1260 (the year of the Hejra which has just closed ) portending ""the beginning of the end"" of Islam if not of the world; and of which this infringement of Moslem supremacy appeared to be the first manifestation.[21] The advantages of the English costume were strongly evinced on Mrs Poole's presentation by her friend Mrs Siedler to the haughty Nezleh Hanum the widowed daughter of Mohammed Ali in her apartments at the Kasr-ed-Dubárah a palace in the midst of Ibrahim Pasha's plantations on the banks of the Nile which is the usual residence of the ladies of the Pasha's family. Mrs Dawson Damer has drawn a sufficiently unamiable picture of this princess whose cruelty to her attendants she represents as emulating that displayed in his public character by her late husband the Defterdar Mohammed Bey.[22] But nothing but the _patte de velours_ was seen by the English stranger who though Nezleh Hanum was severely indisposed at the time of her visit was by her express command shown into her bedroom and received ""with the sweetest smile imaginable;"" while the youngest son of the Pasha Mohammed Ali Bey a boy nine years old sat on a cushion at his sister's feet conversing with the visitor in French; his mother and other ladies sitting on Mrs Poole's left hand. The day happened to be the fourth of the festival of the Great Beiram when it was customary for those ladies who had the privilege of the _entrée_ to pay their respects to the princess. But to not one of those who presented themselves at this levee did Nezleh Hanum deign to address a word in acknowledgment of their salutation as they silently advanced with downcast eyes to kiss her hand or the hem of her robe and then as silently withdrew without once raising their eyes to her face. ""This etiquette I an informed is not only observed during her illness but at all times: and here I felt peculiarly the advantage of being an Englishwoman; for she kept up with me a lively conversation and really treated me as an equal."" On taking leave a second cup of sherbet was presented--""This is always intended as a distinguishing mark of honour. Several ladies accompanied us to the door; and the treasurer followed me with an embroidered handkerchief from her highness. Do not think me egotistical because I describe thus minutely my reception; I consider it important in a description of manners especially as the receiving and paying visits is the everyday business of an Eastern lady."" This was not however the first occasion on which Mrs Poole had visited the Kasr-ed-Dubárah as she had some months previously been present in company with her invaluable chaperon Mrs Sieder at an entertainment there given by the Pasha's hareem; when she had formed the acquaintance of the mother[23] of Mohammed Ali Bey and of another wife of the Pasha ""both young; the one a dignified and handsome person and the other especially gentle and very lovely."" At the time she supposed that these were the _only_ wives of his highness; but on a subsequent visit to the hareem in the citadel she was introduced to a third the mother of a son named Haleem Bey--and she shrewdly conjectured that the full number of four was not incomplete. These ladies with the daughter of Mohammed Ali the widow of Toosoon (a deceased son of the Pasha whose son Abbas is the reputed successor to the pashalik ) and Abbas Pasha's fostermother were the only persons at table with the exception of the French guests--the widow of Toosoon Pasha in virtue of her seniority leading the way to the _salle-à-manger_ and taking the place of honour at ""a very large round silver tray covered with small silver dishes filled with various creams jellies &c. and most tastefully garnished with exquisite flowers; in the centre was a forequarter of lamb on piláv. The lamb was succeeded by stew; the stew by vegetables; the vegetables by savoury cream &c.; sweet dishes most delicately prepared succeeded these in rapid succession; and each was removed and its place filled when perhaps only tasted. Ladies attended close to our divan with fly-whisks; behind them about thirty formed a semicircle of gaily dressed and in many cases beautiful women and girls; those near the door held large silver trays on which the black slaves who stood without placed the dishes."" During the repast Mrs Poole frequently received morsels from the hand of Toosoon Pasha's widow--one of the highest compliments according to Eastern manners--and before taking leave she received an invitation to a grand marriage festival which was shortly to take place in the hareem. The nuptials were not however celebrated during her stay in Egypt the main difficulty being as she was informed _the choice of a bridegroom_! Though the costume of the Pasha's ladies did not differ materially from that already described in the hareem of Habeeb Effendi yet as the Kasr-ed-Dubárah may be considered as the centre of Cairo fashion it would be unpardonable to omit some notice of Mrs Poole's observations (somewhat abridged) on this all-important subject. ""The Turkish ladies wear the _yelek_ (long vest) considerably longer than their height forming a graceful train which in walking over a mat or carpet they hold in front over the arm. The chemise is of silk gauze fine muslin or a very beautiful thin crape with glossy stripes which is made of raw silk in the hareems and is cream colour: the sleeves are not confined at the wrist. The _shintiyan_ (trousers) are extremely full and generally of a different material from the _yelek_; the former being of rich brocade large-patterned muslin or chintz or sometimes of plain satin or gros-de-Naples. The _yelek_ on the contrary is made of a material with a delicate pattern generally a small stripe whether of satin India silk or muslin. Ladies of distinction always wear Cashmere shawls round the waist generally red; and those in Kasr-ed-Dubárah had a narrow edge of gold with gold cords and tassels at the corners."" The tarboosh and diamond ornaments are worn as before described; ""but the front hair is cut short and combed towards the eyebrows which is extremely unbecoming even to a beautiful face except when it curls naturally. The long hair is disposed in numerous small plaits and looped up on each side over the handkerchief. The hair of the younger ladies and white slaves in the Turkish hareems is often worn hanging loosely on the shoulders; but no coiffure is so pretty as that worn by the Arab ladies whose long hair hanging down the back is arranged in many small plaits often lengthened by silk braid and generally adorned with hundreds of small gold ornaments resembling oval spangles which harmonize better with the Eastern costume than any other fashion."" The hareems of the grandees are generally surrounded by lofty walls as high or higher than the neighbouring houses; a vigilant _bowwab_ or doorkeeper is stationed at the outer portal; and within this the eunuchs guard the curtains heavy with golden embroidery which cover the doorway leading to the interior; and woe to the intruder who should attempt to penetrate beyond the entrance! A closed door is never permitted in the hareem; but etiquette forbids the husband to enter when slippers laid before the doorway denote that his wife is receiving visitors--a method of exclusion which is said to be sometimes kept in operation for many days together. The scale of precedence among the inmates is regulated on a very different system from that of European society. Mr Urquhart has correctly remarked that ""the precept 'Thou shalt leave thy father and mother and cleave unto thy wife ' has not been transcribed from the Gospel to the Koran: the wife in the East is not the mistress of the household; she is the daughter of her husband's mother "" to whom the appellation of _hanum_ or chief lady belongs of right to the end of her life: and even if the mother be not living the sisters of the husband take precedence of the wife who is regarded by them as a _younger_ sister. The first wife however where there is more than one can only lose her pre-eminence of rank by the misfortune of being childless in which case she gives place to one who has become a mother; but among the higher classes each wife has her separate apartments and attendants and in some cases even inhabits separate mansion--all however within the bounding walls of the hareem. ""In the great hareems the hanum generally has four principal attendants two of whom are elderly and act simply as companions; the third is the treasurer and the fourth is the sub-treasurer. The next in rank are those who hand pipes and coffee sherbet and sweetmeats; and each of these has her own set of subordinates. Lastly rank the cooks and house slaves who are mostly negresses."" The position of these _white slaves_ among whom Mrs. Poole ""found the most lovely girls in the hareem many of them fully justifying my preconceived ideas of the celebrated Georgian and Circassian women "" may perhaps be best understood by a reference to the familiar pages of the Thousand and One Nights; the hareem scenes in which are probably drawn from those of Syria and Egypt at the period when
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those tales were written. ""Though torn from their parents at an early age they find and acknowledge fathers and mothers in those to whom they are sold; and excepting in two cases cheerfulness has appeared to reign among them""--and the authoress was a witness of the deep sympathy felt by the slaves of the wife of a Turkish grandee who was confined in the state prison by order of the Pasha. The principal employment of these fair prisoners independent of the preparation of sherbets and other household duties consists in embroidery ""which is extremely beautiful as superior as it is unlike to any fancy-work practised in England:--taste of a very remarkable kind is displayed in its execution similar in many respects to that exhibited in the most elaborate decorations of Arabian architecture."" Few even of the ladies of rank can read or write their own language--but there are some exceptions--the accomplished family of Habeeb Effendi has already been noticed; and Mrs Poole was acquainted with another instance in which the daughters had learned under the tuition of a brother who had been educated in Europe to read and understand not only the literature of their own country but the poets of Italy. The surveillance exercised over the young white slaves ""can only be compared to that which is established in the convent. A deviation from the strictest rules of modesty is followed by severe punishment and often by the death of the delinquent ... but if they conduct themselves well they are frequently married by their masters to persons of high respectability; and the ceremony of the marriage[24] of a slave in the high hareems is conducted with extreme magnificence. Those however who from their personal charms have become the favourites of their master and particularly those who have borne him a child are seldom or never thus dismissed and cannot legally be sold: having in this respect the advantage of the wife who is always liable to be divorced without cause assigned and at a moment's notice."" In the hareems of the middle and lower classes the same system of strict seclusion cannot of course be maintained as in the case of the ""hidden jewels"" (as they are called) of the grandees:--the women frequent the public baths and are allowed to visit their neighbours without restraint; but shopping is generally prohibited for reasons which may be gathered from the Thousand and One Nights:--and goods for sale are brought to the hareems by female brokers. The system of blindfold marriages is universal; and except among the lowest class it is scarcely possible that the bridegroom and bride should get a glimpse of each other before their espousals--and the betrothals are generally made at a ridiculously early age. A lady gravely asked Mrs Poole whether one of her boys thirteen years of age was married--and she witnessed a marriage procession in which the almost infant bride taking the whole affair as a good joke thought proper to walk backwards before the canopy fanning her friends instead of submitting to be fanned. The natural consequence of these early marriages is that ""among the lower orders some husbands are sad tyrants; they marry such little young creatures that they are more like children than wives and their inexperience unjustly provokes their husbands."" An original sort of revenge was threatened in her hearing by a man irritated by the abusive language of a little girl whose tongue was the plague of the neighbourhood--""When I have a little more money I will marry you and punish you every day."" Mrs Poole indeed expresses her conviction reluctantly forced upon her that in the middle and lower classes [25] both wives and female slaves are often treated with the utmost brutality; and she mentions two instances in her own neighbourhood in which the death of women of the latter class was caused by the cruelty of their masters. In both these cases however the men were Copts--a people of whom (in spite of the efforts of the English Missionary Society to make them something more than nominal Christians) she was assured by one who knew them well ""that their moral state is far worse than that of the Muslims and that in the _conduct_ of the latter there is much more Christianity than is exhibited in that of the former.""[26] An anecdote casually introduced enables us to judge of the education which children receive on this point. On a visit to the wife of the keeper of the tombs of Mohammed Ali's family a boy just able to walk was brought in when ""the chief lady called for a stick that puss who was quietly crossing the carpet might be beaten for his amusement. I interceded for the cat when she replied mysteriously 'I like her very much--I will not hurt her.' Accordingly she raised her arm with considerable effort and let it fall gently. She next desired one of her slaves to kneel which the girl did most gracefully and bent her head with an air of mock submission to receive the _kurbáj_ and the same farce was repeated. Though neither slave nor cat was a sufferer the effect must have been equally bad on the mind of the child. Alas! for the slaves and cats when he is big enough to make them feel!"" The children however occasionally fare no better than the slaves; and Mr Lane was not seldom obliged by the screams of the sufferers to interfere to stop the cruelty practised in his neighbourhood when ""the answer usually returned was of the most civil kind assuring us with many salutations that _for our sakes_ the offender shall be forgiven."" On one occasion an old woman to punish her little grandson for a trifling theft had employed the services of a professional _beater_ who had tied the child's legs and arms and was beating him with a ponderous stick while his grandmother cried ""again!"" and only desisted on a peremptory remonstrance from Mr Lane; yet the same woman disturbed the neighbourhood with her lamentations every alternate Monday for the loss of her son the little boy's father! It is perhaps hardly fair to cite instances of brutality like this to which our own police-offices afford abundance of parallels as examples of the national manners of Egypt; and Mrs Poole does full justice to the spirit of mutual aid which prevails among the poor in all Moslem countries and teaches them ""to bear each other's burdens."" The women especially those of the higher class are admitted to be the ""most affectionate of mothers."" They are so possessed however by terror of the ""evil eye "" which they firmly believe may be cast on their children by an admiring word or glance that the smallest allusion to them is hazardous. Mrs Poole was much amused by the agitation of an Arab lady in conversation with whom she had congratulated herself that the strength of her eldest boy's constitution had preserved him from the ill effects of the heat. ""In an instant she vociferated 'Bless the Prophet! bless the Prophet!' and coloured deeply."" And it was with difficulty that Mrs Poole could calm her or convince her that the English apprehended no danger from the expression of their satisfaction in the welfare of those they love. It is not easy for even the most experienced to avoid _contretemps_ of this kind in the East where even the ordinary observances of life seem to have been arranged on a system diametrically opposite to our own; and some amusing anecdotes are given of the _gaucheries_ unconsciously committed by raw tourists from Europe. At the house of an Egyptian grandee an European gentleman on receiving the sherbet after pipes and coffee which was handed to him first as a stranger ""looked at it for a moment and then at the gaily-embroidered napkin hung over the arm of the slave who presented it; and following the impulse given I conclude by his preconceptions of Eastern habits of cleanliness dipped his fingers in the sweet beverage and wiped them on the napkin!"" A less pardonable breach of etiquette as it proceeded not from ignorance but want of good-breeding was committed by two Franks who arranged in a motley mixture of European and Oriental costume made their way into the Pasha's palace at Shubra and after rambling from room to room without meeting any one at length entered the bedroom of the Pasha who was nearly undressed! ""Though taken by surprise his Turkish coolness did not forsake him; calling for his dragoman he said 'Ask those gentlemen where they bought their tarbooshes?' 'At Constantinople.' 'And _there_ ' rejoined the Pasha 'I suppose they learned their manners. Tell them so.' Judging from this retort that their presence was not agreeable the Franks saluted the viceroy and withdrew."" As we profess to deal with Mrs Poole solely in her own peculiar province as a delineator of female manners and female society in Egypt we shall pass with brief notice her visit to the Pyramids the account of which contains much valuable information supplied (as she avows ) from the notes of her brother. The excursion though at a short distance from Cairo is not altogether unattended with danger especially to ladies from the attacks of the Bedawees; as appears from the remarks of some young men the sons of a Bedawee sheykh at some distance who had ridden over as they admitted in the hope of seeing the faces of the ladies of the party and were much disappointed at finding them veiled. They had been much struck by the charms of a beautiful American whom they had seen a few weeks before; and one of then exclaimed in speaking of her--""But the sword! the sword! if we dared to use it we would kill that man "" alluding to the lady's companion whether her husband or brother ""and take her for ourselves.""--""'Tis well for pretty women travelling in the East that these lawless Arabs are kept under a degree of subjection by the present government "" says Mrs Poole; and the anecdote affords an indication that when the reins of administration are released by the death of the present Pasha the overland route to India may not be quite so secure as it is at present. But there is another a modern wonder of Cairo which of late years has almost equally divided with the Pyramids the attention of Frank travellers. We allude to the sheykh Abdel-Kadir el-Maughrabi in whose enchanted mirror of ink poured into the palm of an unsophisticated Arab boy men from all parts of the earth were compelled to appear before the tent of the Sultan with its seven mystic flags and submit to a description of their persons and dress which would have satisfied the vigilance of the Russian police. The oracular sagacity of the _Quarterly Review_ was unable to solve the mystery; and even Mr Lane in his _Modern Egyptians_ hesitates whether to doubt or to believe; but the bubble (as we learn from Mrs Poole) has at last burst; and the two familiar spirits Turshoon and Turyooshoon stand revealed in the late Osman Effendi interpreter to the British consulate. Since the death of this respectable personage who usually acted as master of the ceremonies at his performances the good fortune of the sheykh has totally deserted him as he himself inadvertently admitted to Mr Lane when he not long since accompanied two English travellers to witness the exhibition which proved an entire failure; and since that time his attempts have been even more signally unsuccessful. Whatever may have been the means employed there is no longer any doubt that Osman Effendi who sat quiet and demure in a corner without word or sign was the prime agent in the deception; and with him the reputation of the last representative of Pharaoh's magicians has vanished for ever like the visions in his own magic mirror. * * * * * The series of Mrs Poole's letters closes abruptly in April 1844 with the relation of one of her visits to the friendly harem of Habeeb Effendi; and no intimation is given either of the cause of the second cessation or whether a second series may be hereafter expected. We hope that this may be the case; for independent of the interest attaching to the subject and the difficulty of finding another equally qualified by opportunity and powers of observation to do it justice the time must inevitably soon be past when it will be possible to depict the habitudes and manners of the Arab population in their integrity. Cairo is at present with the single exception perhaps of Damascus the most purely Arab city in the East; but the ruthless reforms of the Pasha and the constant passage of the Franks on this new high-road to India will erelong divest it of its distinguishing characteristics and give it as hybrid an aspect as that of the Frank intruders into the Pasha's chamber. An English hotel has already started up; and Mrs Poole informs us that ""by a proclamation of the Pasha the houses are to be whitewashed within and without; those who inhabit ruined houses are to repair or sell them; and uninhabited dwellings are to be pulled down for the purpose of forming squares and gardens; _meshreebeyehs_ (projecting first-floor windows) are forbidden; and _mastabahs_ (the seats in front of shops) are to be removed. Cairo therefore will no longer be an Arab city and will no longer possess those peculiarities which render it so picturesque and attractive. The deep shade in the narrow streets increased by the projecting windows; the picturesque tradesmen sitting with one friend or more before his shop enjoying the space afforded by his mastabah--these will be no more; and while I cannot but acknowledge the great necessity for repairing the city and removing the ruins which threaten the destruction of passengers I should have liked these features retained which are essentially characteristic--which help as it were to group the people and which form such admirable accessories to pictures."" PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE--STEPHENS' BOOK OF THE FARM &c. The growing demand for information among the agricultural classes makes the appearance of new books of a really trustworthy kind of greater national value at the present time than at any former period. Besides as our knowledge is rapidly advancing good books upon practical agriculture are becoming more difficult to write. They require from their authors a larger acquaintance with the newer branches of elementary science than many practical men can be expected as yet to possess. These considerations induce us to advert for the second time to the work now before us. We drew the attention of our readers to the first volume when it made its appearance; two other volumes completing the work having since been published we feel ourselves under a kind of obligation to follow the author cursorily through the remainder of his book. _The Book of the Farm_ might be called _The Practical Farmer's Library_ since it contains full information upon almost every practical subject upon which the intelligent young farmer is likely to require assistance or advice. The scientific branch alone is not systematically discussed though here and there useful scientific points are treated of and explained. But this was not to be expected in a really practical work; and the author upon this branch very properly refers his readers to the published works of Professor Johnston.[27] The feature that struck us most in the perusal of the first volume was the remarkably wide range of minutely practical information which the author possesses and embodies in his book. He describes every practical operation as if he had not only assisted at it on some former occasion but as if he were actually performing it while he is describing it with his pen. This gives a truthfulness and self-evident accuracy to his descriptions which are rarely to be met with in agricultural works and which could not be expected from one who was not really familiar with the points of which he treats. He seems even to enjoy every labour he describes to enter into the spirit of every operation to be performed--into the heart and fun of the thing as it were. He becomes an actual participator in the fact--a _particeps criminis_. No matter whether it is the currying or the skinning of his horse--the shoeing or the riding--taking him to the field or to the tanner Mr Stephens is equally ready and willing for all. He tells you with the same glee how to shelter your sheep on the hill side and how to cut their throats after the most approved fashion; how to lay on fat on your short-horns--what are the marks of their being ripe for the butcher--and how you can kill them in the _most Christian_ way. He pets his sheep-dog and praises him tells you how kindly you should treat him what constant encouragement you should give to so faithful a servant at what age he should be hanged and how you can make most of his skin. He instructs you to tend your young lambs he helps you to select a pet from the flock; he goes with you afterwards to the barn helps you to kill and skin it teaches you to score and cross it in the most approved style cuts it up for you like an anatomist selects the best joint for your own cook; sits down with you afterwards at your own table and carves it and after he has helped you all to your general satisfaction he is still connoisseur enough to keep the best bit of all for his own plate. Besides this living spirit which pervades all the descriptions of methods and operations another excellence we have remarked in these volumes is the _kind_ of opinions given upon practical points in reference to which a difference of sentiment prevails among practical men. They are in general _safe_ opinions--leaning always to the prudent side in cases of doubtful practice. If they appear therefore in some cases not to come up to the notions of those lovers of change who would improve agriculture as engineers make railroads--without regard to their cost or to the interest of the capital expended--they will appear to all sound men to be so much the better fitted to guide the rising farmers of the present day. These young men _must_ possess more knowledge than their fathers if they are to continue upon the land; but they will also soon disappear from the land notwithstanding their knowledge if a balance of profit at the end of the year be not considered an indispensable element in their system of husbandry. The book as we formerly stated is divided into four parts embracing in succession the proper operations to be performed in the four seasons commencing with those of the winter. To the greater part of the winter operations as described and explained by Mr Stephens we adverted in our former notice: there remains one topic however to which from its great national importance we must still turn for a little. Among the various improvements which in the dead season of the year the farmer may undertake with profit to himself and advantage to his farm is that of draining. Of this kind of improvement almost every farm in the country is more or less susceptible. But how should it be done at what depth and with what material? As to the depth the young farmer who wishes to do his work well will neither imitate nor rely too much on the practice of the district he comes from or in which his own farm may happen to be situated. If so he will in Ayrshire--by the advice of the wise-acres in that county--put in his drains only twenty inches or two feet in depth; in Berwickshire he will sink them to three feet; and in Sussex he may be carried along with the rising tide to put none in shallower than four feet. He will not trust we say wholly to example. He will say to himself rather what is the object I have in view and what implements have I to effect it? In draining he has one leading one master object we may call it to attend to. He has to deepen his soil that the roots of his crops may descend further--may draw their food from greater depths and from a larger body of earth. The more completely he can effect this the better will his work be done. How deep will his crops send down their roots? In favourable circumstances his wheat and clover and even his turnips will descend to a depth of three feet. His operations then would be in some degree perfect if he could so open and drain and doctor his land as to enable and induce the roots of his crops to go down so far as this. But they will never or rarely at least descend lower than the level of the water in the bottom of his drains. He cannot therefore hope to make his soil available for the growth of his crops to a greater depth than that to which his drains descend. Three feet then he will say appears to be a reasonable depth for a _perfect_ drain. Again drained land must be opened beneath by the subsoil plough or by the fork if the rains and roots and air are to descend and the full benefits are to be derived from the drains. With our existing implements--especially with the fork--the soil may be stirred to a depth of twenty-six inches. The top of the drain therefore should be at least this depth under the surface; and this again brings the whole depth of a perfect drain to within a few inches of three feet as before. Then as to the material it seems advisable to use either stones or tiles according as the one or the other is the cheaper provided always that the stones are properly broken and carefully put in. The tide seems now to be running in favour of smaller tiles than have hitherto been generally used in Scotland and even of pipe-tiles of a very small diameter. Our friend Mr Smith of Deanston has taken out a patent for a pipe-tile with projecting fingers at the ends which dovetail into each other so as to unite the tiles together and at the same time to keep them in their places. Should these pipes be found generally efficient the cost of draining will be considerably diminished while the small space they occupy will afford greater facilities for deepening the soil. But the economical considerations connected with draining are as important as the practical methods to be adopted both to the cultivator of the soil and to the country at large. We shall advert only to one of these. In what light ought the expenditure of money in draining to be regarded by the practical man? He ought to consider it only as a mercantile speculation by which he may or may not make a profit according to the degree of prudence with which it is undertaken. He has the usufruct of his farm for a certain number of years with liberty to crop it in a certain way. By this he hopes to make a certain sum of money. But it is capable of improvement by draining and he has liberty to drain if he likes. ""Well "" he says to himself ""I make a certain sum by farming my land as it is; I have here fifty pounds of ready money could I make more profit if I were to lay this money out in draining it?--would it be a good speculation?"" He calculates the cost of draining and the probable return of profit and the result is apparently that he _can_ make more profit by this use of his money than by any other way in which he could employ it. This being the result the prudent man embarks in this safe speculation. He does not bury his money in his land; he does not give it away to the land to the loss of his family; he only lends it for a season and for the benefit of his family. He has made his calculations badly and has only his own arithmetic to blame if he does not get all his capital back from the land with a handsome profit in addition some years before his lease has expired. Many tenants think the interest of the landlord should enter into their calculations and some cherish or excite in their own minds ill feelings towards their landlords at the idea of leaving their drains in the land when they quit and the land itself in better condition than when they entered upon their farms. But this feeling arises altogether from a want of familiarity on their part with the ordinary feelings of mercantile men and the transactions of mercantile business. The farmer's sole aim is to promote his own interest. If that interest is to be promoted by draining let him do it immediately and with all his heart; his own profit will not be a whit the less that the landlord comes in for a little profit too when the lease has expired. The builder who takes thirty or forty years' lease of a bit of land in the neighbourhood of London is not deterred from planting houses upon it by the reflection that at the end of his lease the houses will become the property of his landlord. Long before that time has expired he hopes to have his principal and his profit both safe in his pocket. If he does not cherish these hopes he is either a fool or a rogue. On one other point connected with draining we are anxious to quote Mr Stephens' own words. In reply to the question is your land drained? we have so often received the answer--""Oh sir my land is dry it does not require draining""--that we request the serious attention of such of our readers as are interested in the improvement of land to the following passage:-- ""Land however though it does not contain such a superabundance of water as to obstruct arable culture may nevertheless by its inherent wetness prevent or retard the luxuriant growth of useful plants as much as decidedly wet land. The truth is that deficiency of crops on apparently dry land is frequently attributed to unskilful husbandry when it really arises from the baleful influence of _concealed_ stagnant water; and the want of skill is shown not so much in the management of the arable culture of the land as in neglecting to remove the true cause of the deficiency of the crop namely the concealed stagnant water. Indeed my opinion is--and its conviction has been forced upon me by dint of long and extensive observation of the state of the agricultural soil over a large portion of the country--that this is the _true cause of most of the bad farming to be seen_ and that _not one farm_ is to be found throughout the kingdom that would _not be much the better for draining_. Entertaining this opinion you will not be surprised at my urging upon you to practise draining or at my lingering at some length on the subject that I may exhibit to you the various modes of doing it according to the peculiar circumstances in which your farm may be placed.""--(Vol. i. p. 483.) With the substance of these remarks we entirely agree. We would only not put the point so broadly as to imply that the want of draining was the only cause of the bad farming we see. We have however been over large tracts of Scotland and we are quite sure that whole counties might be made to yield the double of their present produce by an efficient drainage and proper subsequent management. We pass over the very succinct and methodical description of the processes of threshing winnowing &c. and can note only one point out of the great mass of very interesting matter Mr Stephens has brought together in regard to the composition qualities and uses of the different kinds of grain. The point to which we shall advert is the composition of oatmeal. Every country is naturally prejudiced in favour of its national food. We Britons look with real or affected disgust on the black rye-bread of the northern nations; and yet on this food the people thrive are strong healthy and vigorous. The bread too is sweet to the taste. It is only disagreeable associations therefore--connected in our minds with the darkness of the colour--that make us consider it disagreeable or unwholesome. In like manner our Irish brethren are strong vigorous and merry on their potato diet. Why should we condemn it as the lowest kind of diet or pity those who are content to live almost wholly upon it? It is true that from its being the main staff of Irish life great distress ensues when a failure takes place in the potato crop. But such would be the consequence of a general failure in any kind of crop on which they might happen chiefly to rely. The cure for such seasons of suffering therefore is not to be sought so much in bringing about change of diet as in introducing a better system of husbandry--an improved system of drainage especially--by which a general failure of any crop will be rendered a more rare occurrence. The spread of railroads will soon render it comparatively easy to transport even the bulky potato from one county to another and thus to prevent the recurrence of famine prices. But in South Britain the oatmeal of the Scottish peasantry--the national food--is looked upon with as much prejudice and those who live upon it with as much pity as the black bread-eaters of Germany and Sweden or the potato-diggers of Ireland. But the health and strength of the Scottish peasantry who live entirely upon oatmeal is proverbial. On this subject in speaking of the Scottish ploughmen where the bothy system is practised--that is where the single men all live together in a room or bothy provided for them which serves them both for sleeping and cooking---Mr Stephens has the following characteristic passage:-- ""The oatmeal is usually cooked in one way as _brose_ as it is called which is a different sort of pottage to porridge. A pot of water is put on the fire to boil a task which the men take in turns; a handful or two of oatmeal is taken out of the small chest with which each man provides himself and put into a wooden bowl which also is the ploughman's property; and on a hollow being made in the meal and sprinkled with salt the boiling water is poured over the meal and the mixture receiving a little stirring with a horn spoon and the allowance of milk poured over it the brose is ready to be eaten; and as every man makes his own brose and knows his own appetite he makes just as much brose as he can consume. The bowl is scraped clean with the spoon and the spoon licked clean with the tongue and the dish is then placed in the meal-chest for a similar purpose on the succeeding occasion. The fare is simple and is as simply made; but it must be wholesome and capable of supplying the loss of substance occasioned by hard labour; for _I believe that no class of men can endure more bodily fatigue for ten hours every day than those ploughmen of Scotland who subsist on this brose thrice a-day_.""--(Vol. ii. p. 384.) The quantity of oatmeal allowed to the ploughman--_as his sole food_--is two pecks or 17-1/2 lbs. in a week exactly 2-1/2 lbs. a-day--or 3/4 lb. for each meal--and yet it often happens that a hard-worked ploughman cannot consume the whole of this allowance. Speaking again of oatmeal _porridge_ Mr Stephens says ""there are few more wholesome meals than oatmeal porridge or upon which a harder day's work can be wrought. Children of all ranks in Scotland are brought up on this diet verifying the line of Burns ""'The halesome parritch chief of Scotia's food.'"" As southern prejudices have a tendency to make their way northward and in the face of old experience at home are leading many to undervalue the oatmeal on which we trust our peasantry will long rely as their staple food it is interesting to find that on this point science has at length come to the aid of reason and experience. Chemistry has already told us many remarkable things in regard to the vegetable food we eat--that it contains for example a certain per centage of the actual fat and lean we consume in our beef or mutton or pork--and therefore that he who lives upon vegetable food may be as strong as the man who lives upon animal food because both in reality feed upon the same things in a somewhat different form. Now it appears from analysis that wheaten flour contains on an average not more than ten per cent of actual dry beef--of that which forms the living muscle of the animal that feeds upon it--with three per cent of fat and fifty of starch. And because of this chemical composition our southern neighbours think wheaten flour the most nourishing the most refined and the most civilized of all food. But Professor Johnston in the recent edition of his Elements [28] tells us that from experiments made in the laboratory of the Agricultural Chemistry Association of Scotland it turns out that oats are far richer in all the three things above named than the best wheat flour grown in any part of England--that they contain eighteen or twenty per cent of that which forms muscle five to eight of fat and sixty-five of starch. The account therefore between shelled oats (groats) and fine wheaten flour stands thus. One hundred pounds of each contain-- Wheat. Oats. Muscular matter 10 lbs. 18 lbs. Fat 3 ... 6 ... Starch 50 ... 65 ... ------ ------ 63 lbs. 89 lbs. What do you say to these numbers Mr Cockney?--You won't pity us Scotch oatmeal-eaters any more we guess. Experience and science are both on our side. What makes your race-horses the best in the world may be expected to make our peasantry the best too. We offer you therefore a fair bet. You shall t
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ke ten English ploughmen and feed them upon two pounds and a-half of wheaten flour a-day and we shall take as many Scotch ploughmen and feed them upon the same weight of oatmeal a-day--_if they can eat so much_ for that is doubtful--and we shall back our men against yours for any sum you like. They shall walk run work--or fight you if you like it--and they shall thrash you to your heart's content. We should like to convince you that Scotch parritch has some real solid metal in it. We back the oatcake and the porridge against all the wheaten messes in the world. We defy your homemade bread your baker's bread your household bread your leaven bread and your brown Georges--your fancy bread and your raisin bread--your baps rolls scones muffins crumpets and cookies--your bricks biscuits bakes and rusks--your Bath buns and your sally luns--your tea-cakes and saffron-cakes and slim-cakes and plank-cakes and pan-cakes and soda-cakes and currant-cakes and sponge-cakes and seed-cakes and girdle-cakes and singing-hinnies--your short-bread and your currant-buns--and if there by any other names by which you designate your wheaten abominations we defy and detest them all. We swear by the oatcake and the porridge the substantial bannock and the brose--long may Scotland produce them and Scotchmen live and fight upon them!! ""The first great event in spring on a farm of mixed husbandry "" says Mr Stephens ""is the calving of the cows."" He then describes the symptoms the preparations and the treatment of the cow and the calf the diseases to which they are respectively liable and the treatment to which they ought to be subjected in his usual clear methodical and remarkably complete manner. We have been struck with the kind tone which pervades the whole of this chapter the gentle treatment he prescribes in all cases--indicating at once a practical acquaintance with the details of these operations and a love also for the quiet and patient animals of which he is treating. We should have quoted had the passages not been too long his description of the different modes adopted apparently with equal profit by the veal manufacturers for the London and Glasgow markets respectively. We should like to know the comparative profit of the French mode of feeding calves for the Paris market _on cream and biscuits_. In his next edition we hope Mr Stephens will instruct us upon this point also. It is one of the merits of this book and in our estimation a very high one that method order and economy of time and labour are invariably recommended and insisted upon in every process and at every season. But these points are especially insisted upon in his chapter _on the advantages of having field-work always in a forward state_. The following extract is long but it contains such admirable advice that we insert it for the sake of those who may never see the book itself or have an opportunity of buying it. After describing how every favourable day should be taken in preparing the land for wheat beans oats potatoes turnips tares or naked fallow in their respective order he continues:-- ""And when every one of all these objects has been promoted and there is found little or nothing to do till the burst of spring-work comes both horses and men may enjoy a day's rest now and then without incurring the risk of throwing work back; but before such recreations are indulged in it should be ascertained that all the implements great and small have been repaired for work--the plough-irons all new laid--the harrow-tines new laid and sharpened and fastened firmly into the bulls of the harrows--the harness all tight and strong--the sacks new patched and mended that no seed-corn be spilt upon the road--the seed-corn thrashed measured up and sacked and what is last wanted put into the granary--the horses new shod that no casting or breaking of a single shoe may throw a pair of horses out of work for even one single hour--in short to have every thing prepared to start for work when the first notice of spring shall be heralded in the sky. ""But suppose the contrary of all this to happen; suppose that the plough-irons and harrow-tines have to be laid and sharpened when perhaps to-morrow they may be wanted in the field--a stack to be thrashed for seed-corn or for horse's corn in the midst of the sowing of a field--suppose too that only a week's work has been lost in winter of a single pair of horses and the consequence is that six acres of land have to be ploughed when they should be sown that is a loss of a whole day of six pair of horses or of two days of three pair--suppose all these inconveniences to happen in the busy season and the provoking reflection occurs that the loss incurred now was occasioned by trifling offputs in winter. Compare the value of these trifles with the risk of finding you unprepared for sowing beans or spring-wheat. Suppose once more that instead of having turnips in store for the cattle when the oat-seed is begun in the fields and that instead of being able to prosecute that indispensable piece of work without interruption you are obliged to send away a portion of the draughts to bring in turnips which _must be brought in_ and brought in too from hand to mouth it being impossible in the circumstances to store them. In short suppose that the season of incessant labour arrives and finds you unprepared to go along with it --and what are the consequences? Every creature about you man woman and beast are then toiled beyond endurance every day not to _keep up_ work which is a lightsome task but to _make up_ work which is a toilsome task but which you said you could easily do when you were idling your time in a season you consider of little value; and after all this toil is bestowed in vain to obtain the end you wish namely to prepare your crop _in due season_. You who are inexperienced in the evils of procrastination may fancy this to be an overdrawn picture--even an impossible case; but unfortunately for that supposition it is drawn from the life. I have seen every incident occur which I have mentioned both as to work being in a forward and in a backward state.""--(Vol. ii. pp. 489 483.) This one extract will alone illustrate the opinion we have already expressed in regard to the soundness and safety of the advice on practical subjects which our author ventures to give. We pass over a hundred pages devoted to ploughing and sowing and the selection of seed. On the last of which points our inclination would lead us to dwell--especially in reference to the steeping of seeds a subject which at present engages so much attention and upon which so much nonsense and mercantile puffing has been recently expended. But our limits restrain us. Whether it is that our own predilections incline us more to those parts of his book or that Mr Stephens writes these better--with heart and kindliness he certainly does write[29]--we scarcely know but we certainly like all his chapter upon animals. _The lambing of ewes_ is the subject of chapter fifty-four. In all lines of life there are the skilful and the unskilful and the former are always the fewer in number. In reference to shepherds Mr Stephens says:-- ""No better proof need be adduced of the fewness of skilful shepherds than the loss which every breeder of sheep sustains every year especially in bad weather. I knew a shepherd who possessed unwearied attention but was deficient in skill and being over-anxious always assisted the ewes in lambing before the proper time; and as he kept the ewes in too high condition the consequence was that every year he lost a number of both ewes and lambs; and in one season of bad weather the loss amounted to the large number of twenty-six ewes and I forget of how many lambs in a dock of only ten score of ewes. I knew another shepherd who was far from being solicitous about his charge though certainly not careless of it yet his skill was so undoubted that he chiefly depended upon it and his success was so eminent that the loss of a ewe or lamb under his charge was matter of surprise. Of these two shepherds--the attentive and the skilful--it would appear that the skilful is the safer and of course the more valuable though it must be owned that it is better to _prevent_ evils by skilful attention than to _cure_ them by attentive skill; yet it is only by the union of both these qualities that a perfect shepherd can be formed.""--(Vol. ii. p. 600.) Perhaps some of our readers are acquainted with _Price on Sheep_ a book in which the treatment of the Leicester sheep is especially described. After commenting upon what this author says of the losses experienced in lambing-time by the southern breeders Mr Stephens pays the following deserved compliment to the intelligent shepherds of Scotland:-- ""I would not have noticed these egregious blunders said by Mr Price to be committed by shepherds in a low country like Romney Marsh in Kent so prominently had not Mr Youatt adopted the sentiments of Mr Price in the very particulars quoted above in his excellent treatise on the history and diseases of sheep. Were a shepherd of a Leicester flock in Scotland made aware that he was suspected of such ignorance of the nature of sheep he would be quite ashamed; and so would shepherds even of the hill country who cannot have so intimate a knowledge of every individual of their flock usually occupying a wide range of mountain land as their brethren of the profession tending flocks within much more limited bounds.""--(Vol. ii. p. 602.) Among the more immediate symptoms of lambing there are two which have struck us as very interesting. We have put them in italics in the following quotation:-- ""The more immediate symptoms of lambing are when the ewe stretches herself frequently; separating herself from her companions; exhibiting restlessness by not remaining in one place for any length of time; lying down and rising up again as if dissatisfied with the place; pawing the ground with a forefoot; _bleating as if in quest of a lamb; and appearing fond of the lambs of other ewes_.""--(Vol. ii. p. 603.) In regard to _pet_ lambs--such as are brought up by hand because their mothers have died and it has been impossible to mother then upon other ewes--the following observation shows their innocent simplicity:-- ""When the same person feeds the lambs and this should be the dairymaid the lambs soon become attached to her and would follow her every where: but to prevent their bleating and to make them contented an apron or a piece of cloth hung on a stake or bush in the paddock will keep them together.""--(Vol. ii. p. 611.) After treating of the various risks which ewes and lambs are subject to the final result for which a skilful shepherd should look is thus stated:-- ""He should not be satisfied with his exertions unless he has preserved one-half the number of ewes with twin-lambs nor should he congratulate himself if he has lost a single ewe in lambing. I am aware these results cannot always be commanded; but I believe an attentive and skilful shepherd will not be satisfied for all his toil night and day for three weeks if he has not attained these results. The ewes may have lambed twins to greater number than the half and yet many pairs may have been broken to supply the deficiencies occasioned by the deaths of single lambs. * * * In regard to Cheviots it is considered a favourable result to rear a lamb for each ewe; and with blackfaced ewes eighteen lambs out of the score of ewes is perhaps one as favourable. Cheviots yield a few pairs blackfaced very few. The former sometimes require assistance in lambing the latter seldom.""--(Vol. ii. pp. 614 615.) An entire chapter is given to the _training and working of the shepherd's dog_. Like master like man says the old adage--like shepherd like dog says Mr Stephens:-- ""The natural temper of the shepherd may be learned from the way in which he works his dog among sheep. When you observe an aged dog making a great noise bustling about in an impatient manner running fiercely at a sheep and turning him quickly biting at his ears and legs you may conclude without hesitation that the shepherd who owns him is a man of hasty temper.""--(Vol. ii. p. 625.) But a well-trained dog has the following qualifications:-- ""Dogs when thus gently and cautiously trained become very sagacious and will visit every part of a field where sheep are most apt to stray and where danger is most to be apprehended to befall them such as a weak part of a fence deep ditches or deep furrows into which sheep may possibly fall and lie _awalt_ or _awkward_ that is lie on the broad of their back and unable to get up and they will assist to raise them up by seizing the wool at one side and pulling the sheep over upon its feet. Experienced dogs will not meddle with ewes having lambs at foot nor with tups being quite aware of their disposition to offer resistance. They also know full well when foxes are on the move and give evident symptoms of uneasiness on their approach to the lambing ground. They also hear footsteps of strange persons and animals at a considerable distance at night and announce their approach by unequivocal signs of displeasure short of grumbling and barking as if aware that those noisy signs would betray their own presence. _A shepherd's dog is so incorruptible that he cannot be bribed and will not permit even a known friend to touch him when entrusted with any piece of duty._ * * * It is supposed that the bitch is more acute than the dog though the dog will bear the greater fatigue. Of the two I believe that the quietly disposed shepherd prefers a bitch and is careful in working her as little as he can when in pup. I may mention that the shepherd's dog claims exemption from taxation; and I believe that a well-trained one costs at least L.3.""--(Vol. ii. pp. 626 627.) Nothing is said of the mutual attachment of the shepherd and his dog. Of this attachment we can never help thinking--when the subject of dogs is introduced--since we saw the look of mingled agony and consternation which showed itself on the face of one of our shepherd boys when a horse had kicked and apparently killed it and the joy with which he hugged it while it licked his hands and face as it recovered. Nothing strikes an American so much on coming to England--kindred though he be not only in blood and language but also in customs--nothing at least strikes him more than the beautiful thorn hedges with which our fields are at once divided sheltered and adorned. And yet how much they are mismanaged--their perfection usefulness and durability lessened--by injudicious in many cases by ignorant and barbarous treatment! A most useful chapter is devoted to this subject from which we shall make one or two extracts. First of switching young hedges:-- ""Hedgers have a strong predilection to use the switching-bill. They will without compunction switch a young hedge at the end of the first year of its existence. No hedge ought to be touched with a knife until it has attained at least two years; because the great object to be attained by a new hedge is the enlargement of its roots that they may search about freely for its support; and the only way it has of acquiring large roots is through its branches and leaves which are the chief means of supporting the healthy functions of plants or of even preserving them in life. Even beyond the age mentioned above the pruning-knife should be very sparingly used until the young hedge has acquired the height sufficient for a fence; and not freely then but only to remove superfluities of growth and preserve equality in the size of the plants. * * * * * Let the plant have peace to _grow_ till it has acquired a considerable degree of natural strength--to acquire which state it will take a longer or shorter time according to the circumstances in which it is placed--acquiring it in the shortest time in deep sandy loam the most _useful_ of all soils and taking the longest in poor thin clay on a tilly subsoil--let it I say have peace to _grow_ and let it be afterwards judiciously pruned and I will give you the assurance of experience that you will possess an excellent fence and a beautiful hedge in a much shorter time than the usual practice of hedgers will warrant.""--(Vol. ii p. 564.) Upon cutting down hedges the following remarks are excellent:-- ""Hedges are wofully mismanaged in the cutting in many parts of the country. Without further consideration than saving the expense of a paling to guard a new-cut-down hedge or in ignorance of the method of making a dead-hedge from the refuse of the old the stems of an _old_ hedge are often cut over about three and a half feet high to continue as a fence. The consequence is just what might be anticipated from a knowledge of the habits of the thorn namely a thick growth of young twigs where the hedge was cut over the ultimate effect of which is a young hedge standing at three and a half feet above the ground upon bare stakes. The wise plan therefore to preserve the value of the old hedge is to cut it near the ground and form a dead-hedge of the part cut off.""--(Vol. ii. pp. 569 570.) We have seen hedges occasionally dying out by degrees on the road-sides where the banks were cut close to the roots of the thorn plants. The following acute observation will in some cases no doubt account for it:-- ""I observe that some farmers remove the hedge-bank behind a thorn-hedge to make compost of; but such a practice is highly injurious to the hedge even after it is grown up by exposing its roots which chiefly lie under the bank to cold and frost. If a hedge is cut down whose bank has been treated in this manner and no means are used to protect the roots when exposed on the removal of the branches it is possible that a few nights of severe black frost may kill every root that lies nearest the surface. I have no doubt that particular plants of old hedges are killed in this manner without the cause being suspected by the farmer.""--(Vol. ii. p. 576.) The planting of potatoes as we should expect in a practical work of this kind is treated of in considerable detail and with much judgment. Upon seed-potatoes which have these last two or three years attracted so much attention we have the following passage:-- ""I have no doubt in my own mind that were seed-potatoes securely pitted until they were about to be planted --not over-ripened before they were taken out of the ground --the sets cut from the crispest tubers and from the waxy end --the dung fermented by a turning of the dunghill in proper time --led out to the field quickly spread the sets as quickly dropped on it and the drills quickly split in the manner represented in fig. 411 and described in (2411 ) there would be little heard of the failure even in the driest season --at the same time the precaution of obtaining seed frequently from an elevated and late district compared to where the seed is to be planted should not be neglected.""--(Vol. iii. pp. 672 673.) These recommendations are correct we believe and judicious as far as they go; other things however are within the powers of the skilful farmer; but to all we would especially recommend a more careful construction of their potato-pits. This subject is again treated of in Vol. iii. p. 1121. The raising of seed-potatoes should be made more an object of special care than has hitherto been the case; for we doubt if the cure recently propounded as infallible on the faith of one or two successful experiments--that of leaving the potatoes covered up during winter in the field where they grew--will be in all cases followed by the wished-for results. We hope however that many will try it. Of horses we could have wished to say something had our space permitted; but we can only refer to what is said of the rearing and intelligence of the horse towards the beginning of the second volume and to the chapter on _breaking in young draught horses_ in p. 691 of the same volume. We come now to the third volume which commences the operations of summer--a season which brings with it new cares especially to the dairy farmer and where the turnip husbandry prevails. It is true that in summer when all his seeds are in the ground the farmer has a little leisure during which he may leave his farm but even then any excursion he makes ought not to be for mere pleasure. A true farmer will have his eyes about him wherever he travels and will carefully study the merits of the rural customs of every district he goes to. There is much truth in the following remarks:-- ""Summer is the only season in which the farmer has liberty to leave home without incurring the blame of neglecting his business and even then the time which he has to spare is very limited. There is only about a fortnight between finishing the fallow the turnip and potato culture and hay-making and the commencement of harvest in which the farmer has leisure to travel. This limitation of time is to be regretted because it is proper that he should take a journey every year and see how farm operations are conducted in other parts of the kingdom. An excursion of this nature is seldom undertaken by a farmer who is generally a man capable of observation without acquiring some hints which may induce the adoption of a practice that seems good or the rejection of one which is bad. Such a journey exhibits mankind in various aspects and elevates the mind above local prejudices; and as husbandry is a progressive art a ramble of a week or two through different parts of the country cannot fail to enlighten the mind of the most experienced farmer much beyond any thing he can observe by always remaining at home.""--(Vol. iii. p. 742.) In his excellent chapter on the sowing of turnips he quotes several instances of the successful preparation of land in the autumn--breaking up harrowing cross-ploughing drilling and dunging--for the turnip crop and he adds the following opinion:-- ""Were such modes of culture adopted in the south of England I have no doubt certain and abundant crops of turnips would be raised in spite of droughts and insects; and the slovenly practice of broad-cast culture would then give way to the more scientific mode of the drill system.""--(Vol. iii. p. 747.) In the following passage he notices a curious but generally received fact regarding the effect of different quantities of bones; but we quote chiefly on account of another observation at its close which may be interesting to our southern readers:-- ""I have tried to raise turnips with different quantities of bone-dust varying from twelve sixteen twenty and twenty-four bushels to the imperial acre and have found the crop improved up to sixteen bushels; but any quantity beyond that even to twenty-four bushels produced no greater effect on the turnips in the same field and on the same sort of soil than sixteen bushels. Nay more than this my late agricultural preceptor Mr George Brown when he farmed Hetton Steads in Northumberland raised as good crops of turnips as sixteen bushels of bone-dust with only eight bushels of bone-dust combined with an indefinite quantity of sifted dry coal-ashes; and yet eight bushels of bone-dust or an indefinite quantity of coal-ashes applied separately produced a very poor crop of turnips. It is therefore unnecessary in so far as the crop of turnips is concerned to sow more than sixteen bushels of bone-dust alone or eight bushels with coal-ashes or perhaps street-manure. Both coal-ashes and street-manure when proposed to be used with bone-dust should be kept dry under cover and sifted free of large lumps. * * * ""The very best mode of using bone-dust in small quantity both for increasing the fertility of the soil and rearing a good crop is to sow the seed along with it in drills already manured with farm-yard dung. The bone-dust secures a good and quick braird of the plant and the dung supports it powerfully afterwards. This plan I would recommend to be pursued particularly in England on the land prepared for turnips in autumn; and were it practised we need not despair of raising heavy crops of turnips especially Swedes on the strongest soils and most certainly they would be obtained after thorough-draining.""--(Vol. iii. pp. 748 751.) To the _drop_-drill as a means of husbanding manure too little attention has hitherto been paid in Scotland. We strongly recommend therefore to the attention of the Scottish farmer the following brief quotation:-- ""The saving of manure in the first instance by the use of the drop-drill appears to be considerable since it has been frequently asserted that ten or twelve bushels of bone-dust per acre will produce a braird equal if not superior to sixteen or eighteen bushels put in by the continuous mode. The subject is therefore of great importance and calls for close observation; for if the drop system is really so important it cannot be too widely adopted.""--Vol. iii. p. 806. We regret the necessity of passing over the remainder of this chapter on turnips. We merely extract the following mode of preventing the destructive attack of the turnip-fly because though the method has been heard of by many it has been tried by comparatively few. Mr Stephens recommends ""To put the seeds for some time before they are sown amongst flour of sulphur and sow the sulphur amongst them. The late Mr Airth informed me that when he farmed the Mains of Dun Forfarshire his young turnip crops were often very much affected and even destroyed by these insects; but that after he used the sulphur he never suffered loss though his neighbours did who would not use the same precaution and that for as long as he possessed the farm afterwards namely fifteen years.""--(Vol. iii. p. 772.) It is also with regret that we pass over the making of butter and cheese the chapter upon which we commend to the attention of our dairy farmers. The subjects of hay-making liming and forming water meadows we also pass; but we stop a moment at his chapter upon flax and hemp. The culture of flax is now very much advocated both in Great Britain and Ireland; and we fear very erroneous notions are entertained and propagated regarding both the profit it is likely to yield to the farmer and the effect it is fitted to produce upon the land. The following passage is not entirely free from objection but it contains a great deal of truth and much common sense:-- ""It has been proposed of late with a considerable degree of earnestness to encourage the growth of flax in Britain. The attempt was made some years ago and failed; but in the present instance it is recommended with the view of raising flax-seed for feeding cattle in sufficient quantity to render us independent of foreign oil-cake of which no doubt large quantities are annually imported but to what extent I have not been able to ascertain. The _object_ of the suggestion is laudable but the _end_ I fear unattainable; for if good _seed_ is raised to make good oil-cake or compounds with oil the _flax_ will be coarse and flax of inferior quality will never pay so well as corn: and it should never be lost sight of in considering this question that to raise flax must bring it into competition with white crops and not green crops because to raise it as a green crop would be to deteriorate its quality by bringing it into immediate contact with manure; and on the other hand if it is raised without manure as a fallow-crop it must deteriorate the soil materially--no species of crop being _more_ scourging to the soil than flax not even a crop of turnip-seed. There is therefore this dilemma in the matter--the quality of the flax or of the seed must be sacrificed. The seed separately will not pay the expense of culture. Seed is produced from six to twelve bushels per acre. Taking the highest at twelve bushels that is one and a half quarter and taking it also for granted that it all will be fit for _sowing_ and worth the highest current price of 60s. per quarter the gross return would only be L.4 10s. per acre. The flax-crop varies in weight of rough dried fibre according to season and soil from three to ten cwt. per acre; and taking the high produce five cwt. per acre of dressed flax at the highest price of L.6 per ton the yield will be L.31 from which have to be deducted the expenses of beetling scutching and heckling and waste and loss of straw for manure and the profit will not exceed L.8 per acre; but though _such_ a profit would certainly repay the expenses of cultivation yet it presents the _most_ favourable view that can be taken even with the sacrifice of the entire loss of seed--the loss in fact of the greatest inducement for renewing the culture of the plant. In Ireland the case I believe will be the same though much of the soil of that country being mossy is more favourable to the growth of flax than that of England or Scotland; yet even there it will be found impracticable to raise good flax and good seed from the same piece of ground at the same time; and if the seed is not good the oil-cake will be bad.""--(Vol. iii. p. 1046.) Among the arguments in favour of the extensive culture of flax now urged by so many we are sorry to see a scientific one lately put forth by our friend Dr Kane of Dublin and which has been much vaunted and relied upon by himself and by those for whose benefit the opinion was propounded. The proposal is it will be recollected to carry off the stalk of the flax crop and to convert the seed into manure. This is the same thing as carrying off the straw of a corn crop and eating or otherwise converting the grain into manure upon the farm. Every one knows that carrying off the straw will exhaust the land as will also carrying off the stalk of the lint. But says Dr Kane I have analysed the _steeped_ and _dressed_ flax and find that it contains very little of what the plant peculiarly draws from the soil. This is left for the most part in the pond in which the flax is steeped or at the mill where the flax is dressed. Therefore to carry off the flax is not _necessarily_ to exhaust the soil. You have only to collect the _shows_ of the flax mill and pump out the water from the steeping hole and apply both to the land and you restore to it all that the crop has taken off. Now there is a fallacy in supposing that all that is taken from the land would in this way be restored--one which the advocates of this non-exhausting view are of course not anxious to discover; but supposing the result and conclusions correct what are they worth in practice? It is only a little bit of fireside farming. What practical good has come out of it? Put all the steeping water upon the land! Have any of the members of the flax societies tried this? Then let them tell us how it is to be done--what it cost--what was the result and the profit of the application. They use this prescription as an argument to induce men to introduce an exhausting culture and they take no means to introduce _first_ a general employment of those means by which it is said that the naturally exhausting effect of the culture may be prevented. What our friend Dr Kane has said and done is in perfect good faith; the form which his opinions have assumed upon paper has arisen solely from the want of a sufficient knowledge of the usages and capabilities of sound and profitable practical husbandry. If we cannot persuade our farmers to collect and apply to the land the liquid manure of their farm-yards when can we hope to persuade them to empty their flax-ponds for the purpose of watering their fields? Can we ever hope soon to persuade them to preserve and use up the thousands of tons of _shows_ that are now yearly sent down the streams by which our flax mills are set in motion? We are far from saying that flax or any other crop may not be grown without necessarily exhausting the soil--chemistry we know will by-and-by put all this within our power; but we are very much of Mr Stephens' opinion that our English and Irish flax societies do not as yet clearly see their way to that end and that unintentionally they will lead many to inflict a permanent injury upon their land without any adequate compensation to themselves their landlords or the country. We had marked the early cutting of corn in harvest as a subject of general importance to practical men and that of the smearing of sheep so interesting especially to our northern agriculturists; and we wished to confirm Mr Stephens' recommendations upon those points by some observations of our own; but we are compelled to leave the chapter which treats upon them to the private consideration of our readers. We quote the following passage from the chapter on _fertilizing the soil by means of manure_ as containing much good common sense:-
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""Dung is applied at the commencement of every rotation of crops with the fallow green-crops and with bare fallow; and when applied at any other time it is near the termination of a long rotation. A rule for the quantity of farm-yard dung to be applied according to the length of the rotation as given by Dr Coventry is that five tons per acre are required every year to sustain the fertility of soil; and therefore land which is dunged every four years in a rotation of four courses should receive with the fallow-crop twenty tons per acre; in a five-course shift twenty-five tons; in a six-course shift thirty tons and so on. These quantities constitute no doubt a sufficient manuring to ordinary crops; but it appears to me to be reversing the order of propriety to give land under the severest shift--a four-course one--the smallest modicum of manure when it should receive the largest; for there is surely truth in the observation that land grazed with stock becomes ameliorated in condition--actually increased in fertility. A six-course shift therefore having three years of grazing should require less instead of more manure even at a time than a four-course one on land of similar quality.""--(Vol. iii. pp. 1230 1231.) The chapter on the points of stock--cattle sheep pigs and horses--would of itself have afforded us materials for an interesting article. Breeding and crossing of stock both so necessary to be well understood by those who would breed for _profit_ are also ably discussed by our author; and it is only want of space which prevents us from quoting from this chapter. But there are some kinds of live _cattle_ which of themselves breed too fast even for Mr Stephens; and these he as anxiously instructs his readers how to exterminate. Among these are rats in regard to the destruction of which the following passage will interest our readers:-- ""Of all the modes I ever witnessed rats being killed none equalled that of a Yorkshireman of the name of John Featherston by means of steel-traps. He had twenty-one small steel-traps which he kept clean and bright. He soon traced the tracks of rats along the floor to a corner or on the tops of walls leading commonly by the corners of apartments to the partition wall which they surmounted between it and the slates; the very place which I have recommended the filling up to break off such communications. After he had discovered the different runs of the animals he made a number of small firm bundles of straw which he placed against the bottom of a wall where the run was on a floor and upon its top where the run was to the roof. He used seven traps at one place at a time and a sufficient number of bundles of straw was used to conceal that number of traps at each place employing the entire number of traps in three places at a little distance from each other and in different apartments. The traps were set but not allowed to spring at first and baited with oatmeal scented with oil of rhodium and placed in a row with a little chaff over them in the run behind the bundles of straw. The traps were baited for two days the baits being replenished as soon as it was discovered by inspection that a bait disappeared. On the third day the traps were baited as before but the restriction was removed from the spring and then began the capture. In all the three days people were prevented as much as possible from frequenting the apartments in which the traps were placed and dogs were entirely excluded. Removing the check from the spring from one set of traps after another armed with short stout stick and furnished with a bag slung from his shoulder Featherston put himself on the alert and the moment he heard the click of a trap he ran to it removed the bundle of straw knocked the rat on the head if alive threw it out of the trap set it again replaced the bundle again put the rat into the bag and was again on the watch from one place to another. In the course of the third day from morning to the afternoon he had collected 385 rats in the bag and allowing all the traps to have done equal execution each had caught more than eighteen rats in the course of a single day. He bargained for 1d. a rat and his food and in three days he earned his food and L.1 12s. 1d.--such was his expertness. It was not supposed that all the rats were cleared off by this capture; but they received such a thinning as to be comparatively harmless for years after. Featherston's first business on the day following the capture was to clean each trap bright before setting out on his journey; for he seemed to place greater reliance on the clean state of his traps than on any other circumstance--that the suspicion of the rats I suppose of the danger of the traps might thereby be allayed. The brown rat burrows in fields and commits ravages on growing crops whether of corn or turnips. I have seen many burrows of them in Ireland and assisted at routing them with spade and terrier but have never heard of their having taken to the fields in Scotland."" _Farm book-keeping_ is a subject too little attended to by our practical men. In our own neighbourhood we know that keeping books is the exception--keeping none is the rule. The smaller farmers know the state of their affairs only by the money they have in their hands at certain seasons of the year. But as better systems of husbandry spread this lax method of carrying on business must be discarded. Husbandry is becoming more and more an experimental art. New trials must now be made year after year by those who would hope to live and thrive; and it is only those who keep regular accounts of the outlay upon each trial and the income from it who can know what methods and manures they ought to adopt and what to reject from a system of profitable husbandry. Upon this subject Mr Stephens is entirely of our opinion and he gives very copious examples of the way in which books ought to be kept. * * * * * Such is a hasty sketch of the contents of the book in so far as the farming part of it is concerned. The way in which the work is illustrated by 608 woodcuts and 33 plates by eminent artists is as creditable to the publishers as the matter of the book is to the author. To the full and accurate descriptions of agricultural implements--to the illustration of which many of these woodcuts and plates are devoted--we feel ourselves wholly unable to do justice. That they are all from the pen and pencil of Mr Slight will to those who know him be a better recommendation than any words of ours. There is only one other test to which in criticising the work before us we are entitled to put it. It contains much useful matter but is it likely is it fitted to answer the end which the author had in view? His object he says was to put into the hands of young men desirous of learning practical farming a manual from which _being upon a farm_ they would be able to learn all that was necessary to fit them for the several successive stations to which the industrious son even of a farm-labourer may fairly hope to rise. This we think he has accomplished and in that graphic and living way which has all along led us into the persuasion that Mr Stephens must himself have ""played many parts "" and entered into the feeling and spirit of them all. When he speaks of the shepherd and his dog and of driving stock to market he seems to look back with much satisfaction almost with regret to the time when he himself served as a drover and took his cattle to the South over the cold Northumbrian moors. He delights to linger by the way and tells you where you will still get the best _gill_ on your road and how it will be safest for you to make the last glass you take into toddy before you go to bed. We think he must often have taken up his night's quarters at Tommy Robson's on the Reed Water on his travels by Watling Street to the Stagshaw Bank Fair. Then he changes the scene for us. He is a ploughman for the time. He tells how he managed his horses guided his plough turned over his furrows mended his harness and how three times a-day he fed heartily and well upon his oatmeal brose and was healthy and strong in limb happy in mind and free from care. We question if he is heartier or happier now. Next we find him writing like one who has been promoted to the rank of grieve or farm-steward. He has assumed the tone and look of a man who has responsibility upon his shoulders--who has graver duties to perform and from whom more is expected. He tells us how he manages his men apportions their hours of labour and distributes to each his appropriate quantity and time of work. The scene shifts and we see him in the market selling his corn. He wants threepence a bushel more and he will hold out till he gets it. His sample is good for his land has been well managed and his grain well cleaned; he knows what his article is worth as things are going in the market and he will be an old corn-merchant who takes him in. Or he has stock to sell and there he goes into the whisky shop to finish his bargain. You heard him ask ten shillings more than he meant to take? That was because he knew the buyer was a higgler and would have left him at once had he refused to come down in his price. Now they are gravely discussing the point over the gill-stoup. They are within half-a-crown now. Another gill will close the bargain. It is finished; the buyer is pleased; and our grieve is five shillings richer than if the bargain had been closed briefly and in the open air. He is not a bad writer for a practical man who enables you in a book upon farming to call up successive transactions in a manner so vivid as this. Next he wishes to become a farmer on his own account and he looks about for a farm that will suit him. On this subject he has an excellent chapter in his third volume. He has been faithful to his master and now he acts honourably towards his equals:-- ""Here "" he says ""let me mention at the outset that it is considered amongst farmers a dishonourable act to look at a farm until you are in the first place assured that it is in the market. To do so until you certainly know that the tenant in possession is to leave it or at any rate until it is advertised in the public prints or otherwise declared to be in the market whether the possessing tenant wishes to take it again or not is an unfeeling act and regarded as equivalent to telling him that you wish to take the farm over his head. Such an act would be as unbecoming as to intrude yourself into a house in town which you think would suit you to look at its internal arrangement before you are aware the possessing tenant is leaving it by the usual announcement of the ticket.""--(Vol. iii. p. 1304). But having obtained possession of a farm he enquires can I now make money for myself--quickly but honourably--in a way that will be at once creditable to myself beneficial to my landlord and of advantage to my country? Two points Mr Stephens insists upon as indispensable to the making of money in this creditable way. The tenant must keep his land clean and he must farm it high. Those who make most money in each district--their natural prudence being alike--are those who are kindest to the land. Use me well says the soil every where and I will use you well in return. In other parts of his work he rises to the station of a land-steward. He discusses in a clear and judicious manner large agricultural questions--he writes with the gravity and thoughtfulness of one whose business it is to superintend and regulate extensive improvements and to look after the proceedings and modes of farming of a large body of tenantry. This indeed we hope and trust will be the case with many of those who carefully read learn and inwardly digest the lessons and precepts of his book; for in whatever capacity it may be their lot to minister to the welfare and progress of agriculture they will find aid and assistance and counsel from the _Book of the Farm_. It is indeed in very many cases of much importance that a better instructed race of men should be entrusted with the immediate management of the larger estates of the country. We have met with many skilful and intelligent members of this class many able to understand and advise and superintend the most enlightened improvements and to conduct them to a prosperous and economical issue. But the mass of these men in our island is not up to the knowledge of the time; too many of them are almost entirely ignorant of the most elementary principles of agriculture. How indeed can it be otherwise when a landholder is contented to place this delicate management in the hands of his retired butler or his failing groom or even of his solicitor or attorney who has been bred up to a totally different profession? If law and medicine require separate schools and training so do farming and the management of estates if they are to be farmed to a profit or managed with economy and skill. But the purpose of our _book_ does not end with the mere practical man. It professes and is fitted to instruct the proprietor too. How much have the landlords yet to learn? Which of them has ever at school or college had an opportunity of obtaining any instruction in regard to what was to be the occupation and support of his after life! Some do indeed when they settle on their estates apply themselves by reading and otherwise to make up their deficiencies and to fit themselves for the new and useful sphere in which they are called to move. But in broad England how few are the landlords who know the principles on which their land ought to be cultivated--who feel an enlightened interest in the prosperity and real advancement of agriculture--who understand how to set a useful and prudent and enlightened example to their tenantry! If knowledge such as that contained in the book before us require to be diffused among the humble walks of agricultural life it is no less necessary we are assured among those who frequent its highest places. But a spirit not only of improvement but of eager searching after knowledge has sprung up among the entire agricultural body. From our own experience we say this; for we have seen with delight the eager eyes of listening audiences for whole hours fixed upon a single speaker who was attempting zealously and simply to instruct them. And it is those of the agricultural body who already know most among whom this eagerness is observed to be most intense. They have tasted of the value of the new lights which recent science especially has thrown upon agricultural practice and they are eager for the acquisition of more. We are proud to say that the first decided proof of this desire for higher knowledge has been manifested among the farmers and proprietors of Scotland. The _Agricultural Chemistry Association of Scotland_ is their work. Through this association they have professedly attached chemistry and geology and physiology to the car of practical agriculture; and under the guidance of these sciences the art of culture will not long lag behind her sister arts for which these sciences have already done so much. We have before us a list of the members of this patriotic association. In this list we find the names of nearly every man in Scotland who is at all known to agricultural fame. If there be a few whose names we miss the reason probably is that they hardly yet know much of its existence; for it has only just finished its first year of active life. The new list of another year will contain the names of all who are really alive to the wants and capabilities of our national agriculture. We are sincerely desirous for the credit and advancement of Scottish agriculture. We are therefore anxious that no means should be left untried to keep up the perhaps artificially high character which the natural intelligence and shrewdness of the Scottish nation has gained for the practical farmers of the country. Granting what we have ourselves seen that there is much good farming and well-farmed land to the north of the Tweed we cannot deny there is also much neglected land and much unskilful tillage. Though much has been improved in this end of the island there is far more still almost in a state of nature. Hitherto the high-roads of the country have gone through such pleasant places as lie between the Pease bridge and Edinburgh; but the railroads now projected will lay open the waste and neglected tracts of country to southern eyes and the agricultural reputation of Scotland may suffer a rude shock in English estimation. We are not the less good patriots while we agree with Mr Stephens that there is a greater breadth of skilfully farmed land in England than in Scotland and that the germ of all or nearly all our improvements has been drawn from the South. Give England her due and Scotland has still much to be proud of in picking up a germ here and a germ there and unfolding and developing these germs under her own colder sky and almost against nature conquering for herself fruitful fields and a high agricultural reputation. But England and Ireland having awoke to new exertions in improving their soil we in the North must open our eyes too. We must if possible keep the name we have acquired. If our practice is faulty let us amend it--if our science is defective let us enlarge it. ""Science with practice "" is the well-conceived motto of the Royal Agricultural Society of England; such a motto we hope all Scottish farmers will adopt. Let them conjoin the science of the books of Johnston with the practice of that of Stephens and they may still hope as a body to occupy the foremost rank among the agriculturists of Europe. STANZAS. With every joy we haste to meet In hopefulness or pride There comes with step as sure and fleet A shadow by its side; And ever thus that spectre chill With each fair bliss has sped And when the gladden'd pulse should thrill The stricken heart lies dead! The poet's brow the wreath entwines-- What weight falls on the breast! Upon the sword where glory shines The stains of life-blood rest. Lo where the rosiest sunbeam glows There lies eternal snow! And Fame its brightest halo throws Where death lies cold below. J. D. LORD MALMESBURY'S DIARIES AND CORRESPONDENCE.[30] In a late number of this Magazine we took occasion under a different title to notice the two first volumes of this highly interesting work. We have seen how Lord Malmesbury conducted himself in his diplomatic capacity at the different courts of Europe under the _ancien régime_. It is difficult for the men of this generation--whose historic era traditionary or remembered commences with the outbreak of the French Revolution--to realize in imagination the exhausted broken and unhealthy state of Europe during the middle and towards the end of the last century. Balance of power there was none. The leading continental states when not in actual arms looked upon each other with eyes of the most bitter jealousy. When they did combine it was for some unholy purpose such as the partition of Poland; and no sooner had they brought down their quarry than like the _Lanzknechts_ of old--to use no more brutal simile--they began to bandy words and blows for their relative proportions of the spoil. Good faith was a thing unknown either to prince or to minister. To trick an ally was considered almost as meritorious a deed as to undermine or defeat an enemy. In short it would be difficult perhaps impossible to point out any period when public morality was at so low and pitiable an ebb. In some respects the older continental states--leaving France for the present out of the question--were less to blame than the newer powers who were then struggling forward with the keenness of fresh competitors and claiming a recognition of importance which had never been accorded them before. In the first class we would rank Austria Holland and Sweden; in the second Russia and Prussia. The Muscovite unequalled in extent of territorial possession--exhibiting much of barbaric splendour with but little of real civilization--sought to extend his unwieldy power still further and to gain a position within the heart of Europe by extending his conquests towards the west. Prussia circumscribed in territory organized herself as a military state. To this one end all other considerations were in the first instance sacrificed; but when it was attained she withdrew the mask and exhibited herself in her real character--the most unscrupulous of neighbours the most fickle and perfidious of allies. Environed with small and defenceless states she never lost an opportunity of aggrandizing herself at their expense no matter what amount of mutual treaties had intervened. Even defeat she could turn to her account by purchasing peace with an enemy upon such terms as surrendered half of a neighbouring territory to the invader and secured the remainder to herself. Even when her interest called upon her to unite with other European powers against a common foe she refused to act upon her own resources and unless subsidized remained sullen and inactive at home. In this situation was the Continent at the outbreak of the French Revolution. The success of the Republican arms in France during the year 1793 of which the capture of Toulon was the crowning point naturally created in the minds of the British ministry the liveliest apprehension and alarm. England alone of all the European states was in a sound and healthy condition. Her finances were unimpaired her resources large her credit almost unbounded. William Pitt the greatest minister whom this country has ever known was then at the helm of public affairs. The nation--though some individuals had not escaped the taint--was opposed to the principles of the French Republic and disgusted with its attendant atrocities. Our insular position and our acknowledged supremacy of the seas were sufficient safeguards against a direct attack; but the immediate danger lay with the Continent. Amidst all the strife of faction and democracy France was progressing towards conquest. Rumour told of armies--undisciplined perhaps and ill-appointed but officered by men of undoubted talent and inspired by an enthusiasm which carried all before them--crowding towards the eastern frontier of France and hanging there like a thundercloud portentous of coming devastation. What was there to meet this tide of threatened invasion? Nothing save a heptarchy of tottering states weak in themselves without concert and without coalition--discontent amongst the lower orders dissatisfaction with the things that _had been_ and an evident leaning towards the things that _might be_--the new doctrines and the new revelation. For it is well to remark that whatever any state might have gained by treachery or violence did demoralize but certainly did not better the social condition of the people. The wind had set in from the west and was carrying across Europe even to the boundary of the Borysthenes sparks and flakes of fire from the great conflagration of France. There was no lack of fuel to maintain an extended combustion and those whose duty it was to quench it were unprepared or unwilling for the task. The result of the operations of the allied forces upon and within the frontier of France is well known. After some success the sole consequence of which was to increase the jealousy which already subsisted between the Austrian and the Prussian the Republican army succeeded in driving back the enemy and establishing themselves upon the Rhine. It was at this moment when the danger was at its height and all Germany besides Holland and the Netherlands was exposed to the terrors of invasion that Frederick William of Prussia actuated by a policy at once base and suicidal announced his intention of withdrawing his troops from the ranks of the confederacy in total violation of the defensive treaty of 1787. It is somewhat difficult now notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject to get at the real grounds of this disgraceful proceeding. The principal alleged cause was the exhausted state of the Prussian treasury which it was said rendered it absolutely impracticable for the king to maintain in the field _without subsidy_ the contingent of troops which he had solemnly bound himself to furnish for the general defence of the Continent. It nowhere appears that any exertion was made to recruit the Prussian finances. By the partition of Poland that State had acquired the accession of a large and most valuable territory worth something surely by way of mortgage or if not at least a ready magazine of supplies. But all this availed nothing. Prussia professed herself ready to take whatever subsidy England or any other power might furnish towards the maintenance of her troops--otherwise they were not to reckon longer upon her co-operation and support. This proposition was made broadly shamelessly and without any diplomatic circumlocution. ""Jacobi Prussian minister (at London ) gave in a kind of memorial expressive of his Prussian Majesty's intention not to grant the succours we had asked for and declining all general interference in the war _without being largely paid_."" So much for defensive treaties! At this crisis the British ministry--fully impressed with the paramount importance of isolating in so far as might be the republican contagion within the confines of France and preventing it from spreading further--requested Lord Malmesbury as the fittest and most experienced diplomatist whose services they could command to proceed on a special mission to the court of Berlin and attempt by every means in his power to recall the king from his false and unnatural position. So great seemed the necessity of accommodation that England was inclined to accede perhaps too much to the demands of her ally rather than allow the war upon which so much depended to be so meanly and pitifully abandoned. The following extract from Lord Grenville's instructions will show the spirit which actuated our ministry. ""If the _alleged distress_ of the king of Prussia's _treasury_ is wholly _feigned_ it will in that case be evident that the determination of the king of Prussia is taken rather to break his alliance with the maritime powers and to risk the dangers which may result from the final establishment of the Jacobin principles in France than to contribute to the indemnification which Austria has in view. In that case all attempts at other arrangements must be useless and nothing will remain to be done except to insist on the succours being furnished; and in case of non-compliance with that demand to prepare the declaration necessary to be given in for the purpose of annulling the defensive treaty. If on the other hand the pecuniary difficulties which are stated _have a real existence_ the disposition to co-operate further in the war may still exist; and in that case some advantage might be derived from the adoption of such arrangements as might enable his majesty to contribute towards removing those difficulties and securing the king of Prussia's co-operation in the war but without departing from the just claims resulting from the existing treaty."" The reciprocal feelings of Austria and Prussia are thus significantly noticed in another part of the same document. ""With respect to Austria I must observe to your lordship that the utmost jealousy prevails between the two courts of Vienna and Berlin; that the former has certainly been deceived by the extent given to the late acquisitions of Prussia in Poland; and that the latter is unquestionably desirous of checking at least by indirect means the plans of indemnity which the emperor is now pursuing towards France."" With Holland and Austria Lord Malmesbury was ordered in all his negotiations with the Prussian court to keep himself in intimate concert; in fact it seems to have been expected that if these powers went cordially along with England Prussia durst not adopt a step which would have exposed her to summary chastisement. It might have been well if such a threat had been intimated directly; but England had not yet learned to appreciate her own unbounded resources and to rely with confidence upon herself. Afterwards as at Copenhagen and elsewhere she adopted the true method of dealing with a false ally or a suspected neutral. At the beginning of the war she transacted with other states on the belief that they were actuated by the same honourable feelings as herself--that they regarded treaties as inviolable--that they were ready for the general good to sacrifice something of private interest. It is needless to say how often and how cruelly she was deceived! Before setting out on his mission Lord Malmesbury had a personal interview with George III. and received from him verbally some private instructions which are most worthy of preservation. Far too little justice has been done to the manly intellect of that king. Stubborn he may have been and wedded to opinions which in this age at least may not be favourably regarded by the million; but this at least we can fearlessly say--that every thought every sentiment every action of his life bore the impress of a high and noble mind--that he was an Englishman in the best sense of the word bold and resolute and sincere; and those who value the free and just constitution of this country and its greatness have cause to bless Providence that so faithful a sovereign occupied the throne during a period of anarchy which threatened to revolutionize the world to uproot the Christian faith and to engulf Europe perhaps irrevocably in the horrors of a Reign of Terror. How clear and king-like is the following language! ""A few clear words are better perhaps than long instructions. I believe that the king of Prussia is an honest man at the bottom although a weak one. You must first represent to him that if he allows his moral character the same latitude in his explanation of the force of treaties as he has allowed it in other still more sacred ties "" (referring to his marriage ) ""all good faith is at an end and no engagement can be binding. You must then state to him how much his honour is engaged in joining in this business in not giving up a cause in which he had begun so nobly. Then you should apply to his interest that the event of the war must either fail or succeed; that if he withdrew himself from the number of coalesced powers in either case he would suffer from leaving them. In the first case (the fate of the war ) he perhaps would be the first to feel the consequences of suffering this _Tartarian horde_ to overrun Europe. In the second if we succeed he certainly might be sure that not having contributed his share to the success would put him in respect to the other powers in a situation of consideration and want of consequence and that he would not be consulted or referred to in the general system of Europe when that became a matter of discussion. That if you fail in referring him to these three great points his _integrity_ his _honour_ and his _interest_ it will be certain nothing can be done; and although I have the greatest confidence in your skill and abilities yet I shall rest assured in that case that _no_ skill nor any ability would be equal to success."" Thus instructed and accredited Lord Malmesbury set off for Berlin by way of Holland. He found the Dutch in considerable anxiety at the state of the campaign and ready to co-operate with England in any measure for maintaining the alliance intact. At Frankfort the monetary market of Germany he ascertained that the amount of treasure still left in the Prussian treasury was estimated at forty-one or forty-two millions of dollars; so that the plea of poverty advanced upon the part of the king was evidently false. Immediately on his arrival at Berlin he obtained an interview with Frederick William; and the replies of that king to the remonstrance of the British minister are abundantly curious. He disclaimed all idea of lukewarmness or indifference to the results of the war was loud in his profession of amity to Great Britain but wound up with the anticipated excuse--""You will I am sure believe me when I tell you _on the faith of an honest man_ (and for being one I hope the king your master will give me credit ) I have not in my treasury enough to pay the expenses of a third campaign. Those I have incurred since my accession are not unknown to you. You also know that the late king strained the resources to their highest pitch; that I cannot raise a new tax on my subjects; that to attempt it would drive them to the worst consequences; and that the nature of the Prussian monarchy is such that it cannot bear a loan. In short that _without my allies come to my assistance and afford me pecuniary s
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pport_ I shall be compelled to stop short in the war. ""I have not exhausted my treasure in idle and useless expenses; it has been employed in forwarding measures which related to the general interests of Europe as well as to the particular ones of Prussia. It cannot be those of England to see me degraded and sunk; and this certainly _joined to my high notion of your national character_ leaves me without apprehension as to the consequences of the declaration I make which I repeat to be the sole and real cause of my apparent backwardness in continuing the war."" It is now clear far beyond cavil or doubt that this sovereign's estimate of the national character of the English was much akin to Major Dalgetty's appreciation of the Dutch--""They are the best paymasters in Europe."" Dalgetty however had one merit which we fear that history must deny to the King of Prussia. He gave his service for his employer's money and was scrupulously true to his articles. Frederick William on the contrary was bent upon receiving a subsidy whilst at the same time he or his ministers were attempting to negotiate a private treaty with France. These facts come out most glaringly in the Malmesbury papers. The envoy seems to have felt all along that he was treading on the most slippery ground that no reliance could be placed upon the faith or integrity of the court with which he now had to deal; and yet circumstances were of so pressing a nature that he dared not while the smallest chance of success remained abandon the progress of the negotiation. The sentiments of the King of Prussia with regard to his nearest neighbour may be understood from the following entry in Lord Malmesbury's diary:--""_Dec. 28 1793._ Supper at Prince-Royal's. King told me of bad news from Wurmser's army--that he had lost two battalions and twenty-one pieces of cannon. _He seemed rather pleased with this bad news_; but admitted that it would do harm by raising the spirits of the Jacobins."" In a note appended to this passage it is added that ""this feeling of hatred towards Austria was shared by every minister at Berlin and every officer in the Prussian army and rendered all our efforts to combine effectually the two nations against the French unavailing."" The prospects of the Allies became daily more gloomy. Wurmser the Austrian general was driven back the blockade of Landau raised and this moment was selected by the Prussian king and his ministers to force a subsidy under the significant threat of an entire withdrawal of his army which for the present remained in a state of suspicious inactivity. Russia at this juncture came forward to interfere. The Prince de Nassau a spurious dignitary and favourite of Catharine arrived at Berlin with a communication for Frederick William urging him in the strongest manner to act in concert with his allies and representing very forcibly that the partition of Poland and the engagements he contracted for his share obliged him to continue the war and that his own declarations and manifestoes from the first by his own confession made him a principal in it. Notwithstanding this good advice the Empress cautiously abstained on hinting at pecuniary succours being probably aware that a Russian subsidy would answer his majesty's purpose as well as one from England. Early in the year 1794 the Duke of Brunswick resigned the command of the Prussian forces. He was succeeded by Marshal Möllendorff--a soldier of some reputation but old testy and pragmatical. After much time wasted in preliminaries and continued threats on the part of Prussia to withdraw immediately from the alliance unless subsidies were forthcoming Lord Malmesbury was empowered to make the following proposals: Two millions sterling were to be given to the King of Prussia to bring 100 000 men into the field. Of this sum England was to furnish two-fifths or £800 000; Austria and Holland each one-fifth; and the remainder was to be considered as an advance from Prussia to be reimbursed by France at the restoration of peace. Munificent as this proposal may appear--and it really was so when the relative situation of the parties is considered--it did not at first sight appear large enough to satisfy the craving appetite of Frederick William who in a private interview with Lord Malmesbury had the assurance to demand for the proposed succours no less a sum than _twenty millions_ of dollars without reckoning the ""bread and forage!"" The firm conduct and resolute tone of Lord Malmesbury seem at last to have convinced the rapacious monarch that in grasping at too much he might lose all; and after a great deal of shabby negotiation and bargaining a settlement was nearly effected on the original terms. Austria however positively declined to become bound for any part of the subsidy--we doubt not for sufficient reasons. Holland in more alarm was willing to contribute her share; but so many impediments were thrown in the way of a settlement by the machinations of the French party at Berlin that Lord Malmesbury found it indispensable to quit that court and conclude the negotiation at the Hague. He was accompanied thither by the Prussian minister Haugwiz--a man whose character for honesty must be left to the verdict of posterity--and on the nineteenth April 1794 a treaty was concluded between Prussia Holland and England by which the former power was bound to furnish an army of 62 000 men under a Prussian commander-in-chief to be subsidized by the other states and to serve against their common enemies. The maritime powers agreed to pay his Prussian majesty £50 000 per month to the end of the year £300 000 to put the army in motion and £100 000 on its return home. All conquests made were to be at the disposal of the maritime powers. Thus did Prussia vaunting herself to be peculiarly the military power of Europe sell the services of her army for hire with as little reservation as ever did the mercenary troops of Switzerland or Brabant. The very idea of such an individual transaction carries with it something degrading; as a state-bargain it is humiliation. One quality only can be brought forward to redeem the sellers of their national armies from contempt and that is the most scrupulous fidelity to the cause of the parties from whom they have accepted their hire. There is no treachery so base as the desertion of a paid ally. Immediately after the treaty was signed Lord Malmesbury was recalled to London ""for information."" The advantage which was taken in the absence of this clear-sighted and able diplomatist may be gathered from subsequent events. We doubt however whether had he remained on the spot he could have counteracted the evils which appear to us more the result of a preconceived intention to betray than the sudden consequence of a plot or the predominance of a new hostile party in the court or cabinet of Berlin. On the 27th of May the first instalment of the subsidy £300 000 was remitted from the British Treasury. About the same time Lord Malmesbury returned to Holland and renewed his entreaty through Haugwiz that the Prussian army might be put in motion. This was positively refused until advice was received of the payment of the subsidy at Berlin. Frederick William had removed to Poland to look after his ill-gotten possessions. His minister Haugwiz very shortly retired to Berlin and never returned. Möllendorff in command of the army peremptorily refused in the face of the treaty and of the apparent commands of his master to leave the Rhine and take up his position in the Low Countries--in short he would obey no orders and did all in his power to thwart and counteract the Austrian. Meanwhile the French advanced in irresistible power. On the 26th of June they were victorious at Fleury--a battle which established the reputation of General Jourdain and settled the fate of the Netherlands. In Flanders Moreau defeated Clairfait and took Ypres. General Walmoden evacuated Bruges. The Duke of York was obliged to abandon Tournay and Oudenarde to their fate and retired upon Antwerp on the 3d of July. This was a period of great anxiety to Lord Malmesbury; for although there are many occasions wherein even the ablest diplomatist must fail more especially when there is a total absence of good faith on the other side yet the crisis was so alarming as to impress him with the sense of more than usual responsibility. The following extract from his diary will show his opinion of the Prussians:--""June 26. To Keyserlautern Prussian headquarters--repetition of the same language--great but shabby art and cunning--ill-will jealousy and every sort of dirty passion. The marshal proposes a memorial to us which we decline receiving and he dispatches his first aide-de-camp Meyerinck to the King of Prussia with his account of what we had said. (N.B.--It appears that these were exaggerated and calculated to do mischief and embroil the negotiation."") Shortly afterwards he writes thus to the Duke of Portland:--""I must thank you on a separate sheet for your few confidential lines. If we listened only to our _feelings_ it would be difficult to keep any measure with Prussia. But your opinion and that of Mr Pitt is one of sound political wisdom and I am well pleased it has prevailed. _We must consider it as an alliance with the Algerines_ whom it is no disgrace to pay or any impeachment of good sense to be cheated by."" The ministry of Great Britain however found it necessary to come to an immediate and explicit understanding with the Prussians who though utterly useless and inactive continued with the utmost punctuality to draw the monthly subsidy. A good opportunity was afforded by the conduct of the Prussian minister at London who with unparalleled effrontery took upon himself to complain of the manner in which the late treaty had been executed with reference to the disposition of the forces. Lord Grenville's reply was decided. If the treaty had not hitherto been punctually executed it was notorious to all Europe that the failure had not been on the part of England. The British resident at Berlin was further desired to intimate ""that the continuance of the liberal subsidy granted by his majesty will depend solely on the faithful execution of the engagement taken by Marshal Möllendorff and on the efficient service of the Prussian army under his command."" This announcement led to a conference between Baron Hardenberg on the part of Prussia and Lord Malmesbury and Baron Kinckel as representing Great Britain and Holland. Hardenberg began with the usual assurances of the continued good wishes and intentions of his king who he said had been deceived by a cabal but who would _so soon as the Polish war was over_ return to Berlin and then every thing would go well. He further proposed that Lord Malmesbury should return to Berlin and resume his negotiations there. ""This was said to Kinckel and me with a clear and evident view to prevail on us to renew the subsidy treaty as the term of its expiration draws near and as the court of Berlin is uneasy at our negotiations at Vienna and apprehensive of the event of an attack on Warsaw. It was too thinly veiled not to be seen through. I therefore answered that I was fearful _the evil was done_; that if the king and his ministers had acted up to the sentiments M. Hardenberg now mentioned or even if I saw a sincere disposition of doing it now by Möllendorff's army _really acting_ it certainly would be good grounds to hope but that this was not the case. ""Hardenberg employed every argument and every _trick_ within the narrow compass of his means to persuade me they were earnestly anxious to unite with us and disposed to rectify their past behaviour; but I remained firm and absolutely declined giving in to a belief of it. ""This led him to say _that we could not do without the Prussians_ and that we _must_ continue the subsidy; that therefore it was wisest and best to do it in the manner the most useful and conciliatory. I replied that without deciding on this strong question of _necessity_ I could not but observe that by stating it as an argument he brought his court on a level with the lowest German prince and supposed it to be actuated by principles like those of the dey of Algiers; and that if _necessity_ was to decide the measure it required no negotiation it would do itself and I felt myself by no means in a rank to conduct _such_ a business."" On the 1st of October instructions arrived from England to suspend the subsidy; and on the 25th of the same month Baron Hardenberg on the part of Prussia declared the treaty at an end which was followed by a direct order from the king to withdraw his army altogether. On the 2d of November Lord Malmesbury received his recall. We have been induced to dwell somewhat minutely upon this singular negotiation because its details have never yet been placed with sufficient clearness before the public. We are now for the first time admitted through the medium of the Malmesbury papers to a sight of the hidden machinery by means of which the colossal panorama of Europe was made so ominously to revolve. Much is there too of importance and useful for the future in the portraitures of national bad faith and individual worthlessness which appear throughout the whole transaction. Prussia was fortunate in her subsequent miseries. These and these alone have made the pen of the historian and the tongue of the orator slow to denounce the enormous measure of her perfidy. Throughout the whole of this negotiation on the result of which the destinies of Europe for a quarter of a century were doomed to depend there is not one single bright spot of candour or of honesty to relieve the darkness of the picture. In comparison with such treachery Pennsylvanian repudiation is venial. The subsidy out of which England was swindled was for the most part applied to the further subjugation of Poland--the troops for which she had contracted and paid were used as an impediment to and not in furtherance of her designs. The language employed by the Prussian minister Hardenberg at his last interview with Lord Malmesbury was that of a sturdy freebooter who far from seeking to conceal his real character takes glory in his shame and demands a compulsory tribute for what he is pleased to denominate protection. It may be said that Prussia afterwards redeemed her error. We cannot see it. To the last she remained a gripping faithless avaricious power; and could she have coexisted equal with France there is not a shadow of a doubt that she would have surpassed that country in her appetite for acquiring plunder. In 1806 under a different monarch she made peace with Napoleon on the condition of acquiring Hanover the hereditary dominions of the occupant of the British throne. It was only when the fact became evident that she was utterly mistrusted throughout Europe; that no state even the most insignificant could place any reliance upon her assurances; when through her own conduct France made no scruple of using her as a contemptible tool and her old allies regarded her with looks of menace--that Prussia made a virtue of necessity by attempting to restore her independence. Even then her repentance was incomplete. Lord Morpeth when sent before the disastrous battle of Jena on a special mission to the Prussian headquarters found Frederick William III. so distracted between the option of a British subsidy on the one hand and the cession of Hanover on the other that with the genuine feelings of an Englishman and a man of honour he could scarce restrain his indignation in the presence of the vacillating king. In our mind the videttes of Pichegru's army had a truer estimate than our own cabinet of the value of such an alliance when they thus expressed themselves at the outposts:--""Englishmen go home: you have no business here; you are too honest to be leagued with the Austrians and Prussians. They will soon leave you in the lurch; and as to the Hessians the Landgrave will turn them all over to us to-morrow if the Convention offers him a ducat a-day more than you now pay him!"" Yet Austria is not chargeable with deceit--who will dare hereafter to say the like for Prussia? Lord Malmesbury did not return immediately to England. At Hanover he received another mark of the confidence of his royal master in a commission to demand the Princess Caroline of Brunswick in marriage for the Prince of Wales. This mission was conferred upon him directly by the king and no discretionary power was given to offer information or advice either to the court or the government. It does not appear that the subject was ever mentioned to Lord Malmesbury before his credentials arrived; certain it is that he had no communication with the person most deeply interested in the alliance and therefore no means of ascertaining his wishes or his motives. The Prince of Wales had never seen his cousin. Probably beyond the false impression conveyed by a portrait he knew nothing of her; for the little court of Brunswick was rarely visited by the English and the military occupations of the Duke kept him almost constantly from home. It must ever be matter of deep regret that more prudence was not employed in the conduct of this unhappy business. Royal marriages are at best precarious; for there is too often a larger ingredient of policy than of affection in the alliance. This one needed not to have been a matter of policy. Neither the illustrious bridegroom nor the kingdoms over which he was afterwards to rule could derive any advantage from a more intimate connexion with the diminutive state of Brunswick. It is therefore almost incomprehensible that no precautions were taken and no investigations made before the prince was finally committed. Surely some one might have been found worthy to play the part of a Buckingham to the successor of Charles--some intimate of the prince who acquainted with his tastes and inclinations might have visited Brunswick as a stranger and without betraying the actual nature of his mission might have acquired a sufficient knowledge of the manners and character of the princess to frame an adequate report. Common prudence should have suggested this; but there is too much reason to fear that the match was the result of motives little creditable to other members of the royal family of England and was not expected by them to secure the ultimate happiness of either party. This at least was the opinion of Lord Malmesbury a shrewd observer and well versed in the domestic politics of St James's. He says--""She (the princess) talks about the Duke of Clarence whom she prefers to the Duke of York and it struck me to-day for the first time that he originally put her into the prince's head; and that with a view to plague the Duke and Duchess of York whom he hates and whom the prince no longer likes well knowing that the Princess Caroline and Duchess of York dislike each other; and that this match would be particularly unpleasant to her and the duke."" Again ""Princess Caroline asks about the Duke of Clarence--says she believes he was the person who first mentioned her to the prince.--N.B. My own private ideas and feelings on this remark."" Endowed by nature with a good heart and some quickness of apprehension this princess was as uneligible a personage as could possibly have been selected for so high a dignity as that of consort to the future king of Great Britain. Her education had been wretchedly neglected. She was vain giddy and imprudent; addicted to the society of persons infinitely beneath her rank whom she treated with unbecoming familiarity; totally ignorant of the world and its usages and withal something of a _bavarde_. She stood in awe of her father who was an austere person and it is said treated his children habitually with much severity. For her mother she had no respect and did not scruple when she could find an opportunity--which occurred but too often--to turn her into ridicule. Her conversation was that of a thorough gossip--her manners those of a flirt. She was disposed to be liberal not from generosity but from absolute carelessness--a fault which she extended to her person. Lord Malmesbury's first impressions of her are by far the most favourable; and yet it will be seen from these that mediocrity was the utmost limit of her charms. ""The Princess Caroline much embarrassed on my first being presented to her--pretty face--not expressive of softness--her figure not graceful--fine eyes--good hand--tolerable teeth but going--fair hair and light eyebrows--good bust--short with what the French call _des épaules impertinentes_."" Her personal habits may be gathered from the following passages of the Diary:-- ""Argument with the Princess about her toilette. She piques herself on dressing quick; I disapprove this. She maintains her point; I however desire Madame Busche to explain to her that the Prince is very delicate and that he expects a long and very careful _toilette de properté_ of which she has no idea; on the contrary she neglects it sadly and is _offensive_ from this neglect. Madame Busche executes her commission well and the Princess comes out the next day _well washed all over_."" ""Princess Caroline had a tooth drawn--she sends it down to me by a page--nasty and indelicate."" ""I had two conversations with the Princess Caroline; one on the toilette on cleanliness and on delicacy of speaking. On these points I endeavoured as far as was possible for a _man_ to inculcate the necessity of great and nice attention to every part of dress as well as to what was hid as to what was seen. (I knew she wore coarse petticoats coarse shifts and thread stockings and these never well washed or changed often enough.) I observed that a long toilette was necessary and gave her no credit for boasting that hers was a _short_ one. What I could not say myself on this point I got said through women; through Madame Busche and afterwards through Mrs Harcourt. It is remarkable how amazingly on this point her education has been neglected and how much her mother though an Englishwoman was inattentive to it."" Such were the personal habits of the future Queen of England who in this normal virtue fell infinitely beneath the level of a daughter of a British tradesman. It is plain that Lord Malmesbury has left much unsaid; but enough there is to show that in every way she was unfitted to be the wife of the most fastidious prince in Europe. In point of morals the examples afforded her at the court of Brunswick were of the worst possible description. Conjugal fidelity seems to have been a virtue totally unknown to the German sovereigns. The following according to Lord Malmesbury were the existing _liaisons_ of Frederick William of Prussia. ""The female in actual possession of favour is of no higher degree than a servant-maid. She is known by the name of Mickie or Mary Doz and her principal merit is youth and a warm constitution. She has acquired a certain degree of ascendancy and is supported by some of the inferior class of favourites; but as she is considered as holding her office only during pleasure she is not courted though far from neglected by the persons of a higher rank. The two candidates for a more substantial degree of favour are Mdlle. Vienk and Mdlle. Bethman."" Of the Emperor Leopold we are told the following anecdote:--""Kinckel said that Bishopswerder told him that Lord Elgin when in Italy would have succeeded in making a triple alliance for the purpose of general peace and tranquillity when he was with the Emperor Leopold at Florence if he had not run too much after Madame Lamberti (Leopold's mistress ) and by that means displeased and soured him."" The father of the Princess was not one whit better than his royal brethren. His mistress Mdlle. de Hertzfeldt lived at court and was on intimate terms with the rest of the family. She appears to have been a clever woman and well acquainted with the character of the Princess. Lord Malmesbury who had known her formerly made no scruple of applying to her for information. ""In the evening with Mdlle. de Hertzfeldt--old Berlin acquaintance now Duke's mistress--much altered but still clever and agreeable--full of lamentations and fears--says the Duke has been cruelly used--abuses the king of Prussia--she always thought him a _bête_ and not a _bonne bête_--talks of the _Illuminés_ and their sects--her apartment elegantly furnished and she herself with all the _appareil_ of her situation. She was at first rather ashamed to see me but soon got over it."" Her advice regarding the future treatment of the Princess is so interesting that we give it entire. ""Je vous conjure faites que le prince fasse mener au commencement une vie retirée à la Princesse. Elle a toujours été très genée et très observée et il le falloit ainsi. Si elle se trouve tout à coup dans le monde sans restriction aucune elle ne marchera pas à pas égaux. Elle n'a pas le coeur depravé--elle n'a jamais rien fait de mauvais mais la parole en elle devance toujours la pensée; elle se livre à ceux a qui elle parle sans reserve et de là il s'ensuit (même dans cette petite cour) qu'on lui prête des sens et des intentions que ne lui ont jamais appartenus. Que ne sera-t-il pas en Angleterre--où elle sera entourée de femmes adroites et intriguantes _auxquelles elle se livrera á corps perdu_ (si le Prince permet qu'elle mène la vie dissipée de Londres ) et qui placeront dans sa bouche tels propos qu'elles voudront puisqu'elle parlera elle-même sans savoir ce qu'elle dit. _De plus elle a beaucoup de vanité et quoique pas sans esprit avec peu de fond_--la tête lui tournera si on la caresse et la flatte trop si le Prince la gâte; et il est tout aussi essentiel qu'elle le craigne que qu'elle l'aime. Il faut absolument qu'il la tienne _serrée_ qu'il se fasse respecter sans quoi _elle s'égarera_. Je sais que vous ne me comprometterez pas--je vous parle comme à mon vieux ami. Je suis attachée coeur et âme au Duc. Je me suis dévouée a lui _je me suis perdue pour lui_. C'est le bien de sa famille que je veux. Il sera le plus malheureux des hommes si cette fille ne reussit pas mieux que son aînée. Je vous repète elle n'a jamais rien fait de mauvais mais elle est sans jugement et on l'a jugée à l'avenant. _Je crains la Reine. La Duchesse ici qui passe sa vie à penser tout haut ou à ne jamais penser de tout n'aime pas la Reine et elle en a trop parlé à sa fille._ Cependant son bonheur depend d'être bien avec elle et pour Dieu repetez lui toujours cette maxime que vous avez déjà plus d'une fois recommandée."" The education of the Princess had been most lamentably neglected. ""Letter from the Prince--well satisfied and approves of what I have done--positively refuses to let Mademoiselle Rosenzweit come over. She was to be a sort of _reader_. King writes on the subject to the Duchess; both she and the Duke press it. I insist upon it and it is settled that she is not to accompany the Princess. Duke takes me aside and says that the only reason why he wished her to be with the Princess was _that his daughter writes very ill and spells ill and he was desirous that this should not appear_. Affected to be indifferent about this refusal but at bottom hurt and angry. Suspects the Queen whom he and the duchess hate."" Perhaps no ambassador ever sent upon such a mission was placed in more embarrassing circumstances than Lord Malmesbury. He was entreated on all sides to undertake a kind of tutelage of the Princess; to prepare her mind for the future life she must lead; to warn her of her faults and school her as to the behaviour which became a Princess of Wales. It was quite plain that even her own relatives and those who regarded her most partially had little expectation that the marriage would prove auspicious or happy; and that their doubts arose not from any rumours of the bridegroom's instability but from their knowledge of the character of the bride. To act the part of Mentor under such circumstances required much delicacy and tact both of which qualities Lord Malmesbury possessed in an eminent degree. More however was requisite in order to make them effectual. It was impossible in a hurried and limited period to repair the fatal effects of years of indolence and neglect. Lord Malmesbury could merely warn but the task of improvement was hopeless. What he did however was well done. From his courteous manners and kindly tone of conversation he speedily became a great favourite with the Princess and sometimes--as we have already seen--used his personal influence with success. Yet this familiar intercourse while it certainly heightened his estimation of her good qualities impressed Lord Malmesbury with the thorough conviction that the Princess was in no way qualified to maintain her future rank. She made him her confidant in certain passages of her history which it would have been far wiser to have concealed:--""Dinner and concert at court; Princess out of humour; very nonsensical confidence about Prince of Orange; cannot be committed to writing; must recollect it as well as my answer and advice."" And again--""After dinner long and serious conversation with the Princess on her manner of calling women by their plain name; of saying 'ma chère ' 'mon coeur ' &c.; and of _tutoying_ when talking to them in German; she takes it right; prepare her for a still more serious conversation on the subject of hereditary Prince of Orange."" We must state in justice to the Princess that all the lectures of Lord Malmesbury--and they were neither few nor trifling--were taken by her in extreme good part. Indeed his lordship appears at one time to have been apprehensive that he was gaining too much influence over his future mistress and that caution was necessary on his side. ""The Princess Caroline asked me with an apology as for _une question indiscrette_ whether I was to be _her Lord Chamberlain_? On my saying I knew nothing of it she was very gracious and expressed a strong wish it should be; and added that she feared it would not be good enough for me and that I would decline it. I told her any situation which placed me near her would be flattering to me but that these situations were sought for by many persons who had better claims than myself; and that besides I never solicited any thing and could not expect that such an office would be offered to me without my asking for it. She again (and apparently in earnest) expressed her wish that it should be and said it would be of infinite use to her to have a person near her she was used to and whom she had confidence in."" On another occasion when the Princess renewed her desire Lord Malmesbury is more significant-- ""She again urges me to accept a place about her court at my return. I avoid an explicit answer but earnestly entreat her not to solicit any thing on my behalf; _I had the Duke of Suffolk and Queen Margaret in my thoughts_!"" When Lord Malmesbury's years and grave functions are considered the touch of vanity which in this latter paragraph peers through his diplomatic caution is somewhat amusing. An anonymous letter which arrived from England led to the following conversations:--""At dinner I found the Duchess and Princess alarmed agitated and uneasy at an anonymous letter from England abusing the Prince and warning them in the most exaggerated terms against Lady ---- who is represented as the worst and most dangerous of profligate women. The Duchess with her usual indiscretion had shown this letter to the Princess and mentioned it to every body. I was quite angry with her and could not avoid expressing my concern first at paying _any_ attention to an anonymous letter and secondly at being so very imprudent as to bruit forth its contents. The Duke on being acquainted with it thought as I did but was more uneasy than he ought. Mademoiselle Hertzfeldt again talks to me as before about the Princess Caroline. ""Il faut la gouverner par la peur _par la terreur même_. Elle s'émancipera si on n'y prend pas garde--mais si on la veille soigneusement et sevèrement elle se conduira bien."" The King of England in a letter to the Duchess says--""Qu'il espère que sa nièce n'aura pas trop de vivacité et qu'elle menera une vie sédentaire et retirée."" These words shock Princess Caroline to whom the Duchess very foolishly reads the letter. ""Princess Caroline shows me the anonymous letter about Lady ---- evidently written by some disappointed milliner or angry servant-maid and deserving no attention: I am surprised the Duke afforded it any. Aimed at Lady ----; its object to frighten the Princess with the idea that she would lead her into an affair of gallantr
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and be ready to be convenient on such an occasion. This did _not_ frighten the Princess although it did the Duke and Duchess; and on my perceiving this I told her Lady ---- would be more cautious than to risk such an audacious measure; and that besides it was _death_ to presume to approach a Princess of Wales and no man would be daring enough to think of it. _She asked me whether I was in earnest._ I said such was our law; that any body who presumed to _love_ her was guilty of _high_ treason and punished with _death_ if she was weak enough to listen to him; so also would _she_. _This startled her._"" The following is Lord Malmesbury's own summary of her character sketched at a favourable moment:-- ""If her education had been _what it ought_ she might have turned out excellent; but it was that very nonsensical one that most women receive--one of privation injunction and menace; to believe no man and never to express what they feel or say what they think _for all_ men are inclined to entrap them and all feelings are improper; this vitiates or _abrutis_ all women--few escape."" (Surely this censure is too sweeping.) ""On summing up Princess Caroline's character to-day it came out to my mind to be that she has quick parts without a sound or distinguishing understanding; that she has a ready conception but no judgment; caught by the first impression; led by the first impulse; hurried away by appearances or _enjouement_; loving to talk and prone to make missish friendships that last twenty-four hours. Some natural but no acquired morality and no strong innate notions of its value and necessity; warm feelings and nothing to counteract them; great good humour and much good nature--no appearance of caprice--rather quick and _vive_ but not a grain of rancour. From her habits from the life she was allowed and even compelled to live forced to dissemble; fond of gossiping and this strengthened greatly by the example of her good mother who is all curiosity and inquisitiveness and who has no notion of not gratifying this desire at any price. In short the Princess in the hands of a steady and sensible man would probably turn out well but when it is likely she will meet with faults perfectly analogous to her own _she will fail_. She has no governing powers though her mind is _physically_ strong. She has her father's courage but it is to her (as to him) of no avail. _He_ wants mental decision: _she_ character and tact."" This mission of Lord Malmesbury extended over a period of nearly five months. An abortive attempt was made to conduct the Princess to England by the way of Holland; but the inroads of the French into that country rendered the expedition highly dangerous. In fact by this time the fate of Holland was sealed. One of the severest winters ever known had opened a natural and universal bridge to the invaders over the most effective barriers of the country. All was flight terror and confusion. The envoy returned with his royal charge to Hanover there to await intelligence of the arrival of the British fleet at Stade as the passage by the Elbe alone seemed practicable. During this anxious period Lord Malmesbury received several letters from the Prince of Wales which are given in his correspondence. These are well worthy of attention. Although a strict grammarian might find fault with their construction there is no appearance of any thing like indifference on the part of the Prince. On the contrary he seems to have awaited with extreme anxiety the arrival of his consort and to have been much vexed and annoyed by the delay which intervened. The following is an extract from his first letter dated 23d November 1794 and written shortly after Lord Malmesbury's arrival at Brunswick:-- ""I have desired Captain Hislop to give you an ample and thorough account of the steps I have taken towards the expediting every thing on this side of the water as well as with my brother the Duke of York to whom I have written also by Hislop; and as to what is now necessary to forward the completing every thing at Brunswick I must leave that to you hoping that you will make every exertion possible to put the Princess in possession of her own home as near the 20th of the ensuing month as possible; for every thing that can create delay at the present moment is bad on every account but particularly to the public whose expectations have now been raised for some months and would be quite outrageous were it possible for them to perceive any impediment arising to what they have had their attention drawn to for so long a time; besides the suspense and the naturally unpleasant feelings attendant upon suspense which I myself must be subject to and the very honourable fair and handsome manner in which the Duke and Duchess have both conducted themselves to me in this transaction; their having also in their last letters both to the King and me said that the Princess was ready to set off instantly. In short all these reasons make it necessary for me my dear lord to desire you to press your departure from Brunswick at as short a date as possible from the receipt of this letter."" In another communication of a later date (21st February 1795 ) the Prince thus expressed himself:-- The accounts you are so good as to give me of the temper and resignation with which the Princess is so good as to bear with the interruptions in her journey is more than I fancy any one would venture to say of me from hence as I assure you all the mismanagements procrastinations and difficulties that I have met with in the conduct of that business on this side of the water have totally put patience (a virtue you well know that our family in general are not much endowed with) out of the question. ""I hope you will make this plan "" (that of the embarkation and landing ) ""acceptable to the Princess as well as the Duchess as you must be well acquainted with my impatience; and I beg you will assure them both that there is no sort of respect state and attention that shall not be shown to the Princess the moment she sets her foot on our dear little island. I am convinced you will heartily concur with me in my anxious endeavours through this or even any other means to bring your voyage to as expeditious and happy a termination as possible. I write to the Duchess of Brunswick by the same courier which letters you will have the goodness to deliver into her hands yourself. I cannot help once more reiterating my thanks to you my dear lord for your judgment and caution through all these late occurrences."" On the 28th of March the embarkation was effected and after a prosperous but foggy passage the royal squadron entered the Thames. It was destined however by management or mismanagement--for we know not which to call it--that the jealousy of the Princess should be awakened from the very first hour she landed in Great Britain. The lady regarding whom the anonymous letter above referred to was written and whose _liaison_ with the Prince of Wales was the subject of public scandal had been selected as one of the Ladies of Honour to meet the Princess on her arrival. This was neither more nor less than a premeditated insult and Caroline must have felt it as such. We can exempt no one from the censure attachable to such a proceeding. Even if it can be supposed that the general rumour was unjust with regard to the nature of that connexion its mere publicity should have prevented the Prince from subjecting his bride to such society at least at so early a period. But we apprehend that no such palliative can be urged. Under these circumstances it was the clear duty of the King to have interfered and in his double capacity of uncle and father-in-law to have prevented this affront from being offered to the unprotected Princess. Altogether it was a scandalous arrangement and Lord Malmesbury felt it as such. The following extract speaks volumes as to the feelings entertained by the haughty favourite towards the wife:-- ""_Sunday April 5._--At eight the Princess got into the royal yacht (Augusta)--pleasant and prosperous sail to Greenwich where we arrive at twelve o'clock. The King's coaches not yet arrived owing as I have since heard to Lady ---- not being ready. She Mrs Aston and Lord Claremont came to meet the Princess. We waited at least an hour for the carriages and were very attentively but awkwardly received by Sir W. Pattison governor of the hospital and his two sisters. Lady ---- very much dissatisfied with the Princess's mode of dress though Mrs Harcourt had taken great pains about it and expressed herself in a way which induced me to speak rather sharply to her. She also said _she could not sit backwards_ in a coach and hoped she might be allowed to sit _forwards_. This (though Mrs Harcourt was servile enough to admit as a reason ) as it was strictly forbidden by the King ""--[it _does_ seem therefore that some such difficulty had been apprehended and the probable conduct of Lady ---- discussed!]--""I most decidedly opposed and told Lady ---- that as she must have known that riding backward in a coach disagreed with her she ought never to have accepted the situation of a lady of the bedchamber who never ought to sit forward and that if she really was likely to be sick I would put Mrs Aston into the coach with the Princess and have by that means the pleasure of Lady ----'s company in the carriage allotted to me and Lord Claremont. _This of course settled the business_; she and Mrs Harcourt sat backward and the Princess sat by herself forward. There was very little crowd and still less applause on the road to London where we arrived and were set down at St James's (the Duke of Cumberland's apartments Cleveland Row) about half-past two."" The long-expected and probably dreaded interview was now to take place. We may search the whole annals of marriage in vain for such another. ""Immediately notified the arrival to the King and Prince of Wales; the last came immediately. I according to the established etiquette introduced (no one else being in the room) the Princess Caroline to him. She very properly in consequence of my saying to her that it was the right mode of proceeding attempted to kneel to him. He raised her (gracefully enough ) and embraced her said barely one word turned round retired to a distant part of the apartment and calling me to him said--'Harris I am not well; _pray get me a glass of brandy_!' ""I said 'Sir had you not better have a glass of water?' upon which he much out of humour said with an oath-- ""'No; I will go directly to the Queen ' and away he went. ""The Princess left during this short moment alone was in a state of astonishment; and on my joining her said--'Mon Dieu! est-ce que le Prince est toujours comme cela? Je le trouve très gros et nullement aussi beau que son portrait.' ""I said his Royal Highness was naturally a good deal affected and flurried at this first interview but she certainly would find him different at dinner. She was disposed to further criticisms on this occasion which would have embarrassed me very much to answer if luckily the King had not ordered me to attend him."" Little comment is required upon such a scene. In charity we shall suppose that the Prince at the first glance was grievously disappointed with the personal appearance of his bride--that he had formed some exaggerated estimate of her charms and that the reaction was so strong as to create instantaneous antipathy. A more favourable hypothesis we cannot form; any other must resolve itself into preconcerted insult. Still this is no justification for conduct which was at once mean and unmanly. There she stood--the daughter of a sovereign prince--his own near kinswoman whose hand he had voluntarily solicited--young and not devoid of some personal beauty. Other defects he had not time to observe and surely on such an occasion as this they were not conspicuously prominent. Could any man with a spark of chivalrous feeling within him have permitted himself to manifest such tokens of disgust in the presence of a woman who was to all intents and purposes his wife and whom he then for the first time beheld? Some there were wearing before him the princely plume of Wales who would rather have forfeited that honour than offered insult to a female and a stranger--but the spirit of the Henrys and the Edwards was not there. An interview of a minute's duration--brandy--and an oath! Rare prospects for the felicity and continuance of the future Hymen!--Let us follow Lord Malmesbury through the subsequent scenes. ""The drawing-room was just over. His Majesty's conversation turned wholly on Prussian and French politics and the only question about the Princess was--'Is she good-humoured?' ""I said and very truly 'That in very trying moments I had never seen her otherwise.' ""The King said 'I am glad of it;' and it was manifest from his silence he had seen the Queen _since_ she had seen the Prince and that the Prince had made a very unfavourable report of the Princess to her. At dinner at which all those who attended the Princess from Greenwich assisted and the honours of which were done by Lord Stopford as Vice-Chamberlain I was far from satisfied with the Princess's behaviour. It was flippant rattling affecting raillery and wit and throwing out coarse vulgar hints about Lady ---- who was present and though mute _le diable n'en perdait rien_. The Prince was evidently disgusted and this unfortunate dinner fixed his dislike which when left to herself the Princess had not the talent to remove; but by still observing the same giddy manners and attempts at cleverness and coarse sarcasm increased it till it became positive hatred. ""From this time though I dined frequently during the first three weeks at Carlton House nothing material occurred; but the sum of what I saw there led me to draw the inferences I have just expressed. After one of those dinners where the Prince of Orange was present and at which the Princess had behaved very lightly and even improperly the Prince took me into his closet and asked me how I liked this sort of manners. I could not conceal my disapprobation of them and took this opportunity of repeating to him the substance of what the Duke of Brunswick had so often said to me that it was expedient _de la tenir serrée_ that she had been brought up very strictly and if she was not strictly kept would from high spirits and little thought certainly emancipate too much. To this the Prince said--'I see it but too plainly; but why Harris did you not tell me so before or write it to me from Brunswick?' ""I replied that I did not consider what the Duke (a severe father himself towards his children) said of sufficient consequence; that it affected neither the Princess's moral character nor conduct and was intended solely as a communication which I conceived it only proper to notice to his Royal Highness at a proper occasion at such a one as now had offered; and that I humbly hoped his Royal Highness would not consider it as casting any _real_ slur or aspersion on the Princess; that as to not writing to his Royal Highness from Brunswick I begged him to recollect I was not sent on a _discretionary_ commission but with _the most positive commands_ to ask the Princess Caroline in marriage and nothing more; that to this sole point respecting the marriage and no other these commands went; any reflections or remarks that I had presumed to make would (whether in praise of or injurious to her Royal Highness) have been a direct and positive deviation from those his Majesty's commands. They were as _limited_ as they were _imperative_. That still had I discovered notorious or glaring defects or such as were of a nature to render the union unseemly I should have felt it as a bounden duty to have stated them but it must have been _directly to the King_ and to no one else. To this the Prince appeared to acquiesce; but I saw it did not please and left a rankle in his mind."" We have heard some blame attributed to Lord Malmesbury in certain quarters for not having communicated to the Prince his own impressions of the bride. We are inclined to think this censure undeserved and to look upon his own defence stated above as perfectly satisfactory. Even if he had considered it his duty to make any such representation--which it was not--he must have done it at great personal peril. The whole odium--if the marriage had been broken off--would have been attributed to him. Had it gone forward the coldness of the Prince would inevitably have been set down as the effect of his interference. If he had been trusted with a discretionary commission much more would have been left in his power; but the marriage was in point of fact quite concluded when he received orders to repair to Brunswick. With regard to the Princess he acted throughout as a sincere and judicious friend in warning and in counselling her. He drew no glittering or extravagant pictures to lead her imagination astray. He prepared her to find the Court of London rather a place of ordeal beset with many snares and difficulties than the site of luxury ease and indulgence. He did his best to tutor her on the delicate topics of deportment manners and conversation; and if he failed it was only because his counsel was required too late. It is said that the Prince never forgave Lord Malmesbury for his share in this negotiation. If the fact be so the Prince was both unjust and ungenerous; for it is questionable if there was one among the other servants of the Crown who could have discharged so arduous a duty with half the discretion of this accomplished and wise diplomatist. It should be remembered too by those who have adopted a different view that Lord Malmesbury had little opportunity _at the first_ to investigate the character and habits of the Princess. He was in daily expectation of his recall and his time as his diary shows was greatly occupied with the stirring public events of Europe. Except himself there was no experienced English statesman on the Continent qualified to give advice at a period when communication with home was hopeless. He therefore became as it were the adviser-general to our ambassadors our army and the friendly states of Holland and of Austria. He was the only man capable of unravelling and detecting the tortuous policy of Prussia and almost every moment of his time was engrossed by these stupendous labours. It was only upon the journey home--broken and protracted as it was--that he had the full opportunity of ascertaining by the use of his own faculties the faults and imperfections of the Princess and surely it was then by far too late to interfere. Lord Malmesbury was present at the nuptials. There was little gaiety on the occasion--none certainly in the heart of one--if not both--of the principal actors in the scene. ""I should have said that the marriage ceremony took place late on the evening of Wednesday the 8th April at St James's Chapel-Royal. The ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Moore.) The usual etiquette observed--we had assembled in the Queen's apartment; from thence to the usual drawing-rooms (very dark.) The procession preceded by the heralds and great officers of the court (amongst whom I was ordered to attend ) walked to the Chapel--very crowded. Prince of Wales gave his hat with a rich diamond button and loop to Lord Harcourt to hold and made him a present of it. After the marriage we returned to the Queen's apartment. The King told me to wear the Windsor uniform and have the _entrées_. The Prince very civil and gracious; but I thought I could perceive he was not quite sincere _and certainly unhappy; and as a proof of it he had manifestly had recourse to wine or spirits_."" Lord Malmesbury remarks in conclusion--""It is impossible to conceive or foresee any comfort from this connexion in which I lament very much having taken any share purely passive as it was."" Such is the secret history of the commencement of this ill-starred union which was destined at a future and even more perilous period to form one of the most dangerous points of discord between the crown and people of these realms. At the lapse of half a century the appearance of these documents is valuable for they throw light upon many passages which otherwise could only have been dimly conjectured. Since then society in the higher circles has undergone considerable reformation. More amalgamation and friendly intercourse is yearly taking place among the different courts of Europe; and we hail those reunions with joy as the best securities not only of the private happiness of those whose welfare must always be important to their people but of the general peace and federal prosperity of the world. The topics upon which we have dwelt in this article are so interesting that we have occupied our space without exhausting one half of these valuable volumes. They contain besides Lord Malmesbury's negotiations with the French Directory at Paris in 1796 and at Lille in 1797 with much of the private history of Mr Pitt during the period of the Addington Administration. We may perhaps on a future occasion recur to these; at present we shall conclude by heartily recommending this work to the perusal of every one who desires to become thoroughly acquainted with the diplomatic relations of the times. GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES. THE VICEROY AND THE ARISTOCRACY OR MEXICO IN 1812. PART THE SECOND. The two great colonizing nations of Europe England and Spain have displayed a striking difference in their mode of treating the countries which discovery or conquest has at various periods placed under their rule. The constant aim of England has been to civilize the aborigines and elevate their moral character; to teach them the arts of life and to attach them to their rulers by the impartial administration of justice. The prosperous state of British India and the ease with which that vast empire is governed and controlled by an insignificant number of Europeans prove the wisdom of the liberal and humane policy applied by Great Britain to her Indian subjects. The colonial system uniformly pursued by Spain has been widely and fatally different. The establishment of her transatlantic colonies was accomplished by the indiscriminate slaughter and plunder of the unoffending natives. Disguise it as he may cruelty is a distinguishing characteristic of the Spaniard; and this moral phenomenon in the character of a people certainly not destitute of noble and chivalrous attributes may probably be traced partly to the large admixture of Arabian blood in the Spanish population and partly to the long enduring and paramount authority of a priesthood remarkable for its intolerant spirit and for its savage abuse of unlimited power. This propensity to deeds of cruelty and oppression was nourished during the long contest with the Moors. Abundant evidence of it may also be found in Spain's European wars and especially during the long and noble struggle of the brave Netherlanders against the reckless and blood-thirsty soldiery of the Duke of Alva. But the crowning atrocities of Spain were perpetrated in her American possessions and more particularly in Mexico the richest and most important of them all. Assuming that the whole of Spanish America was a gift to the king of Spain from God's vicegerent on earth the Roman pontiff and under the plea that it was their especial duty to establish his creed the Spaniards did not hesitate to accomplish this end by the most lawless and cruel means. Their unbounded greed of gold led to further oppressions on their part and sufferings on that of the Indians; and even the arbitrary and for the most part unjust enactments of the Consejo de las Indias a council established for the government of Spain's colonial possessions were outheroded and overstepped by the cruel and mercenary individuals to whom their enforcement was entrusted. Fearing the eventual day of retribution every cunning device was practised to keep down the numbers of the unfortunate natives and to retard the growth of their intelligence. By a royal decree not a town or village could be founded nor even a farm-house built except in the vicinity of a garrison convent or mission. The Spaniards wanted dollars not men and could they have worked the rich mines of Guanaxato Monte Real and elsewhere with bullocks instead of Indians would gladly have seen the whole native population of Mexico exterminated. But when the storm which for a time had been averted at length burst forth they gave a loose to their hatred of the unfortunate Mexicans. The rebellion premature in its outbreak and crushed in its first great effort was carried on under various leaders and with varying success until it terminated in the final downfall of the Spanish rule. The massacres and cruelties perpetrated during the eleven intervening years were beyond conception horrible; far exceeding in extent and atrocity any thing recorded in European history. The fearful night of St Bartholomew the tortures of the Inquisition the persecutions in the Cevennes and later the horrors of the French Revolution sink into insignificance when compared with such wholesale massacres as those of Guanaxato and Guadalajara and with the sweeping destruction wrought by the Spaniards throughout Mexico. ""Such and such towns and villages have disappeared from the face of the earth "" was no uncommon phrase in the reports and despatches of the Spanish commanders--a phrase fully borne out by facts. Prisoners of both sexes and all ages were murdered in cold blood whole districts laid waste with fire and sword until not a human being or habitation was to be seen where previously a flourishing and numerous population existed. In a despatch of the royalist general Morillo dated Bagota June 1816 he stated that in order to cut at the root of the rebellion he had declared all persons rebels who knew how to read and write and that such were on detection immediately to be put to death. Accordingly six hundred of the most notable persons in Bagota both men and women guiltless of all other crimes but education were strangled and their bodies suspended naked from gibbets. Nothing but the weariness of the executioner and his aids put an end to this horrid butchery. We cannot better illustrate the state of things above referred to than by laying before the reader some farther extracts from _The Viceroy and the Aristocracy_. For this purpose we will select the early portion of the second volume previously connecting it by some brief details with the two chapters given in our last Number. The five-and-twenty young noblemen who witnessed the treasonable dramatic performance described in the second chapter of the book before us are sentenced as a punishment for their offence to serve in the army under Calleja the captain-general of Mexico. This is announced to their parents who are all Creoles of the highest rank at a drawing-room held by the viceroy Vanegas where we are introduced to a certain Count San Jago who as well on account of his wealth and influence as by his high qualities and superior intelligence ranks first amongst the Mexican nobility and enjoys great consideration at the viceregal court. His nephew Don Manuel and his adopted son the Conde Carlos were among the spectators of the pasquinade in which King Ferdinand's private pastimes had been so cuttingly caricatured and they are included in the sentence passed on all those who have thus offended. This sentence excites great indignation amongst the Mexican nobility who see in it a gross violation of their _fueros_ or privileges. There is no option however but obedience. The Count San Jago who ardently desires the freedom of his country and even maintains a secret understanding with some of the rebel chiefs rejoices in the punishment awarded deeming that the introduction of these young men into the army may pave the way to Creole ascendancy. The immediate expulsion of the Spaniards from Mexico is not desired by him or by the majority of the Creoles as it would throw the chief power into the hands of the Indians and castes who are totally unfitted to wield it. The count procures a captain's commission for Carlos and would willingly do the same for his nephew; but Don Manuel although a Creole by birth is a Spaniard in heart despises his own countrymen and resolves to proceed to Spain and take part in the struggle against the French. An attachment has existed between him and the Countess Elvira sister of Carlos; but this has recently been succeeded on the side of Manuel by a violent passion he has conceived for the viceroy's sister-in-law Donna Isabella a haughty beauty who only encourages the young Creole so far as it accords with the views of Vanegas some of whose designs would be promoted by the absence from Mexico of the Count San Jago's nephew and heir. Blinded by his passion Manuel obeys the impulse artfully given to him by Donna Isabella resists the remonstrances of his uncle and the tears of Elvira and insists upon proceeding to Spain which his imagination paints as the fountain-head of chivalry and heroism. Count San Jago sees through his motives but does not choose to constrain his inclination; and Manuel sets out with a train of attendants befitting his rank for the sea-coast where he is to embark for the mother country. His adventures upon the road form a striking episode to a certain extent independent of the rest of the book and with which we will continue our extracts. CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH. ""What are you That fly me thus? Some villain mountaineers?"" _Cymbeline._ About a day's journey from the capital rises that mighty chain of mountains called the Sierra Madre which after connecting the volcanoes of Mexico with those of Puebla takes an inland and northerly direction hiding within its bowels near Monte Real and Guanaxato that boundless mineral wealth which excites so strongly the wonder of the naturalist. The most important mountains of Mexico are portions of this chain which gives to that country a character so original so wildly picturesque and truly sublime yet so cheerful and smiling that the eye of the beholder ranges with alternate rapture and surprise from point to point of the immense landscape vainly endeavouring to comprehend in one frame the wonderfully-contrasted materials of the picture before him. The flanks of these mountain ridges are thickly clothed with lofty oak and pine while the dwarf oak and the mimosa cover the shoulders; and their rocky summits bare of all vegetable life are composed of granite and porphyry. Terrific craters yawn on every side of these sombre dark-brown masses which appear to be still teeming with those tremendous revolutions that have given to this country its remarkable configuration. Luxuriant crops of wheat and maize cover the mountain slopes; the lower levels delight the eye with the endless variety and brilliant colours of their exotic plants; while still lower the tough agave darts forth its sharp and giant leaves like so many sword-blades and the plains are intersected by vast barrancas [31] exhibiting that wonderful opulence of tropical fertility which is ever at work in their deep and shady hollows. From these ascend the roar of rushing streams invisible to the eye but mighty in their influence; every slope they wash yielding a prodigality of vegetable ornament which the most glowing fancy would find it difficult to paint. The flowering shrubs are linked together and covered by numberless creepers studded with brilliant blossoms forming continuous garlands of flowers which climb on the roots to the crown and conceal thousands of conzontlis cardinal birds and madrugadores within their shady recesses. It was a bright and sunny afternoon. The snowy regions of the mighty Orizava [32] and of the mightier Popocatepetl hitherto resplendent as burnished silver now began to exhibit flickering tints of rose-colour which deepening on their eastern sides into golden-yellow and bronze reflected every moment some fresh variety of hue. The shadows of Mount Malinche and his brethren began to stretch over towards Tlascala. Deep silence prevailed throughout the entire district broken only by the scream of the ring eagle or the hollow howl of the coyote.[33] On one of the mountain ridges stretching eastward from San Martin and over which Cortes first penetrated into the valley of Tenochtitlan two men had stationed themselves with their backs to a mass of porphyry rock that rose like a fragment of some mighty castle above a yawning barranca of prodigious depth. The lank straight hair and red-black complexion of these men indicated them to be Zambos. Their dress consisted of sheepskins fas
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ened round their shoulders by thongs of hide and of some ragged under garments of a coarse black woollen stuff; their heads were covered by the broad-brimmed straw hats universally worn by the Indians and castes; machetes or long knives were stuck in their girdles and heavy clubs lay on the ground at their feet. To judge from their countenances neither of the men were in a particularly good humour. Whilst one of them stood upright and seemed to be acting as a vedette the other lay stretched upon the turf in a sort of sullen half slumber until his companion weary of his watch threw himself down in his turn; whereupon the other arose muttering and grumbling to take his share of duty. For some time not a word was exchanged between the two sentries. ""_Maldita cosa!_"" at last exclaimed the Zambo who was on his legs. ""By the holy Virgin of Guadalupe if this lasts another week if we are to be thus tracked and hunted like caguars may the devil seize me but I""---- ""I?""--interrogated his companion. ""Will say _adios_ to you; and Mexico's freedom may take care of itself."" ""Wish you a pleasant journey Señor "" replied the other yawning. ""Do you see yonder birds? They are waiting for you."" And he pointed to a flight of zepilots or Mexican ravens with sharp claws and hooked beaks which had just then alighted on the cliffs above their heads. ""_Caramba!_ Calleja would soon settle your business. A dangle at a rope's end with the hangman on your shoulders and that before you could light a cigar or empty a glass of pulque."" ""_Tonterias_ nonsense!"" replied the grumbler. ""My ahuitzote[34] is not yet come."" ""It may not be far off though. You might fall into the hands of Señor Bustamente from whom if I remember right you borrowed ten of his best mules and in your haste forgot to take off their burdens."" ""_Basta_--enough!"" retorted the other Zambo who appeared to be tired of the conversation; and taking a piece of dirty paper out of his girdle he placed upon it a minute quantity of chopped tobacco and rolled it into the form of a cigar. This he smeared over with saliva and then laying it upon a fragment of rock drew his machete laid that upon the cigar and walked off in the direction of an adjacent thicket. The second Zambo had watched with envious eyes these preparations for the enjoyment of a luxury which to Mexicans is more necessary than their daily bread. No sooner had his companion turned his back than he drew from his pocket two pieces of achiote wood [35] and rubbing them together with astonishing rapidity obtained fire in as short a time as it could have been done by the more usual agency of flint and steel. Taking possession of the cigar he lit it and had just begun to inhale the smoke with all the gusto of a connoisseur when the rightful owner of the coveted morsel emerged from the thicket with two fragments of dry wood in his hand. ""_Maldito gojo! Picaro! Infame!_"" vociferated the aggrieved Zambo on beholding his cigar in the wrong mouth. The smoker had very prudently secured his comrade's machete and now began to fly before the angry countenance of his enraged comrade. ""_Paciencia Señor!_"" cried he dodging about and panting for breath. ""Patience most excellent sir! I will return you ten cigars nay a hundred a thousand--so soon as I can get them."" ""_Que te lleven todos los demonios de los diez y siete infiernos!_"" screamed the other who had seized his club and commenced furious pursuit of the robber. Both of them ran several times round the huge block of porphyry but the distance between them was diminishing and there seemed every probability that the thief's love of tobacco would cost him dear when a thundering ""_Halto!_"" from the thicket brought both Zambos to a dead stop. ""_Que es esto?_ What is this?"" cried a voice. ""_Mi Général--no--perdon--capitan!_"" stammered the pursuer; ""he has stolen my cigar."" The captain himself now issued from the copse walked gravely up to the thief took the half-consumed cigar from his mouth and placed it in his own; then stepping forward to the edge of the barranca he listened a few moments pointed down into the yawning chasm and drew himself quickly backwards. His movements were imitated by the Zambos who gazed for a short space on the windings of the barranca through which meanders the old road to Cholula made by Cortes and then sprang back with the exclamation ""_Mulos y arrieros!_"" From among the windings of the above-named road which is scarcely passable even for mules from the depths of ravines and from amidst rocks and precipices the pleasant tinkling of bells now ascended through the clear elastic air to the mountain summit on which the three men were posted. Presently the mules became visible apparently no bigger than dogs clambering slowly up the steep and rocky path; then were heard the long cadences of the muleteer's rude but not unmusical song; and at last the active figures of the muleteers themselves with their fantastical garb and five hundred buttons the variegated accoutrements of the mules with their worsted plumes and tufts and frippery and many-coloured saddle-cloths and even the trabucos that were slung behind the saddles were all distinguishable. There was a wild picturesqueness in the appearance of the cavalcade as it wound its way over the seemingly perpendicular rocks while the rough sonorous song accompanied by the sound of the bells came creeping up the mountain side. Suddenly a figure detached itself from the party as if weary of the circuitous route it was taking and with extraordinary activity and daring commenced a more direct ascent. Springing from cliff to cliff the adventurous climber seemed to find pleasure in his breakneck pastime and continued his course without a pause till he reached the second shelf of the barranca which was riven by a deep and wide crevice. High over his head a gigantic eagle was wheeling and circling floating upon the air now darting down towards him and then again shooting upwards sporting as it seemed with an anticipated prey. The young man for such those above could now discern him to be drew breath for a few seconds cast a glance upwards at the kingly bird and then with one fearless spring cleared the chasm. With unabated vigour he bounded from rock to rock and at length reached a rocky projection immediately below the platform. Grasping the trunk of a dwarf oak he climbed nimbly up it and let himself drop from the branches on the plateau itself. ""_Diabolo!_"" muttered the two Zambos who had witnessed the young man's hazardous progress with that mute admiration and sympathy which the exhibition of bodily strength and activity is apt to excite especially amongst half-civilized men--""_Diabolo!_ He has more lives than a cat!"" And with the words they slunk into the thicket. It was no other than Don Manuel himself who had made this daring and as it appeared unnecessary display of his aptitude for the life of a mountaineer--a display the more perilous as his rich and fantastical riding dress was any thing but favourable to it. He wore a Guadalajara hat of which the brim full six inches broad was completely covered with gold lace while above the low crown was displayed the blood-red cockade adopted by loyally disposed Mexicans. His jacket was abundantly decorated with gold embroidery and garnished with the fur of the sea otter; his breeches of scarlet cloth were open at the knee where they were terminated by green and yellow ties; the whole costume was profusely laced with gold and loaded with silver buttons. His legs below the knee were protected by leather _botines_ or gamashes fastened by silk ribands of various colours and finally losing themselves in a pair of old-fashioned high-quartered shoes. Spurs only were wanting to complete the riding-dress which was more remarkable for richness than good taste and evidently after the fashion of a previous century. Casting a careless glance at the perilous path by which he had arrived the young man then fixed his gaze upon the magnificent panorama spread out before him. In front were the blooming plains of Cholula and beyond them those of Puebla de los Angeles with their corn and maize fields and agave plantations divided by hedges and alleys of cactus and dotted with the cane-built and banana-shaded Indian hamlets. To the right springing out of the rugged porphyry ridge the summits of which alternately wood-crowned and naked were glowing in the afternoon sun arose the snowy head of the Itztaccihuatl shedding such a flood of light and brilliancy in its isolated magnificence that the eye vainly strove to sustain the glare. To the left towered the gigantic Popocatepetl high above the mountain world around a misty crown of cloud clinging to its summit; while farther to the south-east shot up the star of Mexican mountains the Orizava rising like some mighty phantom into the clear blue ether of which the quivering vibrations seemed to bring the enormous mountain each moment nearer to the beholder. Finally in rear of Don Manuel the thickly wooded Malinche with its masses of forest trees and its stupendous barrancas frowned in dark and solemn shadow. The extraordinary contrast of the most magnificent vegetation then just bursting out in all the green and blooming freshness of the season with the severe grandeur of the most sublime Alpine scenery fettered the young man for some moments in speechless admiration. He was roused from his reverie by a slight rustling behind him and turning his head quickly he gave a spring which if less perilous than many of those he had recently made was yet at least as useful in extricating him from a dangerous position. ""_Picaro!_"" shouted one of the Zambos whose machete had harmlessly stabbed the air instead of piercing as was intended Don Manuel's heart. ""_Maldito Gachupin!_"" cried the other who had swung his club with a like innocuous result. The attack of the two bravoes was made so suddenly and unexpectedly that Manuel had barely time to jump aside. With wonderful coolness and presence of mind he sprang to the shelter of the rock at the same moment throwing his hands forward so suddenly that one of the Zambos in his hurry to escape nearly ran over his companion. A brace of pistols which the young man had drawn from the breast of his jacket were the cause of this sudden change in the tactics of the bandits who now retired hastily into the thicket. Don Manuel gazed after them for a few moments and then again approached the edge of the barranca from the top of which the mules were now no longer very distant. Not a word had escaped him during the short scuffle and to judge from the cool indifference he had manifested the occurrence was one of neither a rare nor extraordinary nature. The nephew of the Conde de San Jago had not long relapsed into contemplation when he was again disturbed by a loud _halto!_ proceeding from the same thicket from which it had been already shouted to the Zambos and the next instant the patriot captain issued forth with levelled carbine. No ways discomposed the young don raised a pistol. ""Down with your gun or I fire!"" cried he. ""Indeed "" said the captain ""you should be a bold cock to judge from your crow."" ""You will soon find out what I am "" replied the young man dryly. ""_C--jo!_"" quoth the captain and removed the carbine from his shoulder. The appearance of the patriot or rebel officer whichever he may be styled although less bandit-like than that of the two Zambos was not calculated to inspire much confidence. His face was shadowed indeed concealed by a thick mass of black hair which hung down over forehead cheeks and neck and allowed scarcely any part of his countenance to be visible except a pair of coal-black eyes of somewhat oblique expression. Although not of a particularly strong build his frame was muscular and apparently inured to hardship. He wore a round high-crowned Guadalajara hat encircled by a gold band in which was stuck a large miniature of the Virgin of Guadalupe. A second portrait of that venerated patroness was hung round his neck by a blue and white riband. His cloak of fine cloth and laced with gold had been much worn and ill-treated as had also his hose and his red velvet jerkin; on his feet he wore shoes through which his toes had forced themselves a passage and instead of the usual gamashes his legs were bound round with sheepskin. Spurs full six inches long and with rowels of the same diameter were affixed to his heels. His arms consisted of a carbine a machete and a rusty dragoon sabre. The young Creole measured this personage with an indifferent glance and a smile of disdain for a moment played round his mouth; but then as if he did not deem the object worthy of further notice he let his pistol fall carelessly by his side and turned his back negligently upon the new comer. ""_Todos diabolos!_"" exclaimed the captain after a moment's pause and apparently indignant at the contempt with which he was treated. ""Whence come you and whither are you going? What is the object of your journey? Answer me young sir and that quickly. _Soy un gran capitan! Llevo las manos y tiembla la tierra!_"" ""Probably one of the leaders of the self-styled patriot army "" said the young Creole in a tone of scorn in reply to this pompous announcement. ""Even so señor "" returned the other suddenly changing his own manner of speaking to a sort of humorous sneer--""commander of a division of the patriot army presently in headquarters at Puebla."" ""Headquarters!"" repeated Manuel with infinite disdain. ""Your authority extends far and wide it would appear "" added he with a glance at his interlocutor's dilapidated shoes. ""It does so "" answered the other in the same humorous but somewhat malicious tone. ""Nevertheless my wardrobe as your excellency doubtless perceives has somewhat suffered in the service of the rebel cause and as your señoria will probably have an earlier opportunity than I shall of providing yourself with another pair of shoes and gamashes I would crave of you to condescend so far as to seat yourself upon that stone and divest yourself of those you now wear for the behoof and advantage of the unworthy capitan before you who will otherwise be compelled to dispossess your worship of them in a less amicable manner."" The _gran capitan_ waited a few moments after making this demand but then observing that the young Creole took no steps towards obeying his orders he stamped impatiently upon the ground and exclaimed in a stern peremptory tone ""Off with them and quickly! Your shoes and your gamashes!"" ""You will find my shoes too tight for you I expect "" replied Don Manuel raising a pistol. The Metis on his side covered the young nobleman with his carbine. ""Keep still Jago "" cried Don Manuel sharply ""or I will so shoe you that you shall remember Manuel M----to the very last day of your life."" The patriot officer pushed aside the hair which hung over his forehead and eyes gazed at the Creole for a few seconds in great astonishment and then letting his gun fall ran towards him with outstretched arms. ""_Santa Virgen!_"" exclaimed he--""By the blessed Redeemer of Atolnico! May I never see heaven if it is not the very noble señor Don Manuel nephew of his excellency Count San Jago the first cavalier in Mexico and son of the not-quite-so-noble but still very-tolerably-noble Señor Don Sebastian and of the Gachupina Señora Donna Anna de Villagio and _cortejo_ of the greatest angel in Mexico and consequently in the whole world the Countess Elvira!"" This characteristic and thoroughly Mexican apostrophe was accompanied by vehement gesticulation on the part of the Metis in whose expressive and variable countenance a strange mixture of fun and irony with reverence for the illustrious persons he was speaking of was discernible. He was interrupted in his tirade by Don Manuel. ""Have you done?"" said the latter. ""Not yet "" replied the captain. ""May the Virgin of Guadalupe for ever deprive me of those comforts to Mexican palates Havannah cigars and aguardiente if I can guess what so noble a señor as yourself is doing on such a rugged path as the old Camino de Cortes instead of taking the usual road by Otumba."" ""I can tell you the reason "" replied Don Manuel. ""Our friends have commissioned me to have you hung and that as soon as possible."" ""Indeed!"" said the captain with a sly smile; ""and would you be good enough just for the joke's sake to tell me the names of those friends? I might perhaps find an opportunity of returning their kindness."" As he spoke he advanced a step towards the Creole in a sort of familiar way. ""Keep your distance!"" cried the young man. ""None of your hypocritical caresses! We know each other."" ""Hardly señor "" replied Jago shaking his head. ""If you knew me you would perhaps speak in another tone. But truly now should I not have been a very simple Jago to have passed my life as driver of your mules or perhaps of the _gente irracionale_ as you call the poor devils of Indians? Ah! your worshipful uncle is a right noble and powerful caballero speaks little but thinks much and does more and has his hand over all Mexico and the _madre patria_ and perhaps a step further; but believe me he would speak to Jago in a very different manner from that adopted by his nephew the son of the tolerably-noble señor Don Sebastian. The count is a very noble gentleman; but when he made over one of his finest estates to your father he committed a blunder that cost him three hundred able-bodied Indians. Ha ha!"" continued the man raising his sombrero from his head and setting it on again a little on one side; ""you cannot forgive poor Jago for having walked off with the three hundred Indians who suddenly took a fancy to leave the peaceable hacienda of Don Sebastian and follow the great Hidalgo after the example of your very humble servant. But only think now; for three hundred lean oxen which your worshipful father was kind enough to give to a like number of those poor devils they had to toil a whole year; and by the blessed Virgin St Christopher did not sweat more when he carried the infant Jesus through the flood! It happened to those poor Indians just as it did to St Christopher. The longer they toiled the heavier grew the load; and as they had not the thews and sinews of the saint they at last sank under the burthen. So far from being able to pay for the oxen they got every year deeper into your tolerably-noble father's debt. Can you wonder then that they threw aside spades and baskets and joined the army of Hidalgo?"" However galling the patriot captain's observations were to the young nobleman the latter could not help being struck by their justice. ""Do you think we are dogs señor?"" continued Jago. ""You are a _blanco_ a white not one of our rulers certainly but of as pure blood as any of then. _You_ have never felt the _infamia de derecho_[36] weighing upon you following you like your shadow and worse for _that_ at least leaves one during the rains; and yet _my_ father was as good a father as any Spaniard's could be and my mother as good a mother. But what was the use of that? Jago is a Metis. He is infamous and his children's children after him."" The man had touched briefly but acutely upon the wrongs of the two classes composing the great majority of the Mexican population and his words seemed not to have been without their effect upon the young Creole who replied in a less harsh tone than he had hitherto employed-- ""If Mexico is to be delivered by you and such as you then is she lost indeed."" Jago caught at the word. ""Delivered!"" he repeated sarcastically. ""In spite then of your aristocratic blood you feel that a deliverance is wanted? Yet the world says that for six months past you have become a worse Gachupin than the Spaniards themselves."" Don Manuel cast a furious glance at the Metis. ""Aha! that stings!"" continued the latter. ""What! have they played you a trick too? But _misericordià_ with your nobility who quailed before the rising sun of freedom and deserted your own country to aid the tyrants who oppress it. When such was the case the time was come for the people to assert their rights; and assert them they did as you know."" ""And a fine reward they got for so doing "" retorted the youth. ""Our day will come yet "" returned the captain. ""You are _caballeros_ very gentle and noble men and we are only _gavilla_ knaves and serfs--therefore have ye hung and shot us struck us down like oxen and trampled us under foot used us worse than snared wolves. Poor Hidalgo!"" continued he in a more gentle tone ""you little thought twelve months before how you would be peppered by the damnable Gachupins. They rubbed his hands and his poor bald head with brick-dust slipped a _san benito_ over him and sent him straight into paradise where doubtless he is now giving concerts with his musicians and the blessed St Cecilia. Allende ought to be there too; but he is a soldier and perhaps they would not let him in amongst the eleven thousand virgins. But enough of this. May we venture humbly to enquire of Don Manuel what brought him upon this lonely _marques-camino_? Has your young excellency perchance a fancy to take up arms for Mexico and freedom's sake?"" ""By the Holy Virgin Jago you are an impudent scoundrel and deserve a beating for daring to suspect a caballero of such base dispositions."" The Metis smiled scornfully. ""You have chosen the other side señor "" said he ""instead of remaining neutral which would have been best for you. Ah! beams from bright eyes! Aha!"" ""Scoundrel!"" cried the youth with menacing tone and gesture ""if your tongue""---- ""Speaks "" interrupted Jago ""what every guachinango[37] in Mexico sings over his pulque. But love blinds they say. May I beg to know what you are doing on this road?"" ""Mind your own business "" replied the angry nobleman turning his back haughtily upon his interrogator who gazed at him for a moment with a look of comical astonishment. ""Now by my poor soul!"" exclaimed the captain ""that is an amount of pride which if divided into a million of doses would stock every Creole in Mexico with the drug! But listen to me young sir. All things have their time says the proverb and some two years back this behaviour might have been very suitable from your worship towards Jago the arriero; but times are changed since a certain cura named Hidalgo hoisted the standard of Mexican liberty. Ah! your nobility always excepting the very noble Conde San Jago display their courage in tertulias and ballrooms in intrigues and camarilla conspiracies; but when it came to hard knocks they crept out of the way and left the poor priest of Dolores to help himself. Hidalgo did not understand such tricks and began in right earnest. You should have seen Hidalgo--you would never have thought him the man he was. A short round little fellow with a sanguine smile and lively eyes and a complexion as olive-green as the Madeira bottles he was so fond of. His head was bald; he used to say his bedstead was too short and had rubbed all his hair off; but in spite of that and of his threescore years he had the sinews of a caguar and the strength of a giant; always on horseback and a splendid rider for he had been a lancer in the _presidios_ and had had many a fight with those devils of Comanches. Ah Hidalgo! you deserved a better fate!"" concluded the patriot captain in a saddened tone. The young Creole had listened with some interest to this short but graphic sketch of the remarkable man who first with unexampled boldness raised the banner of Mexican liberty and who as well through the originality of his private life as through his political virtues and failings had become an object of idolatry to his friends and of unappeasable hatred to his opponents. Just as Jago finished speaking Don Manuel's servants and muleteers made their appearance upon the platform. CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH. ""I long To hear the story of your life which must Take the ear strangely."" _The Tempest._ ""Welcome Alonzo and Pedro and Cosmo in the quarters of freedom!"" cried Jago to the servants as with outstretched hand he advanced a few steps to meet them. ""A welcome to ye all!"" ""_Maldito herege!_"" cried Alonzo bringing his carbine to his shoulder. ""Dog! do you dare""---- The other servants joyfully took the proffered hand. The arrieros bowed before the man who had so lately been one of themselves with marks of deep reverence which were only stopped by a significant sign from their _cidevant_ comrade. ""Always the same man Alonzo "" said the captain with a contemptuous laugh; ""just fit to say '_beso las manos a su señoria_ ' and to cringe and bow before counts and marquises. But it is ill speaking with dogs of that kind "" added he as he again turned to the young nobleman. ""Yes señor "" he continued ""Hidalgo was a true man. He it was who first put me out of conceit with slavery of all kinds. 'Tis just sixteen months and three weeks to-morrow since the shell burst. Hidalgo was keeping the tertulia with his musicians--it was nine in the evening. In came Don Ignacio Allende y Unzaga as white as ashes; he had ridden for dear life from Valladolid where Iturriaga in order to secure his place in heaven had consigned his sworn brothers to destruction by confessing every thing to Father Gil who in his turn had confessed to the Audiencia. The corregidor of Valladolid had been immediately arrested as one of the heads of the conspiracy and luckily this had reached the ears of Allende and Aldama who hastened to horse and came as fast as spur and whip could bring them to take counsel of the only man who could help them in their extremity. And counsel he gave them. He and the captain deliberated for one hour and then out he came brisk and bold and declared himself ready for the fight. Off he started to the prison put a pistol to the jailer's head and compelled him to give up the keys and set loose the prisoners. Allende went to the houses of the Gachupins and took away their money giving them acknowledgments for it. All this was done without blood being spilled. Only one Gachupin who behaved roughly to Hidalgo had been slightly wounded. The Indians Metises and Zambos rallied round their cura and away they all went to Miguel el Grande and Zelaya where an infantry regiment and four squadrons of cavalry joined them. On to Guanaxato where another battalion came over. _Todos diabolos!_"" continued Jago ""Hidalgo had now more than fifty thousand men at his back; but what were they? Three thousand infantry and four hundred cavalry among a legion of Indians. The soldiers were lost amid the brown multitude like flies in a pail of pulque. The fifty thousand Indians were shoeless and half-naked armed with clubs and slings or at most with machetes which might do well enough to cut up _tasajo_ [38] but were a deal too short to be measured with Spanish bayonets. Capital fellows were they for plundering and murdering but ill fitted for a fight. In Miguel el Grande in San Felipe in Zelaya the Gachupins had been cut off to a man. That would not have mattered much but the _gente irracionale_ had included the Creoles with the Spaniards. In Guanaxato it was still worse. I joined Hidalgo just in time for that dance. We were received with open arms by the Léperos and Indians but the Creoles and Gachupins had shut themselves up in the Alhondega. This was the first resistance our mad mob had met with and they rushed like raging savages to attack the granary. They were right well received and a desperate fight began. At last a giant of a _tenatero_ found an enormous flat stone put it on his head as he might have done his sombrero and held it on with his right hand while with a lighted torch in his left he set fire to the door of the Alhondega. A way was soon opened to the assailants who rushed in over the smouldering fragments of the door. In a few minutes fourteen hundred Spaniards and Creoles with wives and children were stabbed struck down and torn in pieces. The Indians waded in blood and treasure. The latter they brought out by baskets full; and the fools might be seen changing doubloons for copper money taking them for half-dollar bits. ""About four thousand Indians had joined us out of the city and thirty thousand out of the district of Guanaxato. Hidalgo was at the summit of his glory. A council of war had named him generalissimo; Allende was his second in command; Ballesa Ximenes and Aldama lieutenant-generals; Abasala Ocon and the brothers Martinez were brigadiers. Hidalgo sang a _Te Deum_ and divided the army into regiments each of a thousand men and gave regular pay; to the officers three dollars a-day the cavalry one dollar and the rest half a dollar. He himself appeared in field-marshal's uniform blue with white facings the medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe upon his breast. It would have been wiser however to have named him archbishop and made Allende general-in-chief. Hidalgo was a capital priest but a thorough bad general and could not even maintain discipline in his army. In his first anger at the Creoles for keeping aloof from the revolution he had included them in the cry of '_Mueran los Gachupinos!_' and now his eighty thousand Indians had taken their cue from him and murdered and ravaged and burned wherever they came like incarnate devils. In this manner the Creoles had been rendered our inveterate enemies--more the pity. My late mother used always when she went on a pilgrimage to Guadalupe to burn two tapers a white and a black one--the first for the blessed Virgin the second for the devil. 'There is no knowing ' she used to say 'what one may come to.'"" The interesting nature of Jago's narrative and his originality of manner had by this time riveted the attention of Don Manuel and his attendants. ""When we left Guanaxato "" continued the ex-muleteer ""we were more than eighty thousand men but only three thousand four hundred of us were armed. The _gente irracionale_ in their mad rage had destroyed even the muskets of the Gachupins. Our numbers however still kept increasing and Hidalgo continued his march in triumph. On the 27th October we were in Tolucca. On the 28th we met Truxillo at Las Cruces and scattered him and his fifteen hundred men to the winds of heaven. Two days later we were in sight of Mexico."" The captain paused. His delivery during the latter part of the narrative had been hurried and broken; he was evidently much excited by the recapitulation of the stirring scenes in which he had mingled. With visible effort he resumed-- ""Ah Mexico _estrella del mundo_! Well might thy beauty and brilliancy dazzle the judgment of the poor cura. Hidalgo seemed to lose his head. Instead of marching at once upon the city he sent General Ximenes with a summons to it to surrender. Ximenes the greatest poltroon that ever disgraced an epaulet came back with the most exaggerated stories of the formidable preparations that were making to receive us. This disconcerted Hidalgo; and on the top of that out came a whole regiment of priests and shavelings sent by the Viceroy and they talked to Hidalgo about hell-fire and such like till he swore it would be the most frightful sacrilege to deliver up Mexico the seat of our holy religion and of all piety to the _gente irracionale_. Moreover we learned that Callija had beaten Sanchez at Queretaro and effected a junction with Cadena. Holy Virgin!"" groaned Jago. ""Hidalgo acted like a madman. Instead of taking possession of Mexico with his hundred and ten thousand Indians and four thousand troops of the line which he might have done without opposition he ordered a retreat after we had been a whole day staring at the city like gaping idiots. Vanegas was already on the start for Vera Cruz with his two thousand men. Allende all of us begged prayed entreated; but it was of no use--retreat we did and at Aculco ran right into the jaws of Calleja and Cadena. ""I was in Allende's division "" continued Jago. ""That chief sent General Ximenes with a despatch to Hidalgo and I was ordered to attend him. His excellency Hidalgo that is to say was stationed on the hill of Aculco surrounded by his staff; and close beside him were the fourteen cannons that composed our whole artillery. It was on the 7th of November. We were scarcely fifty paces from Allende and his aide-de-camps when Ximenes turned to me and handed me the despatch which was written on an agave leaf. ""'Go ' said he 'and deliver this to General Hidalgo.' ""I stared at him in astonishment. ""'But General'----said I. ""'But me no buts. I served ten years in his majesty's troops and never used the
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ord. Away with you.' ""The style had altered. Our oppressors and enemies were suddenly converted into his majesty's troops. I said nothing however but went forward with the despatch while the general turned back. To say the truth he looked rather knocked up--and no wonder for it was the rainy season the roads were dreadfully bad our marches had been long and fatiguing and time for rest scanty. Perhaps too he had no stomach for the bullets of the Gachupins who now appeared advancing like walls of polished steel from the direction of Aculco. It was curious to observe the astonishment and childish delight of our Indians who for the first time in their lives beheld an army drawn up in rank and file with its artillery and cavalry. They danced and jumped about for joy; and soon began to use their slings and hurl showers of stones at the Spaniards who had halted evidently startled and intimidated by our numbers. But the stones and arrows whistled about their ears and there was nothing for it but to fight. As I was riding across at full gallop to Hidalgo's position the Spanish skirmishers spread themselves out along the cactus hedges and over the aloe fields and puffed and popped away. The firing soon became warm as more miquelets and caçadores joined in it; and from out of every ditch and hollow from behind each bush and tree the bullets came whistling. Suddenly in the background there glared a dozen streams of fire looking white in the broad daylight and accompanied by a light grey smoke and down went few score of Indians never to stand up again in this life. The infernal music became each moment louder. The smoke was thickest and the fire hottest around the rising ground on which Hidalgo had stationed himself with our regiments of Zelaya and Valladolid in his front the Reyna and Principe cavalry covering the flanks. As I approached the hillock a body of ten thousand Indians furious at the murderous fire kept up by the enemy's artillery rushed forward like a herd of wild buffaloes bearing down all opposition by their mere mass and weight. The foremost had already reached the guns and as they had never before in their lives seen such things what did the poor devils do but take off their straw hats and try to stop up the mouths of the cannon! Just then up came a regiment of the enemy's cavalry dashed amongst them and scattered them like chaff. All was confusion on this part of the line; but our troops in front of the hillock still stood firm and unbroken. ""'Where is he?' enquired a Spanish major who at that moment rode up beside me leaning forward in his saddle his feet firm in the stirrups his hand clutching his charger's mane. I knew not whom he meant; but he had scarcely uttered the words when he slid gently off his horse into the dust. A bullet had struck him--his race was run. My horse was nearly dead with fatigue. I jumped off and got upon that of the Spaniard. Scarcely was the exchange effected when I heard a harsh high-toned voice like that of a gallinazo issuing from the centre of a cloud of smoke. ""'_Adelante!_ Forward!' it cried. ""I knew the tones; they were those of Mexico's destroying angel. I gave my horse the spur; but I was already in the middle of the enemy's lancers who swept me along with them as a whirlwind does a feather. On a sudden there appeared through the smoke the horses' heads and glittering sabres of the patriot cavalry. There was a crash--a few dozen pistol-shots--a hundred thousand curses; the Spaniards had charged and broken through them. ""'_Adelante!_' again screamed the sharp screeching voice. '_Adelante! Muera la gavilla! Por la honra de su Magestad y de la santissima Virgen y del Redentor de Atolnico!_' ""A Spaniard always thinks first of his king then of the Virgin and in the last place of his God; and Calleja is a true Spaniard. He was deadly pale and seemed rather to hang than sit upon his saddle; from his right wrist dangled his sabre; his left hand held a rosary and a relic of some kind which he kissed repeatedly while his face was horribly distorted with rage and anxiety. ""The regiments of Zeluya and Valladolid stood like walls; when a man fell one of the officers sprang from the centre of the square to supply his place. ""'_Adelante soldados por la honra de su Magestad!_' croaked Calleja who was foaming and writhing with fury. At that moment up came another swarm of at least ten thousand Indians from the left wing eager to seek safety behind the soldiers from the murderous fire of the artillery. The regiment of lancers wheeled to the right allowed the Indians to pass and then lowering their lances drove the defenceless mob upon the bayonets of their own friends. In an instant the squares were broken. _Adios Mexico!_ ""The cries of rage of the patriots and the shouts of triumph of our foes still ring in my ears. Thanks to the goodness of my horse I escaped the slaughter that ensued: and taking the road to Guanaxato soon found myself with Allende the only one of our generals who had not lost all judgment and presence of mind. But he was no longer the same man; a ghost a skeleton was he; the last eight days had turned his hair white. He still hoped however to make head against the enemy and save Guanaxato. With five thousand Indians and eight hundred recruits he gave them battle. We fought like lions over their whelps--but all in vain! The odds were too great. Hidalgo in his panic had already fled to Guadalajara and left us in the lurch. We were obliged to follow. ""Four days after the battle of Marfil Allende said to me--'Jago for God and the saints' sake go back to Guanaxato and see how it fares with the unfortunate city! Go Jago for heaven's sake go!' ""His hair stood on end and the sweat broke out on his forehead as he spoke. I understood what was passing in his mind and shuddered. Taking fifty mounted Indians with me I set out though I would as soon have gone to hell itself. Guanaxato had received us on our advance with open arms; fourteen hundred Gachupins had fallen at the storming of the Alhondega. After that its fate was no longer doubtful. But I had not expected any thing so bad as I found. ""Allende had ordered me to use haste and I obeyed his orders. On the second day after leaving him we rode into Burras four leagues from Guanaxato. A solitary Zamba showed herself like a spectre at the door of the venta. She was the first human being we had seen during our two days' march and the only one in the whole village. ""'All is quiet señores ' said she in a hollow shuddering tone pointing with her meagre hand towards the neighbouring _cañada_ or gully. I looked into it. Holy God! it was blood red; filled with a crimson slime. It was running with gore. ""'For three days past ' grinned the Zamba 'it runs thus.' ""I threw away the glass of aguardiente she had brought me for it smelled of blood. Thousands hundreds of thousands of gallinazos coyotes and zepilots were arriving from all quarters and prowling running and flying in the direction of the unfortunate town. ""It was a cool November morning on which we approached Guanaxato; the air was clear and transparent the heavens were a bright blue; over the cañada there floated a cloud of light greyish vapour that extended a full league; here and there this vapour seemed to assume a reddish tinge and then a steam like the smoke of burning sulphur gave such a look of chaos to the atmosphere that it seemed as if the devils of all the seventeen hells had been roasting beneath. Now and then a flame flickered out of the vapour; it was a foul and revolting spectacle. ""It was over the suburb of Guanaxato Marfil by name and over Guanaxato itself the rich city of 60 000 inhabitants that this long bank of exhalation hung like a pall. What the place resembled when we entered it I can hardly say for Calleja had been there and had sat in judgment on the devoted town. In city and suburb in the mines and founderies all was hushed; not a blow of a hammer was heard not a wheel was turning; no footsteps nor voice broke the unnatural stillness. We entered the suburb and the signs of the festival of blood began to multiply themselves; dead bodies became more plentiful; here and there the cañada was choked up with them; while in other places broken baggage waggons dead mules and horses were lying in picturesque confusion. Wolves and carrion birds were tearing and rending the bodies of the unfortunate patriots. From one wall near the entrance of the town a hundred Indians were hanging; a little further on a like number had been literally torn in pieces as if by wild horses and their heads and limbs lay scattered about so frightfully mangled that even the coyotes turned aside and left them. A fine feast day must that have been for Calleja thought I--but pshaw! we had as yet seen nothing. ""The bridge over the cañada had been broken down but a new one replaced it; the piles consisted of human bodies upon which boards were laid. We were now in the city itself. Truly they had made clean work of it. Of the thousands of houses that had nestled themselves along the banks of the stream nought remained but fragments of blackened wall and smoking timber. Among these ruins were other things fat stinking things stumps and shapeless masses which lay scattered and in some places piled up amid the reeking embers. We took them at first for stones and pieces of rock; but we were mistaken. They were the roasted carcasses of Guanaxato's wretched inhabitants--hideous lumps! the feet hands and heads burnt away the bodies baked by the fire. In many of the huts or at least on the places where the huts had stood heaps of these bodies had burnt together in one pestilential mass and now emitted an unbearable stench. Not a living human creature to be seen but thousands of wolves and vultures; although even these neither snarled nor screamed but seemed almost as if they felt the desolation by which they were surrounded. My Indians did not utter a word; our mules scarcely dared to set their feet down; they pricked their ears bristled up their manes refused to advance stayed and some even fell. No wonder. Their path lay over corpses! ""We reached the Plaza Mayor. It was there that Calleja had held his chief banquet and wallowed with his Spaniards in Mexican blood. We waded through a red slime which covered the whole square to the depth of six inches; the bodies were heaped up like maize sacks. In the Alhondega we found a thousand young girls in a state--God be merciful to our poor souls! The Gachupins had first brutally outraged and then slain them but slain them in a manner--_Jesus Maria y José!_ Can it be true that Spaniards are born of woman? Señores! on the market-place alone fourteen thousand Mexicans young women matrons and children and men both young and old had been butchered with every refinement of cruelty. It would have taken too much powder to have shot them quoth Calleja and forsooth the rebels were not worth the outlay. ""We had seen enough "" continued Jago over whose cheeks burning tears were now running while his voice was choked with rage. ""It was not the first time we had seen bloodshed and our stomachs could bear something but this was too much. We turned back to Guadalajara more dead than alive. ""What followed is scarce worth relating. We strove to make another stand brought down forty-three cannons from San Blas and fortified ourselves at the bridge of Calderon; but all in vain! The angel of death had marked us for his prey; Guanaxato had quenched our courage; we were no longer the same men. At one moment there seemed still a chance of victory and revenge. Our Indians who fought like tigers although without order or discipline made a desperate charge upon Calleja's army. The whole line gave way; the fight was won. At that very instant an ammunition-waggon blew up; the Indians thought that Satan himself was come amongst them were seized with a panic and took to flight; the Gachupins plucked up courage; a fresh regiment which Calleja had kept in reserve charged vigorously. All was over. ""It was plain that Hidalgo's star had set. He fled poor fellow! was betrayed and delivered up by his own countrymen. But _basta!_ The account was closed for the year one thousand eight hundred and eleven."" CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH. ""Even as they fell in files they lay; Like the mower's grass at the close of day When his work is done on the levell'd plain Such was the fall of the foremost slain."" _Siege of Corinth._ The patriot captain's animated narrative had not failed to make a lively impression on his hearers at the same time that it worked a remarkable change in his own appearance. Strongly excited by the recollections it called up the disagreeable and rather mean expression of his tawny physiognomy vanished his forehead seemed to expand and a sarcastic and scornful smile that at times played over his features gave him an air of superiority to his hearers as with that extraordinary flexibility of organ that is to be remarked in southern nations he narrated the various stirring events of the first patriot campaign; the struggles and sufferings of his countrymen the unbounded cruelty and excesses of their ruthless oppressors. There was a pause when he finished speaking which was shortly broken by the report of a musket in the adjacent wood. Jago started and listened. A second and a third report followed. ""_Misericordia! Los Gachupinos!_"" shouted the captain springing upon a fragment of rock and rolling his eyes wildly around. ""They are upon us! Run Mateo Hippolito! See what they are and whence they come. Run I say! Have you lead at your heels?"" The two Zambos set themselves in motion but presently paused and seemed unwilling to proceed. Jago drew a small silver whistle from his girdle and blew it with all the power of his lungs. ""The saints be with us "" he exclaimed ""and thou in particular blessed St Martin! If they come from the direction of Tesmelucos then are we peppered and salted. Holy Virgin of Guadalupe! A silver candlestick and ten wax tapers an inch thick so soon as I can obtain them if thou wilt deliver us from this strait!"" He was interrupted in his ejaculations by the sound of a volley of small arms from the wood and the next instant a herd of half-naked Indians Metises and Zambos with scarcely any clothing but sheepskins round their bodies and straw-hats upon their heads rushed out from under the trees closely pursued by the dragoons of the regiment of España who began to gallop along the edge of the plateau and surround the open space on all sides. The arrieros at the very first beginning of the firing had placed their mules and themselves in safety behind the rock concealed in the thicket of dwarf-oak and pines. Jago had spoken once or twice to them and to the servants in a low and urgent tone but his whisperings produced no visible effect. ""_Por todos santos!_"" cried he to his Indians ""to the right children _Nombre de Dios!_ or you are all lost. _Jesus Maria!_ they do not hear!"" The unfortunate patriots who had been surprised during their siesta now came running out of the wood in great numbers with the remainder of the squadron of dragoons at their heels. Upon finding themselves cut off from the path down the barranca they set up a frightful howl and dispersed to the right and left vainly endeavouring to escape the troopers who formed line and with furious sabre-cuts and loud shouts of ""Viva el Rey!"" drove the fugitives before them like a flock of sheep. Don Manuel who remained beside his mules and attendants had at first witnessed this inhuman hunt with more curiosity than sympathy; but when the dragoons began to cut and slash among the defenceless Indians the scene evidently became painful to him; his eyes flashed his cheeks glowed his features expressed the utmost indignation and anger. The Indians were caught as in a trap; precipices on the one side an implacable and bloodthirsty enemy on the other. Each moment dragoons made their appearance out of the wood by ones and twos driving more fugitives before them. At last when the latter found themselves pressed together in one dense body they made a desperate effort to break through their enemies and gain the entrance of the barranca. But the dragoons saw their object and hastened to frustrate it. Strengthening their ranks on that side they completely surrounded the Indians and commenced an indiscriminate and barbarous slaughter. The more the victims sought to escape their persecutors the more dense became their mass and the more fatal the blows of the Spaniards. There were between five and six hundred of the patriots. On a sudden and as if by a general impulse the unfortunate wretches threw themselves upon their knees raised their clasped hands and in heart-rending tones sued for mercy. ""_Cuartel! par el amor de Dios cuartel!_"" ""_Buen viage à los infiernos!_"" was the savage reply of the dragoons and heads and hands fell in all directions. ""Infernal villains!"" exclaimed Don Manuel overcome by his indignation at the barbarity of the soldiery. And hardly were the words spoken when by an incontrollable impulse he raised the pistols he still held in his hands and fired them at the dragoons; then hurrying to one of the mules he snatched another brace from the holsters attached to the saddle. ""_Por el amor de Dios! Por la santissima madre!_ Think of your mother think of the count of Elvira!"" implored Alonzo throwing his arms round his young master. ""Stand off!"" shouted the youth fiercely; ""or by the living God I shoot you on the spot sooner than let this inhuman butchery continue."" Pushing the servant violently from him he sprang forward and discharged his two other pistols. Two dragoons fell from their saddles. ""Holy virgin!"" exclaimed the old serving man ""he will be the ruin of himself of his family of all of us. But it is too late to back out. Take good aim Pedro Cosmo."" And the three men fired their carbines while Jago and the muleteers hastily following their example with their trabucos half a dozen of the Spaniards bit the dust. A short pause ensued. The shots from the thicket had come like a thunderbolt upon the inhuman dragoons and their victims. The latter stared for a few seconds wildly around them as if uncertain whence came the unexpected succour. Their indecision was put an end to by Jago. ""_Abajo con ellos!_"" shouted he in a voice of thunder. ""Down with the dogs!"" And at the word the Indians rousing from their apathy threw themselves upon the dead and wounded Spaniards wrested their weapons from them in spite of the murderous blows of the other dragoons and in their turn assumed the offensive. Don Manuel's blood was now thoroughly heated with the fight. Every shot that was fired at this elevation of ten thousand feet above the sea rolled and rattled its echoes round the hills in long-continued thunder and added to the din and excitement of the scene. ""Are you loaded?"" cried the young nobleman as he shot down the first man of a detachment which was advancing to attack the new foe in his ambush. Servants and muleteers followed his example five more saddles were emptied and immediately the Indians threw themselves upon the fallen regardless of wounds and seized their sabres and carbines. The fight grew more furious in proportion as the sides became more equal. ""Thanks be to God and to your Señoria our time is come!"" murmured Jago. And with the cry of ""Death to the Gachupins!"" he sprang from his cover and fell with a tiger's leap upon the dragoons. The latter began to lose ground; for while twenty patriots now well armed found them occupation in front hundreds of others attacked them on the flanks and in rear climbing upon the cruppers of the horses clasping the riders round the body and dragging them from the saddle. Even the wounded twined their bleeding and mutilated limbs round the horses' legs and made their sharp teeth meet in the very muscle of the brutes till the groans of pain of the latter were heard mingling with the cries of the combatants. It was a frightful group; the Indians were become incarnate fiends. The dragoons had no room to use their weapons; they could scarcely move; men and horses were intertwined with Indians who clung to them like so many anacondas. Hardly ten minutes had elapsed and there were not thirty men left on their horses. Don Manuel had beheld with horror this outbreak of Indian fury. Springing forward he shouted to the patriots in a loud voice to desist. ""Death to the traitor!"" cried the Spanish commandant who was still fighting desperately at the head of the remnant of his squadron. ""_Muera!_"" repeated he as he fired off his last pistol at Manuel. He missed him and had just raised his sabre to repair the badness of his aim when a blow from a club brought horse and rider to the ground. ""Hold your hands!"" cried the young nobleman. ""Hold and give quarter!"" ""_El tiempo de la mansedumbre se ha pasado!_"" muttered Jago and his Indians. ""The day of mercy is long gone by."" ""By the eternal God I will split the skull of the first who strikes another blow!"" shouted Manuel. But his endeavours to suspend the slaughter were fruitless. His voice was drowned amid the furious yells of the Indians. At that very moment the vesper bells from Cholula came sounding up the mountain and those of the various villages of the plain chimed in with an indescribably peaceful and soothing harmony. ""Ave Maria!"" exclaimed a hundred Indian voices. ""Ave Maria!"" repeated Metises and Zambos; and all friends and foes let their blood-dripping hands sink and bending their wild excited gaze upon the earth clasped and kissed the medals of the Virgin of Guadalupe which were hung round their necks and in tones of musical monotony began to pray--""Ave Maria audi nos peccadores!"" All heads were bowed all hands folded; and kneeling upon the corpses of the slain these raging foes implored in humble formula forgiveness for themselves and their erring fellow-creatures. The shades of evening had spread themselves over valley and plain; in the barranca it was already darkest night; but the mountains of the Sierra Madre still glowed in the red rays of the setting sun their snow-capped summits flaming aloft like gigantic beacons. At the same time multitudes of eagles and vultures rose upon the wing mingling their screams with the groans of the dying and the agonized cries of the wounded. Every circumstance seemed to unite to render the scene in the highest degree sublime and horrible. The bells ceased ringing and scarcely had the echoes of their last chime died away when the Indians arose from their devotional posture gazed at each other for a moment with lowering and significant glances and then without uttering a word sprang upon the few remaining dragoons with an eager rage and greed of blood that scarcely seemed human. In a few seconds not one of the Spaniards was left alive. To a man they had been stabbed and strangled by their inveterate and unappeasable foes. * * * * * The principal incident of the preceding chapter is we apprehend of peculiar dramatic merit and boldness of conception. A young nobleman whose predilections and prejudices are strongly enlisted on the side of the oppressors has the better feelings of his nature roused into action by the cruelties he sees inflicted on the oppressed and forgetful of selfish interests strikes boldly in on the weaker side. The moment of excitement over a reaction takes place the stronger perhaps on account of the cruel reprisals exercised by the uncivilized Indians and still more ferocious half-castes; and while the patriots are rifling the dead bodies of the dragoons and their chief is reading some papers he has found in the pocket of the Spanish commandant Don Manuel bitterly deplores the act of precipitation that has blasted all the hopes of his love and ambition. While the various actors in the scene are thus employed Jago's practised ear detects a faint murmur and rattle in the barranca occasioned by the approach of another squadron of cavalry under command of the Conde Carlos. The dragoons alarmed by the firing have left their horses below and slung their heavy boots over their shoulders in order to arrive more speedily to the assistance of their comrades. By a skilful disposition of his Indians the patriot captain surrounds the Spaniards before they emerge from the difficult road up the barranca and while they are panting and exhausted with the steep ascent. This is effected in spite of a desperate attempt of Don Manuel to warn them of their danger. At the moment however that they are to all appearance about to be exterminated by a volley from the patriots Jago cries out to hold and give quarter for that they are Creoles and friends. Count Carlos with a cry of ""Viva el Rey!"" rushes forward to charge the foe but his men hang back and resist all his efforts to make them advance. Jago gives him proofs of the destruction of the other squadron and offers him and his men their lives and honourable treatment as prisoners of war. These conditions the Conde is compelled to accept; but previously to doing so he demands whose word is plighted to him for their due fulfilment. Jago descends the rocky path and whispers a few words in his ear the effect of which is to make Carlos start back and salute the patriot captain with far more respect than a young aristocrat could have been expected to show to a mule-driver. Considering that neither Spain nor Mexico are very safe countries for Don Manuel after what has occurred Jago offers to have him put safely on board an English or American vessel; but the young man is too much agitated to decide upon any thing. Preparations are now made to leave the scene of the recent conflict previously to which however many of the dragoons join the ranks of the patriots. To this Count Carlos objects as contrary to the conditions. ""It is the men's own wish "" replied Jago in a jesting tone. ""We fight for liberty Conde and it were hard measure to refuse it to our new allies."" And smiling significantly he lifted up his voice and sang-- ""Amigos la libertad Nos llama a la lid Juremos por ella Morir como el Cid!"" ""Good God!"" exclaimed the count ""that voice! Pedrillo!"" Before Carlos has recovered from his surprise at recognising the voice of the masked cavalier who played so important a part in the earlier scenes of the book the patriots divide into three parties and set off in as many different directions singing in chorus the song which their leader had commenced. Carlos and Manuel find themselves separated alike from each other and from the mysterious and Protean patriot captain. We shall attach ourselves to the fortunes of Don Manuel and extract the chapter which records his night march and terminates this episode. CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD. ""Away away my steed and I Upon the pinions of the wind All human dwellings left behind; We sped like meteors through the sky When with its crackling sound the night Is chequer'd with the northern light."" _Mazeppa._ In the same wild and abrupt manner in which the song had commenced did it suddenly cease as the party entered the forest the intricacies and ravines of which it required all their attention to thread with safety. No more torches were left alight than were absolutely necessary to find the way over and along the dangerous fissures and precipices which met them at every turn. Here and there were still to be seen traces of the paths hewn in the rock by the unspeakable labour of Cortes' infatuated allies--paths by which that daring adventurer had brought his handful of men his horses and guns over the Sierra and which had recently conducted the Spanish major and his squadron to their less successful coup-de-main. Hours were consumed in clambering up and down this rough and dangerous ground and not a word was uttered by the patriots until they arrived in a valley at a considerable distance below the platform they had left. A shrill whistle was then heard followed by a wild howl resembling that of the caguar whereupon the party halted a short time and then again started off at a rapid pace. Their path now led through lofty woods and tangled thickets overgrown with a mantle of creeping plants so closely entwined and intricate that they might well have deterred the most daring hunter from attempting to force a passage. The stunted oaks and pines had been replaced by palm and tamarind trees the sharp cold had given way to a moderate degree of warmth. Over the adjacent ravines billows of mist were floating and from time to time were wafted towards the wanderers by a puff of the night breeze rendering the darkness that surrounded them yet more intense. Now and then Indians emerged with rapid but silent step from the clefts and passes of the mountain and joined the party; others left it and disappeared with the same noiseless dispatch. No voice was heard no command given; there was every appearance of the blindest obedience without any visible chief. Hitherto our young Don had given no sign of his existence. He had followed mechanically wherever he had been led over mountain and valley through ravine and forest until on a sudden the brilliant spectacle of fifty torches flaring along a rocky ridge and illuminating the depths of a fearful precipice roused him into life and consciousness. Before he had time to enquire where he was or whither they were taking him a whistle was heard and at the same moment he was seized by a pair of powerful arms and placed upon the shoulders of a gigantic Indian who tucked the young man's legs under his arms and trotted away with his burden as though it had been a feather. ""_Vigilancia!_"" suddenly exclaimed a voice and the party paused for an instant: in the silence the roar of a mountain torrent was heard ascending as it seemed from the very bowels of the earth. The climate which had been alternately cold and temperate as the march had lain over high ground or through ravines and hollows had now suddenly become of a tropical heat. ""Where are we?"" enquired Don Manuel of his bearer as the latter at last sat him down upon his feet. ""_Callad!_ Silence!"" replied the Indian pointing down into the depth below from which a shout was heard scarcely audible in the noise of the torrent. ""_Callad!_"" he repeated as he fixed his lasso dexterously under Don Manuel's arms and lifting him over a rock lowered him to a depth of thirty feet. Himself following by the like means he perched the young man upon his shoulders in the same unceremonious manner as before and began a rapid descent into the frightful barranca. ""_Vigilancia!_"" cried a voice. ""Half a foot's breadth and no more; the Virgin help those who require a whole one."" ""_Silencio!_"" commanded a second speaker. ""Caballitos for the Creoles; a good journey to the Gachupins."" The warning and the command had alike reference to an unhewn tree-trunk thrown across the gulf that was now to be traversed. The order had hardly been given when Manuel found himself transferred to the shoulders of a fresh Indian who without looking to the right or left trotted rather than walked over the perilous bridge. In the awful chasm beneath them the water chafed and roared concealed from view by the most luxuriant foliage and creeping plants. On the further side of the bridge several Indians were already standing. ""_Eres Criollo?_ Are you a Creole?"" said a rough voice in rear of Don Manuel and then the shaking of the tree-trunk gave notice that a second caballito with a man upon his back was accomplishing the dangerous passage. Again the question was put but this time the answer was scarcely out of the mouth of the unfortunate Spaniard when the exclamation of ""_Maldito Gachupin!_"" and an agonized cry of ""_Jesus Maria y José!_"" were accompanied by a heavy fall and rattle amongst the branches. Manuel who was now in safety on the farther side of the barranca gazed shudderingly after the unhappy wretch whose death scream rose shrill and wild from the depths of the abyss. Before he had time to utter a word he was again seized and carried along as rapidly and unceremoniously as if he had been a child of two years' old. A few more single shrieks were heard each more faint and distant until at last they ceased altogether. The heat of the _terra caliente_ which the party had recently entered began to change rapidly into the cold of the _tierra fria_ while a wreath of white fog round the summit of a neighbouring mountain indicated the approach of dawn. In the barrancas it was still dark night. Here and there appeared heaps of snow which became more numerous as the climbers ascended
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until at last the whole mountain was one field of ice. As the daylight increased a mass of snow-covered mountain appeared upon the left spreading out like a huge winding-sheet while to the right a still loftier peak caught the first beams of the morning sun. But the beams were pale and the tints grey; all around was mist and icy cold. ""_Por Dios!_"" exclaimed Don Manuel; ""Where is the Conde Carlos? Where are Alonzo Cosmo?"" ""Forward!"" commanded a voice. ""I ask where is the Conde Carlos?"" repeated the young nobleman who remarked to his horror that the party which had set out more than four hundred strong now consisted only of seventy Indians and twenty or thirty dragoons. He had been unconscious owing to the darkness and to his agitation of mind of the separation that had taken place upon the plateau. No answer was vouchsafed to his question. They had arrived at the edge of a deep precipice which stopped their further progress. ""Lassos!"" cried the same voice as before. One of the Indians fastened the end of his lasso round his own body gave the ring at the other extremity to a comrade and was lowered over the precipice. A second lasso was made fast to the ring of the first a third a fourth a fifth were added in like manner until the Indian had disappeared in the fog and it was only known by his shout when he had found a footing. Another Indian and another followed in the same way with as much safety and speed as if they had been so many cotton bales let down from the top floor of a warehouse. ""_Vuestra Señoria_ "" said one of the patriots to Don Manuel pointing to this new kind of ladder and making a sign to an Indian. The next moment the young nobleman also had vanished in the mist. Man followed man and the last who went down gave each of the five guides a cigar laid his finger on his lips and hastened after his companions. The descent thus strangely commenced was continued for some time without incident and the sun was just rising above the mountains when the patriot detachment came in sight of a moderately deep barranca along the side of which stood a _rancho_ or Indian village composed of doorless and windowless huts built of tree trunks and thatched with palm leaves. Each of the humble dwellings was surrounded by its cactus hedge enclosing an infinite variety of gorgeous tropical flowers which offered a striking contrast with the adjacent poverty and filth. From the elevation on which the patriots stood a chapel with snow-white walls buried amidst centenary cypresses was visible as also some other buildings of various sizes apparently belonging to an _hacienda_ or plantation. The party descended rapidly but cautiously towards the village headed by a young Creole who now for the first time during their march attracted Don Manuel's attention and under whose unbuttoned frock-coat were visible the blue uniform and white facings of the patriots and the insignia of a field-officer. The morning mass was just over and the village alive with Indians--men women and children--who crowded round the detachment with joyous welcome and vociferous greetings. In the midst of the bustle the sound of voices was suddenly heard approaching the village from the opposite side and presently the advanced guard of a corps of patriots came in sight. These were followed by several officers of distinguished appearance clothed in rich staff uniforms and amongst them the Conde Carlos. Then came the main body numbering about five hundred men all well armed and equipped. They were for the most part Indians Metises and Zambos from the southern provinces powerful well-built fellows who in spite of their long march came on with a light step and a proud glance. From time to time there was a shout of ""_Viva Vicénte Gueréro! Viva nuestro general!_"" Oddly enough as it struck Don Manuel our old acquaintance Captain Jago was walking among the brilliant train of staff-officers still attired in his shabby _manga_ although he had found means to renew the covering of his feet. ""Ah! Don Manuel!"" cried he with a somewhat malicious smile and fixing his eyes on the now tattered shoes and garb of the young cavalier ""You were doubtless not over well-pleased with your last night's march; but we could not help it and your friend the Count Carlos has fared no better. I trust however that my commands were obeyed and that Major Galeana took all possible care of you?"" ""Major Galeana take care of me!"" repeated the youth indignantly his blood again getting up at the remembrance of the rough handling he had experienced. ""My orders have been obeyed I hope "" resumed Jago. ""Thy orders obeyed knave!"" interupted Don Manuel bitterly without letting Jago finish his phrase. ""Mexico calls me Vicénte Gueréro "" was the dry but dignified reply of the ex-arriero; ""and henceforward I must beg of your young señoria to address me by that name."" And with these words the former muleteer now suddenly transformed into one of Mexico's most distinguished generals turned his back upon the astonished Don Manuel amidst the loud laughter of the bystanders. ""Let the men get their breakfast at once "" continued Gueréro to Major Galeana ""so that they may have at least three hours' siesta. Be kind enough to give me a cigar "" he added to another of his officers. ""Ha! there are _tortillas_ "" laughed he stepping up to a group of Indian women who were busied baking the much-esteemed maize cakes and had crept towards him in order to kiss the hem of his garment. ""They are good Matta "" said he with a smile to one of the girls taking a tortilla from the pan stretching out his hand for the Chili pepper and sprinkling the cake with the pungent condiment. ""One more Matta. So--try them gentlemen you will find them excellent."" The aides-de-camp and generals hastened to follow the example of their chief. ""Apropos Major Galeana "" resumed the latter; ""two Spaniards were caught trying to escape. Let them be strung up. Señor Conde "" he continued turning to his prisoner Carlos ""you are our guest I hope and your friend also if he will so far condescend. But where is he? Where is Don Manuel?"" Common and reckless as Gueréro's manner undoubtedly was there was nevertheless a something about him highly attractive; the more so as the most superficial observer could easily discern that his abruptness was the result not of a consciousness of great power but of a wish to make himself popular with his followers. During the last of the pauses occasioned in his desultory discourse by his attacks upon the maize cakes an officer came up and made a report which seemed strongly to interest the general. ""The devil!"" cried he. ""The Léperos on the heights of Ajotla say you? Let us have a look at them."" And so saying he started off at a pace with which not one of his followers was able to keep up and in a very few minutes had ascended an eminence commanding a distant view of the road from Puebla de los Angeles to the capital while in the still remoter distance beyond the lake of Chalco lay the city of Mexico itself. From that point a strange sight presented itself. The whole of the wretched class of people called Léperos the Lazzaroni of New Spain had evacuated the city and suburbs and with their wives and children had taken up their station upon the Ajotla road their legions extending as far as the chain of volcanic hills which on that side of the great Mexican valley serve as outposts to the Tenochtitlan range. ""Madre de Dios!"" cried Gueréro to his officers as they came up. ""Now for three thousand muskets instead of five hundred and Mexico would be ours."" ""_No sé_ "" replied an old brigadier-general ""I do not know that."" ""_Io lo sé_ "" said Vicénte Gueréro ""_I_ know it; but as things now are it certainly is impossible. They have two regiments of infantry only Spanish infantry to be sure but with the best colonel in the service; and five militia regiments. Yet give me three thousand muskets and Mexico should be ours. The Léperos are waiting for us."" He paused for a moment and seemed to reflect. ""Pshaw!"" added he to his officers ""it cannot be done Señores! But _paciencia!_ before we are ten years older Mexico shall be free."" And without vouchsafing another glance either to the city or the Léperos this remarkable man turned away in the direction of the Hacienda. BRITISH HISTORY DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.[39] No effort of genius or industry can make the history of England during the eighteenth century equal in interest to that of either the seventeenth or nineteenth centuries. By the eighteenth century is meant the period of it ending in 1792: the subsequent eight years begin a new era--the era of Revolutions--which properly belongs to the nineteenth. It was essentially a period of repose. Placed midway between the great religious effort which commencing in the middle of the sixteenth was not closed in the British Islands till the end of the seventeenth century and the not less vehement political struggle which began in the world with the French or perhaps the American Revolution and is still in uninterrupted activity it exhibits a resting-place between the two great schisms which have distracted and distinguished modern times. It wants the ardent zeal intrepid spirit and enthusiastic devotion of the former epoch not less than the warm aspirations fierce contests and extravagant expectations of the latter. Passion had exhausted itself; energy was worn out by exertion; enthusiasm damped by disappointment. We no longer see men nobly sacrificing themselves for what they deemed the public good; the generous had ceased to obliterate the selfish passions; good sense was the characteristic of the period; a desire for repose its leading principle; selfishness its ruling motive. It is ever so with men when vehement passions are not awakened and the ardour of visionary pursuit has not obliterated the desire for immediate gratification. But if the eighteenth century can never rival the eras of the Reformation and the French Revolution in heart-stirring events animated narrative picturesque description generous devotion and sanguinary ambition it is perhaps superior to either in the lessons of political wisdom with which it is fraught. It is so because it exhibits on a great scale and for a long period the _results_ of those changes which had been the subject of that vehement struggle in the two preceding centuries and enables us to appreciate by actual experience the benefits and evils of those great alterations in civil and religious institutions which after so long and severe a contest had at length come to be thoroughly established. The survey is in some respects disheartening but it is instructive; if it dispels many theories and blights much anticipation it confirms many truths and has established some principles which will probably never again be questioned. We are not aware that the history of the eighteenth century has ever yet been written in this spirit. It is understood now to be in the hands of learning and genius; let us hope that equanimity and impartial judgment will preside as much as these brilliant qualities in the completion of the great undertaking. The great passion of the sixteenth century was for religious emancipation. The real evil which it was the object of the Reformation to shake off was the despotism of the Romish priesthood: the freedom for which the Reformers contended was the freedom of the human soul. The immediate object the exciting cause indeed of Luther's movements was the overthrow of the corrupt sale of indulgences which in the time of Leo X. had brought such scandal on the Church of Rome; but religious freedom was the general and durable passion of the Reformation. It was the constrained uniformity of worship the compulsory unity of belief the slavish submission to authority in the dearest concerns of existence which was the real evil that was complained of. This want so natural to an age of mental activity so indispensable to one of advancing freedom the satisfaction of which is as necessary as vital air to one of general intelligence distinctly appeared in the forms of worship which the Reformers generally established when they had thrown off the authority of the Roman pontiff. The Romish liturgies touching admirable and catholic as great part of them are were in general abolished; and in their stead extempore prayers often of portentous length were used to give each individual minister an opportunity of introducing in every part of the sacred proceeding his peculiar tenets. The sermon for a similar reason became the longest and most important part of the service. Every one knows how strongly the same lines of distinction still characterize the ultra-Reformers who contend for the Calvinistic tenets and Presbyterian form of worship and those more moderate partizans of the Reformation who have embraced the less violent schism of the Church of England. Political equality was and still is the grand aspiration of the nineteenth century. What the ardent multitudes who embraced the principles of the French Revolution desired was equality of privilege and universal participation in power. They saw the injustice and cruelty of their former oppressors they felt how galling their chains had been and they flattered themselves that if they could once get possession of the reins of power they had suffered too severely from their abuse to be in any danger of being led astray in the use they made of them. Abolition of rank and privilege the opening of all careers to all and the admission of all into the equal enjoyment of power by means of a government resting on universal suffrage was the general object of ambition and has been established for a brief period in France Spain Portugal and Piedmont; more durably in North and South America. What the results of this system of government are to be is the great problem which is in the course of solution in the nineteenth century; but be these results fortunate or unfortunate it is this which constitutes the characteristic of the period and will form the object of close and anxious attention to historians in future times. It was a principle and basis of government wholly new in human affairs. No previous republic either in ancient or modern times had exhibited any approach to it. The seclusion of the great body of the working class in all the states of antiquity from any share either in municipal or social powers by reason of the generality of slavery--the arrangement of men in trades and crafts through whose heads all their powers were exercised in the free cities of Italy and Flanders in modern times and in general in all the European burghs necessarily rendered the basis of government in all former commonwealths essentially different. A democratic valley may have existed in Uri or Underwalden where all the citizens were equally rich in fortune and nearly equally poor in intelligence; but the example of a great community resting on universal suffrage and a simple majority of votes began with the year 1789. Although the proper democratic spirit existed in great strength in many of the leaders of the Great Rebellion and its extravagances generally affected the army and some of the powerful leaders of that convulsion yet extension of political power was not the object of the _national_ will. This is decisively proved by the fact that when they gained the power the people made no attempt in any material respect to alter the public institutions. Cromwell doubtless was a military usurper; but a military usurper is only the head of a warlike republic and he is constrained to obey the wishes of the soldiers who have elevated him to power. Neither he nor the Long Parliament made any important alterations on the lasting structure of government though for the time they totally altered its practice. The law was administered on the old precedents during the whole Protectorate. The estates of the malignants were put under sequestration and many of the church lands were confiscated but no great alteration in the foundations of government took place. Power when the military oppression was removed immediately returned to its former seats. The parliaments summoned by Cromwell proved so refractory that they were in general dissolved after having sat a few days; juries throughout his reign were so hostile to his government that they acquitted nearly all the state offenders brought before them; and legal prosecutions fell into disuse. Every thing was done by military force; but it never occurred to him to turn up the soil so as to bring up fresh elements into action:--he never thought of summoning a parliament resting on universal suffrage or establishing a revolutionary tribunal the jurors of which were nominated by that democratic assembly. So as the victorious party were allowed to chant hymns as they pleased and hear long sermons replete with any absurdity and indulge in the freedom of the pulpit they cared nothing for that of the press or altering the structure of government. When Charles II. was recalled by Monk he had only to issue writs to the counties and boroughs which had returned the Long Parliament to obtain the most thoroughly loyal commons which ever sat in England. Although the change of government in 1688 is usually called ""the Revolution "" and although it certainly was a most decisive overthrow so far as the reigning family was concerned yet it was by no means a revolution in the sense in which we now understand the word. It made no change in the basis of power in the state though it altered the dynasty which sat on the throne and for seventy years fixed the reign of power in the hands of the Whig party who had been most instrumental in placing William and Mary on it. But the structure of Government remained unchanged; or rather it was changed only to be rendered more stable and powerful. We owe to the Revolution many of our greatest blessings; but not the least of these has been the removal of the causes of weakness which had so often before in English history proved fatal to the throne. It gave us a national debt a standing army and a stable foreign policy. The sum annually raised by William in taxes within five years after he obtained the throne was triple what had been so much the subject of complaint in the time of Charles I.; but the effect of this was to give us a firm government and steady policy. De Witt had said in the disgraceful days of the alliance of Charles II. with France that the changes of English policy had now become so frequent that no man could rely on any system being continued steadily for two years together. The continental interests and connexions of William and subsequently of the Hanover family gave us a durable system of foreign policy and imprinted for an hundred and forty years that steadiness in our councils without which neither individuals nor nations ever attained either lasting fame or greatness. Nor was it the least blessing consequent upon such a change of external policy and of the wars which it necessarily induced that it gave Government the lasting support of a standing army and thus prevented that ruinous prostration of the executive before the burst of popular passion which had so often induced the most dreadful disorders in English history. After 1688 the standing army though inconsiderable compared with what it has since become was always respectable and adequate as the result of the rebellions in 1715 and 1745 demonstrated to the defence of Government against the most serious domestic dangers. That of itself was an incalculable blessing and cheaply purchased by the national debt and all the bloodshed of our foreign wars. Had Charles I. possessed five thousand guards he would at once have crushed the great Rebellion; and the woful oppression of the Long Parliament which during the eleven years that it sat extorted eighty millions equal to two hundred millions at this time from an impoverished and bleeding nation would have been prevented. Englishmen are not accustomed to pride themselves upon the external successes and military triumphs of the eighteenth century; and they have been so eclipsed by those of the Revolutionary war that they are now in a great measure thrown into the shade. Yet nothing is more certain than that it is in external success and warlike glory that during the seventy years which immediately succeeded the Revolution we must look for the chief rewards and best vindication of that convulsion. England then took its appropriate place as the head of the Protestant faith the bulwark of the liberties of Europe. The ambition of the House of Bourbon which so nearly proved fatal to them in the person of Louis XIV. became the lasting object of their apprehension and resistance. The heroic steadiness of William the consummate genius of Marlborough the ardent spirit of Chatham won for us the glories of the War of the Succession and of the Seven Years. Though deeply checkered especially in the American war with disaster the eighteenth century was upon the whole one of external glory and national advancement. To their honour be it spoken the Whigs at that period were the party who had the national glory and success at heart and made the greatest efforts both on the theatre of arms and of diplomacy to promote it. The Tories were lukewarm or indifferent to national glory averse to foreign alliances and often willing to purchase peace by the abandonment of the chief advantages which war had purchased. During the Revolutionary war the case was just the reverse--the parties mutually changed places. The Tories were the national and patriotic the Whigs the grumbling and discontented party. Both parties in both periods were in reality actuated perhaps unconsciously by their party interests--the Whigs were patriotic and national the Tories backward and lukewarm when the Whigs were in power and derived lustre from foreign success; the Tories were patriotic and national when they held the reins of government and the opposite vices had passed over to their antagonists. But if from the external policy and foreign triumphs of the Whigs during the first sixty years of the eighteenth century we turn to the domestic government which they established and the social ameliorations which they introduced we shall see much less reason to congratulate ourselves on the benefits gained by the Revolution. It is here that the great moral and political lesson of the eighteenth century is to be found; this it is which it behoves our historians to tell; this it is which they have left untold. The long possession of power after the accession of William and Mary by the Whig party which continued uninterrupted for seventy years and the want of any philosophical history of the period since they were dispossessed of office have prevented the truth from being boldly told or even generally known in this country. It is much more generally appreciated however by continental writers and we may rest assured the eyes of future generations will be steadily fixed on it. The danger is that it will throw discredit on the cause both of civil and religious freedom in the eyes of future generations in the world. Let us in the first instance boldly and without seeking to disguise the truth examine what are the religious and civil evils which have attracted the attention of mankind in Great Britain during the eighteenth century and then enquire whether they are the necessary result of the Reformation and the Revolution or have arisen from causes foreign to that of religious and civil freedom--in a word from the usual intermixture of human selfishness and iniquity with those great convulsions. The two great evils which have disfigured the reformed church in the British islands since its final establishment at the Revolution have been the endless multiplication and unceasing rancour of sects and the palpable outgrowth of the population beyond the possibility of their gratuitous instruction in religious truth by means of the national church. The three great evils which have been felt in the political and social world in England during the eighteenth century are the prodigious and in general irresistible power of an oligarchy; the unbounded parliamentary and official corruption by which their influence has been upheld; and the unprecedented spread of pauperism through the working classes of society. In these days the reality of those evils will probably not be disputed in any quarter; when we have seen the latter lead to the Reform Bill and the great organic change of 1832 as well as keep the nation and all serious thinkers in it in a state of constant anxiety; and the former rend the national church in Scotland asunder; threaten the most serious religious divisions in England and in both countries permit the growth of a huge body of practical heathens in the midst of a Christian land. Were these evils the necessary and inevitable result of the Reformation and the Revolution; or have they arisen from causes foreign to these changes and which in future times may be detached from them? The Roman Catholic writers on the Continent all maintain the former opinion and consider them as the necessary effect and just punishment of the great schism from the church; which by a natural consequence ended in civil convulsion public immorality and social distress. The English writers have hitherto rather avoided than grappled with the subject; they have rather denied the existence of the evils than sought to account for them. Let us consider to what cause these unquestionable evils of the eighteenth century are really to be ascribed. They know little of the human heart who expect that in an age and country where religion _is at all thought of_ sects and religious differences will not prevail. As well might you expect that in a free community political parties are to be unknown. Truth indeed is one and the same in all ages; but so also is the light of the sun; yet in how many different hues and under how many different appearances does it manifest itself in the world? In the smoky city and on the clear mountain; on the sandy desert and in the stagnant marsh; radiant with the warmth of July or faintly piercing the gloom of December. So various are the capacities feelings emotions and dispositions of men that on any subject which really interests them diversity of opinion is as inevitable as difference in their countenances stature character fortune and state in the world. Hence it was that our Saviour said he came to bring not peace on earth but a sword--to divide the father from the son to array the mother against the daughter. It will be so to the end of the world. Unity of opinion on political subjects seems to prevail under Asiatic despotism; in religious under the European papacy--but nowhere else. The conclusion to be drawn from the absence of all theological disputes in a community is not that all think alike on religion but that none think at all. But although no rational man who knows the human heart will ever express a wish to see entire religious unity prevail in a state yet there can be no question that the prodigious multiplication of sects in Britain which strikes foreigners with such astonishment is mainly to be ascribed as well as the immense mass of civilized heathenism which through the whole of the eighteenth century was growing up in the island to the iniquitous confiscation of the property of the church which took place at the Reformation. It is well known that the proportion of the tithes of England which belongs to lay impropriators is more considerable than that which is still in the hands of the church; and if to them is added the abbey and monastery lands they would by this time have amounted to a very large annual sum probably not less than six or seven millions a-year. In Scotland it is well known the church lands at the Reformation were about a third of the whole landed property. They would now therefore have produced £1 700 000 a-year as the entire rental is somewhat above five millions. What a noble fund here existed formed and set apart by the piety and charity of former ages for the service of the altar and of the poor--two causes which God hath joined and no man should put asunder! What incalculable good would it have done if it had been preserved sacred for its proper destination--sacred from the corruptions mummery and despotism of the Romish church but preserved inviolate for the support of religion the relief of suffering the spread of education! What is it which blights and paralyses all the efforts now made whether by individuals voluntary associations or the state for the attainment of those truly godlike objects? Is it not ever one thing--the practical impossibility of finding the requisite funds to support the institutions necessary to grapple with the evils on a scale at all commensurate to their magnitude? The Established Church could not spread for want of funds to erect and endow churches; meanwhile the population in the manufacturing districts and great towns was rapidly increasing and in consequence part of the people took refuge in the divisions of dissent part in the oblivion of practical heathenism. Thence the multiplication of sects the spread of pauperism the growth of civilized heathenism in the state. The poor-laws dated from the dissolution of the monasteries; the forty-second of Elizabeth stands a durable record of the real origin of that burdensome tax. It was the appropriation of the funds of religion and charity to the gratification of secular rapacity which has been the cause of the chief religious and social evils under which Great Britain has ever since laboured; and it is it which still presents an invincible obstacle to all the efforts which are made for their removal. But the confiscation of the church lands and tithes to the use of the temporal nobility was not a necessary part of the Reformation any more than the confiscation of the estates of the church and the emigrants was a necessary step in the progress of freedom in France. In both cases the iniquitous spoliation was the result of human wickedness mingling with the current and taking advantage of the generous effort for religious or civil emancipation on the part of the many to render it the means of achieving individual robbery for behoof of the few. The Reformation might have been established in the utmost purity in Great Britain without one shilling being diverted from the service of the church or the maintenance of the poor and with the preservation of a fund large enough to have provided for the permanent support of the unfortunate and the progressive extension of the Established Church in proportion to the increase and wants of the inhabitants. In like manner the Revolution might have been conducted to a successful and probably bloodless termination in France without the unutterable present misery and hopeless ultimate prostration of religion and freedom which resulted from the confiscations of the Convention and the division of all the land in the kingdom among the peasants. In neither case are we justified in stigmatizing the cause of freedom on account of the dreadful excesses which were committed by the selfish who joined in its support; but in both we must acknowledge the impartial justice of Providence which has made the iniquity of men work out their own appropriate and well-deserved punishments and has made it to descend to the third and fourth generations from those who committed or permitted the deeds of injustice. The power of the oligarchy which resulted from the Revolution of 1688 and the unbounded corruption by which for seventy years afterwards their power was maintained has been less the subject of observation or censure by subsequent writers for the very obvious reason that the popular party who had gained the victory at the Revolution were during all that period in power and they have been in no hurry to expose or decry these degrading but to them most profitable abuses. It is probable that they never would have been brought to light at all but would have quietly and irrevocably sapped the foundations of the British character and of British greatness had it not been that fortunately for the country the incubus of corrupting Whig aristocracy was thrown off by George III. and Lord Bute in 1761 and cast down by the same monarch and Mr Pitt in 1784; and in their rage and disappointment they exposed when practised by their opponents the well-known and to them long profitable abuses by which the government since the Revolution had been carried on. It is the revelations on this subject whi
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h have recently issued from the press which have cast so broad and to the philosophic historian so important a light on the history of the first two-thirds of the eighteenth century; and among them the letters and memoirs of Horace Walpole occupy a distinguished place. Certainly it was far from the intention of that able and witty annalist to illustrate the unbounded abuses so long practised by Sir Robert Walpole and the Whigs who preceded him nor the vast blessings conferred upon the country by George III. and Lord Bute who first broke through the degrading spell. We have heard little of this view of the subject from the able and learned Whigs who have reviewed his works. Yet it lies on the very surface of things and little need be said and still less learned to show that it is there that the turning-point and great political moral of the history of England during the eighteenth century is to be found. The truth on this subject could not so long have been kept out of view had it not been that till very recently no historian at all worthy of the name has approached the subject of English history during the eighteenth century. The immortal work of Hume as all the world knows comes down only to the Revolution of 1688; and of the subsequent period down to that when his history was written in 1760 he has told us only that the monopoly of offices places and opinions by the dominant Whig party had been so close and uninterrupted that it had well-nigh rendered it impossible to arrive at the truth on the subject. Smollett whose continuation of Hume is to be seen in every bookseller's window beside its great predecessor is wholly unworthy of the honourable place which chance and the neglect of others have hitherto assigned it. Admirable as a novelist--at least as that character was understood in those days--graphic entertaining humourous--Smollett had none of the qualities necessary for a historian. He was neither a soldier nor an orator a poet nor a philosopher. The campaigns of Marlborough the eloquence of Chatham were alike lost upon him. He was neither warmed by the victory of Blenheim nor the death of Wolfe: the adventures of Charles Edward and the disasters of Saratoga were narrated with the same imperturbable phlegm. As to philosophic views of the progress of society or the social and political effects of the Revolution of 1688 and the Reformation the thing was out of the question: it neither belonged to his age nor character to dream of any thing of the kind. He was in his history at least a mere bookseller's hack who compiled a very dull and uninteresting work from the information scanty during his period which the _Annual Register_ and _Parliamentary History_ afforded. If a greater annalist than he do not arise to do justice to his merits the fame even of Marlborough will never descend at least in its full proportions to future generations. It is deeply to be regretted that Sir James Mackintosh did not complete his long-cherished design of continuing Hume's history. No man since Hume's time possessed so many qualifications for the undertaking. To an incomparable talent for depicting character and a luminous philosophic mind he joined great erudition extensive knowledge and a practical acquaintance both with statesmen and ordinary life. Though he was a party man and had early taken in his _Vindiciæ Gallicæ_ a decided part against Burke in apology of the French Revolution yet he possessed great candour of mind and had magnanimity enough in maturer years to admit that he had been far led astray in early life by the inexperience and ardour of youth. When a man possesses this equanimity and justice of mind it is wholly immaterial to what political party he belongs and with what preconceived opinions he undertakes the task of narrating events. Truth will shine out in every page--justice will preside over every decision--facts will inevitably lead to the correct conclusion. It is perverted genius skilful partisanship imagination brought to the aid of party and learning dedicated to the support of delusion which is really to be dreaded. Mackintosh's mind was essentially philosophical: this appears in every page of his Life by his sons--one of the most interesting pieces of biography in the English language. His characters of statesmen orators and poets in England during the eighteenth century chiefly written at Bombay or during the voyage home are perhaps unparalleled in our language for justice and felicity. They show how richly stored his mind was; how correctly his taste had been formed on the best models; how vast a stock of images comparisons and associations he brought to bear on the events and characters which he passed in survey. He had not a poetical mind and was destitute of a pictorial eye. His history therefore never would have been adorned by those moving scenes those graphic pictures which are the life and soul of the highest style of history and which have given immortality to the writings of Livy Sallust and Tacitus. But the eighteenth century though by no means destitute of events calling for such imaginative powers has perhaps less of them than any equal period in English history. What is mainly required for it is a philosophic mind to appreciate the effects of the great convulsions of the preceding century and an impartial judgment to discern the causes which were preparing the still more terrible catastrophe of the nineteenth. Mackintosh possessed these great and valuable qualities in a very high degree; and his history if he had succeeded in completing it would unquestionably have taken its place with those of Hume Robertson and Gibbon. The thing really to be lamented is that the time which Providence allotted to him and which was amply sufficient for the completion even of so great an undertaking was wasted amidst the attractions and frivolity of high London society; and that more even than the heroic Swede in captivity he was ""Condemn'd a needy suppliant to wait While ladies interpose and slaves debate."" Lord Mahon has conferred essential obligations on English history. He has brought to the annals of the British empire during the eighteenth century qualities nearly the reverse of those of Mackintosh but which are nevertheless not less essential than those of the Scotch philosopher for a right appreciation and correct delineation of the period. He is a scholar a gentleman and a man of the world. Possessed of great knowledge of his subject vigorous application and a classical turn of expression he has united to these qualities those in historical writers still rarer of a practical acquaintance with statesmen both in Parliament and private life and a thorough knowledge of the leading public characters both military literary and dignified of his own time. Every one must see what valuable qualities these are for a correct appreciation and faithful narrative of the history of England during the eighteenth century--great part of which was not distinguished by any enthusiasm or impulse in the public mind and during which the springs of events were to be found rather in the intrigues of the court the coteries of the nobility or the cabals of Parliament than in any great movements of the people or mighty heaves of the human mind. In truth no one but a person moving in the sphere and possessed of the connexions which Lord Mahon enjoys could either obtain the knowledge or understand the real springs of events during a great part of the period he has embraced in his work. But still the history of the eighteenth century remains to be written. Lord Mahon has remarkable talents as a biographer; his account of the Rebellion in 1745 and subsequent adventures of Charles Edward is not surpassed in interest by any thing in the English language and is justly referred to by Sismondi in his _History of France_ as by far the best account of that interesting episode in British history. But his _History of England_ are ""Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire "" rather than history itself. We want in his pages the general views drawn from particular facts the conclusions applicable to all ages which mark the philosophic historian. His volumes will always occupy a distinguished place in English literature and will prove of essential service to every succeeding writer who may undertake to treat of the period which they embrace; but the mantle of Hume is destined to fall on other shoulders. Walpole's correspondence and memoirs in many respects are highly valuable and will always be referred to as throwing much important light on the parliamentary and court transactions of the middle of the eighteenth century. They develope much that was known to no other man at least to no other with whose writings we are yet acquainted who has left any record of his information to future times. In this respect his memoirs are invaluable. It is astonishing how much information there is afloat in the higher political circles in every age which is generally known at the time to all who frequent them which on that very account perishes altogether with that generation. No one thinks of committing it to paper any more than they do the stages to London or the names of the months in the year or the usual forms of society--because every one knows them. Thus the information often of essential value to future historians perishes like the beauty of the women which has adorned the age unless some garrulous gossip in his correspondence or memoirs has been trifling enough for his age and wise enough for the next to commit it to paper. Horace Walpole was that garrulous gossip. His correspondence with Sir H. Mann embracing altogether a period of twenty years which had previously been published and his _Memoirs of the Reign of George III._ which have recently appeared contain an account tinged no doubt by strong party feelings but still an account of a very long and important period of English history; and abound not only in curious facts interesting to the antiquary or the biographer but contain many important revelations of essential value to the national or general historian of the period. The praise of these volumes however must be taken with much alloy. Horace Walpole was a man of the world and a courtier; he had quick natural parts and much acquired discernment. He was a good scholar was fond of antiquities and a passionate admirer of curiosities which he collected with indefatigable industry and no small success from every quarter. He had lived too long in the political and the great world not to have learned its selfishness and appreciated its heartlessness; not to have become acquainted with many political secrets and seen enough of political baseness. He had considerable powers of observation and occasionally makes a profound remark especially on the selfish tendencies and the secret springs of the human heart. His characters are all drawn from the life; and often with great power both of observation and expression. But he had not sufficient steadiness of thought or purpose to achieve any thing considerable or draw any important conclusions even from the multifarious information of which he was master or the powers of observation which he possessed. There was nothing grand or generous in his composition. No elevated thoughts no lofty aspirations no patriotic resolves are visible in his writings. Political _insouciance_ was his prevailing habitude of mind; an invincible tendency to ""_laissez aller_"" the basis of his character. But he did not lie by and observe events like Metternich and Talleyrand to become embued with their tendency and ultimately gain the mastery of them; he let them take their course and in reality cared very little for the result. He was an epicurean not a stoic in politics. His character approaches very nearly to that which common report has assigned to Lord Melbourne. He had strong party attachments and still stronger party antipathies; he seems to have devoutly swallowed the creed so common to party men of every age that all those on his side were noble and virtuous and all those against him base and selfish. He had much of the wit of Erasmus but he had also a full share of his aversion to martyrdom. But we shall find abundance of patriotic declamation cutting invective and querulous complaint. The misfortune is that the declamation is always against the triumph of the Tories; the invective against the astuteness of Lord Bute; the complaint against the disunion of the Whig leaders or the Tory influences at court. There is class of readers considerable among men numerous among women in whom the appetite for scandal is so strong that it altogether overleaps the bounds of time and faction and seizes with nearly as much avidity on the private gossip of the past as of the present age. With such persons the next best thing to discovering a _faux pas_ among their acquaintances is to hear of it among their grandmothers; the greatest comfort next to laying bare political baseness in their rulers is to discover it in the government which ruled their fathers. We confess we do not belong to this class. We have little taste for scandal either in the male or female great world. We see so much of selfishness envy hatred malice and all uncharitableness around us that their details have not only entirely lost the charm of novelty but become absolutely sickening by repetition. To such readers the first volume of Wraxall's Memoirs must be a precious morsel. We never doubted that the anecdotes he told were in the main true from the moment we saw the _Quarterly_ and _Edinburgh Reviews_ combined in running him down. Nothing but truth could have produced so portentous an alliance. They combined in saying that what he said was a libel. Doubtless they were right upon the principle that the greater the truth the greater the libel. To such readers we would strongly recommend the _Memoirs and Correspondence of Walpole_. They will find a mass of scandal adequate to satiate the most voracious appetite; evidence of general corruption sufficient to satisfy the most vehement political opponent. It is in the evidence which these volumes afford of the general corruption of Great Britain during the greater part of the eighteenth century that in our humble opinion the most valuable lesson of political wisdom is to be found which that period conveys. We rise from the long series of his amusing volumes with the firm conviction that in his days all parties were base and all statesmen in a certain sense corrupt. They absolutely render the common story credible that during the days of Sir R. Walpole when the members of Parliament were invited to dine with the prime-minister each found a L.500 bank-note under his napkin when he took it off his plate at dinner. At any rate the long and in many respects beneficent reign of that veteran statesman was maintained entirely by patronage and corruption. Horace Walpole himself tells us that it was commonly said at the accession of George III. in 1761 that the country was governed by two hundred noblemen who received more from the government than they gave to it. The influence of these two hundred noblemen in their respective counties or boroughs was maintained by the most unsparing use sometimes of actual bribery always of government patronage to secure the adherence of every political partisan even of the very lowest grade. With truth it might be said of England at that time as it was of France before the Revolution that ""no one was so great as to be beyond the hatred of a minister nor so little as to escape the notice of a comptroller of excise."" Every office in the state from the prime minister down to the humblest _employé_ in the post-office or customs was conferred to secure the fidelity of political supporters. Liberality to opponents the public good fair dealing the claims of long service to the country destitution charity noble descent patriotic conduct were alike scouted and by common consent banished from the consideration of public men. Political support was the one thing needful; and to secure it nothing was grudged without it nothing was to be got. Johnson's well-known definition of an exciseman shows the profound indignation which this universal and unsparing system of corruption excited among the few resolute and generous spirits which its long continuance had left in the country. We heard nothing of the evils of this system from the Whigs during the seventy years subsequent to the Revolution when it was practised by themselves; but we have heard enough of it from them since that time when the state machine they had erected has been worked by their opponents. The Emperor Nicholas said to the Marquis Custine with much bitterness and some truth--""I can understand a democracy where the popular voice is every thing and the magistrates implicitly obey its mandates. I can understand a despotism where the monarch's voice is every thing and the people merely obey his commands. But a constitutional monarchy where the people are mocked by a show of liberty which they do not possess and bribed into submission by corruption by which they are really degraded--that I do not understand and I hope in God never again to see it. I had enough of it in the government of Poland."" Amidst all the blessings of a limited and representative monarchy which no one who surveys the mighty empire of Great Britain can dispute there is it must be confessed some truth in this caustic remark. Walpole has told us of the astonishing extent to which corruption was carried in his day by Lord Bute and the Tories who got possession of the corrupting government in 1761 which the Whigs had been constructing since 1688. The untoward issue of the war which terminated in 1749 in the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle the disgraceful commencement of the Seven Years' War unjustly expiated by the blood of Byng gloriously redeemed by the genius of Chatham; the disasters of the American contest; the frequent defeats of the first years of the Revolutionary war afford decisive evidence how deeply this degrading and corrupting system had entered into the vitals of the nation during the eighteenth century. Every one knows that America was lost in consequence of the imbecility and selfish views of the commanders whom the corrupt system of government in Great Britain had raised to the head of affairs. On several occasions they might with a little energy have terminated the war with glory to themselves and their country. The disasters of Flanders in 1793 and 1794 were in a great measure owing to the same cause. During peace influential imbecility is constantly rising to the head of affairs and the consequences immediately appear on the first breaking out of hostilities. Nothing but the pressure and disasters of war can drive government out of the inveterate vice of purchasing parliamentary support by the promotion of incapable and improper persons. The Whigs since they were driven from the helm of affairs in 1761 have been constantly declaiming against this system which they themselves had introduced and matured during the preceding seventy years; and the clamour they raised at last became so violent that it brought about the great organic change of 1832. But no sooner were they again seated in power than the same system was not only pursued by them but extended: patronage was augmented in every possible way; a new machine for influence adapted to the time--that of commissions--was introduced and largely worked and promotions in every department were rigidly confined to political partisans. It has been a frequent subject of complaint against the Tory government both before the Revolution of 1832 and on their return to power in 1841 that they were too liberal to their opponents and forgetful of their friends in the dispensing of the public patronage; and we have only to take up the Red Book to see that this praise or imputation justly belongs to them. But no man alive ever heard of a Whig during the ten years they were in power being accused of giving any thing to a Tory. The saying which had passed into a proverb during that period that ""the Whigs could do with impunity many things to which the Tories could never set their faces "" proves how rapidly this degrading system of official corruption was again spreading during the Whig tenure of power in domestic government. The disasters of Affghanistan the shaking of our power in India the abortive first two years' hostilities with China show with what dreadful danger it was attended to our external power and even national existence. We have said that it is the decisive mark of a party writer to ascribe political and private vices to his opponents from which he represents his own side as exempt; and we have immediately afterwards said that the wide-spread corruption and constant promotion of influential imbecility which ever since 1688 has been the bane of Great Britain and the chief if not the sole cause of all the disasters we have undergone and of nine-tenths of the debts we have contracted is mainly to be ascribed to the Whigs who during the long period of seventy years immediately subsequent to the Revolution were exclusively in power and had the entire moulding of the constitution both in church and state in their hands. Having taken the mote out of our neighbour's eye we proceed to take the beam out of our own. We hasten to show that we do not ascribe greater political baseness to one party than another. We will not follow the example of Walpole who represents Chatham and all his Whig followers as patriotic angels; Bute and all his Tory supporters as selfish devils. We assume it as the basis of all just or rational historical discussion that though there may be a wide and most important difference in the beneficial or ruinous effects with which their measures are attended the real character the moral purity of the motives of men of opposite parties in the same age is much alike. There is indeed a wide difference in the virtue and public spirit of different ages and of men in the same community under different circumstances; but in the same age and under the same circumstances they are very like similar. The patriotism of Regulus and Fabricius was very different from that which followed the insurrection of the Gracchi; but Sylla and Marius Cæsar and Pompey differed if their real motives are considered very little from each other. The same result would probably have followed the triumphs of either. There is no such thing as all the sheep being on one side and all the goats on another in the same country at the same time. The proportion of good and bad men of generous and base motives among the Roundheads and Cavaliers was much the same. The cabal which was framing a government of despotic power for Charles II. was doubtless selfish and tyrannical; but Algernon Sidney and the whole patriots who opposed them except Lord Russell were quietly taking the whole time bribes from Louis XIV. Severity was doubtless exercised in the punishment of the leaders some of whom were noble and high-minded men of the Rye-House Plot; but that was only in retaliation of the still greater atrocities consequent on the fictitious Popish plots and the perjury of Titus Oates. The Revolution of 1688 was doubtless brought about as a whole by necessity and patriotic intentions; but Churchill proved a traitor to his benefactor and king and betrayed his trust to promote that revolution--a crime as deep as that for which Ney justly suffered in the gardens of the Luxembourg--and the blackness of which all the glories of Marlborough have not been able to efface. The government of Lord Bute and Lord North was doubtless mainly based on the influence of official or parliamentary patronage and the evils of that corruption clearly appeared in the disasters of the American war; but these Tory noblemen only carried on the system invented and brought to perfection during the seventy years that the Whigs had enjoyed a monopoly of power. It is a first principle says Sismondi in politics that all classes which have not constitutionally the means of resistance will be oppressed. There can be no doubt that this is true; and it is not less true that all power which is not systematically watched will become corrupt. It is these principles which explain the universal and wide-spread corruption which overran the country for a century after the Revolution; and they point to a conclusion of the very highest importance in political science. Direct or tyrannical power by means of the prerogative or the simple will of the sovereign having become impossible in consequence of the safeguards established by the Great Rebellion and the Revolution and the disposition to tyranny and abuse remaining the same from the corrupt tendency of the human heart the system of gaining a majority both in Parliament and in the constituencies by means of government influence and official corruption became the acknowledged and probably unavoidable basis of government. During the seventy years that the Whigs were in power they brought this system to perfection and extended its ramifications into the remotest corners of the kingdom. A majority of the House of Peers in the Whig interest amply provided with emoluments offices and dignities got possession of so many boroughs and counties that they secured a majority in the Commons also and got the entire command of government. The sovereigns on the throne--men of little capacity imperfectly acquainted with English unable from that cause even to preside at the meetings of their own cabinet and strongly opposed by an ardent and generous because disinterested party in the country--became mere puppets in their hands and rendered the crown nearly destitute of all real or independent weight in the kingdom. The natural check in a free country upon this corrupt system into which every constitutional monarchy has so strong a tendency to run is found in the vigorous opposition and incessant watchfulness of the people. It is this which has been so powerful a restraint upon the abuses of government during the last half century; and which has now become so strong that the common complaint is that in all important appointments at least the Tory ministry are forgetful of their friends and select the persons to be appointed from the ranks of their enemies. But this salutary check upon bad government did not exist during the first half of the eighteenth century; or rather it existed only to fan and augment the inclination already sufficiently strong to corrupt administration on the part of the Whig oligarchy who had got possession of the helm. The popular party were now in power; their leaders had the disposal of every thing and therefore not a whisper escaped their lips as to the degrading system which was so fast spreading in the country. The Tories who were in opposition were a discredited and defeated party. They had got into ugly company--they had the axe impending over them. The unsuccessful result of the rebellions of 1715 and 1745 had as is always the case not only greatly augmented the strength of the ruling government but it had rendered the Tories who were in great part and probably justly suspected of a leaning to the rebels to the last degree obnoxious to a large majority of the English people. Religious feeling combined with political antipathy and personal terror to produce this emotion. The Tories were associated in the popular mind with Jacobites and rebels; with Popish mummery and national antipathy; with the fires of Smithfield and the defeat of Prestonpans; with Scotch ascendency and revenge for the blood shed at Carlisle; with breechless Highlanders and Protestant confiscation. Thus the Tories as a popular party capable of exercising any effective control on the vices and corruptions of administration were practically extinct. Meanwhile the popular party in England steeped in corruption and gorged with the spoils of the state which the expensive system of government introduced with the Revolution had done so much to augment was effectually gagged and was enjoying its lucrative abuses in silence. This is the true explanation and real cause of the prodigious corruptions which pervaded every department of the state and--what was worse--every class in the country during the seventy years which followed the Revolution and which had wellnigh proved fatal to all patriotic spirit or public virtue in England. The two powers that of the government and the people usually opposing each other had come to draw in the same direction and they raised between them a spring-tide of corruption which wellnigh submerged the state. There can be no question that if this degrading system of government--the necessary and never-failing result of successful revolution--had continued for a generation longer it would have proved altogether fatal to Great Britain. But fortunately for the country George III. and his advisers from the very first moment of his accession to the throne set his face against the party which had introduced and matured this system of government; and their efforts though after a severe struggle were successful. This was the turning-point of English history; upon the success of that attempt the future character of the government and of the people mainly depended. It for the first time since the Revolution restored the government to its proper position--it rested it in its ultimate effects on property and put numbers in opposition. This is the only proper basis of good government--for without property ruling there can be no stability in administration; and without numbers watching there is no security against the multiplication of abuses. The corrupt system of Sir R. Walpole and the preceding administrations had arisen from the popular party--that is numbers--having become the ruling power and of course appropriated to themselves the whole spoils of the state. Instantly their watching became equal to nothing and every abuse was perpetrated without either exposure or complaint. There were no Wilkeses nor Juniuses to lash the vices of administration from 1688 to 1761 when the Whigs were in power; though that was beyond all question the most corrupt period of English history. But they appeared fast enough and did infinite good as soon as the Tories got possession of the public treasury. This is the true secret of the unbounded corruption of the government of the Convention and Directory in France--of the rapid return to a corrupt system during the ten years of Whig power which succeeded the downfall of the Tories in 1830 and of the establishment of Louis Philippe's dynasty now on the basis of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand offices which Tocqueville tells us are at the disposal of the ruling power at the Tuileries. It is not that the popular leaders are worse men or by nature more inclined to evil than their Conservative opponents but that when they are elevated into power by the result of a revolution or social convulsion the controlling has become the ruling power; its leaders and followers alike profit by corruption and mal-administration; and therefore there is no longer any possible restraint on abuse. It is not that the Conservative leaders are by nature better men or more inclined to eschew evil and do good than their popular opponents: but that as the basis of their government is property which necessarily is vested in comparatively few hands they are of course opposed and narrowly watched by numbers; and thus they are deterred from doing evil from the dread of its consequences recoiling upon themselves. And this observation explains the cause of the remark by Montesquieu which the experience of all ages has proved to be well founded ""that the most degrading despotisms recorded in history have been those which have immediately followed a successful revolution."" The clearest proof of how strongly and all but indelibly corruption and abuses had become engrained as it were on the practice of the English constitution is to be found in their long continuance and pernicious effects after the popular party had been thrown back to their proper duty of watching and checking the abuses of government and despite the prodigious efforts which were made and the vast talent which was exerted to expose and decry it. Walpole tells us enough of the corrupt means by which Lord Bute's authority was maintained and of the discreditable intrigues by which succeeding administrations were raised up and cast down. Wilkes and Junius exposed in cutting libels and with caustic severity their real or supposed continuance in a subsequent part of the reign of George III.; Burke and F
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x declaimed in a voice of thunder against the vices of Lord North's administration; and the disasters of that untoward period demonstrate but too clearly that the radical vice of parliamentary influence had almost banished talent and ability from the public service. Every one knows that commissions in the army and navy were bestowed on children as the mere price of support to government; and that when the little hirelings of corruption were sent forth into the public service they were utterly ignorant for the most part of even the most elementary parts of their duty. The same system continued during the early years of the Revolutionary war: and we all know with what disastrous effects it was then attended. But the Whig orators and patriots with all their acuteness and zeal forgot to tell us one thing which however it most behoved them to have told--and that is that it was themselves who had formed and habituated the nation to this degrading system. They have forgot to tell us that they had the framing of the constitution in church and state after the Revolution of 1688; that their power was for above a century entirely paramount; and that if the system of government had come during that time to rest on corrupt influences it was they and they alone who are responsible for the practical moulding of the constitution into such a form. No man who knows the human heart or has had any experience either of public characters in his own or historic shades in any former age will suppose that the Conservative party are more inclined in their hearts to pure and virtuous administration than their popular opponents; but nevertheless there can be no question that their government generally speaking is much more pure and its effects far more beneficial. Decisive proof of this exists in English history during the nineteenth century. It took nearly forty years of incessant effort on the part of the Whigs to eradicate the harvest of corruption which sprang up since 1761 from the seeds so profusely sown by their predecessors during the seventy years before that period; and unless they had been aided by the disasters of the American and the perilous chances of the Revolutionary contest it is probable all their efforts would have been unsuccessful. But when by the firmness of George III. and the talent of Mr Pitt the contest for political supremacy was at an end and government was rested on its true basis--that of property being the ruling and numbers the controlling power--when the Tory party freed from the influence of their old Jacobite recollections had rallied with sincere loyalty round the throne and the Whigs having lost the glittering prospect of a return to power and corruption had been driven to seek for support in the passions of the people what a marvellous display of public virtue and strength did the empire afford! Search the annals of the world you will find nothing superior few things equal to the patriotism public spirit and generous devotion of the latter period of the Revolutionary war. Its unequalled triumphs prove this; the biographies of its great men which are daily issuing from the press show from what a noble and elevated spirit these triumphs had sprung. They conquered because they were worthy to conquer. The burning patriotism of Nelson; the prophetic courage of Pitt; the spotless heart of Collingwood; the stern resolves of St Vincent; the steady judgment of Eldon; the moral firmness of Castlereagh; the unconquerable resolution of Wellington shine forth as the most conspicuous ornaments of this brilliant period. But these men great as they were did not stand alone. They were in prominent situations and have thence acquired immortal fame; but they were followed and supported by hundreds and thousands animated with the same spirit and possessing if called forth the same abilities. England at that period seemed to have reached that epoch in national life ""brief and speedily to perish "" as Tacitus says when the firmness of aristocracy had given invincible resolution and the energy of democracy inexhaustible vigour to the state; when we had the tenacity of nobles without their pride and the vehemence of the people without their licentiousness--""Si monumentum quæris circumspice."" The Emperor Nicholas therefore judged too hastily when he condemned all free countries and constitutional monarchies as necessarily the seats of corruption. It is no wonder he thought so from the experience he had of them and that which the greater part of such governments in his time had afforded. If we had judged of constitutional monarchy and the cause of freedom from the history of England from 1688 to 1793 we should have said the same. But the subsequent history of the British empire has revealed the real cause of these general and wide-spread abuses. It has shown that they arose not necessarily from the triumph of freedom but accidentally from government in consequence of that triumph having for a long period been established on a wrong basis. The contending powers whose opposition produces equilibrium had been brought to draw in the same direction and thence the spring-tide of corruption. A constitutional monarchy is not necessarily based on patronage; it is so only when the popular party are in power. That party having as a whole little or no interest in the property of the state can be retained in obedience and hindered from urging on the revolutionary movement only by being well supplied with offices. It is like a beast of prey which must be constantly gorged to be kept quiet. But the holders of property need no such degrading motive to keep them steady to the cause of order. They are retained there by their own private interest; by their deep stake in the maintenance of tranquillity; by their desire to transmit their estates unimpaired to their descendants. They are as certain in the general case of supporting the cause of order and its guardians at the helm of a state as the passengers in a ship are of standing by the pilot and crew who are to save them from the waves. The true the legitimate the honourable support of a Conservative government is to be found in that numerous class of men who have no favours to ask who would disdain to accept any gratification who adhere to the cause of order because it is that of peace of religion of themselves and of their children. It is a sense of the strength of these bonds a knowledge of the independent and disinterested support which they are certain of receiving which enables a Conservative administration so often to neglect its supporters in the distribution of the public patronage and seek for merit and worth in the ranks of its opponents. A democratic government can never do this because the passions and interests of the great bulk of its supporters are adverse to the preservation of property; and therefore they can be kept to their colours and hindered from clamouring for those measures which its leaders feel to be destructive only by the exclusive enjoyment and entire monopoly of all the patronage of the state. Without undervaluing then the effects of the Revolution of 1688; without discrediting the motives of many of the patriots who combined to shake off the oppressive tyranny and Romish bigotry of James II. it may safely be affirmed that it was George III. Lord Bute and Mr Pitt who put the British constitution upon its right and the only durable and beneficial basis and worked out the Revolution itself to its appropriate and beneficent effects. This is the great and important moral of English history during the eighteenth century; this is the conclusion forced on the mind by the perusal of _Walpole's Memoirs_ and his vehement abuse of Lord Bute and George III. for their dismissal of the Whigs from power. Doubtless they acted from selfish motives in doing so. The king wanted to regain his prerogative the minister to secure his power; but still it was on the part of both a step in the right direction. But for the resolute stand which they made against the Whig oligarchy--but for their wisdom in throwing themselves on the property of the nation to withstand its debasement a domineering party would have become omnipotent the people would have been irrecoverably plunged in the slough of corruption and the liberties of England lost for ever according to all former experience in the firmly established despotism consequent on a successful revolution. George III. said on the first decisive parliamentary division which gave a majority to the Tories in 1761--""At length then we have a king on the throne in England."" Posterity will add--at length the foundations of a free constitution were laid on a durable and practicable basis. NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. II. DRYDEN AND POPE. Specimens of the British Critics are unavoidably an irregular history of Criticism in this island; and such a history of our Criticism is unavoidably one too of our Poetry. The first name in our series is DRYDEN. See what we have written and you find half of our paper is on Shakspeare. POPE is our next worthy; and of three or four pillars on which his name as a critic rests one is his character of the Protagonist. Thus for this earlier part of a new Age the Presidents of Criticism are the two Kings of Verse. When the poet is a critic how shall we sever in him the two Arts? If his prose is explicit his verse is implicit criticism; and there was thus a reason for speaking somewhat especially of Dryden's character as a tragedian in drawing his character as a critic. But indeed the man the critic and the poet are one and must be characterized as a whole; only you may choose which aspect shall be principal. In studying his works you are struck throughout with a mind loosely disciplined in its great intellectual powers. In his critical writings principles hastily proposed from partial consideration are set up and forgotten. He intends largely but a thousand causes restrain and lame the execution. Milton in unsettled times maintained his inward tranquillity of soul--and ""dwelt apart."" Dryden in times oscillating indeed and various yet quieter and safer discloses private disturbance. His own bark appears to be borne on continually on a restless violent whirling and tossing stream. It never sleeps in brightness on its own calm and bright shadow. An unhappy biography weaves itself into the history of the inly dwelling Genius. His treatment of ""The Tempest"" shows that he wanted intelligence of highest passion and imagination. One powerful mind must have discernment of another; and he speaks best of Shakspeare when most generally. Then we might believe that he understood him in all the greatness of his might; but our belief cannot support itself among the many outrages offered by him to nature in a blind or wanton desecration of her holiest revealments to her inspired priest. In the sense stated above his transformation of ""The Tempest "" is an implicit criticism of ""The Tempest."" And assuredly there is no great rashness of theorizing in him who finds in this barbarous murder evidence to a lack of apprehension in Dryden for some part of the beauty which he swept away. It would be unjustifiable towards the man to believe that for the lowest legitimate end of a playwright--money--or for the lower because illegitimate end the popular breath of a day amongst a public of a day--he voluntarily ruined one of the most delicate amongst the beautiful creations with which the divine muse his own patroness had enlarged and adorned the bright world of mind--ruined it down to the depraved the degraded the debased the grovelling the vulgar taste of a corrupt court and town. ""The Inchanted Island"" is a dolorous document ungainsayable to the appreciation in particulars by that Dryden who could in generals laud Shakspeare so well--of that Shakspeare. And if by Dryden then by the age which he eminently led and for which he created and for which he--destroyed. ""The Inchanted Island "" and ""The State of Innocence"" come under no criticism. They are literary FACINORA. No rational account--no theory of them can be given. There they are--melancholy but instructive facts. They express the revolution of the national spirit on the upper degrees of the social scale. That which thirty twenty ten years before was impossible happens. The hewing in pieces of Shakspeare to throw him into the magical caldron to reproduce him not in youth but in dotage shows a death but not yet the consequent life. Stupendous and sweet Nature whom we possessed has vanished--fled heavenward--resolved into a dew--gone into the country. At least she is no longer in town! It may safely be averred that no straining of the human intellect can compute the interval overleaped betwixt those originals and these transcriptions. It is no translation paraphrase metaphrase. It is as if we should catch a confused and misapprehending glimpse of something that is going on in Jupiter. It is a transference from one order of beings to another; who have some intellectual processes in common but are allied by no sympathy. The sublime is gone! The beautiful is gone! The rational is gone! The loving is gone! The divine is not here! Nor the angelical! Nor the human! Alas! not even the diabolical! All is corrupted! banished! obliterated! We have seen Dryden complaining of Shakspeare's language and style--of the language as antiquated from the understanding of an audience in his own day--of the whole style as being ""so pestered with the figurative expressions that it is as affected as it is obscure."" And we were aware of the modest self-attribution ""_I have refined the language_ "" in Drydenising Troilus and Cressida ""which before was _obsolete_."" And Samuel Johnson corroborates and enlarges the self-praise. ""Dryden was the first who _refined the language of poetry_."" At this day such expressions fill the younger votary--creative or critical--of our vernacular muse with astonishment and perplexity and set an older one upon thinking. Such assertions it must be said are ""_unintelligible_"" now because a nobler unfolding of time a happy return of our educated mind to the old and to the natural has ""_antiquated_"" the literary sentiment which Dryden and Johnson shared and which they so confidently proposed to fitly-prepared readers. Shakspeare obsolete! There is not a writer of to-day--whose WORDS are _nearer to our hearts_. OUR OWN _are hardly as intimate there as_ HIS _are_-- ""You are my true and honourable wife _As dear to me as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart_ "" says the troubled Brutus to Portia who has expressed a misdoubting of his true and clear affection for her. Is this ""_antiquated_"" English and thence ""_unintelligible_?"" ""_Viola._--My father had a daughter loved a man As it might be perhaps WERE I A WOMAN I should your lordship. _Duke._--_And what's her history?_ _Viola._--_A blank my lord. She never told her love._ * * * * * _Duke._--But died thy sister of her love my boy? _Viola._--I am all the daughters of my father's house And all the brothers too."" ""_Miranda._--I am a fool To weep at what I am glad of. _Ferdinand._--Where should this music be? I' th' air?--or th' earth? It sounds no more; and sure it waits upon Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank Weeping again the king my father's wreck This music crept by me upon the waters Allaying both their fury and my passion With its sweet air. Thence have I follow'd it Or it hath drawn me rather. But 'tis gone-- No! it begins again. * * * * * The ditty does remember my drown'd father. This is no mortal business nor no sound That the earth owes.--I hear it now above me."" Here we have an ""_antiquated_"" touch or two of what would have distressed Dryden. ""PASSION"" is used in the old strong general sense of powerful possessing emotion--in this example filial sorrow; and lower down we have the obsolete ""OWES"" for the modern ""OWNS "" which two vitiating reliques of antiquity along with that ""pestering "" ""affected "" and ""obscure"" figure ""_crept by me_ upon the waters "" would explain without doubt the impossibility which the reader feels himself under of deriving any pleasure from the passage and to speak strictly of discovering any signification in it!! Assuredly we do not design transcribing whole Shakspeare in order to contradicting a rash word of Dryden's. It might not be politic either; for we should now and then meet with hard sentences which might seem like unlucky witnesses to give evidence against the party that brings them before the tribunal. They would not. It is not in twenty places or not in a hundred that the obsoleteness of a word or phrase makes Shakspeare hard nor any thing in the world but his wit his intellect in excess that occasionally runs away with him and wraps up his meaning in a phraseology of his own creating; enigmas that are embarrassing to disinvolve again--which might indeed be an antiquated manner of his age but not an obsolete dictionary and grammar. Neither is it required of us to convince the reader by copious extracts that _he_ really understands Shakspeare one or other of whose volumes he has always in his pocket and whose English he sits hearing by the hour lisped mouthed and legitimately spoken upon the stage and still fancying that he understands what he hears. But it seemed not altogether out of place when the criticism of style is moved and Shakspeare's English challenged to recall into the liveliest consciousness of the reader for a moment the principal feature of the case which is without doubt that Shakspeare is in all our literature the writer in whom this highest art of writing--namely--start not good innocent reader! for it must one day be said--THE ART OF SIMPLICITY--reaches its height; that magical art of steeping the words and idioms that fall from every lip at every minute in music and beauty and pathos and power so that the familiar sound slips along the well-known inlets into the soul and we are--""took ere we are 'ware."" Otherwise for the general fact that he the reader of 1845 does understand without much difficulty the dramatic poet whom in 1665 the gulf of years and the mutations of speech from father to son had rendered ""unintelligible""--for the general verity of this unforeseen and improbable but indisputable fact the reader's recollection of his own personal history since he was eight or ten years old may be left satisfactorily to vouch. Neither was it perhaps unreasonable to snatch the occasion of alleging and manifesting the momentous and instructive truth--_that the intenser working of the mind finds out in every age the perpetuities of a language_. Let us take our place for a moment in the Age of our poetry which began with Dryden inclusive and ended or began ending with Cowper exclusive. It was the UNCREATIVE age of our poetry; or if you insist upon a denomination positively grounded the IMITATIVE; or it was the _unimpassioned_ or it was the _rational_. Only the stage--losing passion and not being the place for reason--went mad; as with Nat Lee. However it retained something like a creative energy in Otway--and moreover Cato was really and afflictingly a _rational_ play.--The mere musical flow of the verse took the place of ever varying expression; and the name used as nearly equivalent with a good verse at least for describing that which a verse should ordinarily be is a _smooth_ verse. Concurrent in time and cause was the invasion of the ten syllabled rhymed couplet which in place of the old diversified measures took possession--off the stage--of our poetry. With all this went a transformation of the language accepted in verse; a severing and setting apart as if a consecrating of the Parnassian dialect which formerly was always caught up fresh from the lap of nature at the risk no doubt of pulling weeds amongs the flowers. In the incidental enunciations of criticism we may easily gather notices of the movement this way in the double matter of the language and the verse. In both it receives as it should do the same name and description. It is the disengaging of REFINEMENT--its birth from the bosom of BARBARISM--distinct as mother and daughter. Shakspeare and Milton are the two great barbarous kings with a numerous court. If we try to give ourselves account of this Refinement and to vindicate for it the title we are at a loss for names and notions. A Refinement which places the sluts of Dryden and his contemporaries above Imogen and Miranda and above Eve. One hangs down the head in shame and perplexity. The history of England affords us a key in the name of Charles II. The Court the Town and Life-in-doors are the words that resolve the mystery. The Muses that were Powers of Fell and Flood and Forest and Field that went with man wherever he went--in cottage and palace in divan and in dungeon in the student's or the miser's chamber on the battle-plain and at the dance of bacchanals--and when and wheresoever man spoke heard their own mother-tongue they were beguiled and imprisoned within the pale of artificial society and of high life. They had to learn the breeding of the drawing-room. Their auditors in short were gentlemen and ladies who never forgot that they were such in the sudden overpowering consciousness of their being men and women. There was therefore not only a denaturation but an enervation of our poetry. There grew a dainty fastidious easily-loathing taste betokening that the robust health of the older day--its healthy hunger and its blood glowing and bounding like a forester's--was gone by. Never to come again? No! not so bad as that. We mark main lines. We have not room for the filling-up. The last century closing opened another Age and we of to-day renovate and reinvigorate ourselves the best we may. England surely did not bring up the Heroic Tragedy on its unsown soil. It was foreign falsehood that overcame English truth and sincerity. A factitious excitement that induced a false pitch throughout. On the old French stage there were these two eminent characteristics of tragedy: Whatever the subject--if OEdipus and the Plague raging--there must be a love-tale; and the most impassioned persons most continually dissert. Generally Dryden's heroic plays have these two marks--both disnaturings of tragedy. We conceive in Dryden's age and in himself as participant a pampered taste that cannot relish the wholesome simple meats which Nature ""good cateress "" provides for her beloved healthy naturally-living children. That is to say a vitiation of taste by indulged excesses; the wine and high feasting of their own theatre--which really made them unapt for understanding Shakspeare. For in such things men understand by force of delight and if delight deserts them intelligence does too. The writings of the great creative poets--of Homer Dante Chaucer and the rest--always give you the impression that they possessed nature by observation and sympathy--outward nature and man's nature--that this as it were stood in their soul--the great perpetually-present original--from which they drew fancifully varied portraiture. It is there as their standard of reference when they read other poets. In Dryden it is not so. You know neither what he draws from nor to what he refers in those extraordinary heroic tragedies which resemble nothing--no men and no women that were are or shall be. The impossible hero the impossible heroine and their extravagant sentiments afford scope for a strife and a torture of thought which is an inseparable medley of wit and argumentation; wit reasoning and logic jesting; a strange confusion of mental actions with an unfavourable result; for this result is neither TRUTH nor MIRTH; but very CHIMERA--changing colour like the chameleon--shape like the clouds and substance like the contents of an alchemist's crucible. Wit that to nonsense nearly is allied if the thin partitions are not often actually broken down. Where you should have the living blood that flows through the living heart--the affections the passions and the actions that mould man and his world--you find sporting and rejoicing in their own elastic vigour their adroitness and buoyancy and in their wonderful starts and capricious bounds aimless flights and aerial gambols--the bold the keen the nimble the strenuous faculties summoned together to compose the masculine ranging intrepid various piercing and comprehensive INTELLECT--long the acknowledged sovereign-master of that high literature which Milton had now left and which Pope did not yet occupy. Dryden dealt in the same incomprehensible way with Milton as with Shakspeare. In that famous falsifying epigram the poet of _Paradise Lost_ is greater than Homer and Virgil rolled into one; and his name is frequently mentioned with seeming reverence in those off-hand Prefaces. Yet even in such critical passages there is no just approbation of his genius. Thus in the preface to ""The State of Innocence "" he says--""The original being undoubtedly one of the greatest most noble and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced."" _This age! One of the greatest_ &c.! The age of Charles II.! And what has become of the _other_ great noble and sublime poems which that age has produced? These wavering words were written the year Milton died; and Dennis or some one else tells us that twenty years after Dryden confessed that he had not then been sensible of half the extent of his excellence. But what twenty years after does he say?-- ""As for Mr Milton whom we all admire with so much justice his subject is not of an heroic poem properly so called. His design is the losing of our happiness; his event is not prosperous like that of all other epic works; his heavenly machines are many and human persons are but two. But I will not take Mr Rhymer's work out of his hands; he has promised the world a critique on that author wherein though he will not allow his poem for heroic I hope he will grant us that his thoughts are elevated his words sounding and that no man has so happily copied the manner of Homer or so copiously translated his Grecisms and the Latin elegancies of Virgil. It is true he runs into a flat of thoughts sometimes for a hundred lines together but it is when he has got into a track of Scripture. His antiquated words were his choice not his necessity; for therein he imitated Spenser as Spenser did Chaucer. And though perhaps the love of their master may have transported both too far in the frequent use of them yet in my opinion obsolete words may there be laudably revived when either they are more sounding or more significant than those in practice; and when their obscurity is taken away by joining other words to them which clear the sense according to the rule of Horace for the admission of new words. But in both cases a moderation is to be observed in the use of them: for unnecessary coinage as well as unnecessary revival runs into affectation; a fault to be avoided on either hand. Neither will I justify Milton for his blank verse though I may excuse him by the example of Hannibal Caro and other Italians who have used it; for whatever causes he alleges for the abolishing of rhyme (which I have not now the leisure to examine ) his own particular reason is plainly this that rhyme was not his talent; he had neither the ease of doing it nor the graces of it; which is manifest in his 'Juvenilia ' or verses written in his youth where his rhyme is always constrained and forced and comes hardly from him at an age when the soul is most pliant and the passion of love makes almost every man a rhymer though not a poet."" The general effect of this captious passage is far from pleasant. It leaves us in doubt of the sincerity of Courts and Towns and Dryden's admiration of Mr Milton. ""His subject is not that of a heroic poem properly so called."" Milton did not call it a heroic poem. But it is an epic poem and a divine. ""The event is not prosperous."" Assuredly not. For that matter neither to our minds is that of the Iliad. It seems not a little unreasonable to complain that in Paradise Lost the ""human persons are but two."" Dryden ""will not take Mr Rhymer's work out of his hands who has promised us a critique on that author;"" and he hopes Mr Rhymer _will grant_ so and so--look pray again at what Dryden hopes Mr Rhymer will grant to Mr Milton. Mr Rhymer had promised to favour the public ""with some reflections on that Paradise Lost of Milton which some are pleased to call a poem."" But this promise says best Sir Walter ""he never filled up the measure of his presumption by attempting to fulfil."" Milton running on a flat of thought for a hundred lines together on a track of Scripture! In his poem by unnecessary coinage of new and unnecessary revival of old words running into _affectation_! Milton not to be _justified_ for his blank verse no not even by the example of the illustrious and immortal Hannibal Caro! Then he took to it in despair for rhyme was not his talent! His rhyme forced and constrained in the Hymn on the Nativity--in Lycidas--in L'Allegro--in Il Penseroso! In the same Essay on Satire--Dryden talks not very intelligibly about ""the _beautiful turns of words and thoughts_ which are as requisite in this as in heroic poetry itself;"" but with which he confesses himself to have been unacquainted till about twenty years before when ""that noble wit of Scotland "" Sir George Mackenzie asked him why he did not imitate ""_the turns_ of Mr Waller and Sir John Denham of which he repeated many to me."" The memory of that ""noble wit of Scotland"" is far from being honoured--nay it is execrated by his countrymen--by the common people we mean--and in the long run they are no bad judges of merit. He was we believe no great shakes as a lawyer either within or without the bar; and like many other well-born weak-minded men had a taste for elegant literature and vulgar blood. Of his ""voluminous works historical and juridical "" we know less than nothing; but his ""Essays on several moral subjects "" have more than once fallen out of our hands. Sir Walter says ""he was an accomplished scholar of lively talents and ready elocution and very well deserved the appellation of a 'noble wit of Scotland.'"" ""The Bluidy Mackenyie "" reciting to Dryden many ""beautiful turns"" from Waller and Denham--and Dryden calling the poetasters ""those two fathers of our English poetry "" in the same page where he is writing of Milton! At Sir George's behest in Cowley even in his ""Davideis "" an heroic poem he sought in vain for ""elegant turns either on the word or on the thought;"" and his search was equally fruitless in the ""Paradise Lost""--for as Milton ""endeavours every where to express Homer whose age had not yet arrived to that fineness I found in him a true sublimity lofty thoughts which were clothed with admirable Grecisms and ancient words which he had been digging from the mines of Chaucer and Spenser; and which with all their rusticity had somewhat of venerable in them. But I found not there neither that for which I looked."" His search through Spenser and Tasso is more fortunate; Virgil and Ovid are the two principal fountains of them in Latin poetry; and ""the French at this day are so fond of them that they judge them to be first beauties; _delicate et bien tourné_ are the highest commendations which they bestow on somewhat which they think a masterpiece."" This sort of explicit criticism in a small way is rather unsatisfactory; so let us look at a specimen of implicit on Milton. In Todd's edition are detailed the names of the translators of ""Paradise Lost"" into rhyme and prose. ""We must not"" says Sir Walter ""confound with these effusions of gratuitous folly an alteration or imitation planned and executed by John Dryden."" We must not; therefore let ""his gratuitous folly"" stand aloof from theirs and be judged of in itself. ""The State of Innocence"" is AN OPERA! ""Had the subject been of a nature which admitted its being actually represented we might conceive that Dryden who was under engagements to the theatre with which it was not always easy to comply might have been desirous to shorten his own labour _by adopting the story sentiments and language of a poem_"" (how kind and cool) ""which he so highly esteemed and which might probably have been new to the generality of his audience. But the _costume_ of our first parents had there been no other objection must have excluded 'The State of Innocence' from the stage; and accordingly it was certainly never intended for representation."" One cannot well help agreeing with Sir Walter in this pleasant passage; nevertheless might not the opera
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ave been indited with a view to representation? With what more _rational_ purpose could it have been ""planned and executed""? The stage directions are full and minute; and if meant for perusal only and to be part of the poem they are beyond the ridiculous. As for example-- ""Scene I. represents a chaos or a confused mass of matter; the stage is almost wholly dark. A symphony of warlike music is heard for some time; then from the heavens (which are opened) fall the rebellious angels wheeling in air and seeming transfixed with thunderbolts. The bottom of the stage being opened receives the angels who fall out of sight. Tunes of victory are played and an hymn sung; angels discovered alone brandishing their swords. The music ceasing and the heavens being closed the scene shifts and on a sudden represents hell. Part of the scene is a lake of brimstone or rolling fire; the earth of a burnt colour. The fallen angels appear on the lake lying prostrate; a tune of horror and lamentation is heard."" How all this might take with a mixed audience we do not presume to conjecture yet very great absurdities do sometimes take almost as well on as of the stage. Must ""the _costume_ of our first parents had there been no other objection have excluded the 'State of Innocence' from the stage?"" True Sir Charles Sedley and other ""men of wit and fashion about town "" were not well received when exhibiting themselves naked on a balcony overhanging a great thoroughfare; but then they were drunk and acted not only indecent but insulting nay threatening attitudes accompanied with abjurgations and blasphemies which was going injudiciously in advance of that age of refinement. Suppose Booth perfectly sober in Adam and Nell Gwynne up merely to the proper pitch of vivacity in Eve we do not see why the opera might not have had a run during the reign of the Merry Monarch. The first sight we have of Adam is ""as newly created laid on a bed of moss and flowers by a rock."" He rises as he begins to utter his earliest soliloquy; and we believe it is an established rule not to turn your back on--or in playhouse phrase--not to rump your audience. In such a case; however considerable latitude would have been conceded by both sexes to our original; and what with shades and shrubs and above all the rock an adroit actor could have had little difficulty in accommodating to his posterity their progenitor. Of Eve our first glimpse is among ""trees cut out on each side with several fruits upon them; a fountain in the midst; at the far end the prospect terminating in walks."" Nelly might have worn her famous felt chapeau broad as a coach-wheel as appropriately in that as in any other character and contrived to amble about with sufficient decorum for those fastidious times. Besides as custom soon reconciles people to the most absurd dress so would it probably before long reconcile them to no dress at all. A full-bottomed wig in the mimic scene on heroic representative of a class of men who off the boards had always worn not only their own hair but a crop was _a sine qua non_ condition of historic success. _In puris naturalibus_ would have been but to fall back on nature. Why only couple of years ago half a million of our countrymen and countrywomen of all ages flocked by instalments in a single season to look at our First Parents fresh from the hands of a French painter naked as you were born. Such is the power of Names. No imagination--not the least in the world--had that painter; no sense--not the least in the world--of the beautiful or of the sublime in the human figure. But the population urban and rural alike were unhappy till they had had a sight of Adam and Eve in Paradise. We cheerfully acknowledge that Adam was a very good-looking young fellow--bang up to the mark six feet without his shoes-close upon thirteen stone. Had he been advertised as Major Adam of the Scots Greys the brevet would have exhibited himself on that bank to empty benches. In like manner with the fairest of her daughters Eve. As Pope says ""Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see Thinks what ne'er was nor is nor e'er shall be."" Pious old gentlemen however pronounced her perfect merely because they gazed on the image of the mother of mankind. Painted they both were in oils. But from what we saw--for we too were carried away by the general enthusiasm--we are justified in inferring that under prudent management our First Parents might be successfully got up alive during the summer season at our Adelphi. We believe that ""The State of Innocence"" _was_ written for the stage. But the playwright did not intend that Adam and Eve should be stark-naked in an acted opera. Strange to say there is not a word in it about their naked majesty or innocence. Dryden by his idea of an opera was forced to depart from nature and Milton. Eve's dream so characteristically narrated by her to Adam in the poem is shadowed out by a vision passing before her asleep in the opera. The stage direction gives:--""A vision where a tree rises loaden with fruit; spirits rise with it and draw a canopy out of the tree; and the spirits dance about the tree in deformed shapes; after the dance an angel enters _with a woman_ HABITED LIKE EVE."" That is decisive. But what of the opera? In the preface Dryden says ""I cannot without injury to the deceased author of 'Paradise Lost ' but acknowledge that the poem has received _its entire foundation part of the design and many of the ornaments from him_. What I have borrowed will be so easily discerned from my mean productions that I shall not need to point the reader to the places."" That avowal may be thought to set aside all criticism--but not so--for his illustrious editor says ""the probable motive therefore of this alteration was the wish so common to genius to exert itself upon a subject on which another had already attained brilliant success; or as Dryden has termed a similar attempt the desire to shoot in the bow of Ulysses."" And he adds that because Milton intended at first to model his poem into a dramatic form ""Dryden conscious of his own powers and enthusiastically admiring those of Milton was induced to make an experiment on the forsaken plan of the blind bard which with his usual rapidity of conception and execution he completed in the short space of one month."" Wide-encroaching Walter would see nothing far wrong in Glorious John. It is not ""the forsaken plan of the blind bard "" nor any thing in the least like it. They are opposite as any things that ""own antipathy in nature."" But this is all mere nonsense. The opera is disgraceful to Dryden. It proves that he had no understanding of the ""Paradise Lost."" ""Ay you may _tag_ my verses if you will."" But had Milton lived to hear their taggery wrathful fire would have been in his eyes. The opera opens as we saw in chaos the scene sinking into hell and we have Lucifer ""raising himself on the lake."" His exclamatory speech of some sixteen lines on the lake is versified not in Dryden's best manner from that most sublime one of Satan on reaching with Beelzebub the burning marle with some additions from Satan's first address to that angel while yet they were lying side by side on the fiery flood. To those who have the First Book of the ""Paradise Lost"" by heart this sort of transposition patchwork cannot but be most offensive. As if to give an air of originality where everything is borrowed and blurred Asmoday in Milton one of the lowest is made one of the highest and is substituted for Beelzebub--and to him Lucifer most unarchangel-like calls ""Ho! Asmoday awake!"" Asmoday answers in a short speech very ill reported formerly delivered by Milton's Beelzebub concluding with a bit absolutely stolen from his Satan himself! Lucifer then observes to Asmoday that ""our troops _like scattered leaves in autumn_ lie!"" A poor plagiarism indeed from the famous description from Milton's own lips and from Lucifer's incredibly absurd! Lucifer then announces-- ""With wings expanded wide ourselves we'll rear And fly incumbent on the dusky air. Hell! thy new lord receive! Heaven cannot envy me an empire here."" (_Both fly to dry land._) You remember the lines in Milton-- ""Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft incumbent on the dusky air""-- and the other sublimities of the description--all here destroyed by the monstrous absurdity of making Lucifer paint his own projected flight. He then asks ""the rest of the devils "" ""Are you on _beds of down_?"" On beds of down our grandsires lay--but think of eider-ducks in heaven. Moloch says his say from the Miltonic Satan with a slight new reading. ""Better to _rule_ in hell than serve in heaven."" And Beelzebub approves the dictum. ""Moloch in that all are resolved like thee. The means are unprepared; but 'tis not fit Our dark divan in public view should sit; Or what we plot against the Thunderer _The ignoble_ CROWD OF VULGAR DEVILS _hear_!"" Lucifer adopts this disdainful suggestion and great magician as he is exclaims-- ""A golden palace let be raised on high To imitate--no to outshine the sky! All mines are ours and gold above the rest; Let this be done and _quick as 'twas exprest_."" ""A palace rises where sit as in council LUCIFER Asmoday Moloch Belial Beelzebub and SATAN."" Who _he_ may be deuce take us if we can tell. Up to the very moment of his making his appearance we in our simple faith had believed Lucifer and Satan to be one devil--nay the devil. We were taken quite aback by this unexplained phenomenon of Satan's acting the part of his own tail. In this capacity he makes but one speech--but it is the speech of the evening. One seldom hears such eloquence. Moloch having proposed battle the mysterious stranger rises to second the motion. ""_Satan._ I agree With this brave vote; and if in Hell there be _Ten more such spirits_ heaven is our own again. We venture nothing and may all obtain. Yet who can hope but well since our success Makes foes secure and makes our dangers less? _Seraph and Cherub careless of their charge And wanton in full ease now live at large; Unguarded leave the passes of the sky And all dissolved in hallelujahs lie._"" In the ""grand consult "" as recorded by Milton Beelzebub after proposing the ""perilous attempt "" asks ""But first whom we shall send In search of this new world? Whom shall we find Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandering feet The dark unbottom'd infinite abyss And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way or spread his aery flight Upborne with indefatigable wings Over the vast abrupt ere he arrive The happy isle?"" And Satan is the self-chosen missionary of the religion of Hell. In Dryden Asmoday suggests the enterprise and ""_Moloch._ This glorious enterprise--(_rising up._) _Lucifer._ Rash angel stay. (_Rising and laying his sceptre on Moloch's head._) That palm is mine which none shall take away. _Hot braves like thee may fight_ but know not well To manage this the last great stake of hell."" The council comes to a close--and Lucifer promises to be with them again ""Before yon brimstone lake thrice ebb and flow."" Tides in the Mediterranean! a touch beyond Milton. ""Here while the chiefs sit in the palace may be expressed the sports of the devils as flights and dancing in grotesque figures; and a song expressing the change of their condition what they enjoyed before and how they fell bravely in battle having deserved victory by their valour and what they would have done if they had conquered."" What had Dryden purposed to achieve? Out of two books of a great epic to edify one act of an opera. To invention of situation character or passion he aspires not; all he had to do--since he must needs meddle--was to select compress and abridge with some judgment and feeling and to give the result--unhappy at the best--in his own vigorous verse and dearly-beloved rhyme. But beneath the majesty and imagination of Milton his genius strong as it was broke down and absolutely sunk beneath the level of that of common men. Yet not in awe nor in reverence of a superior power; for there is no trepidation of spirit; on the contrary with cool self-assurance he rants his way through the fiery gloom of hell. By his hands shorn of their beams the fallen angels are one and all poor devils indeed. The Son of the Morning is seedy and has lost all authority over the swell mob which he vainly essays to recover by cracking Moloch's organ with his sceptre. Yet Sir Walter blinded by his generous admiration of Dryden's great endowments scruples not to say that ""the scene of the consultation in Pandemonium and of the soliloquy of Satan (not Satan it seems but Lucifer) on his arrival in the newly-created universe would possess great merit did they not unfortunately remind us of the majestic simplicity of Milton."" Oh heavens and earth! the veritable Satan's soliloquy on Niphate's top! ""O thou that with surpassing glory crown'd Look'st from thy sole dominion like the God Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars Hide their diminish'd heads to thee I call But with no friendly voice _and add thy name_ O SUN! to tell thee how I hate thy beams That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell how glorious once above thy sphere Till pride and worse ambition threw me down Warring in heaven against heaven's matchless king!"" And so on for nearly a hundred lines in many a changeful strain arch-angelical all of heaven-remembering passion while ever as thus he spoke ""Each passion dimm'd his face Thrice changed with pale ire envy and despair; Which marr'd his borrow'd visage and betray'd Him counterfeit if any eye beheld; For heavenly minds from such distempers foul Are ever clear."" The soliloquy of Dryden's Lucifer consists of twenty lines taken almost at hap-hazard from that of Milton's jumbled together without consideration and mangled from the most multitudinous blank verse ever written into rhymes much beneath the average merit of one who at times could indeed command ""the long-majestic march and energy divine."" Adam and Eve fare little better than the angels under his reforming fingers. Milton you remember makes Adam tell Raphael the story of his birth in language charmful to affable arch-angel's ear albeit tuned to harmonies in heaven. Dryden burlesques that revelation into the following soliloquy supposed to have been _the first words spoken by human lips_. Adam at once opens his mouth in the style of the age of refinement. After the fall how degenerate kept growing on our father tongue till it reached its acme in the barbarous lingo of Shakspeare! And how suited here the thought to the speech! How natural the natural theology of both! He anticipates Descartes. ""_Adam._ What am I? or from whence? _For that I am_ (rising) _I know because I think_; but whence I come Or how this frame of mine began to be What other being can disclose to me? I move and see and speak discourse and know; Though now I am I was not always so. Then that from which I was must be before Whom as my spring of being I adore. How full of ornament is all I view In all its parts! and seems as beautiful as new: O goodly order'd earth! O Power Divine! Of thee I am and what I am is thine."" A day or two after ""a cloud descends with six angels in it and when it is near the ground breaks and on each side discovers six more."" Raphael and Gabriel sent to admonish and warn discourse with Adam the ten others standing at a distance. The conversation instantly assumes and throughout sustains an intensely controversial character and Raphael and Gabriel though two to one and moreover angel _versus_ man are hard put to it on predestination and free-will. Adam is equipped with all the weapons of the schools and uses them defensively and most offensively with all the dexterity of a veteran gladiator. But our disgust soon ceases along with our deception; and we but see and hear John Dryden puzzling a brace of would-be wits at Wills's. The whole reads like a so-so bit of the _Religio Laici_. It ends thus:-- ""_Adam._ Hard state of life! since heaven foreknows my will Why am I not tied up from doing ill? Why am I trusted with myself at large When he's more able to sustain the charge? Since angels fell whose strength was more than mine 'Twould then more grace my frailty to confine. Foreknowing the success to leave me free Excuses him and yet supports not me!"" _This_ from Adam yet sinless in Paradise! The loves of Adam and Eve are not perhaps absolutely coarse--at least not so for Dryden--but they are of the earth earthy and the earth is not of the mould of Eden. Aiblins--not coarse but verily coquettish and something more is Eve. And she is too silly. ""From each tree The feather'd kinds peep down to look on me; And beasts with upcast eyes forsake their shade And gaze as if I were to be obey'd. Sure I am somewhat which they wish to be And cannot. _I myself am proud of me._"" A day or two after their marriage Eve gives Adam a long description of her first emotions experienced in the nuptial bower. More warmly coloured than in her simplicity she seems to be aware of; and Adam pleased with her innocent flattery treats her with an Epithalamium. ""When to my arms thou brought'st thy virgin love Fair angels sang our bridal hymn above: _The Eternal nodding shook the firmament!_ And conscious nature gave her glad consent. Roses unbid and every fragrant flower Flew from their stalks to strew thy nuptial bower: The furr'd and feather'd kinds the triumph did pursue And fishes leap'd above the streams the passing pomp to view."" Hats off--bravo--bravo--hurra--hurra!--Of such stuff is made in the ""State of Innocence "" Dryden's implicit criticism on the _Paradise Lost_ of Milton. Peace be with his shade! and its forgiveness with us. It is dangerous to unite the functions of judge and executioner. The imperturbable bosom of the seated judge calmly gives forth the award of everlasting Justice and the mandate for the punishment that must expiate or appease her violated majesty. But the judge who is obliged to turn lictor and must step down from the tribunal to take his criminal farther in hand undoubtedly runs a risk when he feels his hand in of being carried too far by his excited zeal. After all we have stayed ours. And now having discharged a principal part of our office what remains but that we turn round heal with our right hand what our left has inflicted and lift up Glorious John to the skies? And lift him up we will; and with good reason; for we are far indeed from being done with this first era of deliberate and formal criticism in English literature. Extol him to the clouds and to the stars we will but not now; for lo! where another great name beckons! The close of the seventeenth century for ever shut the eyes of John Dryden upon the clouded and fluctuating daylight of our sublunary world. It may have been in the same year that a solitary boy then twelve years old wrote five stanzas which any man might have been glad to have written--and which you have by heart--an ""Ode to Solitude""--conspicuous in the annals of English poetry as the dawn-gleam of a new sun that was presently to arise and to fill the region that Dryden had left. A feeble frame has dedicated many a student. This with other causes about this time took the boy ALEXANDER POPE from schools where he learned little to commit him under the guardian more than guiding love of indulgent parents to his own management of his own studies. And study he did--instinctively eagerly ramblingly through books of sundry kinds--helping himself as he could to their languages--devouring more than he digested--wedding himself to the high and gracious muses--seeking for and finding his own extraordinary powers--and diminishing the small quantity of delicate health which nature had put in his keeping. He resigned himself to die and was dying when a strong interposition among other sanatary measures transferred him from the back of Pegasus to that of an earth-born horse. Pope had a gentleness of spirit which showed itself in his filial offices to his father and mother--to her the most ill the prolonged wearing out of a beloved life. It appears in kindly relations to his friends in charities in the scheme of his life--contentedness in a bounded quiet existence a seclusion among books and trees and flowers. His life flowed on peaceably and gently like the noble river upon which his modest dwelling looked. Ill health as we said often dedicates a student. The constitutional feebleness from which he suffered might doubly favour his mind; as often the more delicate frame harbours the greater spirit; and as inaptitude for active and rough sports throws the solitary boy upon the companionship of books and upon the energies avocations and pleasures of his own intelligence and fancy. The little poem of his boyhood and the first of his manhood prophesy his tenor of life and his literary career. A commanding power a predominant star in English literature--you might say that the last century belonged to him. Dryden reigned over his contemporaries. Pope succeeding took dominion over his own time and the following. The pupil of Dryden and gratefully proud to proclaim the greatness of his master and to own all obligations he moulded himself nevertheless upon a type in his own mind. In the school of Dryden he is an original master. Dryden is properly speaking without imitators. His manner proceeds from his own genius and baffles transcribers. But Pope completed an art which could be learned and he left a world full of copyists. A remarkable feature is the early acknowledgment of Pope by his contemporaries. At sixteen he is a poet for the world by his PASTORALS and at that age he has a literary adviser in Walsh and a literary patron in Trumbull. He does not seem to court. He is courted. He is the intimate friend we do not know how soon of scholars and polite writers of men and women high in birth in education in station. Scarce twenty by his ""ESSAY ON CRITICISM"" he assumes a chair in the school of the Muses. At five-and-twenty he is an acknowledged dictator of polite letters. So early rapid untroubled an ascension to fame it would require some research to find a parallel to. Our literature has it not. And this acknowledgment gratulation triumph which friends and circles and the confined literary world of that day in this country could furnish a whole age and a whole country and a whole world the extended republic of letters confirm. In the judgment of England in the eighteenth century the reputation of Pope may be called the most dazzling in English literature. It was a nearer sun than Dryden Milton Shakspeare; as for Spenser and Chaucer they were little better than fixed stars. Great revolutions in the state of the heavens and of astronomical science have ensued. To say nothing of new luminaries that have come into birth from the bosom of ""chaos and unoriginal night "" either we have wheeled round upon Shakspeare or he upon us in a surprising manner; the orb of Milton enlarges day by day; cheerily we draw large accessions of the gentlest light on Spenser; and old Father Geoffrey and we are sensibly approximating. We have taken Pope's counsel. We have with some good-will reverted to Nature and so we come nearer to the poets of Nature. There may have been other causes at work. The change has involved more than was just a depreciation of Pope himself: as if he were an accomplished artist in a limited sphere of art and no poet. We dissent _toto corde et toto coelo_. He was a spirit muse-born a hero of half celestial extraction and so by all rule a demigod. His age confined him. A poet is not independent of his age. He may ride on the van of the tide--no more. And we see that the greatest poets are but the most entire expression of the age taken at the best. How shall it be otherwise? Their age is mother and nurse to them. And what air does a poet respire but the circulating fanning living breeze of sympathy? He more than all beings receives into his soul the souls of other men. So he thrives and grows; and shall he not be a partaker in his age? In an age thus to be described that it refines instead of creating and that in particular it imposes the refinement elaborated by social and indeed aristocratical manners upon genius which should only refine itself by tenderness and sanctity and by love dwelling evermore in the inextinguishable paradise of the beautiful--he who was fitted to his age by much of his mind by his wit by fancy given more fully than imagination by inclination to the _limæ labor_ by the susceptibility of polish by a reasonableness of understanding by his perception of manners even by the delicacy of his habits--he ALEXANDER POPE nevertheless desired the greatnesses of poetry. At fourteen he tries his hand in practice on the lofty Statius--at five-and-twenty upon the sublime Homer. Judge of his poetical heart by his Preface to Shakspeare by his translation of Homer preface and all. What was the translation of Homer? Of all works not creative the one of most aspiring ambition even more than that of Pindar or Æschylus. The young poet who has launched on the air the light self-buoyed gracefully-floating Rape of the Lock who has dipped his pen in the pathos of love and religion for Eloisa longs to put in use the powers that kindle and struggle within him. He will do something of greater design in weightier literature; he will so as a poet may stir melt strengthen instruct exalt and amplify the mind of his country; and he makes the greatest of poets the father of all poetry--ENGLISH. He pledges himself before his country to the task and then trembles at the difficulties and magnitude of his undertaking and then sits down to it and then delivers it accomplished. Did Homer already speak English through the organ of Chapman? If he did it was not English for England; least of all for the England of Pope's day. Fiery and eloquent and creative as it is Chapman's _Homer_ is hard reading now and somewhat rare. _Then_ the book was for the general capacity precisely the same thing as if it were not. And Pope no grudging bestower of merited honours awards generous praise to his irregularly-great predecessor amply acknowledging with one word in him both native power and effectual sympathy with their unparagoned original. Let us reflect also that after all a true translation of Homer into English is in all probability a thing impossible. Why did not Milton leave us half a book or some fifty verses that we might know what the utmost poetical power and the utmost mastery of our speech and the utmost resources of our verse could effect? The inspiring expressive music of the original tongue clothes the simplest and most unadorned word and phrase in wealth splendour gorgeous majesty prodigal magnificence; and this not with any incongruence or disharmony any more than Eve's GOLDEN tresses were excessive ornament unmeet for the primitive simplicity of Eden. The same exhilaration and vivification of the hearing soul which this perpetual music infuses united to the same simplicity of the thought and the words will not easily be found in English. Again rhyme seems wanted to the richness of the harmony. Yet how shall rhyme allow that utmost freedom and range in the flow of the thought which marks the now majestically now impetuously sweeping Homeric river? That measure so _measured_ and yet so free; large various capacious--that hexameter is despair. Meanwhile no nation concludes to forego the incorporation of the great foreign works of literature into its own merely for such discouragement merely because the adequate representation lies wholly out of reach. We have gained much in bringing over the powerful matter if we must leave the style behind and yet the style is almost a part of the matter. Homer is out of hand--Iliad and Odyssey. The Mæonian sun has ripened the powers of the occidental poet. And Pope--_aged thirty-seven_--declares that henceforward he will write _from_ as well as _to_ his own mind. The ""ESSAY ON MAN"" follows. It expresses that graver study of the universal subject MAN which appeared to Pope now self-known to be for the time of poetical literature to which he came the most practicable--for his own ability the aptest; and it embodies that part of anthropology which doubtless was the most congenial to his own inclination--the philosophical contemplation of man's nature estate destiny. The success of this enterprise was astonishing. Be the philosophy what and whose it may the poem revived to the latest age of poetry the phenomenon of the first when precept and maxim were modulated into verse that they might write themselves in every brain and live upon every tongue. The spirit and sweetness of the verse the lucid and vivid expression the pregnant brevity of the meanings the marrying of ardent and lofty poetical imagings to moral sentiments and reflections of which every bosom is the birth-home the pious will of the argument which humbles the proud and rebellious human intellect under the absolute rectitude and benevolence of the Deity--nor least of all the pleasure of receiving easily as in a familiar speech thoughts that _were_ high and _might be_ abstruse that at all events wore a profound and philosophical air--with strokes intervening of a now playful now piercing but always adroit wit--and with touches here and there strewn between of natural painting and of apt unsought pathos--these numerous and excellent qualifications met upon the subject of all subjects nearest to all--MAN--speedily made the first great original serious writing of Pope a textbook and a manual for its branch of ethico-theosophy in every house where there were books in England. These powerful excellences of this great poem did more. They inwove its terse vigorous clear significant wise loving noble beautiful and musical sentences--east west north south--with all memories the mature and the immature--even as in that old brave day of the world or ever books were. Pause gentle reader for a while and reflect kindly on these paragraphs for the sake of Alexander Pope and Christopher North. And now accompany us while we select our specimens of the British critics from the ""Nightingale of Twickenham's"" preface to the works of Shakspeare. What he proposed to accomplish in this undertaking was ""to give a more correct text from the collated copies of the old editions without any innovation or indulgence to his own private sense or conjecture; to insert the various readings in the margin and to place the suspected passages or interpolations at the bottom of the page; to this was added an explanation of some of the more obsolete or unusual words; and such as appeared to him the most striking passages were marked by a star or by inverted commas."" Warton laments that Pope ever undertook this edition; ""a task which the course of his reading and studies did not qualify him to execute with the ability and skill which it deserved and with which it has since been executed;"" but though it was a failure there was no occasion for lamentation. Johnson says more wisely ""that Pope did many things wrong and left many things undone but let him not be defrauded of his due praise. He was the first that knew or at least the first that told by what helps the text might be improved. If he inspected the early editions negligently he taught others to be more accurate. In his preface he expanded with great skill and eloquence the character which had been given of Shakspeare by Dryden; and he drew the public attention upon his works which though often mentioned had been little read."" Warton too admits that the ""preface is written with taste judgment purity and elegance."" Pope speaks modestly of the design of his preface which is not he says to enter into a criticism upon Shakspeare ""though to do it effectually and not superficially would be the best occasion that any just writer could take to form the judgment and taste of our nation."" His humbler aim is but to give an account of the fate of his works and the disadvantages under which they have been transmitted to us. But he cannot neglect the opportunity thus afforded him ""of mentioning some of the principal and characteristic excellences for which (notwithstanding his defects) _he is justly and universally elevated above all other dramatic writers_."" ""If ever any author deserved the name of an _original_ it was Shakspeare. Homer himself drew not his art so immediately from the fountains of nature; it proceeded through Egyptian strainers and channels and came to him not without some tincture of the learning or some cast of the models of those before hi
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. The poetry of Shakspeare was inspiration indeed: he is not so much an imitator as an instrument of Nature; and it is not so just to say that he speaks from her as that she speaks through him. ""His _characters_ are so much nature herself that it is a sort of injury to call them by so distant a name as copies of her. Those of other poets have a constant resemblance which shows that they received them from one another and were but multipliers of the same image; each picture like a mock rainbow is but the reflection of a reflection. But every single character in Shakspeare is as much an individual as those in life itself; it is as impossible to find any two alike; and such as from their relation or affinity in any respect appear most to be twins will upon comparison be found remarkably distinct. To this life and variety of character we must add the wonderful preservation of it; which is such throughout his plays that had all the speeches been printed without the very names of the persons I believe one might have applied them with certainty to every speaker. ""The _power_ over our _passions_ was never possessed in a more eminent degree or displayed in so different instances. Yet all along there is seen no labour no pains to raise them; no preparation to guide or guess to the effect or be perceived to lead toward it but the heart swells and the tears burst out just at the proper places; we are surprised at the moment we weep; and yet upon reflection find the passion so just that we should be surprised if we had not wept and wept at that very moment. ""How astonishing is it again that the passions directly opposite to these laughter and spleen are no less at his command? that he is not more a master of the _great_ than the _ridiculous_ in human nature; of our noblest tendernesses than of our vainest foibles; of our strongest emotions than of our idlest sensations! ""Nor does he only excel in the passions; in the coolness of reflection and reasoning he is full as admirable. His _sentiments_ are not only in general the most pertinent and judicious upon every subject; but by a talent very peculiar something between penetration and felicity he hits upon that particular point on which the bent of each argument turns or the force of each motive depends. This is perfectly amazing from a man of no education or experience in those great and public scenes of life which are usually the subject of his thoughts; so that he seems to have known the world by intuition to have looked through human nature at one glance and to be the only author that gives ground for a very new opinion that the philosopher and even the man of the world may be _born_ as well as the poet."" Nothing can be better. Dryden gave us large and grand outlines. Pope's is closer criticism. But it is more than that which Johnson says that all the successors of Dryden have produced--an expansion only of his notions; unless in that sense in which every follower in time could by possibility do nothing but expand the notions of the first critic who should have said--""Shakspeare was a poet of the highest description with a good many troublesome faults."" Pope's portraiture is drawn from near and intent inspection; a likeness after the life and reflecting the life; thoroughly independent of any thing preceding him. Thus THE COMPLETE SEVERING OF NEARLY-ALLIED PERSONAGES (upon which Pope insists and which more than the immense multiplicity contemplated in a general way of the some hundred DRAMATIS PERSONÆ determines essential variety; attests the constituting of every character after the manner of Nature from an indivisible SELF which at once rules it into unity and holds it unconfused with all others) is a finely-just observation of which we have not a hint from Dryden; and it carries us instantly deep into a most interesting study of comparisons. As of Macbeth and Richard III. both murderous usurpers as different as two men can well be; of Leontes and Othello two jealous husbands and as different even in their jealousy as two men can be; of Coriolanus and Hotspur each an earthly Mars; each ""the soul of honour;"" each sudden in passion impetuous and ungovernable; each with a kindliness of nature that draws and attaches his friends as much as the superiority of his character overrules them; each with a rough abrupt penetrating strength of intellect; each endowed which is more peculiar with vivid imagination that leaps into bold poetical figures; each of a cutting wit and in his own way humourous pleasantry; and yet the semi-traditionary Roman patrician and the quite historical English earl's son so distinct that you shall read the two plays in which they are ten and twenty times over without thinking of putting the towering heroes twinned by so many so marked and so profound affinities upon a line of comparison. Or put all Shakspeare's gallant warriors in a catalogue and what a diversified list have you drawn up! Hector Troilus Diomed Coriolanus Tullus Aufidius Mark Antony Othello Cassio nay and Iago Falconbridge Hotspur Glendower Mortimer Henry V. Talbot Warwick Richard III. Richmond Macbeth Banquo Macduff Old Seward Edmund Edgar Benedict Bertram are some of them; for Shakspeare like Scott loved a good soldier. Compare the melancholy Hamlet and the melancholy Jaques; both shrewd observers of men; both given to philosophizing; and yet different--Heaven knows. And so on. Thus the remark of Pope goes to the root of Shakspeare's creative art and leads you into a method of thinking not soon exhausted. We endeavour says Dryden to follow the VARIETY and greatness of characters that are derived to us from Shakspeare and Fletcher. But does this most general attribution of a characteristic--shared with Fletcher--and such as the loosest observation of the plays forces upon the most uncritical reader--does the accident that Dryden left this inevitable word ""VARIETY"" written make the critical observation of Pope no more than a ""diffusing"" and ""paraphrasing"" of Dryden's ""Epitome?"" Has he only ""changed Dryden's gold for baser metal of lower value though of greater bulk?"" It would at least be as near the truth to say that he has made Dryden's bill good money by accepting it. Pope in the precise and critical sense in which he has attached the praise of ""variety"" to Shakspeare would certainly not have communicated the praise with him to Fletcher. Shakspeare says Dryden ""drew the images of Nature _not laboriously_ but luckily."" ""All along "" says Pope ""there is seen _no labour_ no pains to raise the passions no preparation to lead towards the effect; but the heart swells and the tears burst out just at the proper places."" The unstudied spontaneous movement of the scene in Shakspeare both of the Action and of the Passion as if every thing went on of its own impulse and not as willed and ruled by the poet is an imitation of Nature which no other dramatist has so closely urged. Pope insists upon it--for the passion at least. Is this characteristic already contained in the ""not laboriously but luckily "" of Dryden? If it is contained it is hardly conveyed. A seed has dropped from the hand of Dryden. Under the gardening of Pope it springs up into a fair and fairly-spread plant. That is a sort of ""diffusion"" very distinct from turning gold into base metal. So Pope of himself admires that in the comedies histories and tragedies of the unversed Shakspeare all the businesses high and low of human life turn upon their own hinges.--If a statesman counsel he lays down the very grounds of proceeding which greyheaded statesmanship would have propounded--a king reigns like a king a soldier fights like a soldier woman loves and hates like a woman a clown is a clown a thief is a thief. In short besides the individual constitution and self-consistency of the CHARACTERS besides the spontaneous and self-timed motion of the PASSIONS we are further and distinctly to admire this--that the springs the constitution and the government of ACTION are imitated;--as if the inexperienced player from Avon side had stood personally confidentially participatingly present in the heart of all human transactions: And if it appears to the acute critic wonderful that Shakspeare should have found in his own bosom the archetypes of so many and so diverse individualities that he should have found there the law given by original Nature for the flow and current the impulsion the meandering and the precipitation of the _passions_; it strikes him as yet more wonderful more like an inspiring that he should have found there a divination of that which is subsequent to and ingrafted upon Nature--namely of human life itself of universal human experience; much in the same way as Ulysses admired most in the song of Demodocus his knowledge of that which had passed withinside the Wooden Horse and concluded hence to the undoubted inspiration of the Muse. This appears to us to be the meaning of Pope's eulogy; and if it but unfolds the hints of Dryden's it unfolds them be it said uninvidiously something after the fashion in which Shakspeare himself unfolded the hints which he found in old books of plots and personages; that is to say originally creatively with quite independent power; and certainly with no deterioration to the matter. Pope goes on to admit faults. We must here dissent as to facts and opinions and must qualify. ""It must be owned that with all these great excellences he has almost as great defects: and that as he has certainly written better so he has perhaps written worse than any other. But I think I can in some measure account for these defects from several causes and accidents; without which it is hard to imagine that so large and so enlightened a mind could ever have been susceptible of them. That all these contingencies should unite to his disadvantage seems to me almost as singularly unlucky as that so many various nay contrary talents should meet in one man was happy and extraordinary. ""It must be allowed that stage-poetry of all other is more particularly levelled to please the _populace_ and its success more immediately depending upon the _common suffrage_. One cannot therefore wonder if Shakspeare having at his first appearance no other aim in his writings than to procure a subsistence directed his endeavours solely to hit the taste and humour that then prevailed. The audience was generally composed of the meaner sort of people and therefore the images of life were to be drawn from those of their own rank; accordingly we find that not our author's only but almost all the old comedies have their scene among _tradesmen_ and _mechanics_; and even their historical plays strictly follow the common _old stories_ or _vulgar traditions_ of that kind of people. In tragedy nothing was so sure to _surprise_ and cause _admiration_ as the most strange unexpected and consequently most unnatural events and incidents; the most exaggerated thoughts; the most verbose and bombast expression; the most pompous rhymes and thundering versification. In comedy nothing was so sure to _please_ as mean buffoonery vile ribaldry and unmannerly jests of fools and clowns. Yet even in these our author's wit buoys up and is borne above his subject; his genius in those low parts is like some prince of a romance in the disguise of a shepherd or peasant; a certain greatness and spirit now and then break out which manifest his higher extraction and qualities. ""It may be added that not only the common audience had no notion of the rules of writing but few even of the better sort piqued themselves upon any great degree of knowledge or nicety that way; till Ben Jonson getting possession of the stage brought critical learning into vogue; and that this was not done without difficulty may appear from those frequent lessons (and indeed almost declamations) which he was forced to prefix to his first plays and put into the mouth of his actors the _grex_ _chorus_ &c. to remove the prejudices and inform the judgment of his hearers. Till then our authors had no thoughts of writing on the model of the ancients: their tragedies were only histories in dialogue; and their comedies followed the thread of any novel as they found it no less implicitly than if it had been true history. ""To judge therefore of Shakspeare by Aristotle's rules is like trying a man by the laws of one country who acted under those of another. He writ to the _people_; and writ at first without patronage from the better sort and therefore without aims of pleasing them: without assistance or advice from them: learned as without the advantage of education or acquaintance among them; without that knowledge of the best of models the ancients to inspire him with an emulation of them: in a word without any views of reputation and of what poets are pleased to call immortality: some or all of which have encouraged the vanity or animated the ambition of other writers. ""Yet it must be observed that when his performances had merited the protection of his prince and when the encouragement of the court had succeeded to that of the town the works of his riper years are manifestly raised above those of his former. The dates of his plays sufficiently evidence that his productions improved in proportion to the respect he had for his auditors. And I make no doubt this observation would be found true in every instance were but editions extant from which we might learn the exact time when every piece was composed and whether writ for the town or the court."" Pope here apologises for the very middling sort of company which Shakspeare in his Comedies obliges us to keep by the obligation he was under of ""holding the mirror up to"" his hearers who being for the most part ""the meaner sort of people "" would only duly recognise and sympathize with ""images of life drawn from those of their own rank."" And so we have a pardonable cause wherefore ""our author's"" (like ""almost all the old"") Comedies HAVE THEIR SCENE among TRADESMEN and MECHANICS;"" and some excuse for the degradation of history by the historical plays which strictly follow the common OLD STORIES or VULGAR TRADITIONS of that sort of people. The DEFENCE is kindly; and bears with it we must acknowledge a specious air. In the mean time here lacks surely something to the regular ordering of the trial. Where we should be glad to know is the CORPUS DELICTI? Before justifying let us hear some witnesses to the OFFENCE. Let us call over the Comedies. Here is the roll of them. THE TEMPEST!--_Dramatis Personæ:_--Alonso KING of Naples;--Sebastian HIS BROTHER;--Prospero the RIGHTFUL DUKE of Milan!--Antonio HIS BROTHER the USURPING DUKE of Milan!--Ferdinand SON TO THE KING OF NAPLES!--Gonzalo an honest old COUNSELLOR of Naples!--Adrian Francisco LORDS!--Really we are afraid that all the ignobler males left Caliban a savage and deformed SLAVE; Trinculo a JESTER; Stephano a drunken BUTLER; the MASTER OF A SHIP the BOATSWAIN and MARINERS--will not any more than Miranda with Ariel and the Spirits who personate in Prospero's masque and who clear out the playbill suffice to lay THE SCENE of the ""Tempest"" AMONG tradesmen and mechanics. Next come handsomely cloaked and feathered in old Italian garb ""The TWO GENTLEMEN of Verona!"" But we will not spare any further the curious reader the labour of turning over the leaves of his own copy or of his memory. The truth is as every reader's recollection at once answers that the rule for the comedy of Shakspeare respectively to the social degrees along which it moves may be worded safely enough from the scheme of persons exhibited above. The comedy of Shakspeare removes itself by two great strides from the meaner sort of its auditory; for light-footed or more seriously-pacing it loves to tread on floors of state; it associates familiarly with the highly-born and the highly-natured. His Thalia is of a very aristocratic humour. But more than this she further distances the vulgar associations and experience of her spectators by putting between herself and them the Romance of Manners. We have seen the names--Naples Milan Verona. Let us pursue the roll-call. In ""Twelfth Night "" the ""scene"" is a city in Illyria and the sea-coast near it;--in ""Measure for Measure "" VIENNA;--in ""Much Ado about Nothing "" MESSINA;--in the ""Midsummer Night's dream "" ATHENS AND A WOOD NOT FAR FROM IT;--in ""Love's Labour's Lost "" NAVARRE;--in the ""Merchant of Venice "" PARTLY AT VENICE AND PARTLY AT BELMONT THE SEAT OF PORTIA ON THE CONTINENT (understand OF ITALY;)--in ""As You Like It "" THE SCENE LIES FIRST NEAR OLIVER'S HOUSE; AFTERWARDS PARTLY IN THE USURPER'S COURT AND PARTLY IN THE FOREST OF ARDEN;--in ""All's Well that End's Well "" PARTLY IN FRANCE AND PARTLY IN TUSCANY;--in the ""Taming of the Shrew "" SOMETIMES IN PADUA AND SOMETIMES IN PETRUCHIO'S HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY;--in ""The Winter's Tale "" (a comedy wherein only two of the personages die--one eaten ) THE SCENE IS SOMETIMES IN SICILIA SOMETIMES IN BOHEMIA;--in the ""Comedy of Errors "" at EPHESUS;--Last of all in the ""Merry Wives of Windsor "" in WINDSOR and the parts adjacent. THIRTEEN comedies lying in Italy Illyria Germany Greece France Asia Minor Sicily Bohemia and in that uninhabited island inhabited by a day-dream and which lies nowhere. _One_ in _England_. We throw every thing together. To Shakspeare the boarded stage is the field of imagination. He comes from the hand of Nature an essential poet. That he is a dramatic poet should have two reasons. The first given in his poetical constitution; that the piercing and various inquisition of humanity for which he was gifted; the intimate mastery of passion; and the extraordinary activity of ratiocination which distinguish him are satisfied only by the Drama. Then in the accident of the times--that as the stage rose for Æschylus Sophocles Euripides and they for the stage--so with Shakspeare in England. At a certain point of the social progression the theatre becomes the spot where poetry has living power. Shakspeare must seize upon the mind of his countrymen as Homer took possession of Greece--VIVA VOCE. The silent and retired press is for the dream-like Spenser--for the star-like Milton. To Shakspeare the Promethean maker of men and women earthly-moulded if kindled into life with fire from heaven--give a stage and actors!--Give men and women to personate men and women!--And give three thousand men and women to throng roundabout and look and listen--thrill and weep--suspended in one breathlessness! But not because he has deigned to trace upon those actual boards his magical ring and because within it his powerful art calls up no air-made phantasmagoria but breathing and sentient _substantial_ humanity; not therefore is he less a magician--less a POET--less if you will a dreamer. Imagination is the faculty which habitually divides him as all his brotherhood from us the vulgar of mankind. To him the stage is the field of imagination; therefore he avails himself of all allowed imaginative resources. Distance in time and place which renders indefinite; strange picturesque poetical manners and regions are such legitimate means. In particular imagination prefers high rank to low for half a dozen reasons. The outward show state pomp retinue splendour of costume of habitation of all daily accidental conditions;--these allure imagination which like grief ""is easily beguiled."" EASE in human life like that attributed to the heavenly divinities--the [Greek: reia zôntes]--the gods who live at ease pleases imagination;--which might be justified. But imagination is not a light and idle child to be won by the mere toy of a throne and robe crown and sceptre. These are the signs of a universal homage rendered; and in this meaning besides their natural richness and beauty pleasing. Again imagination itself does homage to stately power--not homage servile as to that from which it dreads evil--but free homage contemplatively to a wellspring of momentous effects. The power that invests the person of a sovereign of necessity clothes him in majesty. Again many and grave destinies hang about high persons. Each stands for many of less note; and imagination is a faculty taking delight in the representation of many by one. Besides high persons carry on high actions; and they are free to act. They will and straightway they do. Here then is good cause why the imaginative drama comic or tragic shall delight in high persons. And you see accordingly that the plays of Shakspeare of whatsoever description move regularly amongst the loftily born--kings independent dukes nobles gentlemen. ""The Emperor of Russia was my father:"" says the falsely accused Hermione and you sympathize with her proud consciousness and you THE MORE feel her abhorred indignity. If Spenser could say that it belongs to gentle blood to sit well on horseback--much more does the easy and inborn courage and worth of gentle blood bestride bravely gracefully lightly and well the careering rearing bounding plunging and headlong rushing horses of human destinies. The fact then is this:--Shakspeare thus views the world; and he frames his idea of the drama accordingly. What then does Pope mean when he says that Shakspeare ""lays his scene amongst tradesmen and mechanics?"" Surely he does not include under _tradesmen_ great _merchants_. Not for example the ""Merchant of Syracusa "" the grave and good old Ægæon condemned to death in the ""Comedy of Errors"" because Ephesus and Syracusa have war. He and his fortune are as far away as a king with his--from the 'prentices of London. It is not the Venetian merchant the princely Antonio with his argosies spice and silk laden that Pope regards as letting down the dignity of the sock; nor we hope the Jew and usurer Shylock; the sublime in indignation when he vindicates to his down-spurned race the parity of the human tempering in body and soul; the sublime in hate when he fastens like a devil his fangs--or prepares to fasten--in the quivering living flesh of his Christian debtor. No! these are not yet the key to the enigma--""_tradesmen_ and mechanics."" In the ""Midsummer Night's Dream "" ""a crew"" of six ""rude _mechanicals_ "" ""hard-handed men "" ""that work for bread upon Athenian stalls "" enact TWO scenes wholly to themselves--ONE which mixes them up with the fairies; and ONE in the presence of Theseus Duke of Athens and of his fair warrior-bride Hippolyta Queen of the Amazons; to say nothing of ONE or possible TWO fairy scenes which include one of the said ""swaggering hempen homespuns "" transformed by faëry. Is _this_ that ""laying"" of the ""scene amongst tradesmen and mechanics "" which has afforded our critic his absolute description of Shakspeare's comedy? We greatly suspect that it had too much to do in suggesting the strange misrepresentation. And is this all? No! It is not. There is one play that by its whole invention lies nearest the reality which must be taken as habitually possessing the understandings of an English--a London--audience in the reign of Elizabeth. It is that one comedy which haunts upon English ground--""The Merry Wives of Windsor."" The complexion and constitution of the play lay it in the bosom--the manners are those--of MIDDLE English life. Here are the persons:--Sir John Falstaff; Fenton (he is Ann Page's lover the list of the names assigns him no rank. In conversation with mine host of the Garter however he asserts his own quality; with ""as I am a gentleman;"") Shallow _a country justice_; Slender _cousin to Shallow_; Mr Ford Mr Page _two gentlemen_ dwelling at Windsor; William Page a boy _son to Mr Page_; Sir Hugh Evans _a Welsh parson_; Dr Caius _a French Physician; Host of the Garter Inn_; Bardolf Pistol Nym _followers_ of Falstaff; Robin _page_ to Falstaff; Simple _servant_ to Slender; Rugby _servant_ to Dr Caius. There is no need of adding two wives and a daughter. Here is the _toning_ of that which we will take leave to call Shakspeare's _only unromantic and unaristocratical_ comedy. Was this written to please the ""meaner sort"" of people who frequented the playhouses? Dennis hands down the tradition--which he may have had from Dryden who may have had it from Sir W. Davenant--that ""the comedy was written at the command of Queen Elizabeth and _by her direction_."" At all events and whatsoever other tastes it courted and may have gratified it won the favour of the highest audience. The quarto edition of 1602 describes it as having been ""divers times acted by the right honourable my Lord Chamberlaine's servants both before her Maiestie and else-where;"" and in the accounts of the _Revels at Court_ in the latter end of 1604 it figures as performed on the Sunday following November first ""by his Majestie's plaiers."" We have thus in part explicitly and in part summarily documented the TONE if it may be so called of Shakspeare's Comic Theatre--being impelled so to do first of all by the duty of contradicting the most injurious and utterly groundless characterization of a critic whom we cite with the highest esteem and applause; further by the fear that the positive and unqualified averment of a high and critical authority might entrap a docile and easy reader into an unhappy _misrecollection_ of his own true and clear knowledge upon the matter. Thirdly we were not sorry to find ourselves engaged in clearing up once for all our own hitherto somewhat confused and insecure impressions. In the fourth place we do always rejoice and are irresistibly swayed from our equipoise and are liable to be hurried any lengths when we fall in with any opportunity of talking in any way about Shakspeare. But in particular we are glad to be obliged to approve and authenticate any general and grounding views of his poetry; and it came not amiss to our humour in this day of the world to show how tenderly and reverently the Spirit who has the most lovingly largely and profoundly comprehended humanity viewed the mistrusted and assailed institutions which have all along built and sustained the societies of men. If there is ""beauty"" that ""maketh beautiful old rhyme "" there is verse that reacts upon its matter; the poetry of Shakspeare shall stand in the place of a more easily fallible political science to strengthen whilst it adorns the old pillars of man's world. Song can draw down the moon from the sky--song shall draw and charm many a rugged uncouth untamed understanding to a more submissive political docility. But indeed there lurked one other less ambitious motive. What could the accurate Pope mean by this most inaccurate description of his author? We presume that there is an answer. The eulogy which precisely describes Shakspeare is Pope's own. The imputations against Shakspeare of which Pope will palliate the edge are not Pope's. They are the impeachments laid by the adversary which Pope zealous of mitigating too largely and hastily concedes. Standing then in bare and sharp opposition as they do to the fact they may serve us as constituting a fact in themselves. They attest the opinion of the day--opinion at least prevalent high and wide since Pope allows it. We can understand the opinion itself only as a confused and excessive exaggeration of the admixture which Shakspeare allowed to the lower comic in comedy and in tragedy; as a protest--in which how far did Pope join?--against that admixture. The conclusion which this day will draw must be that the criticism of Shakspeare in polite circles at that day stood low. ""Another cause (and no less strong than the former) may be deduced from our author's being a _player_ and forming himself first upon the judgments of that body of men whereof he was a member. They have ever had a standard to themselves upon other principles than those of Aristotle. As they live by the majority they know no rule but that of pleasing the present humour and complying with the wit in fashion; a consideration which brings all their judgment to a short point. Players are just such judges of what is _right_ as tailors are of what is _graceful_. And in this view it will be but fair to allow that most of our author's faults are less to be ascribed to his wrong judgment as a poet than to his right judgment as a player. ""By these men it was thought a praise to Shakspeare that he scarce ever _blotted a line_. This they industriously propagated as appears from what we are told by Ben Jonson in his _Discoveries_ and from the preface of Heminges and Condell to the first folio edition. But in reality (however it has prevailed) there never was a more groundless report or to the contrary of which there are more undeniable evidences; as the comedy of the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ which he entirely new writ; the _History of Henry VI._ which was first published under the title of _The Contention of York and Lancaster_ and that of _Henry V._ extremely improved: that of _Hamlet_ enlarged to almost as much again as at first and many others. I believe the common opinion of his want of learning proceeded from no better ground. This too might be thought a praise by some and to this his errors have as injudiciously been ascribed by others. For it is certain were it true it could concern but a small part of them; the most are such as are not properly defects but superfoetations; and arise not from want of learning or reading but from want of thinking or judging: or rather (to be more just to our author) from a compliance to those wants in others. As to a wrong choice of the subject a wrong conduct of the incidents false thoughts forced expressions &c. if these are not to be ascribed to the aforesaid accidental reasons they must be charged upon the poet himself and there is no help for it. But I think the two disadvantages which I have mentioned (to be obliged to please the lowest of people and to keep the worst of company ) if the consideration be extended as far as it reasonably may will appear sufficient to mislead and depress the greatest genius upon earth. Nay the more modesty with which such a one is endued the more he is in danger of submitting and conforming to others against his own better judgment."" On the other hand as the intellectual destiny of Shakspeare was to be the greatest of dramatists the trade of a player had its advantages. He learned absolutely what a stage is what actors can do and what audiences are. Charles Lamb feebly maintained that Shakspeare's Plays are unfitted for acting by being above it. They are above reading too; at least they are above most--why not say the truth at once--above all readers of them. Yet it would be a pity to leave them unread. They are the best fitted of all plays for acting; for of all plays they best possess the stage and command the audience. In thus extolling the essential poetry of Shakspeare he condemns his practical understanding his art. He oversteps too the inabilities of the histrionic art. The inabilities of the histrions themselves is another matter. The difficulty of understanding Shakspeare must not be turned into the impossibility of representing him when understood. The power art science capacity what you will with which he has fitted his works to their immediate use shows itself remarkably in this that as the stage grows in its material means the play comes out in power splendour majesty magnificence as if the stage but grew to the dimensions of that which it must contain; and it must have been hundreds of times felt in the green-room that only the Plays of Shakspeare try and form actor and actress foster and rear them to the height of their possible stature. ""But as to his _want of learning_ it may be necessary to say something more: there is certainly a vast difference between _learning_ and _languages_. How far he was ignorant of the latter I cannot determine; but it is plain he had much reading at least if they will not call it learning. Nor is it any great matter if a man has knowledge whether he has it from one language or another. Nothing is more evident than that he had a taste of natural philosophy mechanics ancient and modern history poetical learning and mythology: we find him very knowing in the customs rights and manners of antiquity. In _Coriolanus_ and _Julius Cæsar_ not only the spirit but manners of Romans are exactly drawn: and still a nicer distinction is shown between the manners of the Romans in time of the former and of the latter. His reading in the ancient historians is no less conspicuous in many references to particular passages and the speeches copied from Plutarch in _Coriolanus_ may I think as well be made an instance of his learning as those copied from Cicero in _Catiline_ of Ben Jonson's. The manners of othe
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nations in general the Egyptians Venetians French &c. are drawn with equal propriety. Whatever object of nature or branch of science he either speaks of or describes it is always with competent if not extensive knowledge; his descriptions are still exact; all his metaphors appropriated and remarkably drawn from the true nature and inherent qualities of each subject. When he treats of ethic or politic we may constantly observe a wonderful justness of distinction as well as extent of comprehension. No one is more a master of the poetical story or has more frequent allusions to the various parts of it. Mr Waller (who has been celebrated for this last particular) has not shown more learning this way than Shakspeare. We have translations from Ovid published in his name among those poems which pass for his and for some of which we have undoubted authority (being published by himself and dedicated to his noble patron the Earl of Southampton.) He appears also to have been conversant in Plautus from whom he has taken the plot of one of his plays. He follows the Greek authors and particularly Dares Phrygius in another; although I will not pretend to say in what language he read them. The modern Italian writers of novels he was manifestly acquainted with; and we may conclude him to be no less conversant with the ancients of his own country; from the use he has made of Chaucer in _Troilus and Cressida_ and in the _Two Noble Kinsmen_ if that play be his as there goes a tradition it was; and indeed it has little resemblance of Fletcher and more of our author than some of those that have been received as genuine. ""I am inclined to think this opinion proceeded originally from the zeal of the partisans of our author and Ben Jonson; as they endeavoured to exalt the one at the expense of the other. It is ever the nature of parties to be in extremes; and nothing is so probable as that because Ben Jonson had much the more learning it was said on the one hand that Shakspeare had none at all; and because Shakspeare had much the most wit and fancy it was retorted on the other that Jonson wanted both. Because Shakspeare borrowed nothing it was said that Ben Jonson borrowed every thing. Because Jonson did not write extempore he was reproached with being a year about every piece; and because Shakspeare wrote with ease and rapidity they cried he never once made a blot. Nay the spirit of opposition ran so high that whatever those of the one side objected to the other was taken at the rebound and turned into praises; as injudiciously as their antagonists before had made them objections."" The learning of Shakspeare! Pope like Dryden has said well upon it. Shakspeare the personal friend of men of highest rank learning genius; and reading in the English language as much as he chose of the wit and wisdom there entreasured inherited the mind of the world. What will you have more? That he shall read his own spirit; and therefore is he above all men learned. As for that seeming wildness and irregularity of his style which many are inclined even at this day to set down to his imperfect education we beg you to recollect his more elaborated rhymed poems; his Venus and Adonis; his Rape of Lucrece; his Passionate Pilgrim; his Sonnets. And are you quite sure that some of the most finished the strictest composition as to language and verse of his age shall not be found there far beyond the experience or even comprehension of Dr Parr and all his scholars? Reader beloved from old and with whom we have ever loved on pleasant landing-place in spacious article lovingly to confabulate--while printer's devil forgetful of copy in the far depths of Altisidora indulged in snoreless sleep--reader beloved anew tell us who were the Greeks? ""They were that division of mankind in which Homer took mortal existence. Homer spoke Greek."" Good. And so three or five thousand years hence somebody will be asking somebody who were the English? ""Oh! they inhabited the island in which Shakspeare was born! Then and a little while before and after. Shakspeare spoke English. He was an Englishman."" Good. Ay ay rough and ready and gentle reader in what civilized part of Central Africa such question and reply will be made we predict not; but you and we feel that when and wheresoever the little dialogue shall occur we two shall have for ourselves our own sufficient share of posthumous reputation and eke Charles Knight. These twelve volumes always lying on their own line of our table are Charles' edition of Shakspeare alone of all our valuables uninsured at the Sun for they are bound in asbestos. And now obedient reader listen to us lecturing like a philosophical critic as we are on Pope's ESSAY ON CRITICISM involved in these ten volumes edited twenty years ago by William Roscoe now with the saints. Essay on Criticism! What does one expect? Criticism be it noted has two phases. This is the first. In its origin it follows now afar now close upon the works out of which it has arisen. It describes the methods which genius has half-instinctively half-thoughtfully followed. It brings out into clear statement certain movements and felt workings of genius; and it defines formal imitation to workers that shall come. It appears therefore as an embodying of rules. This is in the main the shape in which criticism appears in classical antiquity. This was the meaning of the name with Pope and his contemporaries. ""_Dicta sunt omnia_ "" remarks Quinctilian (insisting upon the order in which nature produces first the arts themselves poetry or eloquence in power--operative; _then_ the deduction and exposition of the method ) ""_antequam præciperentur_."" And so in Pope and his contemporaries we read of nothing but RULES--RULES--RULES! At this day the word then in honour grates albeit a smooth one upon one's ear. It seems to depress and to tame to shut up and imprison thought which would range and soar and asks breath and vigour and liberty from true criticism. The truth is that since that day the world has turned round and we are turned philosophers. Thus the second phasis has arisen. We want no longer the rules but the PRINCIPLES--the facts or the laws in our nature and the nature of things about us which have given out the rules; whence they flowed to Homer and to Demosthenes. We will drink from the fountains; not even from those ""golden urns!"" And with right and with reason for we too are the children of nature. Besides we will JUDGE Homer and Demosthenes. Without doubt criticism founded as an art empirical tends continually to its second phasis of a science grounding an art. And it is to be hoped that something towards this profounder constitution has been attained and that we in following down our critics shall follow out some part of such a progress. In the mean time let us not rate our predecessors too low merely upon the showing of their own modesty. Do not believe that Aristotle could propound a rule through which a principle did not gleam out. And in sooth when this Essay sprang from the brain of Pope --were not possibly the papers lying in the desk of Addison in which he began for our literature the deliberate and express examination into the Philosophy of Criticism within the domain of the beautiful in Art and Nature? Addison in a commendatory critique in the _Spectator_ said that the observations in the Essay ""follow one another without that methodical regularity that would have been requisite in a prose writer."" And Warton in opposition to Warburton who asserted that it was a regular piece written on a regular and consistent plan has spoken scornfully of the Bishop's Commentary and concluded in his usual forcible-feeble way that Pope had no plan in the poem at all. Roscoe spiritedly rates Warton for assuming to know Pope's mind better than Pope himself who gave the Commentary his _imprimatur_. It may occasionally refine rather too ingeniously but on the whole it is elucidatory and Roscoe did well to give it entire in his edition of Pope. The Essay is in one book but divided into three principal parts or numbers; and Warburton in a few words tells its plan:--""The rest gives the rules for the study of the art of criticism; the second exposes the causes of wrong judgment; and the third marks out the morals of the critic."" And Roscoe says with equal truth that ""a certain degree of order and succession prevails which leads the reader through the most important topics connected with the subject; thereby uniting the charm of variety with the regularity of art."" Adding finely that ""poetry abhors nothing so much as the _appearance_ of formality and restraint."" An excellent feature of the Essay giving it practical worth and interesting as native to the character of the writer is the strenuous requisition to the poet himself that he shall within his own soul and for his own use of his own art accomplish himself in criticism. It is recorded that Walsh ""the muses' judge and friend "" said to Pope--""There is at least one virtue of writing in which an English poet of to-day may excel his predecessors; that is--CORRECTNESS."" But it is more likely that the perception of this virtue in the poetical intellect of Pope drew out the remark from Walsh than that the remark suggested to the poet the pursuit of the virtue. Pope in his verse in his prose in his life _rules himself_. Deliberated purpose resolutely adopted and consistently executed characterises the man and the writer. It is nature or some profounder control than a casual suggestion of a literary aim that imparts this pervading character. As little could he owe to another the nice discrimination the intellectual precision the delicacy of perception--in a word the critical sense and apprehension which make up one aspect of the mind impressed upon the style generally considered of Pope. As far then as the virtue of correctness is to be predicated of his writings--and we do not believe that the countrymen of a poet go on predicating of him for generation after generation gratuitously--we must believe that we have to thank himself for it and not Walsh. We said ""UPON THE STYLE GENERALLY CONSIDERED ""--for we acknowledge exceptions and contradictions to the general position; inaccuracies and incorrectnesses that would make an answer to the question--""What is the CORRECTNESS OF POPE?"" a somewhat troublesome affair. But we resolutely insist that when in his ""Essay on Criticism "" he calls upon the poet himself severely to school his own mind in preparation; when he requires that in working he shall not only feel and fancy but understand too; when in a word he claims that he shall possess his art AS AN ART; he speaks his own spirit impelling; and so stamps a fine personality which is one mode of originality on his work. The praise that is uppermost in one's mind of the _Essay on Criticism_ is its rectitude of legislation. Pope is an orthodox doctor--a champion of the good old cause. Hence after almost a century and a half this poem of a minor (Warburton says his twentieth year) carries in our literature the repute and weight of an authority and a standard. It is of the right good _English_ temper--thoughtful and ardent--discreet and generous--firm with sensibility--bold and sedate--manly and polished. He establishes himself in well-chosen positions of natural strength commanding the field; and he occupies them in the style of an experienced leader with forces judiciously disposed and showing a resolute front every way of defence and offence. You do not curiously enquire into the novelty of his doctrines. He has done well if in small compass he has brought together and vigorously compacted and expressed with animation poignancy and effect the best precepts. Such writing is beneficial not simply by the truths which it newly propounds or more luminously than heretofore unfolds but by the authority which it vindicates to true art--by the rallying-point which it affords to the loyal adherents of the high and pure muses--by the sympathy which its wins or confirms to good letters--by its influence in dispersing pestilent vapours and rendering the atmosphere wholesome. In perusing the ""Essay on Criticism "" the reader is occasionally tempted to ask himself ""whether he has under his eyes an art of criticism or an art of poetry."" 'Tis no wonder; since in some sort the two arts are one and the same. They coincide largely; criticism being nothing else than the reasoned intelligence of poetry. Just the same spirit power precision delicacy and accomplishment of understanding which reign in the soul of the great poet creating rule in that of the good critic judging. The poet creating criticizes his own work; he is poet and critic both. The critic is a poet without the creation. As Apelles is eye and hand both; the critic of Apelles is eye only. This identification so far as it goes has been variously grounded and viewed. Of old it was urged that only the poet is the judge of poetry the painter of painting the musician of music and so on. Such positions proceed upon a high and reverential estimation of art. To judge requires the depth and sharpness of sensibility the vivid and pathetic imagination which characterize the artist. It asks more. To see the picture as it should be gazed upon to hear the poem as it would be listened to laborious preparation is needed--study strenuous and exact learned and searching--that ardent and lover-like communing with nature the original of arts and that experience in the powers the difficulties and the significancy of art which only the dedication of the votary to the service of an art can easily be supposed to induce. There is in practice a verity and an intimacy of knowledge without which theoretical criticism wants both light and life. So Pope contends-- ""Let such judge others who themselves excel; And censure freely who have written well."" He seems at the same time to be aware that this doctrine is not likely to find general favour; and that an objection will be taken up by those with whom it is unpalatable grounded in the poet's liability to be seduced beguiled transported misled by his sympathy with that which is in the art specifically his own--the inventive power. And he admits the danger; but rebuts the objection by averring that on the other side the critic who is not a poet has his own temptation. He will be run away with by his intellectual propensities; the opinion of his own infallibillity; the pleasure of pronouncing sentence--dispositions all that move to a hasty and are adverse to a generous decision. ""Poets are partial to _their wit_ 'tis true But are not critics to _their judgment_ too?"" The two arts poetry and the criticism of poetry thus running together so as that in the mind of the poet they are one thing and that it is hard well to distinguish in speaking of them in prose it will not seem surprising if Pope intending to write of the lesser and so inveigled into writing of the greater should not always distinctly know of which he writes. Let us cite a celebrated passage as an example of such almost unavoidable confusion. ""First fathom nature and your judgment frame By her just standard which is still the same. Unerring NATURE still divinely bright One clear unchanged and universal light; Life force and beauty must to all impart At once the source and end and test of art. Art from that fund each just supply provides Works without show and without pomp presides. In some fair body thus the informing soul With spirits feeds with vigour fills the whole Each motion guides and every nerve sustains Itself unseen but in th' effect remains. Some to whom heaven in wit has been profuse Want as much more to turn it to its use; For wit and judgment often are at strife Though meant each other's aid like man and wife. 'Tis more to guide than spur the muse's steed Restrain his fury than provoke his speed; The winged courser like a generous horse Shows most his mettle when you check his course."" Now lend your ears. Pray _attend_. It these memorable twenty lines--memorable by the truth of the thinking and the spirited or splendid felicity of expression--the subject of the rules delivered is for two verses--CRITICISM PROPER that is to say the faculty of judging in the mind of the critic who is not necessarily a poet and whose function in the world is the judgment of the work produced and complete and exposed for free censure. ""First fathom nature and your judgment frame By her just standard which is still the same."" This general reference to the fountain-head of law and of power is spoken to the critic--the writer of critiques--the public censurer--the man of judgment. For the next four lines the creative power and the presiding criticism in the mind of the poet and the judicial criticism in the mind of the official critic are all three in hand together. ""Unerring NATURE still divinely bright One clear unchanged and universal light; Life force and beauty must to all impart At once the source and end and test of art."" Warburton has remarked that the two last verses run parallel to one another inasmuch as ""source"" respects ""life "" the ever-welling--""end"" reflects ""force "" for the force of any thing arises from its being directed to its end--and ""test"" looks back to ""beauty "" for every thing acquires beauty by its being reduced to its true standard. Very well said. But in what sense is nature the ""end"" of art? Warburton explains the word by ""the design of poetry being to convey knowledge of nature in the most agreeable manner."" Might not one think that nature is this ""end"" rather inasmuch as art aims at reaching nature in our bosoms? In this acceptation ""end"" and ""force"" would precisely belong to one another. In the mean time ""life"" and ""source"" distinctly concern the creative power in the soul of the poet; art's ""end"" must be known and fixedly looked at as the lodestar by the mariner by presiding criticism in the same soul; and the ""test"" of art must evidently be applied by the critic discharging his peculiar functions; whilst ""unerring nature "" imaged as the sun enlightens of course both poet and critic. And now the critic who was at the outset of the strain--six verses ago--alone in contemplation is dismissed for good or for ill. The poet is on Pegasus's back; the lashing out of a heel kicks the unfortunate devil to the devil; and away we go. For one verse the creative power and the presiding criticism in the mind of the poet are confounded together under the freshly suggested name--ART. ""Art from that fund each just supply provides."" That is to say ""Art "" as the inventive power in the poet draws from the sole ""fund "" nature its abundant ""supplies."" Art as the critical power in the poet takes care that precisely the ""just"" supply be drawn. In the next line this same art signifies this presiding criticism only. ""Works without show and without pomp presides."" Clearly the intent inostensive virtuous faculty of criticism alone influencing guarding leading and ruling. Then out of the four lines which elaborate an excellent simile due in propriety to the presiding criticism two are chequered with a lingering recollection of the creative power-- ""In some fair body thus the informing soul With spirit feeds with vigour fills the whole Each motion guides and every nerve sustains; Itself unseen but in th' effect remains."" What feeds? What fills? You cannot help looking back to that provision of ""supplies;"" and yet a profounder truth would be disclosed another brilliancy imparted and an unperplexed significancy given to the fine image if Criticism alone might be the informing soul--if the delicate Reason of Art in the accomplished poetical spirit had been boldly and frankly represented as inspiriting and invigorating no less than as guiding and supporting; for criticism is the virtue of art ruling the passions and surely neither orator nor poet nor philosopher will pause in answering that virtue ""feeds"" with ""spirits "" and ""fills with vigour."" That which itself unseen remains in its effect is clearly that authorized criticism which genius in the poet's soul obeys. In the next verse wit signifies the creative power alone. ""Some to whom Heaven in wit has been profuse."" In the next wit is the presiding criticism alone. ""Want as much more to turn it to its use."" In the two following wit is the creative power only and judgment is the presiding criticism. ""For wit and judgment often are at strife Though meant each other's aid like man and wife."" The four closing verses which deservedly ring in every ear and grace every tongue--lucid and vigorous--born of the true poetical self-understanding--extol duly the presiding criticism of which only they speak. ""'Tis more to guide than spur the muse's steed Restrain his fury than provoke his speed; The winged courser like a generous horse Shows most his mettle when you check his course."" A happy commentary on the ""feeding with spirits "" and ""filling with vigour "" as we would accept them. The rein provokes into action the plenitude of life that else lies unused. By the by Gilbert Wakefield not the happiest of critics in his services to Pope here rightly warns against the unskilful and indolent error of apprehending from the word ""like"" a most inapt simile which would explain a horse by a horse and exalt Pegasus by cutting off his wings. The words are clearly to be understood ""like a generous horse--AS HE IS."" We have seen then instructed reader that the poet begins giving advice to the critic. Then he entangles for a moment the critic and poet together. Then he discards the critic wholly and takes the poet along with him to the end. Do not forget we beseech you that there are in the soul of the poet two great distinct powers. There is the primary creative power which strong in love and passion and imagination converses with nature draws thence its heaped intellectual wealth and transmutes it all into poetical substance. Then there is the great presiding power of criticism which sits in sovereignty ruling the work of the poet engaged in exercising his art. These two are confounded and confused by Pope once and again. They are so under the name of _Art_!--which at first comprehends the two; and then suddenly means only the power of criticism in the poet. Again they shift place confusedly under the name ""_Wit_""--which at first means the creative power only--then the critical power only. Then once more the creative power only; in which sense it is here at last opposed explicitly to judgment. The close is under a fit and gallant figure a spirited description of the creative power firily working under the control of criticism. These deceiving interchanges run through a passage otherwise of great lucidity and beauty and of sterling strength and worth. Probably most attentive of readers though possibly not the least perplexed thou wilt not rest with less satisfaction upon what is truly good in the passage now thou hast with us taken the trouble of detecting the slight disorder which overshadows it. The possibility of the first confusion which slips from the critic to the poet attests the strength of the opinion in Pope's mind that the poet must entertain as an intellectual inmate a spirit of criticism as learned and severe as that of the mere critic. Perhaps the latter infers how close the cognation of the creative and the critical faculty. And now for another striking instance of sliding unconsciously from critic to poet. ""But most by numbers judge a poet's song And smooth or rough with them is right or wrong: In the bright muse though thousand charms conspire Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire; Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear Not mend their minds; as some to church repair Not for the doctrine but the music there. These equal syllables alone require Though oft the ear the open vowels tire; While expletives their feeble aid do join And ten low words oft creep in one dull line. While they ring round the same unvaried chimes With sure returns of still expected rhymes; Where'er you find the 'cooling western breeze ' In the next line it 'whispers through the trees;' If crystal streams 'with pleasing murmurs creep ' The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with 'sleep;' Then at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought A needless Alexandrine ends the song That like a wounded snake drags its slow length along. Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes!""-- Who are the ""MOST"" that ""JUDGE a poet's song by numbers?"" with whom ""smooth or rough is RIGHT or WRONG?"" Who are ""the tuneful fools "" who of the Muse's thousand charms ""ADMIRE her tuneful voice"" only? The haunters of Parnassus whose attraction thither is the ""PLEASURE"" of their ear not the instruction of their mind; who ""REQUIRE"" nothing more than ""equal syllables?""--For these first eight lines you have the bad critic and the bad critic only. But who are ""THEY"" that ""ring round the same unvaried chimes"" of rhymes; who bestow upon ""you "" ""the reader ""--""breeze "" ""trees;"" ""creep "" and ""sleep;"" whose one thought has no meaning; who have scotched the snake not killed it; and who are to be abandoned to the solitary delight of their own bad verses? In these last ELEVEN lines you have the bad poet and the bad poet only. Whilst in the three intermediate verses ""Though oft the ear "" &c. you have the imperceptible slide effected from critic to poet. Did Pope know and intend this? We think not; and we think there is in the construction itself proof positive to the inadvertency. For where is the antecedent referred to in ""While THEY ring round?"" He who looks for it will arrive first at the ""THESE "" who ""equal syllables alone require."" But he has now escaped from the bad poet's into almost worse company. The said ""THESE"" are clearly a SECOND smaller division of the condemned EAR-CRITICS. The greater division the ""MOST"" _have_ ears forsooth and can distinguish ""smooth"" and ""rough."" But ""THESE"" WOULD HAVE ears. They have none; they have only FINGERS. They can tell that the syllables keep the RULE of the measure and that is all. They stand on the lowest round of the ladder or on the ground at the foot of the ladder. | | | | | Tho' oft the ear the open vowels tire is to them ""excellent music "" an unimpeachable verse for it COUNTS RIGHT. They are the arithmeticians of the Muse--no musicians. We agree with Warburton who says that it is ""impossible to give a full and exact idea of poetical criticism without considering at the same time the _art of poetry_ so far as poetry is an ART."" But we must contend that a poet who addresses or discourses of two such distinct species as the writer who criticizes and the writer who is criticized--two human beings at least placed in such very different predicaments--is bound continually to know and to keep his reader aware which he exhorts and which he smites--the sacrificer or the victim. You have in your memory and a thousand times recollected the following fine passage; but are you sure that you have fully and clearly understood as well as felt it? ""A _little learning_ is a dangerous thing; Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring; There shallow drafts intoxicate the brain And drinking largely sobers us again. Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts While from the bounded level of our mind Short views we take nor see the length behind; But more advanced behold with strange surprise Far distant views of endless science rise! So pleased at first the towering Alps we try Mount o'er the vales and seem to tread the sky Th' eternal snows appear already past And the first clouds and mountains seem the last. But those attain'd we tremble to survey The growing labours of the lengthen'd way Th' increasing prospect tires our wondering eyes Hills peep o'er hills and Alps on Alps arise."" The precept must be given to somebody. To whom? The whole Essay addresses itself to two descriptions of persons--to those who _will be_ critics and to those who _will be_ poets. Both are here addressed and indistinctively. But we may distinguish--nay must--in turning verse into prose. What is the counsel bestowed? ""Meddle not with criticism as a professed or unprofessed critic unless you are prepared to invade the depths of criticism."" ""Touch not the lyre of Apollo to call forth a tone unless you are willing to put your hand under the most rigorous discipline in the school of the musicians."" What is the motive the reason of the counsel? The twofold monitory and hortatory counsel proceeds upon a twofold contemplation; upon the view of the beginning and upon that of the end. A taste of criticism--the possession of half a dozen rules--the sitting for a few furtive and perilous instants upon that august seat of high judgment before which the great wits of all ages and nations come to receive their award--infatuates the youthful untempered brain with dazzling bewildering and blinding self-opinion. Enough to mislead is easily learned. Right dictates of clearest minds--oracles of the old wisdom--crudely misunderstood. Rules of general enunciation made false in the applying by the inability of perceiving in the instance the differencing conditions which qualify the rule or suspend it. So on the other hand canons of a narrower scope stretched beyond their true intent. And last and worst of all in the ignorance and in the disdain of statutes and sanctions and preceding authoritative judgments--the humours and fancies the likings and the mislikings the incapable comprehension and the precipitate misapprehensions of an untrained uninstructed inexperienced self-unknowing spirit howsoever of Nature gifted or ungifted to be taken for the standard of the worth which the generations of mankind have approved or which has newly risen up to enlighten the generations of mankind! Abstain then from judging O Critic that wilt be! Humble thine understanding in reverence! Open thy soul to beliefs! Yield up thy heart dissolving and overcome to love! Cultivate self-suspicion! and learn! learn! learn! The bountiful years that lift up the oak to maturity shall rear and strengthen and ripen thee! Knowledge of books knowledge of men knowledge of Nature--and solicited and roused and sharpened in the manifold and studious conversation with books and with men and with Nature--last and greatest--the knowledge of thyself--shall bring thee out large-hearted high-minded sensitive apprehensive comprehensive informed and original clear and profound genial and exact scrutinizing and pardoning candid and generous and just--in a word a finished CRITIC. The steadfast and mighty laws of the moral and intellectual world have taken safe care and tutelage of thee and confer upon thee in thy now accomplished powers the natural and well-earned remuneration of honestly laboriously and pertinaciously dedicated powers! And as for thee O Poet that wilt be con thou by night and by day the biography of JOHN MILTON! And now--in conclusion--for the very noblest strain in didactic poetry. ""Those Rules of old discover'd not devised Are Nature still but Nature methodised; Nature like Liberty is but restrain'd By the same laws which first herself ordain'd. ""Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites When to repress and when indulge our flights: High on Parnassus' top her sons she show'd And pointed out those arduous paths they trod; Held from afar aloft th' immortal prize And urged the rest by equal steps to rise: Just precepts thus from great examples given She drew from them what they derived from Heaven. The gen'rous critic fann'd the poet's fire And taught the world with reason to admire. Then Criticism the Muse's handmaid proved To dress her charms and make her more beloved. * * * * * ""You then whose judgment the right course would steer Know well each Ancient's proper character: His fable subject scope in ev'ry page; Religion country genius of his age: Without all these at once before your eyes Cavil you may but never criticise. Be Homer's works your study and delight Read them by day and meditate by night; Thence form your Judgment thence your maxims bring And trace the muses upward to their spring. Still with itself compared his text peruse; And let your comment be the Mantuan muse. ""When first young Maro in his boundless mind A work t' outlast immortal Rome design'd Perhaps he seem'd above the critic's law And but from Nature's fountains scorn'd to draw: But when t' examine ev'ry part he came Nature and Homer were he found the same. Convinced amazed he checks the bo
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d design; And rules as strict his labour'd work confine As if the Stagyrite o'erlook'd each line. Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; To copy nature is to copy them. Some beauties yet no precepts can declare For there's a happiness as well as care. Music resembles poetry; in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach And which a master-hand alone can reach. If where the rules not far enough extend (Since rules were made but to promote their end ) Some lucky license answer to the full Th' intent proposed that license is a rule. Thus Pegasus a nearer way to take May boldly deviate from the common track; Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend And rise to faults true critics dare not mend. From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art Which without passing through the judgment gains The heart and all its end at once attains. In prospects thus some objects please our eyes Which out of nature's common order rise The shapeless rock or hanging precipice. But though the ancients thus their rules invade (As kings dispense with laws themselves have made ) Moderns beware! or if you must offend Against the precept ne'er transgress its end; Let it be seldom and compell'd by need And have at least their precedent to plead The critic else proceeds without remorse Seizes your fame and puts his laws in force. I know there are to whose presumptuous thought Those freer beauties ev'n in them seem faults. Some figures monstrous and mis-shaped appear Consider'd singly or beheld too near; Which but proportion'd to their light or place Due distance reconciles to form and grace. A prudent chief not always must display His powers in equal ranks and fair array But with the occasion and the place comply Conceal his force nay seem sometimes to fly. Those oft are stratagems which errors seem; Nor is it Homer nods but we that dream. Still green with bays each ancient altar stands Above the reach of sacrilegious hands; Secure from flames from Envy's fiercer rage Destructive war and all-involving age. See from each clime the learn'd their incense bring! Hear in all tongues consenting paeans ring! In praise so just let ev'ry voice be join'd And fill the gen'ral chorus of mankind. Hail bards triumphant! born in happier days; Immortal heirs of universal praise! Whose honours with increase of ages grow As streams roll down enlarging as they flow; Nations unborn your mighty names shall sound And worlds applaud that must not yet be found O may some spark of your celestial fire The last the meanest of your sons inspire (That on weak wings from far pursues your flights; Glows while he reads but trembles as he writes ) To teach vain wits a science little known T' admire superior sense and doubt their own! A magnificent burst of thoughtful enthusiasm! an urgent and monitory exhortation in which Pope calls upon rising critics and poets to pursue in the great writings of classical antiquity the study of that art which proceeds from the true study of Nature. It depictures his own studies; and expresses the admiration of a glowing disciple who having found his own strength and light in the conversation of his high instructors will utter his own gratitude will advance their honour and will satisfy his zeal for the good of his brethren by engaging others to use the means that have prospered with himself. The art delivered by Greece was self-regulated nature. Criticism was the well-expounded Reason of inspiration calling and instructing emulation. The critic that will be must transport himself into the mind of antiquity; and in particular into the mind of his author for the time being. Homer is your one great all-sufficient lesson. Read him after Virgil's manner of reading him who sought Nature by submitting himself to rules drawn from her and emblazoned in the Iliad and Odyssey. Nevertheless the rules do not yet comprehend every thing; and emergencies occur when they whom the rules have trained to mastery inspired by their spirit and following out their design transcend them: so creating a new excellence which in its turn becomes a rule--but O ye moderns! beware and dare tremblingly! There are critics of a confined and self-confident wit who impeach these liberties even of the masters most unthinkingly and rashly; for sometimes the skillful tactician is on his way to winning the victory when you think him flying. The fame of those ancients is now safe and universal. Withhold not your solitary voice. Hail ye victorious inheritors of ever-gathering renown! And oh! enable the last and least of poets to teach the pretenders of criticism modesty and reverence! _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ Footnotes: [1] Daguerreotype &c. [2] Valerius Flaccus. [3] Cicero in a well-known passage of his _Ethics_ speaks of trade as irredeemably base if petty; but as not so absolutely felonious if wholesale. He gives a _real_ merchant (one who is such in the English sense) leave to think himself a shade above small-beer. [4] ""_The astonishment of science._""--Her medical attendants were Dr Percival a well-known literary physician who had been a correspondent of Condorcet D'Alembert &c. and Mr Charles White a very distinguished surgeon. It was he who pronounced her head to be the finest in its structure and development of any that he had ever seen--an assertion which to my own knowledge he repeated in after years and with enthusiasm. That he had some acquaintance with the subject may be presumed from this that he wrote and published a work on the human skull supported by many measurements which he had made of heads selected from all varieties of the human species. Meantime as I would be loth that any trait of what might seem vanity should creep into this record I will candidly admit that she died of hydrocephalus; and it has been often supposed that the premature expansion of the intellect in cases of that class is altogether morbid--forced on in fact by the mere stimulation of the disease. I would however suggest as a possibility the very inverse order of relation between the disease and the intellectual manifestations. Not the disease may always have caused the preternatural growth of the intellect but on the contrary this growth coming on spontaneously and outrunning the capacities of the physical structure may have caused the disease. [5] Amongst the oversights in the _Paradise Lost_ some of which have not yet been perceived it is certainly _one_--that by placing in such overpowering light of pathos the sublime sacrifice of Adam to his love for his frail companion he has too much lowered the guilt of his disobedience to God. All that Milton can say afterwards does not and cannot obscure the beauty of that action: reviewing it calmly we condemn--but taking the impassioned station of Adam at the moment of temptation we approve in our hearts. This was certainly an oversight; but it was one very difficult to redress. I remember amongst the many exquisite thoughts of John Paul (Richter ) one which strikes me as peculiarly touching upon this subject. He suggests--not as any grave theological comment but as the wandering fancy of a poetic heart--that had Adam conquered the anguish of separation as a pure sacrifice of obedience to God his reward would have been the pardon and reconciliation of Eve together with her restoration to innocence. [6] ""I stood in unimaginable trance And agony which cannot be remember'd."" --_Speech of Alhadra in Coleridge's Remorse._ [7] Some readers will question the _fact_ and seek no reason. But did they ever suffer grief at _any_ season of the year? [8] [Greek: Phygê monou pros monon].--PLOTINUS. [9] The thoughts referred to will be given in final notes; as at this point they seemed too much to interrupt the course of the narrative. [10] ""Everlasting Jew!""--_der ewige Jude_--which is the common German expression for _The Wandering Jew_ and sublimer even than our own. [11] ""_I felt._""--The reader must not forget in reading this and other passages that though a child's feelings are spoken of it is not the child who speaks. _I_ decipher what the child only felt in cipher. And so far is this distinction or this explanation from pointing to any thing metaphysical or doubtful that a man must be grossly unobservant who is not aware of what I am here noticing not as a peculiarity of this child or that but as a necessity of all children. Whatsoever in a man's mind blossoms and expands to his own consciousness in mature life must have pre-existed in germ during his infancy. I for instance did not as a child _consciously_ read in my own deep feeling these ideas. No not at all; nor was it possible for a child to do so. I the child had the feelings I the man decipher them. In the child lay the handwriting mysterious to _him_; in me the interpretation and the comment. [12] I except however one case--the case of a child dying of an organic disorder so therefore as to die slowly and aware of its own condition. Because such a child is solemnized and sometimes in a partial sense inspired--inspired by the depth of its sufferings and by the awfulness of its prospect. Such a child having put off the earthly mind in many things may naturally have put off the childish mind in all things. I therefore speaking for myself only acknowledge to have read with emotion a record of a little girl who knowing herself for months to be amongst the elect of death became anxious even to sickness of heart for what she called the _conversion_ of her father. Her filial duty and reverence had been swallowed up in filial love. [13] _The Englishwoman in Egypt._--Letters from Cairo written during a residence in 1842 1843 and 1844 with E. W. Lane Esq. author of the _Modern Egyptians_. By his SISTER. [14] Blue eyes are regarded in the East as so unlucky that the epithet ""blue-eyed"" is commonly applied as a term of abuse--(see Lane's _Thousand and One Nights_ chap. XV. note 9.) We find from Miss Pardoe that a similar prejudice prevails among the Osmanlis. [15] A representation of ladies thus mounted is found in the _Modern Egyptians_ Vol. i. p. 240 first edit. [16] _Observations on the Mussulmans of India_ by Mrs Meer Hassan Ali (Parbury and Allen 1832.) The authoress of these volumes became under what circumstances she does not inform us the wife of a Moslem native of wealth and rank in India of whose hareem she had been twelve years an inmate without once having had reason by her own account to regret her apparently strange choice of a partner. [17] Knight's _Quarterly Magazine_ ii. 414 a talented but shortlived periodical chiefly by members of the University of Cambridge to which Praed was a principal contributor under the assumed signature of Peregrine Courtenay. [18] Lane's _Thousand and One Nights_ i. 176 ii. 345. [19] A representation of the Mahmal is given in the _Modern Egyptians_ ii. 182. [20] Mrs Damer describes this lady to whose amiability and accomplishments she does ample justice as ""a sort of Turkish _chanoinesse_ "" who had renounced marriage in order to devote herself to her mother--a circumstance which if correctly stated would be almost unparalleled in the East. But Mrs Poole's silence would rather lead us to suppose that Mrs Damer was mistaken. [21] A belief precisely similar prevailed throughout Christendom previous to the year 1260 of our own era: the reference being to the two mystic periods in the eleventh chapter of the Apocalypse. [22] An anecdote of this personage is given in Mr Lane's works i. 153. [23] It is hareem etiquette to address mothers by the names of their children. [24] Marriages of slaves from the khalif's hareem occur more than once in the Thousand and One Nights. [25] The higher classes are not free from this reproach if we are to believe the story told by Mrs Damer that Nezleh Hanum punished a female slave who had offended her by the daily amputation of a joint of one of her fingers! [26] A Spanish proverb of former days defines ""Castilian faith and Moorish works"" as the ingredients of a good Christian. [27] _Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry and Geology._ 1 vol. 8vo. _Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology._ 4th Edition. _Catechism of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology._ 7th Edition. [28] _Elements of Agricultural Chemistry and Geology_ 4th Edition p. 239. [29] Yet we are sometimes led to doubt if our author be really so kind-hearted as he would have us to believe. The following passage for example would lead us to believe that he is really savage at heart and that his humanity is little better than affectation. The contrast between the two passages which we have put in italics is very amusing. He is speaking of the _weeding_ of pigeons. ""Every bird that is caught should be examined and recognized and every one exhibiting signs of old age should be destroyed by pushing the joint of the thumb with force into the back of the head and severing the cervical vertebræ or _applying the teeth for that purpose_; but should these modes be disliked or impracticable _rather than torture the poor devoted animals_ by abortive attempts let their heads be cut off at once by a sharp table-knife.""--(Vol. ii. p. 253.) [30] _Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris First Earl of Malmesbury._ Edited by his GRANDSON the Third Earl Vols. 3 and 4 London: 1844. [31] Barrancas are those immense clefts or ravines some of them several thousand feet deep which abound upon the plateau or table-land on which the city of Mexico stands. [32] Orizava--in Mexican Citlatepetl or the Star Mountain. [33] The Mexican wolf. [34] A proverbial expression amongst the Indians signifying something inimical or prejudicial; the day of ill luck. [35] Bixa Orellana--a species of dye-wood. String is made out of the bark. The wood takes fire easily upon friction. [36] Infamous by birth. The children of whites and negroes or whites and Indians or Indians and negroes were _infames de derecho_. [37] Guachinango is another name for Lépero. Pulque is the favourite drink of the Mexicans made from the sap of the agave or aloe. [38] Beef salted and dried. [39] _Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III._ London: 1845. 2 vols. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. The first numbered page in the original text is 269. The following misprints have been corrected: ""subjct"" corrected to ""subject"" (page 392) ""tougue"" corrected to ""tongue"" (page 396) Other than the corrections listed above printer's inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained. Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors have been silently closed while those requiring interpretation have been left open. Other punctuation has been corrected without note. "
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file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCLIV. APRIL 1845. VOL. LVII. CONTENTS. VIRGIL TASSO AND RAPHAEL 401 PING-KEE'S VIEW OF THE STAGE 415 THE MIDNIGHT WATCH 424 VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION 448 MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XVI. 461 BETHAM'S ETRURIA CELTICA 474 SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 489 NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. III.--DRYDEN 503 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. CCCLIV. APRIL 1845. VOL. LVII. VIRGIL TASSO AND RAPHAEL. Originality of conception and fidelity of observation in general mark the efforts of genius in the earlier ages of society; and it is then accordingly that those creative minds appear which stamp their own impress upon the character of a whole people and communicate to their literature in the most distant periods a certain train of thought a certain class of images a certain family resemblance. Homer Phidias and Æschylus in ancient times--Dante Michael Angelo Ariosto and Shakspeare in modern belong to this exalted class. Each in his own department has struck out a new range of thought and created a fresh brood of ideas which on "winged words " have taken their flight to distant regions and to the end of the world will never cease to delight and influence mankind. Subsequent ages may refine their images expand their sentiments perhaps improve their expression; but they add little to the stock of their conceptions. The very greatness of their predecessors precludes fresh creations: the furrows of the ancient wheels are so deep that the modern chariot cannot avoid falling into them. So completely in all persons of education are the great works of antiquity incorporated with thought that they arise involuntarily with every exercise of the faculty of taste and insensibly recur to the cultivated mind with all that it admires and loves and venerates. But though originality of conception the creation of imagery and the invention of events belong to early ages delicacy of taste refinement of sentiment perfection of expression are the growth of a more advanced period of society. The characters which are delineated by the hand of Genius in early times are those bold and original ones in which the features are distinctly marked the lines clearly drawn the peculiarities strongly brought out. The images which are adopted are those which have first occurred to the creative mind in forming a world of fancy: the similes employed those which convey to the simple and unlettered mind the clearest or most vivid conception of the idea or event intended to be illustrated. Valour pride resolution tenderness patriotism are the mental qualities which are there portrayed in imaginary characters and called forth by fictitious events: and it is this first and noblest delineation of mental qualities in an historical gallery which has rendered the _Iliad_ immortal. The images and similes of Homer are drawn from a close observation of nature but they are not very varied in their range: he paints every incident every occurrence every feature but he is not much diversified in conception and surprisingly identical in expression. His similes of a boar beset by hunters of a lion prowling round a fold and repelled by the spear of the shepherd of a panther leaping into a herd of cattle are represented in the same words wherever he has a close fight of one of his heroes with a multitude of enemies to recount. So forcibly is the creative mind in the first instance fascinated by the variety and brilliancy of its conceptions that it neglects and despises their subordinate details. It is careless of language because it is intent on ideas: it is niggardly in language because it is prodigal of thought. Homer's expressions or epithets are in general admirably chosen and speak at once a graphic eye and an imaginative mind; but it is extraordinary how often they recur without any variation. It is the same with Ariosto: he is somewhat more varied in his expression but even more identical in his details. Prodigal of invention varied in imagination unbounded in conception in the incidents and great features of his story he has very little diversity in its subordinate parts. He carries us over the whole earth through the air and to the moon: but giants castles knights and errant damsels occur at every step with hardly any alteration. The perpetual jousts of the knights charging with the lance and then drawing the sword are exactly parallel to the endless throwing of the spear and leaping from the chariot in the _Iliad_. No man can read the _Æneid_ without seeing that it has been constructed both in its general conception and chief incidents on the poems of Homer; and yet so exquisite was the taste so refined the sentiment so tender the heart of VIRGIL that he has produced upon the world the impression of a great original author. Dante worshipped him as a species of divinity; he made him his guide through the infernal regions to unfold the crimes of the wicked and the intentions of the Deity in the distribution of future rewards and punishments. Throughout the middle ages he was regarded as a sort of necromancer a mighty magician to whom the past and the future are alike known and whose power even the elements of nature were constrained to obey. The "Sortes Virgilianæ " so well known and so long practised in every country of Europe arose from this belief. The imagery mythology and characters of his epic poem are drawn from the _Iliad_: but in two particulars he is entirely original and his genius has opened the two fountains from which the most prolific streams of beauty in modern poetry have flowed. He is the father of _descriptive_ and _amatory_ poetry. The passion of love as we understand it was unknown to Homer as much as was the description of nature as a separate and substantive object. He has made the whole _Iliad_ indeed turn upon the wrath of Achilles for the loss of Briseis; and he has painted with inimitable tenderness and pathos the conjugal attachment of Hector and Andromache; but he had no conception of love as a passion mingled with sentiment and independent of possession. The wrath of Achilles is the fury of an Eastern sultan whose harem has been violated: the parting of Hector and Andromache is the rending asunder of the _domestic_ affections the farewell from the family hearth the breaking up of the home circle. But the love of Dido for Æneas is the refined passion which is the soul of the romances and of half the poetry of modern times. It was the creature of the imagination the offspring of the soul from its own conceptions kindled only into life by an external object. It arose from mental admiration; it was inhaled more by the ear than the eye; it was warmed at his recital of the sack of Troy and his subsequent wanderings over the melancholy main. It had no resemblance to the seducing voluptuousness of Ovid any more than the elegant indecencies of Catullus. It resembled the passion of Desdemona for Othello. Homer painted with graphic fidelity and incomparable force often with extraordinary beauty the appearances of nature; but it was as illustrations or for the purpose of similitude only that he did so. It was on human events that his thoughts were fixed: it was the human heart in all its various forms and changes that he sought to depict. But Virgil was the high-priest of nature and he worshipped her with all a poet's fervour. He identifies himself with rural life he describes with devout enthusiasm its joys its occupations its hardships: the rocks the woods the streams awaken his ardent admiration; the animals and insects are the objects of his tender solicitude. When the Mantuan bard wrote ----"Sæpe exiguus mus Sub terram posuit domos atque horrea fecit " he was inspired with the same spirit that afterwards animated Burns when he contemplated the daisy Cowper when he sympathized with the hare. The descriptive poetry of modern times has owed much to his exquisite eye and sensitive heart. Thomson in his _Seasons_ has expanded the theme in a kindred spirit and with prodigal magnificence. Scott and Byron have brought that branch of the poetic art to the highest perfection by blending it with the moral affections with the picturesque imagery of the olden time with the magic of eastern or classical association. But none of our poets--how great soever their genius how varied their materials--have exceeded if they have equalled the exquisite beauty of his descriptions; and the purest taste in observation as the utmost beauty of expression is still to be best attained by studying night and day the poems of Virgil. Modern epic poetry arose in a different age and was moulded by different circumstances. The mythology of antiquity was at an end and with it had perished the gay and varied worship which had so long amused or excited an imaginative people. The empire of the Cæsars with its grandeur and its recollections had sunk into the dusk; the venerable letters S. P. Q. R. no longer commanded the veneration of mankind. A new faith enjoining moral duties had descended upon the earth: a holier spirit had come to pervade the breasts of the faithful. An unknown race of fierce barbarians had broken into the decaying provinces of the Roman empire and swept away their government their laws their property and their institutions. But the Christian faith had proved more powerful than the arms of the legions; it alone had survived amidst the general wreck of the civilized world. Mingling with the ardent feelings and fierce energy of the barbarian victors it sat ----"a blooming bride By valour's arm'd and awful side." Incorporating itself with the very souls of the conquerors--descending on their heads with the waters of baptism never leaving them till the moment of extreme unction--it moulded between these two extremes their whole character. A new principle superior to all earthly power was introduced--a paramount authority established to which even the arm of victorious conquest was compelled to submit--ruthless warriors were seen kneeling at the feet of unarmed pontiffs. The crown of the Cæsars had more than once been lowered before the cross of the head of the faithful. From the intensity and universality of these religious emotions and the circumstance of the Holy Land being in the hands of the Saracens with whom Christendom had maintained so long and at times so doubtful a struggle a new passion had seized upon the people of modern Europe to which no parallel is to be found in the previous or subsequent history of mankind. The desire to recover the Holy Sepulchre and re-open it to the pilgrimages of the faithful had come to inflame the minds of men with such vehemence that nothing approaching to it had ever before occurred in the world. It had pervaded alike the great and the humble the learned and the ignorant the prince and the peasant. It had torn up whole nations from Europe and precipitated them on Asia. It had caused myriads of armed men to cross the Hellespont. In Asia Minor on the theatre of the contest of the Greeks and Trojans it had brought vast armies into collision far outnumbering the hosts led by Hector or Agamemnon. It had brought them together in a holier cause and on more elevated motives than prompted the Greek confederates to range themselves under the king of men. It had impelled Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Godfrey of Bouillon from Europe. It had roused Saladin and Solyman the Magnificent in Asia. Unlike other popular passions it had continued through successive generations. It had survived for centuries and declined at length less from want of ardour in the cause than from failure of the physical and material resources to maintain at so vast a distance so wasting a struggle and supply the multitudes of the faithful whose bones whitened the valley of the Danube or the sands of Asia. But religious and devout emotions had not alone become all-powerful from the blending of the ardour of a spiritual faith with the fierce energy of northern conquests. The northern nations had brought with them from their woods two principles unknown to the most civilized nations of antiquity. Tacitus has recorded that a tribe in Germany maintained its authority solely by the justice of its decisions; and that in all the tribes women were held in the highest respect and frequently swayed the public councils on the most momentous occasions. It is in these two principles the love of justice and respect for women that the foundation was laid for the _manners of chivalry_ which form the grand characteristic and most ennobling feature of modern times. New elements were thence infused into the breast of the warriors into the heart of women into the songs of poetry. Chivalry had arisen with its dreams its imaginations its fantasy; but at the same time with its elevation its disinterestedness its magnanimity. The songs of the Troubadours had been heard in southern Europe; the courts of love had been held in Provence; the exploits of Charlemagne and Richard had resounded throughout the world. The _chevalier sans peur et sans reproche_ who dedicated himself to the service of God and of his lady was a less natural but he was a far more elevated being than either Achilles or Æneas. Knights-errant who went about in quest of adventures redressing wrongs succouring damsels combating giants defying sorcerers delivering captives--faithful amidst every temptation to their lady-love true amidst every danger to the Polar-star of duty--formed the leading characters in a species of romance which is less likely in all probability to be durable in fame than the _Iliad_ or the _Æneid_; but which is so in a great degree from the circumstance that the characters it portrays had from an extraordinary combination of events been strung upon a higher key than is likely to be sympathized with by future generations of man. Ariosto was the great original mind in this extravagant but yet noble style of poetry; he was the Homer of this romance of modern Europe. He possessed the same fruitful invention the same diversified conception the same inexhaustible fancy as the Grecian bard; and in melody and occasional beauty of versification he is often his superior. But he will bear no sort of comparison with Homer in knowledge of character or the delineation of the human heart. His heroes are almost all cast in one of two models and bear one of two images and superscriptions. The Christian paladins are all gentle true devoted magnanimous unconquerable; the Saracen soldans haughty cruel perfidious irascible but desperately powerful in combat. No shades of difference and infinite diversity in character demonstrate as in the _Iliad_ a profound knowledge and accurate observation of the human heart. No fierce and irascible Achilles disturbs the sympathy of the reader with the conquerors; no self-forgetting but country-devoted Hector enlists our sympathies on the side of the vanquished. His imagination like the winged steed of Astolfo flies away with his judgment; it bears him to the uttermost parts of the earth to the palace of the syren Alcina to the halls in the moon but it destroys all unity or identity of interest in the poem. The famous siege of Paris by the Saracens in the time of Charlemagne which was so often expected during the middle ages that it at last came to be believed to have been real was the main point of his story; but he diverges from it so often in search of adventures with particular knights that we wellnigh forget the principal object of the poem and feel no absorbing interest in the issue of any particular events or the exploits of any particular heroes. He had no great moral to unfold or single interest to sustain in his composition. His object was to amuse not instruct--to fascinate not improve. He is often as beautiful as Virgil in his descriptions as lofty as Homer in his conceptions; but he as often equals Ovid in the questionable character of his adventures or Catullus in the seducing warmth of his descriptions. There is no more amusing companion than the _Orlando Furioso_ for the fireside; but there is none less likely to produce the heroes whom it is his object to portray. That which Ariosto wants TASSO has. The _Jerusalem Delivered_ is beyond all question the epic poem of modern Europe. In it as in the _Iliad_ unity of interest and of action is entirely preserved. It is one great struggle between Europe and Asia which is recorded; it is for the attack and defence of one city that the forces of Christendom and of Mahometanism are arrayed. But the object of contention the moral character of the struggle is incomparably higher in the modern than the ancient poem. It is not "another Helen who has fired another Troy;" it is no confederacy of valour thirsting for the spoils of opulence which is contending for victory. It is the pilgrim not the host whose wrongs have now roused Europe into action; it is not to ravish beauty from its seducer but the holy sepulchre from its profaners that Christendom has risen in arms. The characters of the chiefs correspond to the superior sanctity of their cause and indicate the mighty step in advance which the human mind under the influence of Christianity and civilization had made since the days of Homer. In Godfrey of Bouillon we perceive enthusiasm guided by wisdom; difficulties overcome by resolution self-subdued by devotion. Rinaldo like Achilles is led astray by beauty and the issue of the war is prolonged from the want of his resistless arm; but the difference between his passion for Armida and the Grecian hero's wrath for the loss of Briseis marks the influence of the refined gallantry of modern times. The exquisite episode of the flight of Erminia the matchless pathos of the death of Clorinda can be compared to nothing either in the _Iliad_ or _Æneid_; they belong to the age of chivalry and are the efflorescence of that strange but lofty aspiration of the human mind. Above all there is a moral grandeur in the poem a continued unity of interest owing to a sustained elevation of purpose--a forgetfulness of self in the great cause of rescuing the holy sepulchre which throws an air of sanctity around its beauties and renders it the worthy epic of Europe in its noblest aspect. Notwithstanding these inimitable beauties the _Jerusalem Delivered_ never has and never will make the impression on the world which the _Iliad_ has done. The reason is that it is not equally drawn from nature; the characters are taken from romantic conception not real life. The chiefs who assemble in council with Godfrey the knights who strive before Jerusalem with Tancred have little resemblance either to the greyhaired senators who direct human councils or the youthful warriors who head actual armies. They are poetical abstractions not living men. We read their speeches with interest we contemplate their actions with admiration; but it never occurs to us that we have seen such men or that the imagination of the poet has conceived any thing resembling the occurrences of real life. The whole is a fairy dream--charming interesting delightful but still a dream. It bears the same resemblance to reality which the brilliant gossamer of a snow-clad forest glittering in the morning sun does to the boughs when clothed with the riches and varied by the hues of summer. It is the perfection of our conceptions of chivalry mingled with the picturesque machinery of antiquity and romantic imagery of the East told with the exquisite beauty of European versification. But it is a poetical conception only not a delineation of real life. In Homer again the marvellous power of the poet consists in his deep insight into human character his perfect knowledge of the human heart and his inimitable fidelity of drawing every object animate or inanimate. Aristotle said that he excelled all poets that ever appeared in "[Greek: diagnoia]." Aristotle was right; no one can study the _Iliad_ without feeling the justice of the observation. It is the penetration the piercing insight of the Greek bard which constitute his passport to immortality. Other poets may equal him in variety of imagination; some may excel him in melody of versification or beauty of language: none will probably ever approach him in delineation of character or clothing abstract conceptions in the flesh and blood of real life. Considered with reference to unity of action and identity of interest the _Jerusalem Delivered_ equal to the _Iliad_ is much superior to the _Æneid_. Virgil appears in his admiration of Homer to have aimed at uniting in his poem the beauties both of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ and thence in a great measure his failure to rival either. While the first six books which contain the wanderings of the Trojan exile and the dismal recital of the sack of Troy are an evident imitation of the _Odyssey_ the last six containing the strife in Italy the efforts of the Trojans to gain a footing on the Ausonian shores and the concluding single combat of Turnus and Æneas are as evidently framed upon the model of the _Iliad_. But it is impossible in this manner to tack together two separate poems and form an homogeneous whole from their junction. Patchwork will appear in spite of all the genius and taste of Virgil. Epic poetry indeed is not confined within the narrow limits of the Grecian stage; the poem may embrace a longer period than it requires to read it. But in epic poetry as in all the fine arts one unity is indispensable--the unity of interest or emotion. Unity of time and place is not to be disregarded to any great degree without manifest danger. The whole period embraced in the _Iliad_ is only forty-eight days and the interest of the piece--that which elapses from Hector lighting his fires before the Greek intrenchments till his death in front of the Scæan Gate--is only thirty-six hours. Tasso has the same unity of time place and interest in his poems: the scene is always around Jerusalem; the time not many weeks; the main object the centre of the whole action the capture of the city. The charming episodes of Erminia's flight and Armida's island are felt to be episodes only: they vary the narrative without distracting the interest. But in Virgil the interest is various and complicated the scene continually shifting the episodes usurp the place of the main story. At one time we are fascinated by the awful recital of the murder of Priam the burning of Troy and the flight of Æneas: at another we weep with the sorrows of Dido at Carthage and the exquisite pathos of his heart-rending lamentations: at a third we are charmed by the descent into the infernal regions on the shores of Avernus we sympathize with the patriotic effort of Turnus and the people of Ausonia to expel the invaders from the Italian shores. Though Virgil did not intend it he has twice transferred the reader's sympathy from the hero of his story: once by his inimitable description of the mourning and death of Dido from the departure and perfidy of Æneas and again from the burst of patriotic feeling which he has represented as animating the Etruscan tribes at the violent intrusion of the Trojan invaders. Virgil's heroes will bear no sort of comparison with those either of the _Iliad_ or the _Jerusalem Delivered_. Æneas himself is a vain conceited man proud of his piety and his wanderings and destroying our admiration for either by the ostentation with which he brings them forward on all occasions. The well-known line "Sum pius Æneas famâ super æthere notus " occurs too frequently to render it possible to take any interest in such a self-applauding character. Compare this with the patriotic devotion the heroic courage the domestic tenderness the oblivion of self in Hector in the _Iliad_ and it will at once appear how far deeper the insight into the human heart was in the Grecian than the Roman poet. One striking instance will at once illustrate this. When Hector parts from Andromache at the Scæan Gate and after he has taken his infant son from his arms he prays to Jupiter that he may become so celebrated that the people in seeing himself pass may say only--"He far exceeds his father." What sentiment on the part of a hero himself and at the moment the bulwark and sole stay of Troy! But what does Virgil make Æneas say in similar circumstances?--"Learn boy virtue and true labour from ME fortune from others." What a difference between the thought in the two poets and the interest which their words excite in the breast of the reader! What an historical gallery or rather what a gallery of imaginary portraits does the _Iliad_ contain! It is the embodying so many separate and well-distinguished characters in different persons which forms the grand characteristic--the unequalled supremacy of the poem. Only think of what they are. Achilles vehement alike in anger and in grief wrathful impetuous overbearing "the most terrible character ever conceived by man;" yet not insensible at times to the tender emotions loving his country weeping for his father devoted to his home but yet determined to purchase deathless renown by a short life ere he met the death he knew awaited him under the walls of Troy. Hector calm resolute patriotic; sustaining by his single arm the conflict with a host of heroes; retaining by his single suavity the confederacy of many jealous and discordant nations; unconquerable in the field; undaunted in council; ever watching over his country; ever forgetful of himself; overflowing with domestic affection yet prodigal of self-sacrifice; singly awaiting before the Scæan Gate the approach of Achilles when his celestial armour shone like the setting sun and all Troy in terror had sought refuge within the walls; deaf to the wailing even of Andromache and Priam at the call of patriotic duty; and when betrayed by Minerva in the last conflict and deprived of his home yet drawing his sword to do deeds of which men might speak thereafter! Diomede unsubdued even amidst the wreck of Grecian fortunes during the absence of Achilles alone sustaining the war when all around him quailed before the spear of Hector; and resolute to hold his ground with a few followers even though the whole of his Grecian leaders fled in their ships. Agamemnon proud imperious passionate; doing injustice in anger yet willing to repair it on reflection; wresting the blue-eyed maid from Achilles in the first burst of fury yet publicly acknowledging his fault in the council of the chiefs; sending embassies and offering his own daughter to obtain a reconciliation with the son of Peleus. Ulysses wary alike in council and in action; provident in forming designs intrepid in carrying them into execution; sparing of the blood of his soldiers but unconquerable in the resolution with which they were led; ever counselling prudent measures but ever ruled by invincible determination. Ajax singly resisting the onset of the Trojan multitude; slowly retreating covered by his broad shield; midway between the two armies when all around him fled; striving with desperate resolution for the body of Patroclus and covering the retreat of his followers who dragged along the lifeless hero when Hector clad in the shining panoply he had wrested from the Myrmidonian chief was thundering in close pursuit. What has Virgil to exhibit as a set-off to this band of heroes--"Fortem Gyan fortemque Cloanthum"--the boyish eagerness of Ascanius the savage wrath of Turnus when bereaved of his bride! We seem in passing from the _Iliad_ to the _Æneid_ to have fallen so far as character goes from a race of giants to a brood of pigmies. Modern partiality cannot claim for Tasso the merit of having conceived a band of heroes whose characters were as strongly marked or boldly drawn as those of the Grecian bard; yet may it justly claim for the Italian poet the second honours. Tasso did not draw his characters from nature like Homer; he lived at a period when the manners of the heroic age had passed away and the recollections of it were preserved only in the stanzas of poetry and the romances of the Troubadours; yet did the force of his genius the elevation of his sentiments the loftiness of his conceptions in a great measure supply the defect and produce a magnificent and to this day unequalled picture of the chivalry of modern Europe. Godfrey of Bouillon is the model of a Christian hero whose arm has been devoted to the sacred lance; antiquity did not and could not conceive any such character. Hector is the nearest approach to it; but the patriotism of the Trojan chief is mingled with his domestic affections; it is for his father his wife his child his hearth his country that he fights. In Godfrey all these affections warm and ennobling as they are appear to be obliterated by the perpetual sense of a sacred duty superior to them all--by the intensity of the pious fervour which had concentrated all earthly affections. He is the personification of the Church militant combating for its Saviour's cause. The profound feelings the self-negation the martyr-like spirit which had been nursed for centuries amidst the solitude of the cloister appears in him brought forth into action and producing the most intense enthusiasm yet regulated by the caution of Ulysses combined with the foresight of Agamemnon sustained by the constancy of Ajax. Rinaldo youthful vehement impassioned is the ideal of a hero not yet weaned from the passions of the world. Vehement capricious and irascible he disturbs like Achilles the council of the chiefs by his wrath and is seduced by the beauty of Armida to abandon the cause of the cross; yet even in her enchanted gardens and when surrounded by all that can fascinate the imagination and allure the senses the sparks of a noble nature are not extinct in his breast; he is recalled to his duty by the sight of her warriors; he flies the arms of the syren; he penetrates with invincible courage the enchanted forest; and when he descends purified from the stains of the world from the lofty mountain on whose summit at sunrise he had dedicated himself to God he is the worthy and invincible champion of the cross. Not less bold than his youthful rival not less enthusiastic in his affections Tancredi is the victim of a romantic passion. But it is no enchantress for whom he pines; it is no seducing frail one who allures him from the path of duty. Clorinda appears in the Saracen ranks; her arms combat with heroic power for the cause of Mahomet; the glance which has fascinated the Christian knight came from beneath the plumed helmet. Lofty enthusiasm has unstrung his arm--devoted tenderness has subdued his heart--the passion of love in its purest form has fascinated his soul; yet even this high-toned sentiment can yield to the influences of religion; and when Tancredi after the fatal nocturnal conflict in which his sword pierced the bosom of his beloved is visited by her in his dreams and assured that she awaits him in Paradise the soul of the Crusader is aroused within him and he sets forth with ardent zeal to seek danger and death in the breach of Jerusalem. It cannot be said that these characters are so natural as those of Homer at least they are not so similar to what is elsewhere seen in the world; and therefore they will never make the general impression which the heroes of the Iliad have done. But they are more refined--they are more exalted; and if less like what men are they are perhaps not the less like what they ought to be. How is it then if Virgil is so inferior to Homer and Tasso in the unity of action the concentration of interest and the delineation of character that he has acquired his prodigious reputation among men? How is it that generation after generation has ratified the opinion of Dante who called him his "Divine Master"--of Petrarch who spent his life in the study of his works? How is it that his verses are so engraven in our recollection that they have become as it were a second nature to every cultivated mind and insensibly recur whenever the beauty of poetry is felt or the charms of nature experienced? Rest assured the judgment of so many ages is right: successive generations and different nations never concur in praising any author unless his works in some respects at least have approached perfection. If we cannot discern the beauties the concl
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sion to be drawn is that our taste is defective rather than that so many ages and generations have concurred in lavishing their admiration on an unworthy object. Nor is it difficult to see in what the excellence of Virgil consists; we cannot read a page of him without perceiving what has fascinated the world without concurring in the fascination. It is the tenderness of his heart his exquisite pathos his eye for the beauty of nature the unrivalled beauty of his language which have given him immortality and to the end of time render the study of his works the most perfect means of refining the taste and inspiring a genuine feeling of poetic beauty. So melodious is the versification so delicate the taste so exquisite the feeling so refined the sentiment of Virgil that it may truly be said that he will ever remain the model on which the graces of composition in every future age must be formed. Of him more truly than any human being it may be said ""Nihil quod tetegit non ornavit."" The _Georgics_ demonstrate that in the hands of genius and under the guidance of taste the most ordinary occupations of rural life may be treated with delicacy and rendered prolific of beauty. The dressing of vines the subduing of the clod by the sturdy heifers the different manures for the soil the sowing of seed the reaping of harvest the joys of the vintage the vehemence of storms the snows of winter the heats of summer the blossoms of spring the riches of autumn become in his hands prolific of description and prodigal of beauty. Even the dumb animals are the objects of his tender solicitude. We hear the heifers lowing for their accustomed meal in winter; we gaze on the sporting of the lambs in spring; we see the mountain goat suspended from the shaggy rock in summer; we sympathize with the provident industry of the bees; we even feel we have a friend in the little underground nest of the field mouse. The opening lines of the Eclogues which every schoolboy knows by heart give an earnest of the exquisite taste which pervades his writings:-- ""Tityre tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi Sylvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena; Nos patriæ fines et dulcia linquimus arva. Nos patriam fugimus: tu Tityre lentus in umbra Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas."" Virgil it has been said was so strongly impressed with the inferiority of the _Æneid_ to what he conceived epic poetry should be that he desired that poem to be thrown into the flames after his death; yet though deficient in the principal requisites of an epic poem so far as the structure of the story and the delineation of the characters are concerned what exquisite beauties does it contain--what an assemblage of lovely images has it brought together--what an irreparable loss would its destruction have been to all future generations of men! Not all the genius of subsequent ages could have supplied its place. There are beauties in the _Æneid_ which neither Thomson in descriptive nor Racine in dramatic poetry have been able to rival. If Homer excels all subsequent writers in conception of character vigour of imagination and graphic delineation Virgil is not less unrivalled in delicacy of sentiment tenderness of feeling and beauty of expression. There are many more striking scenes in the _Iliad_ more animating events more awful apparitions; but in the _Æneid_ passages of extraordinary beauty are much more numerous. What is present to the imagination when we rise from the former is the extraordinary series of brilliant or majestic images which it has presented; what is engraven on the memory when we conclude the latter is the charming series of beautiful passages which it contains. There are many more events to recollect in the Grecian but more lines to remember in the Roman poet. To the _Iliad_ subsequent ages have turned with one accord for images of heroism traits of nature grandeur of character. To the _Æneid_ subsequent times will ever have recourse for touches of pathos expressions of tenderness felicity of language. Flaxman drew his conception of heroic sculpture from the heroes of the _Iliad_: Racine borrowed his heart-rending pathetic from the sorrows of Dido. Homer struck out his conceptions with the bold hand and in the gigantic proportions of Michael Angelo's frescoes; Virgil finished his pictures with the exquisite grace of Raphael's Madonnas. Virgil has been generally considered as unrivalled in the pathetic; but this observation requires to be taken with a certain limitation. No man ever exceeded Homer in the pathetic so far as he wished to portray it; but it was one branch only of that emotion that he cared to paint. It was the _domestic pathetic_ that he delineated with such power: it was in the distresses of home life the rending asunder of home affections that he was so great a master. The grief of Andromache on the death of Hector and the future fate of his son begging his bread from the cold charity of strangers--the wailings of Priam and Hecuba when that noble chief awaited before the Scæan Gate the approach of Achilles--the passionate lamentations of the Grecian chief over the dead body of Patroclus--never were surpassed in any language; they abound with traits of nature which to the end of the world will fascinate and melt the human heart. The tender melancholy of Evander for the fate of Pallas who had perished by the spear of Turnus is of the same description and will bear a comparison with its touching predecessor. But these are all the sorrows of domestic life. Virgil and Tasso in the description of the despair consequent on the severing of the ties of the passion of love have opened a new field unknown in the previous poetry of antiquity. It is to be found touched on in the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides and but touched on. The passion they represent under the name of love was not what we understand by the word or what constitutes so important an element in the poetry and romance of modern Europe. It was not the imaginative flame feeding on hope nursed by smiles transcendent in enjoyment but a furious mania resembling rather and classed with the ravings of insanity. Destiny was the grand ruling power in Greek tragedy: the distress brought out was the striving of man against the iron chain of fate. Love as a passion independent of destiny detached from sense feeding on the imagination living in the presence of the beloved object is glanced at in Catullus; but it is in Virgil that we must look for the perfect delineation of its suffering a thorough knowledge of its nature--in Tasso that it has been wrought up to the highest conceivable perfection. But for all that we will not have old Homer defrauded of his dues. The _Iliad_ cannot for the reasons already mentioned produce passages to be placed beside the pathetic tenderness of Dido's love for Æneas the romantic chivalry of Tancredi or Erminia's passion. But in the earlier and more natural affections in the delineation of domestic grief in the rending asunder the parental or filial ties who has ever surpassed the pathetic simplicity of the Grecian bard? Where can we find such heart-rending words as Priam addresses to Hector leaning over the towers of Troy when his heroic son was calmly awaiting the approach of the god-like Achilles resplendent in the panoply of Vulcan and shielded by the Ægis of Minerva? But we know not whether three lines in the _Odyssey_ do not convey a still more touching picture of grief--so powerful is the wail of untaught nature. When Proteus informed Menelaus of the murder of Agamemnon his grief is thus described-- ""[Greek: Hôs ephat': autar emoige kateklasthê philon êtor Klaion d' en psamathoisi kathêmenos; oude ny moi kêr Êthel' eti zôein kai horan phaos hêelioio.]"" _Odyssey_ IV. 538. ""Thus he spoke; my soul was crushed within me; I sat weeping on the sand; nor had I the heart to wish to live and behold the light of the sun."" Here is the pathos of nature: ""Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted because they are not."" One peculiar beauty belongs to the epic poems of antiquity and especially Homer from the combination of heroic sentiments and actions with a simplicity which will be looked for in vain and in truth would be unseemly in the later ages of society. We hear of princes kings and the daughters of kings and our imagination immediately clothes them with the pomp and circumstance of modern royalty. But erelong some little circumstance let out as it were accidentally brings us back at once to the simplicity and habits of early life. Bellerophon met the daughter of a king amidst the grassy meads and a race of heroes sprung from this occasion; but he met her as he was tending his herds and she her lambs. The beauteous daughters of the Trojan chiefs repaired to the hot and cold springs of the Scamander near the Scæan Gate but they went there to wash their clothes in its limpid fountains. The youngest daughter of Nestor with the innocence of a child though the beauty of womanhood did by her father's desire to Telemachus the duties of the bath. Many a chief is described as rich; but generally the riches consist in flocks and herds in wrought brass or golden ornaments--not unfrequently in meadows and garden-stuffs. This beauty could not from the superior age of the world belong to Tasso. His soldans are arrayed in all the pomp of Asiatic magnificence--his princes appear in the pride of feudal power--his princesses surrounded with the homage of chivalrous devotion. Virgil has often the same exquisite traits of nature the same refreshing return to the young world in the _Æneid_: He dwells on those peeps into pastoral simplicity as Tacitus did on the virtue of the Germans in the corrupted days of Roman society when ""corrumpere et corrumpi seculum vocatur."" We may conceive the enchantment with which the Romans when the Capitol was in all its splendour in the time of Augustus read his charming description of its shaggy precipices in the days of Evander. ""Hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit Aurea nunc olim sylvestribus horrida dumis. Jam tum religio pavidos terrebat agrestes Dira loci; jam tum sylvam saxumque tremebant. 'Hoc nemus hunc ' inquit 'frondoso vertice collem Quis deus incertum est habitat deus: Arcades ipsum Credunt se vidisse Jovem cum sæpe nigrantem Ægida concuteret dextrâ nimbosque cieret.' * * * * * Talibus inter se dictis ad tecta subibant Pauperis Evandri passimque armenta videbant Romanoque foro et lautis mugire Carinis.""--_Æneid_ viii. 347. What Homer was to Virgil and Ariosto to Tasso that Michael Angelo was to RAPHAEL. Though both these illustrious men lived in the same age yet the former was born nine years before the latter [1] and he had attained to eminence while his younger rival was yet toiling in the obscurity of humble life. It was the sight of the magnificent frescoes of Michael Angelo that first emancipated Raphael from the stiff and formal though beautiful style of his master Pietro Perugino and showed him of what his noble art was susceptible. So great was the genius so ardent the effort of the young aspirant so rapid the progress of art in those days when the genius of modern Europe locked up during the long frost of the middle ages burst forth with the vigour and beauty of a Canadian spring that he had brought painting which he had taken up in a state of infancy in the studio of Pietro Perugino to absolute perfection when he died at the age of thirty-seven. Seventeen years in Raphael's hands sufficed to bring an art as great and difficult as poetry to absolute perfection! Subsequent ages vainly as yet attempting to imitate can never hope to surpass him. How vast must have been the genius how capacious the thought how intense the labour of the man who could thus master and bring to perfection this difficult art in a period so short as to men even of superior parts and unwearied application barely to gain the command of the pencil! Modern painting as it appears in the works of Michael Angelo Raphael and Titian is an art as elevated in kind as the highest flights of the epic or tragic muse and it has been brought to a perfection to be paralleled only by the greatest conceptions of Grecian statuary. If called upon to assign the arts which human genius had since the beginning of the world brought to absolute perfection no one would hesitate to fix on Grecian sculpture and Italian painting. Imagination can conceive a more faultless poem than the _Iliad_ a more dignified series of characters than those of the _Æneid_ a more interesting epic than _Paradise Lost_; but it can figure nothing more perfect than the friezes of Phidias or more heavenly than the _Holy Families_ of Raphael. It is one of the most extraordinary and inexplicable facts recorded in the history of the human mind that these two sister arts should both have been brought to perfection near each other on the shores of the Mediterranean in the lifetime of a single generation; for the transition from the marbles of Ægina to those of the Parthenon made in the lifetime of Pericles is as great as from the paintings of Pietro Perugino to those of Raphael made in the lifetime of Leo X. The sculpture of antiquity aimed chiefly if not entirely at the representation of a _single figure_. Even the procession on the frieze of the Parthenon is not sculpture--it is a series of isolated horsemen or figures passing. The group of Niobe and her children is the only attempt extant at telling a story or representing emotion by a variety of figures. Within this limited range the great sculptors carried the art to the highest imaginable perfection. The Apollo is the most perfect representation of manly beauty the Venus of feminine grace and delicacy. The Laocoon exhibits the most fearful contortions and agonized expressions of pain and anguish in suffering humanity; the Fighting Gladiator--the most inimitable representation of war-like energy at its extreme tension--the Dying Warrior of the Capitol of valour sinking beneath the ebbing stream of blood. The Hercules Farnese is the perfection of physical strength the Jupiter Tonans of awful majesty the Venus Calipyge of alluring beauty. Thus the expression of _character_ was their great object; emotion was not overlooked but it was studied only as it brought out or illustrated the permanent temper of mind. A collection of ancient statues is a vast imaginary gallery in which as in the heroes of the _Iliad_ every conceivable gradation of the human mind is exhibited from the stern vengeance of Achilles whom not even the massacre of half the Grecian host could melt to the tender heart of Andromache who wept her husband's valour and her sad presentiments for her infant son. In modern painting as it appeared in the hands of Raphael and Michael Angelo a wider range was attempted: more spiritual and touching objects had come to engross the human mind. The mere contemplation of abstract character--its delineation by the graphic representation of the human form had ceased to be the principal object of genius. The temple of the unknown God was no longer to be filled with idols made under image of man. The gospel had been preached to the poor; the words of mercy and peace had been heard on the earth. Painting had come to be the auxiliary of religion; it was in the churches of a spiritual and suffering faith that its impression was to be produced. Calvary was to be presented to the eye; the feeling of the centurion. ""Truly this man was the Son of God "" engraven on the heart. It was to the faithful who were penetrated with the glad words of salvation that the altar-pieces were addressed; it was the feeling of the song of Simeon that had gone forth on the earth. It was those divine feelings which painting as it arose in modern Europe was called to embody in the human form; it was to this heavenly mission that the genius of Italy was called. And if ever there was a mind fitted to answer such a call--if ever the spirit of the gospel was breathed into the human breast that mind and that breast were those of Raphael. Michael Angelo was the personification of the genius of Dante. The bold conceptions the awful agonies the enduring suffering which are brought forth in that immortal poet had penetrated his kindred spirit and realized the _Inferno_ in the representation of the _Last Judgment_. But it was the Spirit of Christ which had been breathed into the heart of Raphael. The divine words ""Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not for of such is the kingdom of heaven "" had inspired his immortal conceptions. It is neither physical beauty nor mental character as in the Greek sculpture which is represented in his paintings. It is the Divine spirit breathed into the human heart; it is the incarnation of deity in the human form that formed the object of his pencil. He has succeeded in the attempt beyond any other human being that ever existed. If any works of man ever deserved the name of divine they are the _Holy Families_ of Raphael. Superficial writers will ask what has Raphael to do with Virgil? mere artists will enquire how they are to be benefited by the study of Tasso? Those again who have reflected on the means by which the higher stages in any art are attained will acknowledge that at a certain elevation their principles are the same. To move the heart whether by painting poetry or eloquence requires the same mind. The means by which the effect is to be produced are not different. The one works indeed with the pencil the other with the pen; the one composes in verse the other in prose--but what then? These are the means to the end they are not the end itself. There are many avenues to the human heart but the inner doors in them all are to be opened only by one key and that key is never denied to the suit of genius. It is in his lesser pieces that the exquisite taste and divine conceptions of Raphael are chiefly to be seen. His greater paintings the _Transfiguration_ the frescoes in the Vatican the cartoons are invaluable to the artist as studies and specimens of the utmost power of drawing and energy of conception; but it is not there that the divine Raphael appears. In the larger ones his object was to cover space and display talent; and in the prosecution of these objects he never has been exceeded; but it is in his groups of two or three figures that his exquisite conceptions appear. It is there that he has given free scope to his exquisite conception intended to represent in the maternal and therefore universally felt affection the divine spirit and parental tenderness of the gospel. ""My son give me thy heart "" was what he always aimed at. ""God is love "" the idea which he ever strove to represent as embodying the essence of the Christian faith. The Madonna della Seggiola at Florence the Assumption of the Virgin at Dresden the Madonna di Foligno in the Vatican the Holy Family at Naples St John in the Desert in the Tribune at Florence the small Holy Family in the Louvre the large Holy Family with the flowers brought from Fontainbleau also in the Louvre St Mark at Munich and several of the lesser pieces of Raphael in the same rich collection in that city are so many gems of art embodying this conception which to the end of the world even when preserved only in the shadowy imitation of engraving will improve the heart and refine the mind as well as fascinate the imagination. It may be doubted if they ever will be equalled: excelled they can never be. Whoever will study those inimitable productions even when standing to gaze at the engravings from them in a print-shop window will have no difficulty in feeling the justice of Cicero's remark that all the arts which relate to humanity have a certain common bond a species of consanguinity between them. The emotion produced by the highest excellence in them all is the same. So intense is this emotion so burning the delight which it occasions that it cannot be borne for any length of time: the mind's eye is averted from it as the eyeball is from the line of ""insufferable brightness "" as Gray calls it which often precedes the setting of the sun. It is difficult to say in which this burning charm consists. Like genius or beauty its presence is felt by all but can be described by none. It would seem to be an emanation of Heaven--a chink as it were opened which lets us feel for a few seconds the ethereal joys of a superior state of existence. But it is needless to seek to define what all who have felt it must acknowledge passes all understanding. It is a common saying even among persons of cultivated taste that it is hopeless to attempt to advance any thing new on the beauties of ancient authors; that every thing that can be said on the subject has already been exhausted and that it is in the more recent fields of modern literature that it is alone possible to avoid repetition. We are decidedly of opinion that this idea is erroneous and that its diffusion has done more than any thing else to degrade criticism to the low station which with some honourable exceptions it has so long held in the world of letters. But when ancient excellence is contemplated with a generous eye even when the mind that sees is but slenderly gifted who will say that nothing new will occur? When it meets kindred genius when it is elevated by a congenial spirit what a noble art does criticism become? What has it proved in the hands of Dryden and Pope of Wilson and Macaulay? It is in the contemplation of ancient greatness and its comparison with the parallel efforts of modern genius that the highest flights of these gifted spirits have been attained and the native generosity of real intellectual power most strikingly evinced. Criticism of words will soon come to an end; the notes of scholiasts and annotators are easily made as apothecaries make drugs by pouring from one phial into another. But criticism of things of ideas of characters of conceptions can never come to an end; for every successive age is bringing forth fresh comparisons to make and fresh combinations to exhibit. It is the outpouring of a heart overburdened with admiration which must be delivered and will ever discover a new mode of deliverance. How many subjects of critical comparison in this view hitherto nearly untouched upon has the literature of Europe and even of this age afforded! Æschylus Shakspeare and Schiller--Euripides Alfieri and Corneille--Sophocles Metastasio and Racine--Pindar Horace and Gray--Ovid Ariosto and Wieland--Lucretius Darwin and Campbell--Demosthenes Cicero and Burke--Thucydides Tacitus and Gibbon--Thomson Cowper and Claude Lorraine: such are a few which suggest themselves at first sight to every one who reflects on the rich retrospect of departed genius. It is like looking back to the Alps through the long and rich vista of Italian landscape; the scene continually varies the features are ever new the impression is constantly fresh from the variety of intervening objects though the glittering pinnacles of the inaccessible mountains ever shine from afar on the azure vault of heaven. Human genius is ever furnishing new proofs of departed excellence. Human magnanimity is ever exhibiting fresh examples of the fidelity of former descriptions or the grandeur of former conception. What said Hector drawing his sword when betrayed by Minerva in his last conflict with Achilles he found himself without his lance in presence of his fully-armed and heaven-shielded antagonist? ""Not at least inglorious shall I perish but after doing some great thing that men may be spoken of in ages to come.""[2] PING-KEE'S VIEW OF THE STAGE. This is not O Cho-Ling-Kyang! a barbarian land as in our foolish childhood we were taught; but contrariwise great is the wisdom of the English and great their skill. Yea I will not conceal the fact that in some things they are worthy to be imitated by the best and most learned in the flowery land. Three moons have I resided in London and devoted myself with all the powers of my mind and body to fulfil the task which you and the ever-venerated Chang-Feu have laid upon me. Convey to his benignant ear the words of my respect and tell him that my brow is ever on the outer edge of his footstool. As I understand my office--having pondered over the same ever since the ship left the shore of my beloved country--it is to give you a report of the manners and customs of the inhabitants of this extraordinary land and smooth the way for the sending forth of an ambassador from the immaculate emperor to the governor of this nation. I have completely executed your commission O excellent Cho-Ling-Kyang! and this was the manner of the doing thereof. When I embarked on board of the large ship with the three masts which had for name the Walter Scott--after a great general who conquered a province called Scotland and was presented with a blue button as a reward for his magnanimity--I was entirely ignorant of the language spoken by the mariners with the exception of the short form of prayer which they constantly use when speaking of each others' eyes and a few phrases not easily translatable into our refined tongue; and I accordingly experienced great difficulty in making myself understood. Notwithstanding I soon got friendly with the captain and also with the men--who pulled my back hair whenever I passed them in the most warm and affectionate manner possible. I took greatly to study when I had overcome the sea-sickness; and although I could not master the pronunciation of their words I soon arrived at a degree of skill which enabled me to read their printed books. There was a large library on board of the ship and all day long--with the aid of Morrison's wonderful dictionary--I toiled in the delightful task of making myself acquainted with the masterpieces of English literature. And this I considered the best preparation for the duty set before me; for without books how could I furnish my mind with a knowledge of the past?--and without mastering the language how could I understand the characters and modes of thought of the men who now are? I therefore studied history; but their historians write so much and differ so greatly from each other that it was perplexing to know if what they told was true--and I was utterly confused. But fortunately there was in the ship a young person who had been sent out by his friends to a merchant's office in Canton; but had discovered that he was a great poet and very clever man and was going back to tell his father he would not hide his talents any more but be a wonder to all men for his genius and abilities; and this young person was very kind to me. He advised me what to read--which was principally his own writings; and on my telling him I wished to study history he said nobody cared for it now and that all the history he knew was in Shakspeare's plays. This Shakspeare was a great writer long ago who turned all the histories of his country into dramatic scenes; and they are acted on grand occasions before the Queen and her court at this very day. When I enquired of the young person how his countrymen preserved the memory of events which had happened since the death of the great Shakspeare he said there were other people as clever perhaps as Shakspeare who embalmed important incidents in immortal verse but whom a brutal public did not sufficiently appreciate; and he offered to read to me a poem of his own called the Napoleonad giving an account of a great war that happened some time ago--and which had been published he said week after week in the Bath and Bristol Literary Purveyor. He read it to me and it was very fine; but I did not gain much information. I read various parts of English history in Shakspeare; but from the specimens he gives of the kings that reigned long ago in England I fear they were a very cruel and barbarous race of men. One of the name of Lear gave up the kingdom to his three daughters and two of them treated him very cruelly turned him out of doors on a stormy night put out his followers' eyes and behaved very ill indeed. Another was called John--a bad man. Three Henries--the first two great fighters and one of them a common highway robber in conjunction with a fat old gentleman who was a great coward but boasted he killed the chief warrior of the enemy--and the other Henry a weak old man who was murdered by another very bad king called Richard. There was another Henry who sent away his wife--a fat bloated villanous kind of man; and after that no mention is made of any of the English kings in Shakspeare's history. And when I asked the young person if there had been any kings since he said he had never heard of any except George the Third grandfather of the present Queen. I demanded of him if all the plays in England were forced to be histories? and he said no. And when I further enquired what they represented and of what use they were he said they were to hold a mirror up to nature and to be the abstract and brief chronicle of the time; by which he afterwards explained to me he meant this--that although tragedies and the loftier portions of the drama treated generally of great events yet that in England there were many men of extraordinary talent who taught great moral lessons by means of the stage and above all things never overstepped the modesty of nature but in every scene gave a vivid and true imitation of the actual events of life. In short that the best way of seeing English character was to study the English stage; for all classes of men were more fully truly and fairly represented there than even in the House of Commons itself. The young person to prove the truth of this read me a comedy which he was going to have acted at Covent-Garden Theatre; and it was very amusing for he laughed excessively at every speech. You will easily believe O Cho-Ling-Kyang! that I rejoiced greatly at hearing this account of the stage; and unbounded was my satisfaction in finding among the books in the library a large collection of English plays which I studied deeply and took notes from for my future guidance in mingling with society. What a blessing it is for a nation to be in possession of so useful an institution where the actual manners of the time are brought exactly forward and the people can see the different classes of society with all their different feelings and peculiarities--their modes of thought--their faults and weaknesses--their wishes and vices--as vividly produced as if the performers were in reality the very beings they represent! How it must instruct the boorish in the gracefulness of polished life--how it must reprove the bad by the contemplation of honest simplicity--and what an insight must it give to the foreigners into all the secrets of the domestic existence of this great and extraordinary people! O Cho-Ling-Kyang! when the young person told me this I said to my heart--""Be still--beat no more with the pulses of uncertainty--I shall only buy a perpetual ticket to the pit of the theatre and write home a minute account of all I see and hear."" On my arrival in London I took down the names of the theatres and for three months I have studied character every night. Yet though I devoted my nights to the stage I pored all the morning over the many volumes I have collected of the printed dramas; and as they all agree in their descriptions I think I cannot be deceived and that you may safely present the subjoined result of my enquiries to the very sparkling eyes of the ever-venerated Chang-Feu. There are many ranks of men in this land and he of the highest rank is called a lord. When young a lord is always rich and gay and a great admirer of the ladies; and it is also the case that many ladies are devotedly attached to him and make no scruple to confess it to their chambermaids before they have been acquainted with him half an hour. When the lord is old he is a stiff stupid man who generally talks politics and boasts how eloquent he is in the great national assembly. He is also always very harsh to his children till they marry against his will and then he forgives them and prays for their happiness. The title bestowed on the wife and sometimes on the daughter of a lord is lady or ladyship; but this dignity is also possessed by the wives of a class of men very numerous in this country who are called sirs. The ""ladies "" almost without exception are very disagreeable people and highly immoral as they are always in love with some one else besides their husbands --and are great gamblers at cards and very malicious in their observations on their friends. The ""sirs"" are divided into two classes--sometimes they are fat rich old men who have made large fortu
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es by trade and have handsome girls either of their own or left to their charge by deceased relations --and sometimes they are gay fascinating young men running away with rich people's daughters or stupid people's wives; but luckily they always take names that give fair warning of their character so that they are generally foiled in their infamous attempts. And this is a fine illustration of the openness of the English disposition. A man here seldom conceals his propensities but assumes a name which reveals all his character at once. Sir Brilliant Fashion and Sir Bashful Constant and Sir Harry Lovewit show at once their respective peculiarities--as do Colonel Tornado Tempest Hurricane Absolute Rapid and a thousand others that I have met with in my reading. But the thing which astonished me most of all was that in this great mercantile nation a merchant is very little appreciated unless he is in debt or a cheat; but the hero of most of the histories if he is of a mercantile family is over head and ears in the books of Jew usurers and has left the respectable circle of his equals in rank and spends his time and constitution in the gaieties of the lords and ladies. And that this has long been the case is proved by old plays and new ones. There is a play in the oldest-looking of the volumes I possess called ""How to grow Rich "" which shows the style of manners in this respect forty or fifty years ago; and I will translate the beginning of it that you may see a real picture of English society with your own eyes. Mr Warford the nephew of Mr Smalltrade a banker is in conversation with Mr Plainly the head clerk:-- ""_Plainly._--Nay do not think me curious or impertinent Mr Warford. I have lived so long with you and your uncle that I cannot see you unhappy without enquiring the cause. ""_Warford._--My uncle is himself the cause. His weakness and credulity will undo us all. ""_Plainly._--Excuse me sir; but I'm afraid the young lady now on a visit at our banking-house the charming Lady Henrietta has she not made a very deep impression? ""_Warford._--To confess the truth she has; and though from my inferior situation in life I can never aspire to the gaining of her affections she may still have to thank me for saving her from ruin. ""_Plainly._--From ruin sir? ""_Warford._--Ay; she is now on the very brink of it. When her father Lord Orville went abroad for his health he gave her a fortune of eight thousand pounds and left her to the care of her uncle Sir Thomas Roundhead. At his country seat Mr Smalltrade met with her and being banker to her father he thought it his duty to invite her to his house. ""_Plainly._--And she had no sooner entered it than she became acquainted with Sir Charles and Miss Dazzle? I suspect their infamous designs. ""_Warford._--Yes Plainly when Miss Dazzle has robbed her of her fortune at the gaming-table Sir Charles is to attempt to deprive her of her honour; but if I don't shame and expose them! Oh think of the heartfelt satisfaction in saving such a woman as Lady Henrietta! 'Tis true most of her fortune is already lost and Sir Thomas is so offended at her conduct that wanting an heir to his estate he has adopted his god-daughter Rosa."" In the next page we are shown the mode in which banking was carried on in country towns by persons who had the daughters of lords visiting them--who have gone abroad for their health and left then such uncountable heaps of sycee silver. ""_Smalltrade._--There is nothing like a snug country bank. [_Enter a servant._ ""_Servant._--I want change for this draft of Sir Harry Hockley's. ""_Smalltrade._--Very well how much is it for? ""_Servant._--A hundred pounds. ""_Smalltrade._--What? ""_Servant._--A hundred pounds. ""_Smalltrade._--Mercy on me! you've set me all in a tremble. Draw on a country bank for a hundred pounds!--why does your master suppose himself drawing on the bank of Amsterdam? ""_Plainly._--True sir; and if you recollect we had a large run upon us yesterday. ""_Smalltrade._--So we had--a very large run! Sir Thomas Roundhead drew in one draft for the enormous sum of twenty-five pounds and here's your master draws for a hundred. Talk of a country bank! the Bank of England couldn't stand this. ""_Servant._--I can't tell sir; Sir Harry said he had ten times the money in your hands. ""_Smalltrade._--So he has and what then? Doesn't he place money in my hands that it may be safe; and if he is to draw it out in large sums that is if he is to get it out when he wants it where would be the use of a banker?"" In a succeeding scene Miss Dazzle meets her brother Sir Charles and says -- ""Welcome from London brother! I have just left the idol of your heart the charming Henrietta. As usual the banker's nephew was attending her. ""_Sir Charles._--Ay ay it's all pretty plain but I won't be scandalous. ""_Miss Dazzle._--Well if she's his to-day she'll be yours to-morrow. I have seen Mr Smalltrade; he talks of becoming a partner; and if you play your cards well Lady Henrietta will be completely in your power. ""_Sir Charles._--Yes for when I've won all her money I can be generous enough to become her protector. Well sister we shall ruin them all."" It will be seen from this O Cho-Ling-Kyang! that sirs and their sisters unite with country bankers in setting up a gaming-house--and that the method of treating a lord's daughter is to ruin her first at cards and in character afterwards. The picture of private life which I have quoted is from the works of one Frederick Reynolds; the play was acted with the greatest applause and has passed through a great many editions. So there can be no doubt of its presenting a true image of the usual course of events in this great and wonderful nation. In another volume I find a similar representation. It is called ""The Way to get Married "" and is written by one Thomas Morton. I will translate some passages for you and you will see that the English are very different people in their own country from what they are in their counting-houses at Hong-Kong. There was a gentleman of the name of Toby Allspice a grocer who was sheriff of his county and expected by the death of an old maid Miss Sarah Sapless to succeed to thirty thousand pounds. He has a daughter who is very anxious to be ""stylish "" and marry a ""lord"" or a ""sir "" if she can. To Mr Allspice's town goes a London merchant of the name of Dashall who receives a letter on his arrival and reads it to the whole of the audience:-- ""_Dashall_ (_reads_).--'Dear Dashall all's up. Transfer swears if you don't settle your beer account in a week he'll blackboard you. Affectionate enquiries are making after you at Lloyd's; and to crown all hops were so lively last market that there is already a loss of thousands on that scheme. Nothing can save you but the ready. Yours ""'TIM TICK. ""'N.B.--Green peas were yesterday sold at Leadenhall market at ninepence a-peck so your bet of three thousand pounds on that event is lost.'--So! Lurched every way; stocks insurance hops hazard and green peas all over the left shoulder; and then like a flat I must get pigeoned at Faro by ladies of quality for the swagger of saying 'The Duchess and I were curst jolly last night.' But confusion to despair! I'm no flincher. If I can but humbug Allspice out of a few thousands and marry his daughter I shall cut a gay figure and make a splash yet. ""_Waiter_ (_without._)--A room for Lady Sorrel. ""_Dashall._--What the devil brings her here? Old and ugly as she is I'll take decent odds that 'tis an intrigue. [_Enter Lady Sorrel._ ""_Lady Sorrel._--Inform my cousin Caustic I'm here. Ah Dashall! I suppose the warm weather has driven you from town? ""_Dashall._--True London was certainly too hot for me but how could your ladyship leave the fascination of play? ""_Lady Sorrel._--Hush! that's not my rural character. I always assimilate. The fact is Dick I have here a strange plain-spoken worthy and wealthy relation; he gives me considerable sums to distribute in London to the needy which I lose in play to people of fashion; and you'll allow that is giving them to the needy and fulfilling the worthy donor's intentions.--Ha! ha! ""_Dashall._--Then you are not here because your favourite young Tangent is arrived?--Eh? ""_Lady Sorrel._--What Dick have you found out my attachment there? Well I confess it; and if my regard be not I'll take care my revenge shall be gratified; and 'tis a great consolation that one is nearly as sweet as the other."" And when the above-named cousin of Lady Sorrel has a palaver with the same merchant Dashall he is instructed in the inner secrets of the commercial world after the following guise:-- ""_Dashall._--Capital!--an old bugbear--never thought of now. No! paper discount does it all. ""_Caustic._--Paper! ""_Dashall._--Ay. Suppose I owe a tradesman--my tailor for instance--two thousand pounds-- ""_Caustic._--A merchant owe his tailor two thousand pounds!--Mercy on me! ""_Dashall._--I give him my note for double the sum--he discounts it--I touch half in the ready--note comes due--double the sum again--touch half again--and so on to the tune of fifty thousand pounds. If monopolies answer make all straight; if not; smash into the Gazette. Brother merchants say 'D----d fine fellow; lived in style--only traded beyond his capital.' So certificate's signed ruin a hundred or two reptiles of retailers and so begin the war again. That's the way to make a splash--devilish neat isn't it? How you stare! you don't know nothing of life old boy. ""_Caustic._--Vulgar scoundrel! ""_Dashall._--We are the boys in the city. Why there's Sweetwort the brewer--don't you know Sweetwort? Dines an hour later than any duke in the kingdom--imports his own turtle--dresses turbot by a stop watch--has house-lamb fed on cream and pigs on pine apples--gave a jollification t'other day--stokehole in the brew-house--asked a dozen peers--all glad to come--can't live as we do. Who make the splash in Hyde Park?--who fill the pit at the opera?--who inhabit the squares in the West? Why the knowing ones from the East to be sure. ""_Caustic._--Not the wise ones from the East I'm sure. ""_Dashall._--Who support the fashionable Faro tables? Oh how the duchesses chuckle and rub their hands when they see one of us! ""_Caustic._--Duchesses keep gaming-tables! ""_Dashall._--To be sure! How the devil should they live?"" Such O learned Cho-Ling-Kyang! is the real life of those extraordinary beings who are so steady and plodding to outward appearance. Little would you suspect that when one of the merchants of the factory got home he would aid duchesses in the setting up of Faro tables and mix with all the brilliant and dissolute society of a great city. To us such thoughts would seem unnatural and scarcely would the president of the Hong consider himself qualified to hold a chopstick in the presence of a yellow button. And I fear greatly; that in the extremity of your unbelief you say Tush tush--Ping-Kee is deceiving us by inventing foolish deceits! An English merchant would not make open profession of his bankruptcy; an English lady of rank would not exult in the number of people she had ruined by false play at cards; an English gentleman would not concert plans with his sister for the seduction of a lord's daughter; an English sheriff would not throw off his grocer's apron to go and receive the judges while an English barrister put it on and sold figs to the beautiful daughter of a British captain. But consider O Cho-Ling-Kyang! that I am a man of veracity from my youth and that if I make so bold as to invent or even to misquote there may be many beside you who can convict me at once. And if you persist in your doubts and say verily the writers of those plays give no true account of their countrymen but write false things which have no existence in reality what shall we think of the countless numbers who go to see those representations and take no steps to punish the authors for libels and defamations--but contrariwise applaud and clap their hands and say ""good good""--would they do this if the picture had no resemblance? But they hold up the stage as a school of morals and a copy of things that are. And another argument O Cho-Ling-Kyang! that these dramas are drawn from experience and observation is that they do not contradict each other as they would assuredly do if they proceeded from any source but reality. No no--great sir--believe me that the scenes I have quoted are excellent descriptions of the characters introduced and that their originals are to be met with every day. Again perhaps you will say--not so; O Ping-Kee the writers of those plays are stupid men--with shaved heads--that have no understanding and receive no greater reward than the conjurers who catch balls on their foreheads and balance long poles in the market-place! But the case is far different as I will prove to you from the preface to one of those works written by a lady called Inchbald who herself wrote many comedies and received much money for the same. ""It is well known that the English theatres never flourished as they do at present (1807.) When it is enquired why painting poetry and sculpture decline in England? want of encouragment is the sure reply; but this reply cannot be given to the question why dramatic literature fails? for never was there such high remuneration conferred upon every person and every work belonging to the drama. A new play which from a reputed wit of former times would not with success bring him a hundred pounds a manager will now purchase from a reputed blockhead at the price of near a thousand and sustain all risk of whether it be condemned or not. Great must be the attraction of modern plays to repay such speculation. It is a consolation to the dramatist of the present age that while his plays are more attractive than ever those of former writers were those authors had their contemporary critics as well as he though less acute and less severe indeed than the present race."" I have not time to reduce into celestial money the English sum of a thousand pounds; but it is great yea more than the value in three years of the longest peacock's feather in Pekin and the value of a play is not diminished since then. Not many moons ago there was a reward offered by one of the managers of five hundred gold coins called guineas to the person who should send to him the best comedy illustrative of present manners. O Cho-Ling-Kyang the power of five hundred guineas in awakening the poetic powers of mankind! The great majority of the English nation for a whole year wrote nothing but plays; all the world was a stage and all the men and women merely writers; and when the time came all had broken down in the attempt except ninety-six. But through these fourscore and sixteen dramas all painting the habits and characteristics of the present time the judges appointed by the manager had to read. And they read--and read; and when they came to a decision lo! it was in favour of a lady--one of the cleverest authors in other styles that England has ever seen--bright polished witty; and although not in a dramatic form more dramatic and lively than any professed play-writer since one called Sherry from his fondness for drinking wine. 'Midst the applause of all the rest of the world and the hatred and jealousy of her ninety-five competitors she was presented with the money; and the manager on looking through a hole in the curtain on the first night of the performance saw the whole house crowded from the floor to the roof and thought he had never so wisely laid out five hundred guineas in his life. ""Oho!"" said wise men to each other in the boxes ""we shall see ourselves as we are--no farcical exaggeration no vulgar grievances; the woman is an observing woman and has mixed in great society; moreover it is the best play out of nearly a hundred; let us wait it will be as good as the _School for Scandal_."" And they stamped loud with their feet. The play was called the _Day of Dupes_; and wise men in the boxes were not exempt from the general fate. All were dupes together. For the authoress was a wise woman and jingled the five hundred guineas in a purse and kept all her own clever observation of life and manners to be used on some other occasion and took the same view and no other of English customs and character that Reynolds and Morton and O'Keefe and Colman had done before her. So her heroes and heroines flew about the stage and talked funny things and swore a little and conversed in a provincial dialect called slang and behaved exactly as Dashall and Miss Dazzle and Lord Sparkle had behaved before. Oh! was not this a triumph to the great authors of former days and did it not prove that wise men in the boxes are foolish men when judging of the stage? It did O Cho-Ling-Kyang! but a greater triumph was at hand. The manager having read and studied the preface by the female Inchbald which I have translated for your instruction and having given a small sum--so they consider five hundred guineas in this land of ingots--to a reputed wit thought he would gain much silver if he obtained a drama from a reputed blockhead. And he was right in his calculation; for he applied to an author who had written farces in five acts where various impossible things were done and persons talked in great jokes invented long ago by a nobleman of the name of Miller and behaved like the clown in a pantomime without the advantage of being dressed in his parti-coloured garments; and in a short time this author furnished the manager with a comedy called _Old Heads and Young Hearts_. Oh! he knew so much of life this famous author; he would show what the real state of society was; and said I to myself I will go and judge for myself. I will see whether the books I have been studying are filled with lies. I will see how gentlemen speak and how ladies look and act. Oho! I will put Reynolds and Morton to the proof. I will put on my European dress. I will ask the way to the theatre. I will sit in the pit. So shall I be able to send to Cho-Ling-Kyang and to the venerated Chang-Feu an account from my personal experience of English fashionable life. And so the first person I saw on the stage was a young gentleman greatly in debt a studier of the law who lives in a building called the Temple in a room meagrely furnished and talks about his intimacy with duchesses exactly as Dashall and Tangent had done before. Oh! said I this is complete proof that the great Reynolds and great Morton drew from life and also the great author of this beautiful play. His name not the author's name but the young gentleman's name is Littleton Coke after two sages of the law called Coke and Littleton; but he makes no money by his profession and has found all his great friends desert him when he made application to them for a loan. Their names are Lord St James and Mister Deuceace. His brother also writes him a letter enclosing the blessing of the Reverend Mr Rural but no cash. But suddenly comes in Lord Charles Roebuck the younger son of the Earl of Pompion (for in this country all the younger sons of Earls take the title of ""Lord "") and tells Mr Littleton Coke that he is in love with a lady he lifted out of a carriage that had been upset. ""_Littleton._--Is that all? ""_Roebuck._--Forbid it Venus! No with incredible trouble I traced them. The father the dragon who guards this Hesperian fruit is an old East Indian colonel as proud as Lucifer and as hot as his dominions. I hovered round the house for a week. ""_Littleton._--Successfully? ""_Roebuck._--I saw her once for a second at the back garden-gate. ""_Littleton._--To speak to her? ""_Roebuck._--I hadn't time. ""_Littleton._--No? Oh! ""_Roebuck._--No. So I gave her a kiss. ""_Littleton._--Excellent economy; and her name-- ""_Roebuck._--Is Rocket--her father an eccentric old bully turns his house into a barrack mounts guard at the hall door; the poor girl can't move without a sentry and I believe her lady's-maid is an old one-eyed corporal of artillery."" From this you will perceive O Cho-Ling-Kyang! that the English are different from the Chinese in many respects; but that Colonel Rocket so far differs from his countrymen as to keep a strict guard over his daughter. There was a gentleman of the name of Thunder in one of the volumes I read on board of the ship who was very like this Rocket--probably his uncle; and he again was the son or grandson of an old admiral I read of in a book called _Trunnion_--all evidently excellent men and frequently met with in English society. The Earl of Pompion is prime minister of England and of course a very clever man and he has determined that his son shall marry his cousin Lady Alice the widow of another lord--Lord George Hawthorn. She is called Lady Alice though her husband's name was George; for it is usual for a lady to retain her Christian name in spite of her marriage although instances I am told are known where a lady--even a duke's daughter--marrying a marquis's son takes the Christian name of her husband along with his title and calls herself Lady Thomas or Lady William; but the author of this drama of course knows best. Lord Charles Roebuck tries to avoid a marriage with Lady Alice and begs Mr Littleton Coke to propose for her himself which he of course agrees to do; and in preparation for which he would probably have found the large sum of twenty pounds he wished to borrow from Lord St James very useful. In addition to the hand of the widow who has a fortune of £5000 a-year Lord Charles insures him a seat in Parliament; and the two friends go out in a great hurry on hearing a knock at the door to take up their residence in the house of the Earl of Pompion. The knock at the door is given by the brother of the young barrister who speaks in a language which they told me was the vernacular of a foreign kingdom called York; he is accompanied by a priest of one of the religions tolerated in this country called the Christian which was once universal but has now fallen into disrepute. They come in search of the spendthrift and are taken for a money-lender and a bailiff by the young lawyer's clerk; and this makes a great laugh it is so natural a mistake. Lady Alice Hawthorn is a delightful lady. She has invited Colonel Rocket and his daughter to dine with Lord Pompion (whom she calls Pompey after a great philosopher in ancient Rome ) and who she says although he is her uncle ""talked impudence"" to her when he was half tipsy at a ball at a place called Almacks. She tells the Earl that Colonel Rocket is rich and powerful; but in this she tells a non-verity--for she looked at me--even me--where I was sitting in the pit and said he is ""a half-pay colonel with less interest than a treasury clerk but a glorious old fellow; I'll bet he'll kiss the countess in a week. What fun!"" I even I Ping-Kee was so astonished that I could say nothing but sat and blushed very much at the communication; and still redder did my cheek become when I saw what followed. For when Lord Charles and the barrister came in the young lord recognises Lady Alice's tones. ""Blest voice "" he says surely it is-- ""_Lady Alice._--Your cousin Alice; how are you Charley?--(he hesitates)--all right go on I'm human nature (he kisses her.) What's your friend's name?"" And then Mr Littleton Coke is presented to Lord and Lady Pompion who receive him very kindly; for they mistake him for the foreign gentleman who does not speak English his brother from the kingdom of York. And Lady Alice besides asking her cousin to kiss her lets the young barrister make love to her and kiss her hand before they are acquainted ten minutes and altogether gives a very fascinating idea of widows of high rank. Colonel Rocket always gives his commands in military language as if he were at the head of his regiment and Lord Charles Roebuck frightens the common people with his haughty looks. There is a very elegant gentleman who is called a butler and comes in to inform Lord Charles that dinner is on the table; and the second act ends in the following dignified manner:-- ""_Butler._--Ahem--dinner my lord""--(a pause--he goes behind their causeuse)--""Dinner my ------"" (They start up confused.) Roebuck looks sternly at the butler and they _exeunt_ followed by Butler bowing. In the next act there is a great deal of kissing and talking for which I could see no reason; and people ran out and in and up and down so much that I became rather confused. But the old Bonze is very stupid and makes a number of mistakes; and the young barrister is very gay and treats Lady Alice as if she was no better than a dancer at a festival; and they all treat each other in such extraordinary ways that I could only perceive that English young ladies and English young gentlemen if they behaved in Canton as they do at home would speedily be consigned to the lockup-house. But at last I was glad to recognise Lord Charles disguised in top-boots and knee-breeches as a groom and I was very proud of my cleverness in recognizing him; for his own father speaks to him for a long time and never makes the discovery; and shortly after Mr Littleton Coke appears also disguised as a groom but for what purpose I could not find out. And there was a long time employed in love-making again and quarrelling and mistaking till at last all things seemed to go right and the old Bonze united the hands of the lovers on the stage and we all laughed and clapped our hands. Of a truth O Cho-Ling-Kyang! the persons who find fault with the drama are foolish. It is not with the drama such critics should find fault but with the people who believe in real life in such a curious manner. No--it will not do to throw the blame of such representations on the author. He does nothing but paint what he sees. And therefore you will be wise if you send over to this people an ambassador who is not of the sect of the moral Con-fu-tse; for as he will have to mix in the society of Lady Alices and Countesses of Pompions he might be shocked and degraded by meeting them if he had any regard for female delicacy or manly feeling. It will not require a man of the abilities of the venerated Chang-Feu to twist round his thumb so very stupid a mortal as the Earl of Pompion who is secretary of state; and therefore you may save much silver by engaging a common Button to conduct the negotiations with the English crown. I could see no one on the stage or meet with any one in the books bearing any resemblance to Pottinger or Davis; and therefore I suppose all the clever men are banished by this curious people and all the silly ones kept at home. You will therefore be wise to make your treaties with the Pompions who reside in Whitehall rather than with the Goughs and Parkers who are transported to Hong-Kong. In the mean time I will continue my researches and I will also make personal experiments as to the veracity of the stage representations. I will go at once to one of the great men's houses and will kiss his wife in a week and disguise myself like a postilion and run away with one of his daughters. And of the result I will make you aware. Such is the view of your servant Ping-Kee who touches the ground you stand on with his forehead nine times--and one time more. THE MIDNIGHT WATCH. CHAPTER I. ""For the watch to babble and talk Is most tolerable and not to be endured."" _Much Ado about Nothing._ About the period when the civil wars between the Republican and Royalist parties in England had terminated after the execution of the unfortunate Charles I. in the utter defeat of his son at the battle of Worcester and the dispersion of all the adherents to the royal cause a small castellated mansion not far from the eastern coast of England was garrisoned by a party of the Parliamentary troops. This mansion which had belonged to a Royalist family who had fled the land having been seized upon and confiscated by the Parliamentary commissioners employed in sequestrating the property of confirmed enemies of the commonwealth had been converted into a sort of fortress or stronghold the natural defences and isolated position of which rendered it peculiarly adapted as a place of confinement for prisoners of war. Its situation at the same time so near the coast gave it an additional advantage as a post of observation whence measures might be taken for the interception of such Royalists who proscribed as obstinate malignants might be led to this part of the country in their attempts to seek the means of escape. Flanked on one side by the waters of the river this isolated house was cut off on the other three by a broad ditch or moat being thus entirely surrounded by water except at one point the most remote from the river where it communicated by a wooden bridge with a causeway lined by an avenue of trees which served as an approach and traversed at some length a low level tract of land before it reached the higher and more hilly country. A similar tract of level but of a more marshy and swampy description stretched along the opposite bank of the river terminating at some distance by a line of low well-wooded hills. Not far from the house which stood thus alone like a solitary bittern in a Dutch landscape the river widened suddenly into a large expanse of water called in this part of England a ""broad "" which was itself only separated from the sea by a narrow strip of low sand-banks and sandy downs or deanes as they are there termed and extended thus along the shore to some distance when again assuming the form of a river it poured its waters into the German Ocean. Of the more ancient part of this mansion which boasted (it was never well known upon what authority) a Roman origin only a large circular tower was left which was attached somewhat awkwardly like an ill-adjusted headpiece on to the more modern building. Although constructed in the comparatively peaceful times of Henry VII.'s reign the more modern house had been evidently built with some ideas of strength and defence and in a demi-castellated form various smaller additions having been made to it at subsequent and different periods without any great observance of order or style. Behind the main body of the house thus irregularly constructed was a species of small inner-court or garden enclosed between the old tower and the walls that connected it with the mansion on one side and a wing of the building which extended to the side of the stream on the other; whilst opposite to the back of the house which was now wholly unoccupied and almost in a ruinous state a strong and thick parapet skirted the river and completed the parallelogram.--Formerly an opening in the centre of this parapet had evidently conducted by several steps to the water's edge in order to facilitate the communications with boats on the river; but it had now been blocked up by a fresh mass of heavy brickwork and masonry as if for the purpose of adding security to the place; and at the time we write two culverins mounted so as to be on a level with the top of the parapet contributed to give to the spot the look of a fortified stronghold. The forms of flower-beds of prim shapes the former decorations of the spot might still be traced here and there in the now almost level and sandy surface of the coast giving evidence that some pains had probably been originally bestowed upon this interior enclosure. But beyond these faint traces of flower-beds nothing now remained of its better days but a few evergreens and other bushes which growing close by the parapet wall had equally escaped the rude trampling of the unheeding soldiers or the wanton devastations of some of the over-zealous of the day; men who looked upon all adornment of whatever kind all appearance of gratification of a refined taste however innocent as sinful and condemnable. A vaulted passage traversed the wing of the building mentioned as stretching to the water's edge and formed the usual and more direct communication between this sort of court and other parts of the establishment. Late on a fine autumn afternoon of the year 1652 some little time after the battle of Worcester a young man musket on arm paced up and down this inner court as sentinel. His dress which partook of the military uniform of the times without precisely belonging to any particular regiment and the finer cloth of some parts of his attire which was of a far finer texture than was customary upon the person of a common soldier proved that he was one of the many volunteers who had enrolled themselves among the troops of the Parliamentary army and probably of gentler birth than might be generally found employed in such humble military functions. Loose boots of so great a si
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e towards their upper part that each might have been imagined to contain at least half a calf-skin mounted towards his large hose of plain but good material. A tuck or rapier of some length was girded round his loins; a corselet with bandoleer slung around it covered the front of his buff-coat; and a morion destitute of all feather or ornament concealed for the greater part his hair closely clipped in compliance with the puritanical fashions of the times the colour of which however might be divined by the fairness of the young mustache that curled lovingly about his upper lip. Sometimes as he paced backwards and forwards upon his lonesome watch the eye of the young man rested for a while upon the dull swampy landscape the chief beauty of which at the moment was a slight haze that hovered over stream and marsh and stunted willow and distant hill tinged with a golden hue from the slanting rays of the sun; the only living sights and sounds of which were busy flights of gnats whirling up and down with drowsy hum; an occasional frog that splashed from the opposite shore into the water with an uneasy croak; and one solitary fisherman who after having drawn up his boat among the rushes on the river's bank near the opening upon the ""broad "" and left his line to float along the lazy stream seemed to have lain down in his broad flat-bottomed punt to sleep at his ease. Sometimes he paused to scrutinize more earnestly the heavy pile of the old tower to guard all egress from which might be supposed from his periodical examinations of its walls to be the peculiar duty of his post. Sometimes again he gazed listlessly upon the marks of devastation where the carved armorial bearings of the family to whom the mansion had belonged had been hacked away from the walls of the building and other symbols of nobility or religion had been wantonly mutilated or destroyed; and at such moments an almost unconscious sigh would escape him ill according with the tenets of the party which he evidently served. But most generally his attention was directed towards a low window in the first floor of the projecting wing not very many feet above the level of the ground in front of which a small wooden balcony filled with flowers showed that the occupant of the chamber to which it belonged was probably of the gentler sex and of an age when such matters are still objects of tender and careful solicitude. At these times evidences of impatience almost amounting to pettishness would appear in his uneasy gestures; and after a scrutiny of some duration he would again turn away to resume his pacing with a look of trouble and annoyance upon his brow. The handsome features of that fine face however were not formed to express grief nor that clear bright eye sorrowful thought; yet such were the circumstances of the times that whenever disengaging them from associations connected with the balconied window as his reflections reverted to himself and his own position his countenance would fall and his eye cloud over with an expression of sadness. Gerald Clynton was of old family and noble birth. His father Lord Clynton had doated upon his wife with the fondest and most exclusive affection; and the birth of Gerald his second son having been the occasion of her death in childbed the agonized husband who was inconsolable for her loss had never been able to look upon the child and in its infant years had banished it altogether from his sight. The time arrived however when it became necessary to remove the little boy from the sole care of menials and to commence the rudiments of his education; and at that period Mr Lyle the brother of the deceased Lady Clynton finding the aversion of the father towards the poor innocent cause of the mother's death still more strongly rooted by time and his whole paternal affections centred and lavished upon his eldest born had taken the child to his home and being himself childless had treated and as it were adopted the boy as his own son. Time crept on. The boy grew into the youth; the youth approached to the man; but still Lord Clynton evinced no interest in his young son--gave no demonstration of awakening affection. With time also crept on the angry and troubled clouds that arose upon the political horizon of the land. The storm at length burst forth. The fatal struggle commenced between the unfortunate Charles and his Parliament; and the civil wars broke out. A stanch Royalist Lord Clynton joined with enthusiasm the cause of the monarch; while Mr Lyle whose tenets were of the Presbyterian persuasion and whose political opinions were entirely of that party found himself enrolled in the ranks of the Parliamentary army in which his name and fortune and his active but stern cold courage gave him much influence. Entirely deprived of the affections of a father whom he never remembered to have seen and on whom with the usual levity of boyhood he seldom or never bestowed a passing thought Gerald Clynton or Gerald Lyle as he was constantly called after his uncle--and most people knew not that he bore any other name--naturally imbibed the opinions and sentiments of his protector; and when the civil war was openly declared followed him to the camp. The reflection never crossed him that the unknown author of his being might be engaged in the ranks of the enemy; that his uncle and his father might chance to meet face to face upon the battle-field; that either his real parent or the parent of his affections might fall by the hand of the other. To do justice to the feelings of the youth no idea of the kind had ever been suggested to him by his uncle not a word mentioned of the political sentiments of his father. Colonel Lyle--for such became his rank in the Parliamentary army--was a man of firm adherence to his principles; and although a cold hard man in all things but his affection for his adopted son too earnest and eager a supporter of the party for which he battled to allow such a proselyte to what he considered the just and upright cause--such a follower in his own footsteps as his nephew--to escape him on account of any family considerations which he stigmatized as ""prejudices to be despised and set at nought in so holy a matter."" Enrolled as a volunteer in his uncle's regiment Gerald had in some of the scanty moments of peace and repose snatched between the quickly following phases of the struggle found opportunities to cultivate the acquaintance of an old friend of his uncle's--an officer in the same regiment--or rather it ought to be owned without reserve the acquaintance of the fair daughter of that friend. In these troubled but precious moments it was that Gerald's young heart first awakened to love; and when upon the death of his uncle Colonel Lyle who never recovered the wounds he had received upon the field of Naseby old Lazarus Seaman received the command of the regiment it was again the bright eyes of pretty Mistress Mildred that served as a loadstone to attach him to it and to attract him to follow the troop which garrisoned the lone mansion upon the eastern coast of England; for Colonel Lazarus Seaman was the governor or commander of this impromptu sort of fortress; and Colonel Lazarus Seaman's daughter his only and motherless child quitted her father's side as little as possible. She it was who was the tenant of the room appertaining to that balconied window and those bright and carefully-tended flowers to which the eyes of Gerald now so often strayed as he paced up and down the dull court to perform the duties of sentinel. Gerald's thoughts however as already intimated were not placid nor were they exclusively occupied by the object of his affections. They dwelt from time to time with grief upon his uncle whose death had excited in him so many bitter regrets; and those sad recollections in their turn called forth in him other reflections of a new and painful nature. He recalled to mind how in his dying moments the self-elected father of his youth had summoned him to his side and talked to him of that other father whom he had never known; how he had spoken in broken accents and with much remorse of the possible hatred engendered between father and son; of his own regrets now first clearly awakened in him that he himself might have been the cause of such a consummation; and how then with his last breath he in vain endeavoured to murmur expressions of bitter repentance for some cruel wrong done the nature of which no longer met the ear of the anxious listener and was soon left for ever unexplained in the silence of death. These sad remembrances led to a train of thought of a most painful and harassing description. His position as a voluntary supporter of a cause repugnant to the principles of a father whom although unknown to him it was his duty to honour and obey and as affianced to the daughter of a man whose Republican principles were so decided appeared to him involved with the most perplexing difficulties. New and conflicting feelings had arisen in the young man's breast. There was already within him a bitter struggle between love and duty--between long inculcated opinions and newly awakened emotions. As the one or the other feeling predominated Gerald walked backwards and forwards with gloomy face or turned to gaze upon the window the closed casement of which seemed then to call forth from him gestures and words of a somewhat testy impatience. ""She knows that this is my hour for mounting guard and yet she comes not to the window. She shows no sign of the least thought or care for me "" he muttered angrily to himself stamping more firmly and sharply as he recommenced his pacing after a pause in which he had eyed the window with bent brow and bitten lip. ""But she does not love me "" he added bitterly. ""She has never loved me. She has never done otherwise than trifle with my affections--seeking for demonstrations of my love to feed her vanity and then flinging them aside with the sick stomach of an over-pampered child. I am a fool to let myself be thus dragged at her skirts in such tinselled leading-strings. No; I will loose myself from this thraldom. But what if she love another? More than once I have thought she looked with much complacency upon that young recruit--the new volunteer--that Maywood I think they call him. Were it true 'sdeath! I would slit his ears for him. God forgive me the oath!"" Gerald asked no forgiveness for the revengeful thought. He was still continuing his half-muttered soliloquy of jealousy and spite when the click of a casement-hasp caught his lover's ear. In a moment the angry expression of his brow was cleared away like a mist before the sun--a bright gleam of satisfaction illumed his countenance as he looked eagerly and hastily towards the window of Mistress Mildred's chamber. The casement opened and first appeared a fair hand which with a long tapering jug of blue and white Dutch porcelain was bestrewing water upon the flowers in the little wooden balcony. Then there stood at the open window a youthful female form; but the head was bent down so low over the flowers--the damsel was so absorbed in her gentle occupation--she was of course so completely unaware of the presence of any person in the court below who might expect a greeting from her that it was difficult at first to distinguish the features. A pure white pinched and plaited cap covered the bended head but not however so entirely as fully to contain or hide a profusion of dark brown hair which perhaps according to the fashion of the times it should have done. Through the flowers also that partially obscured the long low window might be distinguished part of a sad-coloured gown the simplicity of which in its make could not conceal as perhaps it ought to have done the rounded outlines of a full but graceful form; while at the same time its dull hue was charmingly relieved--of course without any intention of coquetry--by a ruff and gorget of the most glittering purity and at the end of the long sleeves by two small delicate white cuffs which seemed to be playing a game of rivalry with the little hands for the palm of fairness. As Gerald hemmed and coughed and shuffled with his feet impatiently he imagined for a moment that one hasty glance of the eyes which bent over the flowers was directed into the court and then averted with the quickness of lightning but he was no doubt mistaken; for when the task of watering the plants was at an end the head was only raised to watch the clouds for a very short space of time--sufficient time however to show two dark pencilled eyebrows placed over a pair of bright dark eyes in that peculiar arch which gives a look of tormenting _espièglerie_ to the expression and in the blooming cheeks full but not too full for grace two laughter-loving dimples which imparted to a lovely countenance a joyous and fascinating character--and then was again withdrawn. The fair white hand again already rested upon the hasp of the casement as if to close it when Gerald who had waited with renewed feelings of vexation the greeting of his lady-love called in a low but almost angry tone of voice ""Mildred!--Mistress Mildred!"" ""Master Gerald Lyle is it you? Who would have thought that you were there?"" said pretty Mistress Mildred again showing at the window her arch countenance the expression of which seemed to be at most wicked variance with her prim attire. ""Methinks a friendly greeting were not ill bestowed upon an old acquaintance "" muttered the young man in the same tone of testy impatience. ""Know you not "" responded the damsel with something of the canting whine adopted at the time and in a semi-serious tone to the genuineness of which her dimples very naughtily gave a direct lie--whatever their mistress might have intended--""Know you not that such bowings of the head and kissings of the hand are but vain and worldly symbols and delusions."" ""Trifle not with me I beseech you Mildred "" said the vexed lover ""for my heart is sad and my mind is harassed. During the weary hours of my watch I have longed for a smile from that sweet face--a glance from those bright eyes as my only solace; and yet the hours passed by and you came not to your window although I had let you know that it was my duty to keep this watch; and when you did come you would have left again without a single word to me. This was unkind. And now you are there you bend your brow upon me with an angry look. What have I done to offend you Mildred? You cannot doubt my love my truth."" ""And what is there in my conduct or in my words that can justify Master Lyle in thus treating me as a trifler?"" answered Mildred with a pouting air avoiding any direct answer to all his other remarks. ""Methinks I have every right to be offended at so unjust an accusation."" But in spite of the gross offence Mistress Mildred now seemed to have no thought of punishing it by withdrawing from the window. ""I offend you! you know I would give the whole world were it mine to spare you one painful feeling "" cried the young man. ""It is you who wrong me it is you who are unjust and even now you seek to quarrel with me. But perhaps you wish to break the troth you have given me--perhaps your light heart has already offered its affections to another!"" ""As you will sir. Perhaps my light heart as you are pleased to call it would do well to seek some less morose and tetchy guardian "" said the young lady tossing up her head and preparing again to close the windows. But as her eye fell upon the despairing look and gestures of her lover the arched eyebrow was unknit and raised with an expression of comic vexation; a smile lurked for a moment in the dimples and corners of the pouting mouth; and then at last broke out into a fit of decided laughter. After indulging a moment in her mirth Mildred looked at the young man fondly and said ""Go to Gerald! you show not the patient spirit of a Christian man; and even now your face wears such a frown as methinks must have wrinkled the brow of the jealous blackamoor in those wicked stage-plays of which my poor mother told me before my father chid her for it and bid her cease to speak of such vanities--fie now! out upon you! shall I throw you down my little mirror that you may see that face? Well! I am a naughty froward child. See there! I am sitting on the stool of penance and I ask thee pardon."" ""Forgive me also "" cried Gerald springing forward his heart melting before the arch look of fondness that beamed down upon him. ""Forgive me my pettish impatience with you Mildred."" ""Forgiveness of injuries is ordained unto us as our first of duties "" rejoined Mildred with another demure look--which was all the wickeder for its demureness. ""But why came you not before my Mildred?"" said the lover with a slight lingering tone of expostulation; ""you know not the bitterness of those countless minutes of anxiety and doubt and eager waiting."" ""I could not leave my father "" replied Mildred more seriously; ""although he knows and approves our attachment; he would have chid me had he been aware that I come to have speech of you from my window; and as it is I have done wrong to come. Besides he was weary and bade me read to him and I sat by his side and read to him the Bible until in the midst of an exhortation to watch and pray I heard a sound that he himself might have called an uplifting of the horn of Sion and behold he was snoring in his chair; and then in the naughtiness of my heart I stole from his presence to come to my room--and--and--tend my flowers "" she added with an arch smile. ""You thought of me then and came though late to see me?"" said Gerald eagerly. ""You? Did I not say my flowers Master Gerald?"" asked Mildred still laughing. ""Oh! mock me no longer cruel girl! You know not all I have suffered during this tedious watch--all the doubts and fears with which my poor mind has been tortured. Did you know you would console not mock me and one word would console all. Tell me you love me still."" ""One word you say--what shall it be?"" said Mildred raising her eyebrows as if to seek the word; and then looking down upon him kindly she added ""Ever."" ""And you love none but me? you have no thought for any other?"" continued the lover with an evident spice of jealousy still lurking in his mind. ""What! two words now?"" said the laughing girl. ""Are all lovers such arrant beggars? give them a penny and they ask a groat. Well! well! but one other and that shall be the last. None""--and as Mildred spoke she bent herself over the balcony to smile on Gerald and rested one tiny hand of course unconsciously on the outer framework. ""Thanks thanks my dear my pretty my darling Mildred!"" exclaimed the young man and as he spoke he sprang musket on arm upon a stone bench which stood out from the wall immediately under Mistress Mildred's window and endeavoured to snatch the white hand that just peeped so invitingly over the edge of the low wooden balcony. ""Out upon you Master Sentinel "" said the young lady putting back her hand. ""Is it thus you keep your watch? Another such step and I shall sound the alarm and denounce you as a deserter to your post. Look ye! your prisoner will escape."" Gerald instinctively turned his head to the old tower behind him as he stepped down again from the stone bench with somewhat of that tail-between-the-legs look which a spaniel wears when repulsed from his mistress's lap. But there was no one stirring. He shook his head reproachfully at the laughing girl. ""Nay! I did but remind you of your duty "" said Mildred; ""and you know my father sets much store by the capture of this prisoner whom he supposes to be some one of rank and note; a fugitive from the dispersed army of the malignants; perhaps a friend of the young King of Scots and as such aware of his retreat."" ""I saw him as they brought him hither after capturing him in an attempt to gain the coast "" replied the young soldier. ""He is an old cavalier of a stately and goodly presence although cast down by his ill fortune. But enough of this. Tell me Mildred""--But here the ears of the young couple caught the sound of a distant bell as it came booming over the water of the broad. ""Hush! It is the curfew from the town "" said Mildred. ""The watch will now be changed. Back! back! They will be here directly. I must away."" ""Already "" cried Gerald with vexation. ""But another word Mildred--but one--some token of your love until we meet again."" ""Impossible!"" replied the fair girl. ""How can you ask me for a token? It were very wrong in me to give you such. You ask too much."" Then as she was about to close the window she exclaimed again ""This poor rose wants trimming sadly. Alack! these early frosts destroy all my poor plants;"" and taking up her scissors which hung from her girdle she snipped at a withered leaf. Perhaps Mildred's pretty little hand trembled for of course it was an accident--the unfortunate scissors instead of cutting the withered leaf; closed upon the very prettiest rose upon the little tree--that rose happened to hang over the edge of the balcony and so it came to pass that it fell at Gerald's feet. Gerald seized it and pressed it like all true lovers from time immemorial to his lips. ""Thanks! darling girl "" he cried. ""Thanks! for what?"" rejoined Mistress Mildred putting on a very lamentable air. ""Now don't suppose I have done this purposely. My poor rose! how you crush it and tumble it in your hand. How could I be so awkward!"" and with these words the window was wholly closed. Gerald still stood with his eyes fixed upon the window when a noise as if a sharp rustling among leaves startled him. Immediately upon the alert he looked cautiously around; but there was no one in the court. He walked hastily to the parapet wall and bent over it--all was still except the boat of the fisherman which he had before observed. It had apparently been rowed to another part of the river about the mansion as a better place for fishing without having been observed by the inattentive sentinel for it was now floating down the stream towards the opening into the broad. The fisherman again lay motionless at the bottom of the boat. Suddenly a thought seemed to cross the young soldier's brain for he sprang to the bushes still left growing near the parapet wall and searched hastily among the leaves. From the ground beneath their thick shelter he raised a small packet. His musket was already jerked into his right arm to fire an alarm in order that the fisherman might be pursued as suspected of attempting to establish a communication with the prisoner when his eye fell upon the superscription of the packet. He stared for one moment with surprise; and then his colour changed and he grew deadly pale. His eye hurried rapidly to the tower--an exclamation of bitter grief burst from his lips--and he stood aghast. At this moment the steps of the soldiers coming to relieve guard resounded along the vaulted passage communicating between the court and other parts of the mansion. At the sound the blood rushed back into Gerald's face until it covered forehead and temples. He hastily replaced the packet in the hiding-place where he had discovered it and stood with musket in arm and in a state of ill-repressed agitation awaiting the corporal and guard. The young soldier who was now brought to relieve him from his post was the same Mark Maywood of whom he had expressed his jealous doubts. The usual ceremony of relieving guard was gone through; but although the words of order were few these few words were communicated by Gerald in a brief angry tone and received by the other young soldier with a cold frowning air. Between the two young men there appeared to exist feelings of an instinctive repulsion. As he turned to leave the court Gerald gave another anxious eager look at the old tower and glanced askance at the leafy hiding-place of the packet. Another troubled sigh burst from his heart; but whatever thoughts occupied him before passing under the vaulted passage he raised his eyes to the well-known chamber casement which was close by. He could evidently perceive Mildred's graceful form partly ensconced behind a hanging to her window. Was she watching his departure? No. It seemed to him as if her eyes were turned in the direction of the handsome young recruit--that detested Maywood. And he? Gerald looked round once more. He felt convinced that the young sentinel's eyes were fixed upon pretty Mistress Mildred's window. It was in a high state of agitation--a new fit of raging jealousy mingling with other painful and harassing emotions that Gerald followed the corporal and soldiers from the court. CHAPTER II. ""O 'tis your son! I know him not. I'll be no father to so vile a son."" ROWLEY (_Woman Never Vexed._) ""Yet I have comfort if by any means I get a blessing from my father's hands."" _Idem._ Gerald sat with a troubled and moody air upon one of the stone benches of the low hall which formerly intended perhaps as a sort of waiting-room for the domestics of the establishment was now used as the guard-room. Although his thoughts were not upon the objects around him he seemed to be assiduously employed in cleaning and arranging his accoutrements--for in spite of his birth and the fortune bequeathed to him by his uncle he was still left to fulfil the very humblest and most irksome duties of a military life. It had been part of the severe Colonel Lyle's system of education to inure his adopted son to every toil and privation that might give health and hardihood to mind as well as body; and upon the same principle when he had enrolled the boy as a volunteer in his own troop he had compelled him to serve as a common soldier. The colonel's strict and somewhat overwrought sense of justice as well as his peculiar political opinions had led him moreover to declare that whatever the artificial position of his adopted son in the supposed scale of society it should be by merit only that the young volunteer should rise from the ranks through the various grades of military distinction; and upon his deathbed he had urged his friend Seaman to pursue the same system as long as Gerald should feel disposed to follow under him the career of arms. Although received therefore with certain reservations upon an equality of footing into the family of Colonel Seaman and in some measure looked upon as the accepted lover and future husband of the colonel's fair daughter young Gerald found himself condemned to go through all the inferior duties and occupations of a common soldier. Long accustomed however by his uncle's strict and unbending system of training to hardships little regarded by a roughly-nurtured youth of his years he never thought of murmuring against this harsh probation; and if now he pursued his occupation with a troubled brow it was far other thoughts that caused that look of doubt and uneasiness. The vaguest suspicions of his mistress's fickleness were sufficient to excite the jealous temperament of a youth like Gerald whose naturally ardent and passionate disposition whose hot Clynton blood had been only subdued not quenched by the strict education of his severe cold uncle Lyle. But there were thoughts and feelings of a far more momentous and harassing nature which now assailed him. The packet which he had discovered among the bushes growing close upon the parapet wall and which had evidently been conveyed by stealth within the precincts of the fortress had borne the following superscription:--""For the Lord Clynton--these."" It was Lord Clynton then--it was his own father who was a prisoner within those walls. Under sad auspices were his filial affections now first awakened. He was aware of the danger that must attend his unhappy parent should he be discovered to be as was probably the case one of those obstinate malignants as they were termed who after having made reluctant submission when the fate of arms proved fatal to Charles I. had again joined the royalist troops when the standard was raised for the young prince and fought in his cause until the final overthrow at Worcester forced them into flight from the country. It was in an attempt of this kind that the prisoner had been taken. Gerald knew how almost certain would be the old cavalier's condemnation under such circumstances. But there were evidently hopes of saving him. Communications it was clear had been established with the prisoner by persons outside the walls of the fortress. It was known probably that by permission of the commander the prisoner was allowed to take the air for a certain time daily in the small court beneath the walls of the tower in which he was confined; and this opportunity was watched it would seem for the conveyance of the communication into the hand of the prisoner. The conflicting struggle which had arisen in Gerald's mind now gave place to one overpowering feeling. He was determined at all risks and at whatever sacrifice to himself to save his father. The breach of trust--the dereliction from his honour--the probability of being obliged to renounce the hand of the girl he loved if detected in assisting in a plot to favour the evasion of the old cavalier--all faded away before his sight and appeared as naught when compared with the hope of rescuing his father from his cruel situation. What the nature of the scheme was which Lord Clynton's friends seemed to be devising in order to effect his escape or how far he could assist in such a project he was unable to divine. But the one thought was there and mastered all--the thought that on opening the way of escape before his father he should be able to say ""Father bless thy long-estranged son; it is he who saves thee."" The rest was doubt confusion and darkness. Again and again did he turn over in his mind a thousand projects by which to aid in the evasion of the prisoner. Again and again did he endeavour to conjecture what might have been already purposed. All appeared to him to be impracticable on the one hand and a mystery on the other. Already the consciousness of his secret induced him to look upon every one with suspicious eyes as an enemy or a spy upon his conduct. But most of all with that prejudice which pointed him out his supposed rival as the object of peculiar hatred did he look upon Mark Maywood as his enemy in this matter--that Mark Maywood whose violent party feelings and fierce Republican abhorrence of royalty and the adherents of the fallen royalty of England had already manifested themselves in such frequent outbreaks since his arrival as a fresh recruit in the troop--that Mark Maywood who in case of the evasion of one of the detested cavaliers would be foremost to hunt him to the death--that Mark Maywood who even now kept watch over his father's prison and might if he discovered the packet which was intended for the old man's hand thwart for ever the only means of the unfortunate prisoner's escape. And as this thought came across him Gerald counted in an agony of mind all the possibilities by which the packet might meet the sentinel's eye. With beating heart he reviewed in imagination every leaf which hid it every overhanging branch which might add to its concealment. Bitterly did he reproach himself in his heart that he had thrown it back to its hiding-place so hastily and carelessly upon hearing the approach of the guard. It seemed to him that if the packet were discovered it would have been he who had delivered up his father who had betrayed the secret on which depended his father's safety. The thought however that the evening was closing in somewhat consoled him. Eternally long seemed the time spent in this mute agony of doubt. At length the hour sounded for the relief of the guard and Gerald's heart beat painfully. Now he might learn whether Maywood had made the dreaded discovery. He placed himself as if by chance in the passage through which the guard had to pass with the report to the governor and gazed with scrutinizing look into the face of the young soldier as he went by as if he could read an answer to his dreaded doubts in those dark eyes. Mark Maywood's face to which in spite of its beauty the closely clipped dark hair in Roundhead fashion contrasting with the thick mustache gave a harsh and hard look was stern frowning and expressive of that sullen severity which was usually put on by the enthusiasts of the day. In such a face Gerald could read nothing to dissipate his doubts but every thing to strengthen them. Anxiously did he await the return of the relieved sentinel to the guard-room. But when Mark Maywood came at last he interchanged but a few sentences with the older and sterner of his comrades said not a word to Gerald a
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d taking a well worn Bible in his hand flung himself on a bench and soon seemed lost in serious devotion. Once in truth Gerald fancied that he raised his eye to scan him as if with scorn and then indeed he first remarked that Maywood twisted between his fingers a rose. For a moment his aversion to the young soldier as an enemy to be dreaded for his father's sake was absorbed in his hatred to him as a suspected rival. That rose? how had he obtained it? Could Mildred be so base as to encourage the handsome young enthusiast who in spite of his gloomy character had evidently to Gerald's jealous eye shown himself feelingly alive to the attraction of pretty Mistress Mildred's charms? For a moment the feelings of jealousy so completely overpowered all others that he started forward to challenge the young man to account for the possession of that rose. But again the thoughts of his father came across him. Such a challenge must necessarily involve him in a quarrel--a quarrel would be followed by an arrest for breach of discipline--a confinement of some hours during which he who might have aided his father's escape might perhaps have left him to perish; and swallowing with an effort all the bitter feelings that almost choked him--he again turned away and sought his hard couch. Sleep he could not; or if he dozed the conflicting feelings of doubt apprehension for his father and burning jealousy still flitted through his mind like a troubled and tormenting nightmare; and the next day Gerald arose with the earliest dawn in a state of mind the uneasiness of which seemed intolerable. The morning broke--the day advanced--and as no new measures seemed to be taken with respect to the prisoner Gerald's mind began by degrees to be relieved from its trembling apprehensions as to the discovery of the packet; eagerly did he await the hour of his own guard which in the course of the morning was announced to him to be at noon and as usual in the small inner court. His heart beat with impatience to see whether the secret communication still remained in its hiding-place and to facilitate if possible the means of its falling into his father's hands. At length the hour arrived--Accompanied by the corporal and the other soldiers of the guard he was taken to relieve his predecessor on the post and after an interchange of the usual formalities was left alone. His first impulse was to examine the bush into which on the previous evening had been flung the packet. After looking carefully around him and in spite of the absorbing thought which now occupied his attention casting one glance accompanied by a troubled sigh upon Mildred's window he approached the wall. Before however he could put aside the leaves several heavy steps resounded through the vaulted passage and Gerald drew back from the wall with all the seeming unconcern he could assume. The persons who entered the court were the commander Lazarus Seaman himself and three soldiers. With a grave salute and a few words to Gerald the colonel gave directions that the heavy gate of the prison tower should be opened and motioning to one of the soldiers who accompanied him to remain behind he entered the tower with the two others and was immediately heard mounting the winding stair leading to the room above in which the prisoner was confined. Again did Gerald's heart beat thick with apprehension. What could be the purpose of this visit of the governor to his prisoner? Had a report of the previous evening been the cause of this fresh examination? Did it result from the discovery of the secret packet? Gerald trembled--a moment's search among those bushes would convince him of the reality or vanity of his agonizing fears and yet he did not dare to stir a step to solve his doubts. The eye of the other soldier was upon him. He listened with straining ears to catch the faintest sound that came from the tower as if it had been possible for him to hear what passed in the chamber of the prisoner; striving at the same time to master all expression of his feelings lest his secret should be read upon his brow by the very anxiety to conceal it. Useless effort; for the soldier who remained behind paid little heed to him and would have been totally unable to comprehend his motives for uneasiness had even its expression been visible. At length the steps of the governor and his party were heard descending the stairs of the tower. As they emerged into the court Gerald started with a fresh burst of uncontrollable agitation. The old cavalier followed the Roundhead colonel. With a few more words to signify to his prisoner that the time allotted to him to take the air in that court was but short Lazarus Seaman again retired. The soldier already mentioned remained behind as a sort of extra sentinel or watch to prevent all possibility of escape during the time the prisoner was permitted to promenade the open space. Gerald was in the presence of his father! With what overpowering emotion did he now long to throw himself into those arms and be pressed to his father's heart! And yet the utmost caution was necessary. A word might deprive him of all power to assist the prisoner in his projected escape. It was with the utmost difficulty that he restrained his feelings and watched the noble form of the old cavalier as he paced slowly and sadly up and down the court. That then was his father! The dark mourning habit which Lord Clynton wore in imitation of many of the Royalist party after the execution of their unfortunate master although soiled and torn gave him an air of dignity in spite of its look of sadness; and the long grizzled beard which had evidently remained untrimmed having been left probably to grow uncultured as a sign of sorrow bestowed upon him an imposing expression in spite of its neglected state. Although cast down and worn out by disappointment and vexation there was evidently a feverish and testy impatience in the old man's manner which was perhaps a symptom of the family temperament; and Gerald observed that from time to time he looked sharply at both the sentinels and then cast a furtive glance at the clump of bushes near the wall. The packet then was supposed by the prisoner to be still there; but yet uneasiness and doubt were visible in his hasty looks. In reflecting upon the position of the barred window of the prisoner's chamber Gerald remembered that its tenant might have witnessed the approach of the supposed fisherman and divined his motive without being able to see what had passed near the bushes themselves. The old man was consequently still doubtful as to the safety of the communication which was to be the key to his escape and even more anxious as to the means by which he might reach it. Gerald watched with palpitating heart how in his promenade the old cavalier approached nearer and nearer as if unconsciously the parapet wall. Had he been alone all he said to himself would have been well; but there was another witness to observe the prisoner's actions. Gerald in his turn also scrutinized the comrade of his watch and turned over in his mind schemes to elude his vigilance. The man employed upon the extra duty of this watch was well known to him by sight and reputation. He was said to have been originally of Dutch extraction; and certainly there was much in his heavy features sleepy eyes and phlegmatic temperament which seemed to attest the truth of such a supposition--a supposition which was still more borne out by the report that he owned the euphonious appellation of Gideon Van Guse. This however was but vague hearsay; for in imitation of the fantastic habit of some of the fanatics of the time Gideon had adopted a pious cognomen the softness of which he perhaps fancied to accord well with his own placable and quiet disposition. He went by the name of Godlamb Gideon except upon those occasions when some of the more wicked of his comrades took advantage of certain drowsy and somniferous points in his indolent character to bestow upon him the nickname of Go-to-bed Godlamb. As Gerald cast his scrutinizing look upon him Master Go-to-bed Godlamb was standing planted against a wall in the full warmth of an autumnal sun perched upon one leg according to a habit which he seemed to have inherited by a sort of instinct from the cranes of the country of his fathers and which he was generally observed to adopt when in a more than usually drowsy disposition. His other leg was twisted round its brother in somewhat incomprehensible fashion. But in spite of this supposed indication of drowsiness Gideon's light eyes stared out from under his preposterously high steeple hat with unusual wakefulness and rotundity and gave to his not very expressive physiognomy the appearance of that of an owl. Gerald thanked the good fortune that had sent him at such a moment a comrade of so drowsy and phlegmatic a nature. But it was in vain that he watched for some further indications of the usual results of Go-to-bed Godlamb's pious meditations. The eyes _would_ still preserve a most provoking rotundity; nay more they appeared determined out of the most obstinate spirit of opposition to assume at that moment a liveliness they never had been known to assume before since they had opened on the light of day. The old cavalier still paced the court but nearer to the bushes than before. Impatient also at the loss of the precious moments as they hurried by Gerald approached his comrade. ""You seem weary friend "" he said. ""Yea verily "" answered Godlamb Gideon through his nose. ""My soul is weary with long watching; but if the flesh be weak the spirit is still strong."" ""Give way comrade give way "" insinuated Gerald; ""I will keep watch for both and none shall be the wiser."" ""Nay but the labourer is worthy of his hire "" snorted Gideon with much unction. ""Odds pittikins man "" he blurted out immediately afterwards in another and more natural tone ""would you have me in arrest again for sleeping on my post? That is to say "" continued the Puritan soldier casting up his eyes and again resuming his canting whine ""verily and of a truth the hand of the scourger has been heavy upon me; the unjust have prevailed against me; but I will watch that I fall not again into their toils."" Gerald turned away with impatient vexation. At that moment the old cavalier who had taken advantage of the few words passing between the two sentinels to approach the bushes unobserved was bending down to possess himself of the packet. As Gerald turned he again drew back his purpose unfulfilled. Standing with his back to the other sentinel Gerald now made a sign to the old man with his finger placed upon his lips to say not a word but to repose his confidence in him. The prisoner started with surprise and looked at the young soldier with a mixture of hope and doubt. Before making any further demonstration Gerald again turned in his walk to assure himself that Gideon observed nothing of this interchange of looks with the prisoner and then again turning his back to him placed his hand upon his heart with a look of fervour and truth which would have been alone sufficient to inspire confidence in the old cavalier and passing as near him as he could with prudence murmured in a low tone ""Trust to me!"" The old man again started; but there was more of pleasurable surprise and less of doubt in his expression. Gerald's heart beat wildly as his father's eye beamed upon him for the first time with kindly and grateful feeling. The young soldier again looked at his comrade. Gideon's eyes were now beginning to close in the excess of his fervour over the pious page. Walking quietly to the protecting bushes Gerald bent over the parapet as if to look into the stream and plunging his arm at the same time into the leaves felt for the packet. After a moment's fear and doubt he touched it--he drew it forth. By a movement of his head he saw the old man watching him with increasing agitation; but giving him another look to re-assure him Gerald rose from his posture and was about to conceal the packet in his bandoleer when it slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground. At the noise of the fall Gideon's eyes again opened and were lifted up with owl-like sagacity of expression. Gerald's foot was already upon the packet. Neither he nor the old cavalier dared to interchange a look. Gideon's eyes said as plainly as eyes could speak that they were not asleep and had not _been_ asleep and never intended to go to sleep--in fact were wonderfully wakeful. Aware that he could not remain motionless upon the spot where he stood under the full stare of Gideon's eyes Gerald let fall his musket as if by accident and then kneeling with his back to his fellow-sentinel contrived adroitly to raise the packet at the same time with his musket and to conceal it upon his person. The prisoner was following his movements with anxious eagerness. Possessed of the precious document Gerald now felt the impossibility of giving it into his father's hands as long as the eyes of Godlamb Gideon were upon them. There appeared to him to be but one practicable manner of conveying the desired intelligence contained within it to the prisoner--namely by examining himself the contents in such a manner as not to excite the suspicions of his comrade and then communicating them in low and broken sentences to his father. Placed in such a position as not to be observed by Gideon he took the packet from his bosom and making the movement of breaking the fastening looked imploringly at the old cavalier. The old man comprehended the glance hesitated for a moment with a look of doubt and then clearing his brow with an expression of resolution as if there were no other means nodded his head stealthily to the young soldier and moving to one of the stone benches fixed against the walls of the court the furthest removed from the spot where Gideon stood flung himself down upon it and with his face buried between his hands seemed absorbed in thought. From one of the capacious pockets of his full hose Gerald now produced a book--it was the Bible; for it was the fashion of the times among the Puritanical party to carry the holy book about the person. With a short humble prayer that he might not be thought to desecrate the sacred volume by applying it to a purpose of concealment for his father's sake he placed upon its open pages the letter which formed the only contents of the packet after having first torn away and concealed unobserved the envelope and then resumed his monotonous pacing up and down the court. Gideon observed his comrade's seeming devotion and appearing determined to outrival him in excess of zeal applied himself more sedulously than ever to his book. ""Your friends are on the alert--a lugger lies off the coast ready for your escape "" said Gerald in a low tone to the old cavalier as he passed as near to him in his walk as discretion would permit. Such was the sense of the commencement of the communication. The old man made a gentle inclination of his head to show that he understood him without raising it from between his hands. The young soldier looked at Gideon; Gideon had shifted his legs and perched himself in an attitude bearing a more direct resemblance to that of a reposing crane than ever. Gerald again cast his eyes upon his open book-- ""All is prepared for to-night "" he continued to mutter as he again slowly passed the seat of the prisoner. ""Have the bars of your window been cut by the file already conveyed to you?"" The old man again bowed his head with an affirmative movement. As Gerald turned once more Go-to-bed Godlamb was nodding his head over his book as if in very enthusiastic approval of its contents but unfortunately with so much energy--that he jerked it up again into an upright posture--and immediately began staring straight before him with great vehemence. Gerald bit his lips with vexation and continued his walk. His eyes were seemingly employed upon the page before him-- ""A boat will be brought without noise under the walls at twelve this night "" continued the anxious son repassing his father where he sat. ""You must descend from your window by your bed-clothes."" Gerald resumed his walk. Gideon was winking and blinking with much energy-- ""The only difficulty is to elude the vigilance of the sentinel who shall have the _midnight watch_""--muttered Gerald as he again came back past the prisoner. The old man raised his head and looked at him anxiously. Gideon was again nodding but with a lesser degree of enthusiasm as Gerald turned himself that way. The young man quickened his step and was soon once more by his father's side-- ""Every means that lie in _my_ power shall be employed to favour your escape "" whispered Gerald with much emotion. The prisoner gave him an enquiring glance as if to ask his meaning--Gerald looked round--Godlamb was now snoring after the fashion of a well-known farm-yard animal--not the one whose name he bore. ""God grant "" continued the young man in much agitation ""that the lot fall to me to be the sentry on that watch--then all were well!"" ""And who are you young man "" said the cavalier ""who thus interest yourself so warmly in my fate?"" Gerald could no longer command his feelings. He flung himself at the old man's feet. ""Father!"" he exclaimed in smothered accents ""give me thy blessing."" ""Your father! I!"" cried the old cavalier; ""you my son! you Gerald Clynton! no--no--Gerald Lyle I should have said. Tell me not so."" ""I am your son Gerald--Gerald Clynton--Oh call me by that name!"" exclaimed the kneeling young man in a choked voice; for the tears were starting into his eyes. ""Thou art no son of mine. I know thee not! Leave me!"" said Lord Clynton springing from his seat in bitter anger. Go-to-bed Godlamb stirred uneasily upon his post. Gerald rose quickly from his knees trembling with agitation; for in spite of the violence of his emotion he had sufficient presence of mind to look cautiously round at his sleeping comrade. Gideon's eyes were still closed over his book in that profound mystery of devotion which was one of his most remarkable traits. ""My father!"" cried Gerald imploringly to the old man who now stood looking towards him with a harsh and stubborn expression of countenance although the workings of emotion were faintly perceptible in the lineaments of his face. Lord Clynton waved him impatiently away and turned aside his head. ""Oh repulse me not my father!"" cried Gerald with imploring looks. ""Why am I still the proscribed son of your affections? What have I done to be thus driven from your arms? Am I still--though innocent of all wrong--to pay so cruel a penalty for my unhappy birth?"" ""Allude not to your mother!"" exclaimed the old man passionately. ""Defile not her memory even by a thought base boy! Were she living still she also would refuse to acknowledge her degenerate son."" ""Great God! what have I done to merit this?"" said the unhappy son forgetting in the agitation of his mind the strict principles of the Puritanical party which forbade as sinful this adjuration of the Deity--""I thought to save you my father from your cruel situation--I thought to aid your flight."" ""Say rather "" said the excited cavalier giving way to his hot unreasonable temper ""to trample on the prisoner--to scoff at him and triumph over him--to deliver him up to his enemies. What have I else to expect from the degenerate rebel to the religion of his fathers his country and his king. Go boy--go play the patriot at thy ease--reverse the tale of the Roman Brutus--and denounce thy father to the block!"" ""Unjust! unkind!"" said the young man struggling with his tears which now began to give place to feelings of indignation in him also. ""But you have ever been so. You have driven me an innocent babe from your affections and your sight; and when now first after long years I beg a father's blessing--stretch forth my arm to earn a father's thanks--you spurn me from your feet and heap unmerited obloquy upon my head."" ""Unmerited!"" echoed Lord Clynton. ""Do you forget your disobedience? or do the convenient tenets of your hypocritical party permit you to erase the fifth commandment from the decalogue and teach you that the honouring of your father is an idle observance not to be weighed in the balance against the cause of the God of Israel and his people--so goes the phrase--does it not?"" ""I understand you not "" said Gerald. ""In what have I refused to honour my father? whose face I see for the first time to-day--at least since I have thought and memory."" ""In what?"" exclaimed his father with a bitter laugh ""said I not so? Honour and dishonour are in your new-fangled vocabulary but vain words that you understand no longer. In what? If I thy father--since to my shame I must be so--if I have been led by my overwhelming grief for that angel who has long been at rest to treat thee with wrong in thy childhood my conscience has no longer a reproach to offer me; for my son has in return treated me with the bitterest scorn and refused to come to those loving arms which at last opened to receive him. In what? I have appealed to thee with the strongest appeal of a father's heart to join me in the true and joint cause of murdered royalty and I find thee even now before me with arms in thy hands to aid the sacrilegious traitors to their king--may be to turn them with parricidal arm against thy father."" ""Again I understand you not "" repeated Gerald gazing wistfully in his face. ""Oh speak explain--my father--this is a mystery to me!"" ""Not understand me!"" echoed Lord Clynton with scorn--""convenient phrase! convenient memory! You understood not perhaps those letters I addressed you those letters in which I implored you to forget the past and offered you a loving welcome to my heart. But you could dictate a letter to your uncle in which you could upbraid me for my past unkindness and refuse to return. You understood not my urgent appeal to you to join the cause of truth and loyalty and fight by your father's side. But you could dictate a second answer worded with cold contempt in which you could assert your rebellious right--degenerate boy!--to follow those principles you dared to my face to qualify as those of justice and religion."" ""Letters!"" repeated Gerald astounded. ""An appeal! I know of none--until my uncle's death I scarcely was aware I had a father to whom I owed a duty--I never heard that he followed another cause but that which I was taught to believe the right."" ""No letters! No appeal!"" said his father half in scornful mistrust half in doubt. ""None--I protest to you my father "" replied the agitated youth. ""Now--but only now--can I construe rightly the words my uncle uttered on his deathbed which spoke of wrong he had done me and you."" ""Can I believe all this?"" said the passionate old cavalier now evidently wavering in his wrath. ""As God lives "" said Gerald; ""that God whom I perhaps offend that I thus call upon his name--that God who has said 'Swear not at all.'"" The old cavalier shrugged his shoulders at this evidence of the Puritanical education of his son. ""I swear to you that I know nothing of those matters."" Lord Clynton was evidently moved although the rebellious spirit within still resisted the more affectionate promptings of his heart-- ""Father prove me "" cried Gerald imploringly. ""Let me live henceforth to serve you--let me die for you if needs must be--let me save you from this prison--let me earn thy blessing--that blessing which is my dearest treasure upon earth."" Gerald again bent down at the old man's feet. Lord Clynton still struggled with his feelings. There was still a contest in his heart between long-cherished anger and newly-awakened confidence. Before either could again speak the trampling of feet was once more heard along the vaulted passage. The agitated son rose quickly to his feet and strove to repress his emotion. His father gave him one look; and that look he fondly construed into a look of kindness. In another moment the colonel entered the court followed by two soldiers. Gideon's poised leg fell to the ground; his eyes opened and stared out wonderfully. That troubled stare told as if the eyes had had a tongue that Go-to-bed Godlamb had been sleeping soundly on his post. Fortunately for the somnolent soldier the sharp looks of Lazarus Seaman were not bent in his direction. With a formal bow to his prisoner Colonel Seaman informed him that the time allotted to him for exercise in the open air was past. With another formal inclination of the head the old cavalier bowed to his jailer and turned to mount the tower stair. He exchanged not another look with his son: but as he turned away Gerald tried to read in his face a milder feeling. ""I will save him or will die!"" muttered Gerald to himself as the party disappeared under the tower gateway. ""I will force him to grant me that blessing he has refused me--I will earn it well;"" and he determined in his mind that come what might he would find means to be appointed to the midnight watch. CHAPTER III. ""Trifles light as air Are to the jealous confirmation strong As proofs of holy writ."" _Othello._ ""Honest soldier Who hath relieved you?-- Bernardo hath my place."" _Hamlet._ Left alone upon his post in the inner court Gerald resolved in his mind what could best be done for his father. Every thing was already in preparation for the prisoner's escape but the success or failure of the whole enterprise turned solely upon the connivance or opposition of the sentinel upon duty at the hour when the escape was to be effected. Gerald did not doubt however that should he himself not have the good fortune to be chosen for the midnight watch he would not find much difficulty in persuading the comrade to whom it should fall to exchange it with him for a more commodious hour. He felt that there could be none who would not gladly accept his offer and thus be left to enjoy their night's rest instead of enduring the fatigues of a tedious night watch. Of his own safety of the dishonour the punishment that awaited him for abetting in the escape of a prisoner of such importance he thought not a moment. All such considerations were lost in his hopes of rescuing his father. But still in the vague uncertainty that hung over the events of that important night in the impatience of his mind to arrive quickly at that awful hour--that hour which was to decide so much joy or misery for him--Gerald scarcely knew how to conceal his feverish agitation. He was aware however how necessary it was to avoid betraying any feelings that might excite the least suspicion; and he determined to appear as cold and as unconcerned as possible. There was another also although at this moment a secondary torment which added to his trouble of mind. He was unable to disengage his thoughts entirely from those feelings of bitter and scorching jealousy which various little indications of coquetry displayed by the evidently coquettish little Puritan damsel and certain marks of desire to seek her presence and parade under her window evinced by the hated Maywood had planted in his heart--and in a jealous and impatient temperament like Gerald's such seed once sown quickly grew up with rank luxuriance and spread on every side imbibing sustenance from every element that approached it living in want of better nourishment upon the very air itself. Perhaps the sight of Mistress Mildred for a moment at her window a passing word or merely a kind smile might have poured balm upon the ulcer of jealousy soothed the pain and closed the wound--at least for the time. But during his long watch Gerald looked at that well-known window in vain. There was not a symptom of the fair girl's presence in her chamber and Gerald's fertile imagination--the true imagination of the jealous lover--suggested to him a thousand doubts and fears of Mildred's truth ingeniously invented self-tortures weapons forged to be turned against himself--all mere vague conjectures but assuming in his eyes all the solidity and reality of truth. If she were not in her chamber he argued where could she be? Perhaps with her father: and her father was dictating a despatch to that Mark Maywood who served him sometimes as secretary; and Mildred was gazing on him with pleasure; and he was raising his eyes from time to time to hers--or perhaps she was in the other gardens or alleys about the house and that Maywood was following her at a distance not unobserved; or perhaps she passed close by him and he muttered words of admiration or even of love and she then listened with complacency; or perhaps the handsome young recruit whispered in her ear to ask her when he could see her pretty face again; and she smiled on him and said that when his watch should be beneath her window she would come. Madness! Gerald would pursue his vision no further. But although the clouds of the vision rolled away they left a dark chilling mist of suspicion upon his mind that he could not perhaps did not strive to shake off. Relieved from his guard Gerald returned to the guard-room--his mind in that agony of suspense and dread respecting his father the disquietudes of which his jealous doubts scarcely diverted for a moment and only rendered more hard to bear. On his way he again passed the detested Maywood. As he approached he evidently saw the young soldier crumple in his hand a paper he was reading and hide it hastily about him. This was no fancy he repeated to himself; this was reality. He had seen the look of confusion and trouble upon Maywood's face the haste with which he hid that paper at his approach. There was no longer any doubt. His hated rival was in correspondence already with his faithless mistress; and the contents of that written paper what could they be if not an acquiescence in some demand a rendezvous granted a meeting at her window? With rage in his heart Gerald again longed to spring upon his rival and tear that paper from his bosom. But again prudence prevailed over passion. He felt that the life of his father depended upon his caution--his father--his father whom he alone perhaps could save whose blessing was to be his recompense. Swearing to tear for ever from his heart the vain coquettish heartless girl upon whom his affections had been so ill disposed--for thus in his passion he qualified his lady-love--he crushed down within him the violence of his angry feelings and determined to defer his revenge defer it only until those few hours should be passed those hours which should witness his father's escape and ensure his father's safety--and then die willingly if such should chance to be his fate in securing his vengeance. Strange mixture of noble feelings and base passions! Where were now the stern strictly religious principles of his uncle and instructor? The fierce nature of his hot blood prevailed for the time over the better culture of his education. At length the hour arrived when the soldiers were mustered in the outer court before the front of the mansion and the names of those called over who were appointed to the different watches of the night. How anxiously and eagerly did Gerald's heart beat as the midnight watch in the tower-court was named! Was it by a gracious and happy chance upon himself that the lot would fall? The name was pronounced. It was _not_ his own. The sentinel appointed to this post the man upon whom depended the destiny of his father was another. But still in spite of the first pang of disappointment--for disappointment would arise within him although the chances had been so greatly against him--hope again revived in his heart. The sentinel whose post he coveted whom he had to seduce into an exchange whose watch he was to contrive to take from him as a favour was one of the most easy of the whole troop to deal with the lazy phlegmatic somnolent Godlamb Gideon he whose very nickname was an augury and a warrant of success the wight yclept Go-to-bed Godlamb. After waiting till the assembled soldiers had dispersed and a proper time had elapsed before seeking Gideon Gerald again returned to the outer court before the house where he knew it was the habit of the indolent soldier to bask and doze upon a certain sheltered bench in the last rays of the setting sun absorbed he himself would declare in his devotions. And there in truth he found the man he sought. But confusion! there was another by his side and that other was the man who among all he would have the most avoided. It was Mark Maywood. He stood by the side of Gideon's reclining form and was speaking with much earnestness to the phlegmatic soldier whose widely-opened eyes seemed to express more animati
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n than of wont. No time however was to be lost. The night was approaching and it was necessary to come at once to an arrangement with the allotted sentinel of the midnight watch. Overcoming his repugnance and fully determined to act with caution Gerald assumed an air of unconcern and sauntered to the spot where sat Godlamb Gideon. After greeting sulkily the handsome young recruit to whom Gerald's presence seemed in nowise pleasing he commenced with affected indifference his attack upon the heavy soldier. ""You are ever zealous friend in the good work "" he said. ""Yea and of a truth these crumbs of comfort have a blessed and pleasant savour in my nostrils "" replied Godlamb Gideon pressing his book between his hands turning up the whites of his eyes and snuffing through his nose as though that member were stuffed up by the pleasant savour of which he spoke. ""But have a care that your zeal be not overmuch "" continued Gerald ""and that you faint not by the way from the heaviness of your burden. Methinks your cheek is already pale from exceeding watching and prayer."" ""Verily I have fought the good fight and I have run the good race and peradventure the flesh faileth me "" snorted the Puritan soldier. ""Your allotted post then falls heavy upon you"" said Gerald with an air of kind concern ""for you have the midnight watch methinks. Indeed I pity you my good friend. Hear me. I will perform the duties of your part and you shall rest this night from your labours; my mind is troubled and I heed not the watching through the night. You will rise from your couch ready for new outpourings of spiritual thought and refreshed""---- ""As a giant refreshed with wine "" interrupted Gideon with another snort: ""yea and so shall it be."" Gerald's heart beat at what he considered an acceptance of his proposal; but Godlamb Gideon continued--""Thou art kind and I thank thee no less that I refuse thy offer. Verily it would seem to be a gracious and an especial vouchsafing in my favour. For behold another hath released me from my task."" ""Another!"" cried Gerald with a tone of consternation that overcame his caution. ""Yea this good youth hath proffered to relieve me of my heavy burden."" Gideon pointed to Mark Maywood. Gerald started with angry surprise. Maywood bit his lip and turned his head aside. ""He has taken thy post!"" said Gerald choking with rage. Gideon nodded his heavy head. The blood boiled in Gerald's veins and rushed into his cheek. He felt for a moment nearly suffocated with the violence of his passion. Since the young recruit had been anxious to obtain Gideon's weary post there could be no doubt what was his purpose. There and in the silence of the night he would be able under Mildred's window to pour into her ear those words of love which he dared not openly profess. It was true then that Mildred had bid him try to obtain the post of sentinel in the inner court. That was their hour of rendezvous. Furious jealousy joined to rage at losing that post on which his father's whole fate depended contributed to torture his mind. Not only would his detested rival find a favourable opportunity of holding converse with that faithless girl but he would be there to prevent his father's escape--he of all others--he that fierce and violent Republican that determined enemy of all adherents to the royal cause. If the vision of Maywood interchanging soft words with Mildred at her window tormented the unhappy lover far more agonizing were the feelings that represented to him the stern young sentinel raising his musket upon his shoulder to arrest the escape of the old man--shooting him perhaps in his descent from the tower-window--bringing him bleeding to the earth. Horror! Convulsed with these accumulated feelings he stood for a time speechless struggling with his passions. When he looked again upon Maywood's face that hated individual's eyes were bent on him with a stern but enquiring glance and in evident discomposure. This very look was sufficient to confirm all the young lover's suspicions and it was with the greatest difficulty that he could control his passion. He mastered himself however sufficiently to meet the glance of Maywood without giving vent to his wrath and turning to Gideon he called him aside. The indolent soldier evidently rose unwillingly but he followed Gerald to a little distance grumbling something about an ""interruption to the inward outpourings of the spirit."" ""Hark ye Master Gideon "" said Gerald when they had got to some distance from Mark ""you must not do me wrong in this. I own that my request is not wholly disinterested. You know that I love our colonel's daughter that I am affianced to her. Her chamber looks into that court and at midnight""---- ""Now out on thee Master Lyle "" drawled Godlamb with an hypocritical upturning of his eyes. ""Wouldst thou make my watch a pretext for ungodly chambering and profane love passages?"" ""How now fellow!"" exclaimed the young man in wrath. ""What mean you by this insolence?"" and he grasped Gideon's collar with violence. But immediately afterwards repenting of his excitement he continued with a calm tone although still in some irritation ""This is mere fooling Gideon. I know you as you are--I know you to be a thorough hypocrite."" ""Nay but of a truth""--exclaimed the pacific Godlamb very sulkily. ""Hear me "" interrupted Gerald. ""It is not as you think--that Maywood loves her too. He also would keep the watch at midnight in the hope to see her at the window--by chance man by chance--no otherwise; but I would hinder this and""---- ""Nay but Master Maywood hath my word "" again began Gideon. ""Nay but Master Gideon slept whilom upon his post "" continued Gerald mimicking him. ""And if Master Gideon be reported to his colonel Master Gideon will have a week's arrest upon bread and water; but Master Gideon may do what he listeth."" ""For the love of heaven "" exclaimed Gideon forgetting his Puritanical mask in his alarm; ""you would not report me comrade? S'wounds you would not serve a poor fellow so scurvy a trick?"" ""Upon one condition then "" replied Gerald. ""Retract your word to that man; give me up your post at midnight; and I will be as silent as the grave."" ""Lord have mercy upon us! Thou art as the cruel taskmasters of the children of Israel; and thy heart is hardened even as was Pharaoh's "" whined Godlamb again resuming his canting tone. ""But be it even as thou wilt."" Gerald triumphed; the midnight watch was his; and with it his father's safety and his father's blessing. They returned to the spot where Maywood still stood observing them Gideon following in the rear muttering something about ""the hand of the ungodly being upon him."" ""Speak Gideon "" said Gerald as they approached ""and thank your comrade here for his kindly proffered barter of hours; since it is I who take your post you will not need his well-meant and disinterested civilities."" There was something of a sneer on Gerald's lip as he pronounced these words which probably augmented the feelings of anger that now evidently flushed the usually cold face of Maywood and darkened his brow; for the latter appeared to tremble with suppressed passion as he advanced upon his rival with the words-- ""How now you Master what's-your-name? What warrants you to interfere thus ill advisedly in my concerns? If this man has given up to me at the midnight hour the watch over that offshoot of a rotten and corrupted stem of tyranny is it for you to stand between me and my purpose?"" ""Your purpose is doubtless of the best and truest and worthiest "" replied Gerald with another flickering sneer upon his lip. ""But this watch is mine now by Master Gideon's consent and these hours of the night I intend to devote to the watching of those whose security may need my care."" Mark Maywood bit his lip and clenched his hands together in a vain effort to suppress his violent irritation. ""Hoity toity! Here's a coil about an old inveterate Amalekite!"" said Gideon in a mixture of his natural and assumed phraseology prudently withdrawing at the same time to some distance from the angry young men as if afraid lest an appeal to himself should involve him in the quarrel. ""Hark ye sirrah "" cried Maywood angrily ""I am not about to resign the right this man has yielded to me at the caprice of the first foolish fellow who chooses to cross my path without making him repent his uncalled-for interference. What is it to me this post? but browbeaten by a bullying boy I never will be."" ""Nor will I yield to a base and treacherous hypocrite like thee Mark Maywood "" exclaimed his angry antagonist. The hands of both the young men were instantly upon their rapiers. ""By the mass what are ye about?"" exclaimed Gideon in alarm. ""Trifle not with the carnal weapon! Would ye have us all in arrest before we can look about us? Forbear men of wrath!"" But the phlegmatic Gideon kept at a prudent distance. At these words other considerations appeared suddenly to strike both the young men. In spite of their passion both paused irresolute. Gerald reflected that were he involved in a quarrel he would necessarily be prevented in any case whether victorious over his adversary and then consigned to prison or himself disabled from forwarding his father's escape. His rival appeared actuated also by prudential motives perhaps by the conscientious scruples of the party to which he belonged perhaps by the thought of Mildred. ""This is truly ruffling and bawling like tavern hunters and drunkards "" stammered Gerald as if seeking an excuse for withdrawing from the fray. ""But the time will come Mark Maywood when you shall not escape me."" ""So be it comrade "" replied the other again sheathing his half-drawn rapier. ""I know you not; and can but barely divine your cause of enmity. But I will not fail you at the night-time. Till then let this suffice. The midnight watch is mine--mine by the first assent of yonder soldier to my proposal of exchange."" ""No! Mine "" again urged Gerald ""mine by his retractation of his prior consent if such he gave."" ""Come hither comrade "" cried Maywood to Gideon who was suddenly absorbed once more in his devotions. ""Hear ye Master Godlamb "" said the other. But Go-to-bed Godlamb stirred not. He shrank from the appeal to himself. ""It is to me your post has been consigned is it not so?"" enquired the one. ""It is I who take it off your hands--speak "" cried Gerald. ""Remember Gideon "" he added with upraised finger. ""Speak who is it?"" said both at once. Gideon shuffled with his feet and looked heavier and more embarrassed than ever; but as he caught sight of the warning finger he absolutely shut his eyes in utter despair and pointing at Gerald with the words ""Verily and of a truth thou art the man "" he hastened away as fast as his indolent nature would permit ""before he should fall into the toils of the angry Philistines "" as he expressed it. Gerald could not suppress a look of triumph. Whatever were Mark Maywood's feelings he only expressed them by a dark scowl of disappointment and then turned away without another word. CHAPTER IV. ""'What hour now?' 'I think it lacks of twelve ' 'No it is struck--' 'Indeed I heard it not.'"" _Hamlet._ The night had closed in--that night of so vital importance to his father's destiny--and Gerald sat alone in a small lower room his heart beating high with hope that he should contribute to his father's rescue. He was lost in thought when a firm hand laid on his shoulder roused him from his abstracted state. He turned his head and saw to his surprise Mark Maywood by his side. The young man wore a calmer clearer brow although his usual cold stern almost determined expression still pervaded it. ""Comrade "" said Maywood with much appearance of frankness in his manner ""I have spoken roughly without cause; I crave your pardon."" Gerald heard this unexpected address with great astonishment; and before he answered paused in much embarrassment. ""Let us be frank "" continued Mark. ""Had we been so before much ill will and evil blood might have been spared. I have only divined your feelings from my own. You have not seen the pretty daughter of our colonel with admiration. Nor have I."" Gerald started with again rising wrath but his rival interrupted him. ""Bear with me for a while "" he continued ""and hear me out. You have been here long. I am but a new-comer. You have the prior claim. Perhaps she returns your love. Had I known of this before--and as it is I have but guessed it on witnessing your anxiety to hold this watch in the court beneath her window--I had withdrawn as is my duty. And now comrade I return to offer you the sacrifice of my newborn admiration and at the same time my friendship."" ""What you say seems fair and straightforward Master Maywood "" said Gerald overcome by the frank manner of the young soldier ""and I thank you for this generosity and truth. My suspicions then did not deceive me? You love her and you sought to see her to-night?"" ""I did "" said Maywood. ""And she did she return your love? Did she herself accede to this meeting?"" Mark shook his head with a faint doubtful smile but gave no answer. Gerald's brow again grew gloomy and he sank his head between his hands. ""Come! come! no more of this "" pursued the other young soldier with a cordiality of manner which Gerald had never before witnessed in his dark stern aspect. ""Let all be forgiven and forgotten. Come pledge me in this one cup. These drinkings of toasts as it is called these pledgings over liquor are considered unseemly and even ungodly by many; I know it well but you cannot refuse to drink one cup with me as earnest of our kindly feeling for the future."" For the first time Gerald now observed that Maywood bore under his arm a flagon of ale and held in his left hand two cups of horn. ""I reject not your kindly feeling "" answered Gerald; ""but I am not wont to drink ""--and he repelled the cup which Maywood now filled for him. ""Nay! nay!"" said Mark sitting down by the table on which Gerald leant. ""You wrong me by refusing this first offer of reconciliation. Come comrade this one."" Gerald took the cup of ale unwillingly and only raised it to his lips. But Maywood shook his head at him--and Gerald in compliance with his newly made friend's request at last swallowed the contents. ""I am not used to these strong drinks "" said Gerald setting down the horn with evident distaste. ""I like them not; but I have done this to show my willingness to meet you on friendly ground."" Maywood raised in turn his cup but at the same moment calling to a dog that had followed him into the room he said ""Down Roger down "" and stooped to repulse it; immediately afterwards he raised the horn and seemed to drain the ale to the last drop. ""One more and then I will not urge you again "" said Mark to Gerald eyeing him with a sharp enquiring look. ""No no not one "" replied the young man with disgust. ""Already this unusual drink has confused my head. I am accustomed to water only--such was my uncle's mode of educating me. It is strange how my brain turns with this fermented liquor. I have done wrong to drink it "" and Gerald rubbed his heavy forehead and strained his eyes. His powers of vision became more and more confused and it was with difficulty that he could now see before him the face of Maywood which to his intellect disordered by the liquor seemed to wear a strange expression of cunning and triumphant contempt. He made an effort however to shake off this feeling and raise his sinking head but in vain. A sensation of overpowering drowsiness crept over him more and more. The thought of his watch however was still uppermost in his mind and he had yet power sufficient to reflect that there was still some time to midnight and that a little slumber might restore him; and giving way to the oppressive sleep which came over him he laid his head on the table and was immediately lost to all sense of what was passing around him. At first Gerald's sleep was heavy and complete. How long it remained so he had no power to tell. At length however it became lighter and grew more troubled and confused. Wild dreams began to course each other through his brain--at first of an undefinable and fantastic nature--then they assumed a more definite shape. He dreamed of his father--that old greyheaded cavalier with his long white beard--and before him stood Lazarus Seaman who accused him of absurd and imaginary crimes. And now they brought him into that open court--a file of soldiers were drawn up--their muskets were levelled at that old man's heart--Gerald struggled and sought to spring between those deadly instruments and his doomed father but his feet clove to the ground--he struggled in vain--the muskets were discharged and his father fell weltering in his blood. With the last struggle of a convulsive nightmare he started up uttering a loud scream. It was but a frightful dream. And yet the noise of those fearful muskets--that discharge of artillery--still rang in his ears. As he opened his eyes all was dark around him--the darkness of deep night. It was long before he could sufficiently recover his senses to remember what had passed; and when slowly the events of the day forced themselves upon his mind his intellects seemed still confused and troubled. How strangely real now appeared the impression of that dream! It was with difficulty he could persuade himself that the firing had been imaginary; and even now there seemed a strange confusion of noise and voices around him; but that surely was the ringing in his head from the unusual draught he had taken. Slowly his whole memory returned to him and he recalled to himself that it was necessary for him to be ready to answer for Godlamb Gideon when that worthy's name was to be called over for the midnight watch. He staggered up unto his feet and with difficulty found his way into the open air. As he gazed with somewhat troubled brain on the bright starlit sky two or three soldiers hurried past them. ""Hark ye comrade "" he said to one ""how long is it yet to midnight?"" ""Midnight! where have you been hiding yourself comrade?"" answered the man. ""Midnight is long since past."" ""Long since past!"" screamed Gerald with frantic violence. ""No! no! it is impossible--my post was at midnight in the tower court."" ""Then you have escaped by wonderful interposition friend from the consequences of your absence; for I was there when the names were called and 'present' was answered for the sentinel at the tower court."" ""Father of mercy!"" cried Gerald in despair. ""What then has happened?"" ""Happened!"" echoed the soldier; ""why the prisoner has tried to escape! But didn't you hear the shots? They brought the old reprobate to the earth of a surety."" Gerald uttered a loud groan and fell against the wall of the house; but in another moment he recovered himself by a desperate effort from a feeling of sickness and death and repulsing violently the soldier who had come to his assistance he rushed round the mansion with whirling brain and clenched teeth towards the tower court. His father had been killed--killed by his own folly. Rage despair contrition self-horror at having been so weak as to accept Maywood's proposal to drink that fatal drink which caused his deadly sleep all tortured his heart and drove him almost to madness. He could not doubt that it was that hated Maywood who had deceived him drugged his liquour cheated him into a sleep in order to be present undisturbed at his rendezvous with Mildred; and now it was by his hand by the hand of that villain that his father had fallen. All was commotion in the fortress. Gerald as he rushed forward heard the noise of voices and boats upon the water--the voice of Lazarus Seaman--now the men calling to each other. Horror-stricken overwhelmed with despair convulsed with rage he bounded through the vaulted passage. In the moonlit court stood now but one figure alone--the sentinel who was bending over the parapet and seemed to be watching with interest the movement of the boats upon the water. With the rage of a tiger Gerald sprang upon him and seized him by the collar with frenzied gripe. It was indeed Maywood--pale agitated and excited. ""Villain! traitor! assassin!"" screamed Gerald madly frantic with passion and despair ""you have betrayed that greyheaded old man; you have murdered him; but I will have revenge! He was my father and it is you have killed him."" ""_Your_ father!"" exclaimed the young sentinel in a voice choked by emotion. ""He was _mine_ and I have saved him."" Gerald released his hold and staggered back. For a moment the young men stared at each other in bewildered surprise. Then all at once the truth flashed across them. ""Brother! brother!"" burst simultaneously from their lips. ""Gerald! Everard!"" they exclaimed again; and Everard Clynton flinging himself into his brother's arms gave way to his suppressed agitation and burst into a flood of tears. At this moment a distant sound of a gun came across the water; Everard sprang up and grasped his brother's arm. ""Hush!"" he said ""three shots from the sea are the signal to me that he has escaped in safety to the vessel that awaits him."" Another boomed faintly across the broad. A pause of fearful interest followed and then another. Once more the brothers fell into each others' arms. In a few words Everard Clynton explained to his brother how after his father's capture he had enlisted in the troop quartered in the fortress in order to save him. How he had known from their friends without the means provided to effect his father's escape; how he too had sought with desperation the midnight watch upon which depended his father's delivery; and finding himself overcome by his supposed rival he had administered to him a sleeping draught in order to secure the post; how his pretended admiration for Mistress Mildred had been assumed in order to forward his views and colour his designs by giving a pretext to his desire to obtain the post of sentry in the court; how Mildred had never given him any encouragement Gerald's unreasonable jealousy having supplied the rest. He had assisted his father to escape and only long after his flight had given the alarm and fired upon the water pretending to call for a sudden pursuit. Mark Maywood however was tried by a court-martial for negligence upon duty on the night of the prisoner's escape; but the constantly exhibited violence of the Republican principles which he had affected as well as his zeal and exemplary good conduct since he had joined the troop saved him in the colonel's eyes. He was acquitted. Shortly afterwards he disappeared altogether from the fortress after an affectionate farewell to Gerald Clynton who had the good fortune to receive in due time the assurance of his brother's safe escape to join his father in Flanders. Not long afterwards the death of Colonel Lazarus Seaman leaving his daughter an orphan Gerald Clynton married pretty little Mistress Mildred and quitting the service retired to Lyle-Court the estate bequeathed to him by his uncle. There is no doubt that pretty little Mistress Mildred's eyes were given to be coquettish in spite of themselves; but yet notwithstanding sundry little symptoms of jealousy exhibited by Gerald there is every reason to believe that he was as absurd and misled in his jealousy after as he was before his marriage and that she made him a most excellent wife. During the more peaceful times of the Protectorate Gerald received news from time to time of the welfare of his father and his brother; and upon the Restoration he had the happiness of welcoming them to the English shores once more. Although Lord Clynton always preserved a predilection for his elder son yet he had somehow found out that Gerald bore an extraordinary resemblance to his deceased mother and always treated him with the utmost love. He never forgot also the deep affection Gerald had displayed in his efforts to save him during that never-to-be-forgotten _Midnight Watch_. VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. We should take but a limited view of science if we supposed that the laws of nature of which it is cognizant have for their object the continuance only and preservation of the several parts of the universe; they provide also for change improvement development progression. By these laws not only are the same phenomena the same things perpetually reproduced but new phenomena new arrangements new objects are being successively developed. In short we are able to perceive to a certain extent that not only the world is preserved and renewed but grows and is created according to great general laws which are indeed no other than the great ideas of the Divine Mind. The modern science of geology has more especially led us to extend our view of science in this direction. The discovery of those mute records of past changes which lay buried in the earth has induced us to investigate with awakened curiosity those changes which are actually taking place before us in the broad day and in our own generation; and the result has been a conviction that in the activity of nature there was a provision made not only for restoration from decay and a perpetual renewal of the individuals of each species but for successive transformations in the surface of the globe fitting it for successive forms of vegetable and animal life. The plant that lives and sows its seed and dies has not only provided for its own progeny; under many circumstances it prepares the soil for successors of a superior rank of vegetation--""Pioneers of vegetation "" as Dr Macculloch calls them ""the lichens and other analogous plants seek their place where no others could exist; demanding no water requiring no soil careless alike of cold and heat of the sun and of the storm; rootless leafless flowerless; clothing the naked rock and forming additional soil for their successors."" The whole tribe of corals whose lives are sufficiently brief and sufficiently simple are yet not permitted to die away from the scene and leave it as so many of us do just as they found it; they build up such a mausoleum of their bones--(for what used to be considered as the shell of the animal is now pronounced to be a sort of bony nucleus or skeleton)--that large islands are formed and a corresponding displacement of the sea is occasioned. The little creatures heave up the ocean on us. The river that to the poet's eye flows on for ever in the same channel ""giving a kiss "" and kisses only to every pebble and every sedge ""it overtaketh in its pilgrimage "" is detected to be secretly scraping abrading cutting out the earth like a knife and washing it away into the sea. On the other hand the earthquake and the volcano which were looked on as paroxysms and agonies of nature are transformed in our imagination into the constant ministers of beneficent change and of creative purposes; and the momentary violence they commit is to be excused on the plea of the great and permanent good they effect. For it is they who build the hills and the mountains whence flow the streams of abundance upon the earth and which instead of being the gigantic melancholy ruins Bishop Burnet took them to be are the palaces and storehouses of nature which it is given in charge to these sons of Vulcan to construct and to repair from the ravages which the soft rains of heaven incessantly commit upon them. Astronomy too notwithstanding the severe discipline she has undergone has in these later times resumed all the boldness of her youth and brought her stores of science to the construction of the most splendid cosmogony that ever attracted the faith of the learned. She has girt her long robe around her and entered the lists with and far outstripped whatever is boldest in the speculations of the youngest of the sciences. The nebular hypothesis though not yet entitled as we think to be considered other than an hypothesis has assumed a shape and consistency which forbids an entire rejection of it which enforces our respect and which at all events habituates the imagination to regard our planetary system as having probably been evolved under the will of Providence by the long operation of the established laws of matter. It is quite a legitimate object of science therefore to view the laws of the physical world--whether they regard its mechanic movement its chemistry or its zoology--in their creative as well as reproductive functions; and it is the purpose of a work lately published entitled ""Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation "" and which has drawn to itself considerable attention to collect and arrange whatever hints or fragments of knowledge science affords enabling us to bring the successive phenomena of creation under the formula of general laws. In this purpose it is impossible to find a shadow of blame and the work will probably answer one good end that of directing the studies of scientific men into paths but little or timidly explored. But unfortunately what the author has collected as the results of science are in some instances little else than the wild guess-work of speculation. He has no scruple whatever in imitating those early geographers who disliking the blank spaces of undiscovered regions were in the habit in their charts ""Of placing elephants instead of towns."" Indeed his book is an assemblage of all that is most venturous and most fanciful in modern speculation in which the most conspicuous place is allotted to a modification of Lamarck's theory on the development of animal life. The charge of an atheistic tendency as it is the heaviest which can be made against a work so it is the last which ought to be hazarded without sufficient cause. In general owing to the very sacredness of the subject we feel disposed in all suspicious cases to pass over in silence both accusation and defence; and if in the present instance we depart for a moment from this line of conduct it is only to give expression to a conviction--which we share we believe with all who have both the interest of science and the interest of theology at heart--that the fair efforts of the scientific enquirer should never be impeded by needless objections of a theological character. What we mean is this: though a suspicion may cross the mind that a writer does not hold the religious tenets which we should desire to see every where advocated; yet if we are persuaded at the same time that this laxity of faith has no real logical connexion with the scientific results with which he is occupied we ought not to inflict on _them_ any portion of our suspicion or distrust. We shall always protest against confounding the legitimate attempts of science with the erroneous principles of certain schools of metaphysics which may or may not be connected with them. If there is atheism in the world we know whence it comes; we know well it is in a very different laboratory than that of the chemist that it has been distilled. The unknown author before us repeatedly protests against being numbered amongst atheistic philosophers; on our own part we are thoroughly convinced that no formula of physical science could possibly interfere with a rational belief in the power and wisdom of God; what remains then but to treat his book purely in a scientific point of view? To reduce to a system the acts of creation or the development of the several forms of animal life no more impeaches the authorship of creation than to trace the laws by which the world is upheld and its phenomena perpetually renewed. The presumption naturally rises in the mind that the same Great Being would adopt the same mode of action in both cases. If for instance the nebular hypothesis to which we have already alluded should be received as a scientific account of the proximate origin of our planetary system this as Mr Whewell has shown in his ""Bridgewater Treatise "" would serve only to enlighten and elevate our conception of the power of God. And indeed to a mind accustomed--as is every educated mind--to regard the operations of Deity as essentially differing from the limited sudden evanescent impulses of a human agent it is distressing to be compelled to picture to itself the power of God as put forth in any other manner than in those slow mysterious universal laws which have so plainly an eternity to work in; it pains the imagination to be obliged to assimilate those operations for a moment to the brief energy of a human will or the manipulations of a human hand. Does not the language even of a Christian poet when he speaks of God as _launching_ from his ample palm the rolling planets into space in some meas
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re offend us? Do we not avoid as much as possible all such similitudes as being derogatory to our notions of the Supreme? There are still indeed some men of narrow prejudices who look upon every fresh attempt to reduce the phenomena of nature to general laws and to limit those occasions on which it is necessary to conceive of a direct and separate interposition of divine power as a fresh encroachment on the prerogatives of the Deity or a concealed attack upon his very existence. And yet these very same men are daily appealing to such laws of the creation as have already been established for their great proofs of the existence and the wisdom of God! Their imagination has remained utterly untutored by the little knowledge which they have rather learned to repeat than to apprehend. Whatever words they may utter of subtle and high-sounding import concerning the purely spiritual nature of the Divine Being it is in fact a _Jupiter Tonans_ clad in human lineaments and invested with human passions that their heart is yearning after. Such objectors as these can only be beaten back and chained down by what some one has called the brute force of public opinion. Some little time ago men of this class deemed it irreligious to speak of the _laws_ of the human mind; it savoured of necessity of fatalism; they now applaud a Dr Chalmers when he writes his Bridgewater Treatise to illustrate the attributes of God in the laws of the mental as well as the physical world. No there is nothing atheistic nothing irreligious in the attempt to conceive creation as well as reproduction carried on by universal laws. For what is the difference between individual isolated acts and acts capable of being expressed in a general formula? This only that in the second case the same act is repeated in constant sequence with other acts and probably repeated in many places at the same time. The divine work is only multiplied. If the creation of a world should be proved to be as orderly and systematic as that of a plant this may make worlds more common to the imagination but it cannot make the power that creates them less marvellous. But while we would reprove the narrowness of spirit that finds in any of the discoveries of science a source of disquietude for the interests of religion we have here an observation to make of an opposite character which we think of some importance and which we shall again in reviewing the theories of our author have occasion to insist upon. It is undoubtedly true that there rises in the minds of every person at all tinctured with science a presumption that every phenomenon we witness might be if our knowledge enabled us reduced under the expression of some general law; and that whatever changes are or have been produced in the world might be traced to the interwoven operations of such laws. But however prevalent and justifiable such a presumption may be we hold it no sound philosophy to give it so complete a preponderance as to debar the mind from contemplating the possibility of quite other and independent acts of divine power the possibility of the abrupt introduction into our system of new facts or series of facts with their appropriate laws. The author before us in his anxiety to explain after a scientific manner the introduction of life and the various species of animals into the globe seems to have thought himself entitled to have recourse to the wildest hypothesis rather than to the immediate intervention of creative power; as if it were something altogether unphilosophical to suppose that there could be such a thing as a quite new development of that plastic energy. It is not even necessary that we should urge that if a Creator exist it is a most unwarrantable supposition to imagine that all his creative power has been exhausted. We say even to an atheistic philosophy that it is an unauthorized limitation that would forbid the mind to contemplate the possibility of the uprise in time of entirely new phenomena. Can any philosopher of any school whatever be justified in saying that there shall be no new fact introduced into the universe?--that its laws cannot be added to? Why should he recoil from the introduction of any thing new? If he is one whose last formula stands thus _whatever is is_--this new fact will also fall with others into his formula. Of this also he can say _whatever is is_. There is we repeat a strong presumption in favour of a scientific sequence of an unbroken order of events; but this presumption is not to authorize any hypothesis whatever in order to escape from the other alternative an immediate intervention of creative power. This also is a probability which philosophy recognises and in which a rational mind may choose to rest till science brings to him some definite result. We are very far from intending to follow the author of the _Vestiges of the Natural History of the Creation_ through all the sciences along which his track has led him. We shall limit ourselves to what forms the most peculiar and startling portion of his work--to his theory of the origin and development of animal life. But for the discoveries of geology a certain philosophy might have been content to say of the animal creation that it was the law of nature that life should beget life--that reproduction like nutrition to which it has been assimilated is a part of the definition of life--and that as to a commencement of the various tribes of animals we are no more bound to look for this than for the commencement of any other of the phenomena of nature. From the researches however of geology it is evident that there was a time when this earth revolved around the sun a barren and untenanted globe--that there was a time when life did make its first appearance and that in different epochs of the world's existence there have flourished very different species of animals than those which now inhabit it. Here at all events the imagination cannot gain that imperfect repose which it finds in the contemplation of an eternal series. It is a plain historical fact that life had a beginning on this earth and that from time to time new forms of life new species of vegetables and animals have been introduced upon the scene. Here are two great facts to be accounted for or to be left standing out unconnected in their origin with that interlinked series of events which creation elsewhere displays. Life reproduces life the plant its seed the animal its young each after its kind such is the law; but this law itself when was it promulgated or when and how did it come into force and operation? For ourselves in the present imperfect condition of our knowledge we are satisfied with referring life in all its countless forms at once to the interposing will of the Creator. We listen however with curiosity and attention to any theory which the naturalist or physiologist may have to propose so he proceed in the fair road of induction. There is nothing in the laws of life which forbids but much on the contrary which invites to the same pains-taking examination which has been bestowed with more or less success on other phenomena of nature. But what is the resolution of this problem which the author of the _Vestiges_ proposes? Assuredly not one which indicates the boldness of advancing science but one of those hardy conjectures which are permitted to arise only in the infancy of a science and which show how clear the field is hitherto of certain knowledge--how open to the very wantonness of speculation. Very little has been done towards determining the laws of life and therefore the space is still free to those busy dreamers who are to science what constructors of Utopias are to history and politics. His solution is simple enough and with good reason may it be simple since it depends on nothing but the will of its framer. The germ of life--that primary cell with its granule in which some physiologists have detected the first elementary form of life--he finds to be a product of chemistry. From this germ cell or animalcule or whatever it may be called has been developed in succession all the various forms of existence--each form having at some propitious moment given birth to the form just above it which again has not only propagated itself but produced an offspring of a still higher grade in the scale of creation. Thus the introduction of life and the various species of animals is easily accounted for. ""It has pleased Providence to arrange that one species should give birth to another till the second highest gave birth to man who is the very highest.""--(P. 234.) Under favourable skies some remarkable baboon had we presume a family of Hottentots whose facial angle we believe ranks them with physiologists next to the brute creation; these grew and multiplied and separated from the tribes of the _Simiæ_; under a system of improved diet and perhaps by change of climate they became first tawny and then white and at last rose into that Caucasian family of which we here in England boast ourselves to be distinguished members. Such a solution as this most people will at once regard as utterly unworthy of serious consideration. This _progressive development_ is nowhere seen and contradicts all that we do see; for no progeny even amongst hybrids was ever known to be of a superior order in the animal creation to both its parents. Such a proposed origin of the human race would be sufficient with most of us for its condemnation. ""Give us at least "" we exclaim ""a man to begin with--some savage and his squaw--some Iceland dwarf if you will wrapt in his nutritious oils--something in the shape of humanity!"" In short it is a thing to be scoffed away and deserving only of a niche in some future _Hudibras_. But although the theory is thus rash and absurd and requires only to be stated to be scouted the author in his exposition of it advances some propositions which are deserving of attention and for this reason it is we propose to give to his arguments a brief examination. The theory divides itself into two parts--the production of organic life from the inorganic world; and the progressive development of the several species from the first simple elementary forms of life. Spontaneous or as our author calls it aboriginal generation is a doctrine neither new nor without its supporters. But unfortunately for his purposes the class of cases of spontaneous generation which appear to be at all trustworthy are those in which the animalcule or other creatures have been produced either within living bodies (entozoa ) or from the putrefaction of vegetable or animal life the decay and dissolution of some previous organization. Here _life_ still produces _life_ though _like_ does not produce _like_. It is well known that amongst some of the lower class of animals as amongst certain of the polypi reproduction is nothing more than a species of growth; a _bud_ sprouts out of the body which separating itself becomes a new animal. With such an analogy before us there appears nothing very improbable in the supposition that _entozoa_ and other descriptions of living creatures should be produced from the tissues of the higher animals either on a separation of their component parts when they decay or on a partial separation when the animal is inflicted with disease. We make no profession of faith on this subject; we content ourselves with observing that this class of cases where the evidence is strongest and approaches nearest to conviction lends no support whatever to our author's hypothesis and provides him with no commencement of vital phenomena. Of cases where life has been produced by the operation of purely chemical laws on inorganic matter there are certainly none which will satisfy a cautious enquirer. If Mr Crosse or Mr Weekes produce a species of worm by the agency of electricity it is impossible to say that the germ of life was not previously existing in the fluid through which the electricity passed. When lime is thrown upon a field and clover springs up it is the far more probable supposition that the seed was there but owing to ungenial circumstances had not germinated; for no one who has mentioned this fact has ventured to say that the experiment would always succeed and that lime thrown upon a certain description of soil would in all parts of the world produce clover. Not to add that it would be strange indeed if such an instance were solitary and that other vegetation should not be produced by similar means.[3] Vegetable and animal life we ought here to mention are considered by our author as both derived from the same elementary germ which branches out into the two great kingdoms of nature; so that it is of equal importance to him to find a case of spontaneous generation amongst the plants as amongst the animals. We must therefore extend the observation we made on a certain class of cases amongst animals to an analagous class of supposed cases of spontaneous generation amongst vegetables. If that downy mould for instance which the good housewife finds upon her pots of jam be considered as a vegetable and be supposed to have grown without seed it would be somewhat analagous to the entozoa amongst animals; it would be a vegetation produced by the decay of a previous vegetation. It is only necessary to recall to mind the instances which naturalists record of the minuteness of the seeds of life and the manner in which they may lie for a long time concealed in order to induce us to presume in the majority of examples that are alleged of spontaneous generation the previous existence of the seed or the germ. Take the following from Dr Carpenter's work on _Comparative Physiology_:--""Another very curious example of fungous vegetation in a situation where its existence was not until recently suspected is presented in the process of fermentation. It appears from microscopic examination of a mass of yeast that it consists of a number of minute disconnected vesicles which closely resemble those of the Red Snow and appear to constitute one of the simplest forms of vegetation. These like seeds nay remain for almost any length of time in an inactive condition without losing their vitality; but when placed in a fluid in which any kind of sugary matter is contained they commence vegetating actively provided the temperature is sufficiently high; and they assist in producing that change in the composition of the fluid which is known under the name of fermentation.""--P. 74. With such instances before us the experiments of Messieurs Crosse and Weekes must be conducted with singular care and judgment in order to lead to any satisfactory result. Let us be allowed to say that the experiments of those gentlemen excite in us no horror or alarm. A Frankenstein who produces nothing worse than a harmless worm may surely be suffered to go blameless. Let these electricians pursue their experiments and make all the worms they can. They will incur no very grave responsibility for such additions as they can make to that stream of life which is pouring from every crack and crevice of the earth. Some persons have a vague idea that there is something derogatory to the lowest form of animal life to have its origin in merely inorganic elements; an idea which results perhaps not so much from any subtle and elevated conceptions of life as from an imagination unawakened to the dignity and the marvel of the inorganic world. What is motion but a sort of life? a life of activity if not of feeling. Suppose--what indeed nowhere exists--an inert matter and let it be suddenly endowed with motion so that two particles should fly towards each other from the utmost bounds of the universe; were not this almost as strange a property as that which endows an irritable tissue or an organ of secretion? Is not the world _one_--the creature of one God--dividing itself with constant interchange of parts into the sentient and the non-sentient in order so to speak to become conscious of itself? Are we to place a great chasm between the sentient and the non-sentient so that it shall be derogation to a poor worm to have no higher genealogy than the element which is the lightning of heaven and too much honour to the subtle chemistry of the earth to be the father of a crawling subject of some bag or sack or imperceptible globule of animal life? No; we have no recoil against this generation of an animalcule by the wonderful chemistry of God; our objection to this doctrine is that it is not proved. But proved or not our author has still the most difficult part of his task to accomplish. From his animated globule he has to develop the whole creation of vegetable and animal life. We shall be contented with watching its development through one branch that of the animal kingdom. The idea of the development of the animal creation from certain primary rudiments or simple forms of life is due we believe to Lamarck; and although his peculiar theory has met and deservedly with ridicule we do not hesitate to say that it is far more plausible and substantially far more rational than that which our author has substituted. Geology reveals to us a gradual extinction of species accompanied by a successive appearance of new species;[4] it reveals to us also that the surface of the earth has undergone great mutations; that land and sea have frequently changed places; and that the climate of the several regions of the world owing to many causes has greatly varied. Natural history is replete with striking accounts of the modifications produced in a race of animals by the change of climate diet and the enforcement of new habits; and linking all these facts together it does not appear a very violent supposition nor one that departs from the frequent analogies of nature to say that the causes which have brought about the extinction of certain species may have also operated to the development of new species. The manifest error of Lamarck was an egregious exaggeration of certain well-known truths. Because external circumstances may do much in directing the inherent power of development possessed by a given organization he resolved that it should do every thing. The camelopard was to get his long neck by stretching for his food; and the duck her web-foot by paddling in the water. But the author before us breaks loose entirely from the region of facts; or rather he announces to us on his own responsibility an entirely new fact--that it is the law of animal life that each species should from time to time produce a brood of the species next in order of perfection or complexity of organization. With him this development is the result merely of a law of generation which he himself has devised to meet the emergency. Amongst the laws of life the most conspicuous and undoubted is this--that each species reproduces itself that like begets like. This law our author cannot of course gainsay; but he appends to it another overruling law that from time to time at long intervals the like does not beget the like but the different and superior form of organization. In other words the old law changes from time to time. Of this novel description of law he borrows the following illustration of Mr Babbage:-- Unquestionably what we ordinarily see of nature is calculated to impress a conviction that each species invariably produces its like. But I would here call attention to a remarkable illustration of natural law which has been brought forward by Mr Babbage in his _Ninth Bridgewater Treatise_. The reader is requested to suppose himself seated before the calculating machine and observing it. It is moved by a weight and there is a wheel which revolves through a small angle round its axis at short intervals presenting to the eye successively a series of numbers engraved on its divided circumference. ""Let the figures thus seen be the series 1 2 3 4 5 &c. &c. of natural numbers each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent by unity. ""Now reader "" says Mr Babbage ""let me ask you how long you will have counted before you are firmly convinced that the engine has been so adjusted that it will continue whilst its motion is maintained to produce the same series of natural numbers. Some minds are so constituted that after passing the first hundred terms they will be satisfied that they are acquainted with the law. After seeing five hundred terms few will doubt; and after the fifty thousandth term the propensity to believe that the succeeding term will be fifty thousand and one will be almost irresistible. That term _will_ be fifty thousand and one and the same regular succession will continue; the five millionth and the fifty millionth term will still appear in their expected order and one unbroken chain of natural numbers will pass before your eyes from _one_ up to _one hundred million_. ""True to the vast induction which has been made the next succeeding term will be one hundred million and one; but the next number presented by the rim of the wheel instead of being one hundred million and two is one hundred million _ten thousand_ and two. The law changes."" The illustration is carried through a page or two more but we have quoted all that is essential. Mr Babbage makes a very useless parade here of his calculating machine. A common household clock that strikes the hours would illustrate all that his machine can possibly illustrate. If the reader seat himself before that homely piece of mechanism he will hear it _tick_ for sixty minutes when the _law of the machine_ will change and it will _strike_. In a scientific point of view it is absurd to talk about the _law of his machine_. His machine partakes only of the laws of mechanics which we presume are as constant there as elsewhere. Our only definition of law is a sequence that is constant; deny its constancy and you deny it to be law; it is a mere contradiction in terms to speak of a law that changes. If therefore our author guided by this illustration of Mr Babbage's proclaims a law of animal life which _changes of itself_ from time to time he is departing from the fundamental principle of all science--he who is so zealous to reduce all phenomenon to the formula of science! Anxious to escape from an abrupt interposition of creative power he introduces a sudden mutability in the laws themselves of nature! If it be said that he does not (although his words imply it) insist upon a single law of nature that varies at intervals but contends for a variable result produced by the law of reproduction acting under varied circumstances and in co-operation with different laws--then was Mr Babbage's machine of no use whatever to him nor did he stand in need of any peculiar illustration. There is not a class of phenomena which does not exhibit this variety of result by the diversified co-operation of laws constant in themselves. The frozen river becomes motionless; it ceases to flow; yet no one attributes any inconstancy to the laws of heat or the laws of hydrostatics. Quitting these abstractions in which the writer before has shown himself no very great adept let us enquire by what arguments he attempts to support his peculiar _principles of development_. That on which he appears chiefly to rely is the fact that the embryo of one of the higher animals passes through the foetal stages of the lower animals--the fish the reptile the bird--before it assumes its last definite shape. From this he would infer that the germ of life is alike in all and that it depends only on peculiarities of gestation whether it shall become a fish a fowl or a mammal. He lays particular stress on the circumstance that the brain of the human embryo passes through these several stages. But 1. In order to derive any thing like an argument here surely the whole human embryo and not the brain only ought to undergo these changes. But not only in man in the other mammalia to which allusion is made it is never the _entire animal_ which passes through these transformations. 2. If the embryo of one of the mammalia pass through the foetal stages of the fish and the bird the embryo fish bears the same transitory resemblance to the foetal condition of the bird or the mammal. So that the order here is reversed and nothing appears proved but that some deviations of form are in all cases assumed before the final shape is adopted. And 3. The physiologists who have made this branch of their science an especial study tell us as the result of their microscopic observations that the embryo of the higher animals pursues a different course of development _from the very earliest stages_ to that of the lower animals. It cannot be therefore according to the diagram that the author presents to us that the same germ which is nourished up to a certain point to be fish would if transferred to other care and a better system of nutrition be nourished into a bird or a mammal. If it is to be a mammal it must be fashioned accordingly from the very beginning. We will content ourselves with quoting as our authority for these assertions a passage from Dr Carpenter's work on _Comparative Physiology_; and we cite this author the more willingly because he is certainly not one who is himself disposed to damp the ardour of speculation and because the very similarity of some of his views or expressions renders him at all events an unexceptionable witness on this occasion. ""Allusion has been made to the correspondence which is discernible between the transitory forms exhibited by the embryos of the higher beings and the permanent conditions of the lower. When this was first observed it was stated as a general law that all the higher animals in the progress of their development pass through a series of forms analogous to those encountered in ascending the animal scale. But this is not correct for the _entire animal_ never does exhibit such resemblance except in a few particular cases to which allusion has already been made (the case of the frog and others who undergo what is commonly called a metamorphosis.) And the resemblance or analogy which exists between individual organs has no reference to their _forms_ but to their _condition_ or _grade of development_. Thus we find the heart of the mammalia which finally possesses four distinct cavities at first in the condition of a prolonged tube being a dilatation of the principal arterial trunk and resembling the dorsal vessel of the articulated classes; subsequently it becomes shortened in relation to the rest of the structure and presents a greater diameter whilst a division of its cavity into two parts--a ventricle and an auricle--is evident as in fishes; a third cavity like that possessed by reptiles is next formed by the subdivision of the auricle previously existing; and lastly a fourth chamber is produced by the growth of a partition across the ventricle; and in perfect harmony with these changes are the metamorphoses presented by the system of vessels immediately proceeding from the heart. In like manner the evolution of the brain in man is found to present conditions which may be successively compared with those of the fish reptile bird lower mammalia and higher mammalia; but in no instance is there an exact identity between any of these. It is to be remembered that every animal must pass through _some_ change in the progress of its development from its embryonic to its adult condition; and the correspondence is much closer between the embryonic fish and the foetal bird or mammal than between these and the adult fish.""--(P. 196.) And take also the following short passage from the preface of the same work where the author has been speaking of the latest discoveries of physiologists on the development of the embryo. ""Thus when we ascend the scale of being in either of the two organized kingdoms we observe the principle of specialisation remarkably illustrated in the development of the germ into the perfect structure. In the lowest of each kind the first-formed membranous expansion has the same character throughout and _the whole enters into the fully-developed structure_. In higher grades the whole remains but the organs evolved from the centre have evidently the most elevated character. _In the highest none but the most central portion is persistent_; the remainder forming organs of a temporary and subservient nature."" The fact that the animal kingdom exhibits a gradual progression from forms the most simple to forms the most complex is of course appropriated by our author as a proof of his theory of successive development. It is well known that whilst this scale of being is an idea which occurs to every observer the naturalist finds insuperable difficulties in arranging the several species of animals according to such a scale. To relieve himself from these the author has taken under his patronage what in honour of its founder he calls the _Macleay System_ in which the animal kingdom is ""arranged along a series of close affinities _in a circular form_;"" into which circles we will excuse ourselves from entering. It is a system as confused as it is fantastic; and our author who writes in general in a clear and lucid manner in vain attempts to present us with an intelligible exposition of it. Arrange the animal creation how you will in a line or in circles there is one fact open to every observer that however fine may be the gradations amongst the lower animals the difference between the higher animals is very distinctly marked. It is a difference which does not at all accord with the hypothesis of our author ""that the simplest and most primitive type gave birth to the type next above it and this again produced the next higher and so on to the very highest the stages of advance being in all cases very small--namely from one species only to another; so that the phenomenon has always been of simple and modest character."" Whilst he confines himself to _mollusks_ and suchlike obscure creatures the phenomenon he supposes may not be very startling; but when he ascends to the higher and larger animals whose forms and habits are well known to us--when he has to find a father for the horse the lion the rhinoceros the elephant--his phenomenon we are sure will no longer retain its ""simple and modest character."" Naturalists have observed that there is a striking _uniformity of plan_ even amongst animals of very different habits and which perhaps inhabit different elements; they have remarked that this uniformity is adhered to even when it appears to answer no specific purpose as when in the fin of a whale the unbending bone bears the semblance of the jointed hand. This too is pressed into the service of our author's hypothesis. It is a curious fact. But if we say of it that it appears to hint the existence of _some law_ and to tempt the investigation of the physiologist we assign to it all the scientific importance that it can possibly deserve. Some physiologists we must be permitted to observe have rather amused themselves by a display of ingenuity than profited science by their discoveries of a _unity of structure_ in animals of the most opposite description. It is easy to surprise the imagination by pointing out unexpected resemblances if all cases of diversity are at the same time kept out of view. These writers will mention for instance that all quadrupeds have uniformly _seven_ bones in the neck. The giraffe has no more than the pig. But they refuse to mention at the same time that in _birds_ the number varies from nine to twenty-three and in _reptiles_ from three to eight. Sometimes the merest fancy is indulged. We are told that in the pulpy substance of a certain mollusk there are lines drawn presenting a sketch of a vertebrated animal and it is gravely intimated that nature seems to have made a rough design of the next work of art she was about to produce. When Dr Carpenter tells us in exemplifying this law of unity of composition that ""the skull is but an expansion of the three highest vertebræ modified to afford space for the development of the contained brain and of the organs of sense "" p. 191--is he much wiser than those entomologists whom he had been previously criticising for ""maintaining that the wing of an insect is a modification of its leg?"" Verily we suspect that if Martinus Scriblerus had had his attention drawn to this manner of viewing things it would have greatly excited his learned ingenuity; he would probably have begun to apply this scientific method to a variety of things and found a unity of composition never before dreamt of. What should have prevented him from casting a philosophic glance upon the furniture of his room? With less ingenuity than certain physiologists he would easily detect a marvellous unity of plan. He would have probably taken th
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table with its four legs and the disk they support as his great type of joinery and would have traced a modification of this type in all the articles around him. The chair is manifestly nothing else than the table with a development of the hinder legs commonly called the back. From the chair to the sofa the transition would be ridiculously easy; indeed the sofa can only be considered as a variety of the chair produced by a high state of cultivation. In the footstool or ottoman the disk of the table has become thick and pulpy while its legs have dwindled into small globular supports. This exaggeration of the upper portion at the expense of the lower is carried a step further in the chest of drawers where the small globular supports bear a singular disproportion to the corpulent figure they sustain. In some varieties even these knob-like legs are wanting; but precisely in these cases he would observe the knobs invariably re-appear in the shape of handles which are still a sort of paw. What is the fire-screen he would say but a table with the disk in a vertical position? What the four-post bedstead but a reduplication of the original type a table placed on a table the upper one being laid open? If he had had the advantage of reading Mr Dickens he would have mentioned in confirmation of this view that young Mr Weller when sleeping under a table congratulates himself upon enjoying the luxury of a four-post bedstead. The coal-scuttle might perhaps present some difficulties; but if he might be allowed to approach it through the loo-table he would doubtless succeed in tracing here also the unity of composition. In the loo-table the four legs have collapsed into a central column! The coal-scuttle is only a _loo-table_ with the edges of the disk curled up--assuming a bonnet-like shape the result perhaps of its long domesticity. In short we believe the only insuperable difficulty Martin would encounter would be when after having completed his survey he would run off to the joiner to convince him of the unity of plan on which he had been so unconsciously working. It was a bold step of our author's to adduce the geographical distribution of the several species of animals as a proof of his law of development. To most minds it would have immediately occurred as an objection. Each region of the earth has its own peculiar _fauna_ and this difference is not accountable on any known influence of soil or climate. What can explain the peculiar fauna of New Holland? If all the varieties of animal life spring from one and the same germ under the uniform laws of nature how is it that in some regions fitted in every respect for the support of animal life no animals whatever of the higher order are found? ""New Zealand which may be compared in dimensions to Ireland united with Scotland which extends over more than 700 miles in latitude and is in its many parts 90 miles broad with varied stations a fine climate and land of all heights from 14 000 feet downwards does not possess one indigenous quadruped with the exception of a small rat.""--_Lyell's Principles of Geology_ Vol. i. p. 102. Other instances equally striking might be mentioned. How are we to explain them upon our author's hypothesis? Are we to make supposition upon supposition and presume that the land of New Zealand had not been long enough emerged from the sea to allow of the ample development of the original germ of life; and that if the rat had been left to himself he would in process of time have peopled the whole region with dogs and horses and oxen or some other analogous quadrupeds? But our readers have perhaps heard sufficient of an hypothesis which is built only on a series of conjectures and we ourselves are wearied with a too easy victory. There are many other topics in the book which would far better reward discussion than the one we have chosen--as for instance the geological views here put forward the claims of phrenology and the difference between instinct and intelligence; but if disposed to treat these subjects we could have found other and more suitable opportunities; we thought it fit to select that which forms the peculiarity of the present work. But absurd as the matter is we must complete the account which the author gives of the development of that race in which we are chiefly interested--man. We have seen that according to his law of progressive generation and as an instance of what he denominates ""a modest and simple phenomenon "" man was one day born of the monkey or the ape. But this discovered law has not only thus happily introduced the human being upon the earth it also throws light upon the diversities which exist in the family of man. ""The causes of the various external peculiarities of mankind now require some attention. Why it is asked are the Africans black and generally marked by ungainly forms? Why the flat features of the Chinese and the comparatively well-formed figures of the Caucasians? Why the Mongolians generally yellow the Americans red and the Canadians white? These questions were complete puzzles to all early writers; but physiology has lately thrown a great light upon them. It is now shown that the brain after completing the series of animal transformations passes through the characters in which it appears in the Negro Malay American and Mongolian nations and finally becomes Caucasian. The face partakes of these alterations. The leading characters in short of the various races of mankind are simply representations of particular states in the development of the highest or Caucasian type. The Negro exhibits permanently the imperfect brain projecting lower jaw [5] and slender bent limbs of a Caucasian child some considerable time before the period of its birth. The aboriginal American represents the same child nearer birth. The Mongolian is an arrested infant newly born. And so forth."" So that we Caucasians are at least the only full grown children: all others are more or less abortions. Indeed we might be described in the language of this theory as the only animals on the face of the earth who pass through the full period of gestation. And yet even this honour may be disputed; perhaps we ourselves are but imperfect developments of that germ of life which is the progenitor of us all. The author darkly intimates that we may be supplanted from our high place in this world that another and more powerful and sagacious race may be born of us who may treat us no better than we have treated the monkeys and other species of the brute creation. This is the severest blow of all. After having humbled our pride according to this philosopher's bidding and taught ourselves to look upon the ape with due feelings of filial respect--after having acknowledged some sturdy baboon for our only Adam and some malicious monkey for our sweet mother Eve--after having brought ourselves to see in the lower animals the same mental and moral faculties which we boast of and to confess that the same psychology applies to both with a slight modification in our theory of the origin of ideas--after having practised all this condescension to be threatened with complete dethronement from our high place in the world!--to be told that we too shall have to obey a master who may govern us as man governs the horse! What a millennium to look forward to! ""Is our race but the initial of the grand crowning type? Are there yet to be species superior to us in organization purer in feeling more powerful in device and art and _who shall take a rule over us_? There is in this nothing improbable on other grounds. The present race rude and impulsive as it is is perhaps the best adapted to the present state of things in the world; but the external world goes through slow and gradual changes which may leave it in time a much serener field of existence. There may then be occasion for a nobler type of humanity which shall complete the zoological circle on this planet and realize some of the dreams of the purest spirits of the present race.""--P. 276. Melancholy prospect for man! When the earth becomes a serener field of existence then will a race appear to take rule over him. Might not he become serener too? Is it thus that are to be solved all our social problems all our discussions upon the perfectibility of man all our vague but obstinate prophecies of some more rational and happier scheme of existence? This _homo_ is to survive it seems only to make railroads for the future _angelus_. On the authorship of this production we have no communication or conjecture to make. The writer has been successful as far as we know in preserving his incognito; and as the rumours that have reached our ear have all been again contradicted we think it wisest to abstain from circulating any of then. We heard it pleasantly said that the author had been followed down as far as Lancashire and that then all further trace of him had been lost. We think he might be traced further north than Lancashire. The style in one or two places bears symptoms of a Scottish origin. Occupied with the wild theory it promulgates we have not said much of the literary merits of the work. Nor is there much to say. It is written in a clear unpretending style but somewhat careless and inexact. The exposition in the first portions of the work the astronomical and geological appeared to us particularly good. The author's knowledge of science is such as is gleaned by that sort of student who is denominated in prefaces the general reader; he is not we should apprehend a labourer in any one of its departments but thankfully receives whatever is brought to his door of the results of science. With this chance-gathered stock he has ventured to frame or rather to defend his speculations. The sudden success of the work is not we think what any one could have prognosticated. It is a success which its singularity has gained for it and which its superficiality will soon again forfeit. We may mention that this notice was written after a perusal of the first edition. In the third edition we observe that some passages have been slightly modified or omitted; but the hypothesis put forward is substantially the same. MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XVI. ""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. The insurrection had broken out; there could now be no scepticism on the subject. Some hundreds of armed men were already crowding the grounds in front of the mansion; and from the shouts which rose in every quarter and still more from the fires which blazed on every hill round the horizon the numbers of the insurgents must have amounted to thousands. It was evident that we were in a pitfall and that resistance was only the protraction of a fate which was now inevitable. The shrieks of the females and the despondency of the men who naturally thought that their last hour was come were enough to dishearten all resolution. For a few minutes the only orders which I could give were to bar the doors and close the windows. The multitude new to hostile enterprises had till now kept at some distance warned by their losses in the skirmish with the yeomanry and probably expecting the arrival of troops. But the sight of our precautions few and feeble as they were gave them new courage; and discharges of musketry began to drop their bullets into the midst of our startled assemblage. It is only justice to the national intrepidity to say that every measure which I proposed for defence was unhesitatingly adopted; and that one of my chief difficulties was to prevent rash sallies which must have only terminated in loss of life. The short interval now allowed to us was employed in barricading the mansion which was built almost with the strength of a fortress and posting every man who could handle a musket or pistol at the windows. Still I knew that this species of defence could not last long; and my only hope for our lives was that the firing might bring some of the troops who patrolled the country to our assistance. But the discharges became closer and heavier and still no sound of succour was to be heard. My situation became more anxious every moment; all looked up to me for their guidance; and though my garrison were brave and obedient as became the high-spirited sons of Ireland there seemed the strongest probability that the night would end in a general massacre. Yet there was no faint-heartedness under the roof; our fire was stoutly kept up whenever the assailants came within range; and as I hurried from chamber to chamber to ascertain the condition of our defence and give directions I found all firm. Still the terrors of the females--the sight of the first women of the province flying for refuge to every corner where they might escape the balls which now poured into every window; the actual wounds of some visible by the blood streaming down their splendid dresses; the horror-stricken looks of the groups clinging to each other for hopeless protection; and the actual semblance of death in others fainting on the sofas and floors and all this under an incessant roar of musketry--made me often wish that I could give way to the gallant impatience of my friends within the mansion and take the desperate hazard of plunging into the midst of the multitude. But a new danger awaited us; a succession of shrieks from one of the upper apartments caught my ear and on rushing to the spot and forcing my way through a crowd of women half frantic with alarm I saw some of the outbuildings immediately connected with the mansion wrapped in a sheet of fire. The insurgents had at last found out the true way to subdue our resistance; and we obviously had no alternative but to throw ourselves on their mercy or die with arms in our hands. Yet to surrender was perhaps only to suffer a more protracted death degraded by shame; and when I looked round me on the helplessness of the noble and beautiful women around me and thought of the agony which must be felt by us on seeing them thrown into the power of the assassins who were now roaring with triumph and vengeance I dismissed all thoughts of submission at once and determined to take the chances of resistance while any man among us had the power to draw a trigger. In rushing through the mansion to make its defenders in the front aware of the new misfortune which threatened us I happened to pass through the ball-room where the corpse of its noble and brave master was. One figure was standing there with his back to me and evidently gazing on the body. All else was solitary. Of all the friends guests and domestics not one had remained. Loud as were the shouts outside and constant as was the crashing of the musketry I could hear a groan which seemed to come from the very heart of that lonely bystander. I sprang towards him; he turned at the sound of my step and to my surprise I saw the face of the man whose share in the insurrection I had so singularly ascertained. I had a loaded musket in my hand and my first impulse in the indignation of the moment was to discharge its contents through his heart. But he looked at me with a countenance of such utter dejection that I dropped its muzzle to the ground and demanded ""What had brought him there at such a time?"" ""This!"" he exclaimed pointing to the pallid form on the sofa. ""To that man I owed every thing. To his protection to his generosity to his nobleness of heart I owed my education my hopes all my prospects in life. I should have died a thousand deaths rather than see a hair of his head touched--and now there he lies."" He sank upon his knees took the hand of the dead and wept over it in agony. But I had no leisure to wait upon his remorse; the volleys were pouring in and the glare of the burning buildings showed me that the flames were making fearful progress. ""This "" said I ""is your work. This murder is but the first-fruits of your treason; probably every life in this house is destined to butchery within the hour."" He sprang on his feet. ""No no "" he cried ""we are not murderers. This is the frenzy of the populace. Regeneration must not begin by massacre."" The thought suddenly struck me that I might make his fears or his compunctions at the moment available. ""You are at my mercy "" said I. ""I might justly put you to death at the instant as a rebel in the fact; or I might deliver you up to the law when your fate would be inevitable. I can make no compromise. But if you would make such atonement to your own conscience as may be found in undoing a part of the desperate wrong which you have done go out to those robbers and murderers who are now thirsting for our blood and put a stop to their atrocities if you can; save the lives of those in the house; or if you cannot die in the only attempt which can retrieve your memory."" He looked at me with a lacklustre eye for a moment and uttered a few wild words as if his mind was wandering. I sternly repeated my demand and at length he agreed to try his influence with the multitude. I threw open the door and sent him out adding the words--""I shall have my eye upon you. If I find you swerve I shall fire at you in preference to any other man in the mob. We shall die together."" He went forth and I heard his recognition by the rebels in their loud shouts and their heavier fire against our feeble defences. But after a few moments the shouting and the fire ceased together. There was a pause; from its strangeness after the tumult of the last hour scarcely less startling than the uproar. They appeared to be deliberating on his proposition. But while we remained in this suspense another change came; loud altercations were heard; and the pause was interrupted by a renewed rush to the assault. We now looked upon all as hopeless and expected only to perish in the flames which were rolling in broad sheets over the roof of the mansion. There was no symptom of faint-heartedness among us; but our ammunition was almost exhausted and every countenance was pale with despair; another half hour and our fate must be decided. In this extremity with every sense wound up to its utmost pitch I thought that I heard the distant trampling of cavalry. It came nearer still. There was evident confusion among the rebels. At length a trumpet sounded the charge and a squadron of horse rushed into the lawn sabring and firing among the multitude. The struggle was fierce but brief; and before we could unbar the doors and burst out to take a part in the _mêlée_ all was done; the rebels had fled the grounds were cleared and the dragoons were gathering their prisoners. All was now congratulation; and I received thanks from gallant lips and from bright eyes which might have flattered one fonder of flattery. All imputed their safety to the address with which I had employed the feelings of the rebel leader. But for the pause produced by his presence all must have perished. It had given time for the cavalry to come up; they having been bewildered in crossing the country and floundering through the wretched by-roads which then formed the disgrace of Ireland. Life is a chapter of accidents; and even their arrival had been a matter of accident. An aide-de-camp of the viceroy had been sent in search of me with despatches: the officer in command at the next town had persuaded him much against his will to take as his escort one of the night patroles of horse; and thus were saved a hundred and fifty lives of the first personages of the province. By morning the mansion and all within it would probably have been embers. The aide-de-camp's despatches were sufficiently alarming. The lord-lieutenant had received from England details of the intended insurrection. The privy council had been summoned and the usual commands issued to keep the troops throughout the country on the alert; but the information was still so imperfect the skill of the conspirators was so adroitly exerted in keeping their secret and the outcry of the powerful parliamentary Opposition was so indignant and contemptuous at the remotest hint of popular disaffection that the Government was virtually paralysed. But the question was now decided; the scene which I had just witnessed unhappily left no room for doubt and I determined to set off for the metropolis without delay. I had no sooner expressed my intention than I was assailed on all hands with advice and even with entreaties to postpone my journey until the flight of the rebels was fully ascertained or at least till daylight gave me a better chance of personal safety. But every moment now seemed to me more precious than the last; and breaking through a circle of the noble and the fair I threw myself on my horse and with the aide-de-camp and a couple of dragoons for my escort soon left the whole scene of entreaty and terror sorrow and triumph behind. We rode hard through the night observing frequent signs of the extended insurrection in fires on the mountains and the gatherings of peasantry on the roads--sometimes compelled to turn out of our way by the evidence of their being armed and in military organization; and at others dashing through the groups and taking them by surprise. A few shots fired at random or the rage and roar of the crowd as we scattered them right and left in our gallop were all that belonged to personal adventure; and when the dawn showed us from one of the hills round the capital the quiet city glittering in the first sunshine all looked so lovely and so tranquil that it required the desperate recollections of the night to believe in the existence of a vast and powerful combination prepared to cover the land with burning and blood. Within a few hours after my arrival the privy council assembled; my intelligence was received as it deserved; it decided the wavering and gave increased determination to the bold. Still our sitting was long and anxious. The peril was now undeniable but the extent the object and the remedy were alike obscure. It is not of course within my purpose to reveal the secrets of councils in which all is transacted under the deepest bond of confidence; but it may be fairly told that our deliberations often completely reversed the proverb that ""In the multitude of councillors there is safety "" if by safety is meant either promptitude or penetration. But there was one man among them who would have distinguished himself in any council upon earth. He was a lawyer and holding the highest office of his profession. But his ambition was still higher than his office and his ability was equal to his ambition. Bold by nature and rendered bolder by the constant success of his career he would have been a matchless minister in a despotic government. Living under the old régime of France the laurels of a Richelieu or a Mazarin might have found a formidable competitor in this man of daring and decision. He wanted but their scale of action to have exhibited all their virtues and perhaps all their vices. At the bar his career had been one of unexampled rapidity. He had scarcely appeared when he burst through the crowd and took the stand to which all the dignities of the profession seem the natural inheritance. He had scarcely set his foot on the floor before he overtopped the bench. But the courts of justice were too narrow for him. It was in Parliament that he found the true atmosphere for his loftiness of flight and keenness of vision. At that time the study of public speaking had become a fashion and the genius of the country singularly excitable always ardent and always making its noblest efforts under the spell of public display exhibited the most brilliant proofs of its title to popularity. But in the very blaze of those triumphs the Attorney-general showed that there were other weapons of public warfare not less original and not less triumphant. No orator and even no rhetorician he seemed to despise alike the lustre of imagination and the graces of language. But he substituted a force that often obtained the victory over both. Abrupt bold and scornful his words struck home. He had all the power of plain things. He brought down no lightning from the heaven of invention he summoned no flame from below; but the torch in his hand burned with withering power and he wielded it without fear of man. By constitution haughty his pride actually gave him power in debate. Men and those able men too often shrank from the conflict with one whose very look seemed to warn them of their temerity. But to this natural faculty of overthrow he added remarkable knowledge of public life high legal repute and the incomparable advantage of his early training in a profession which opens out the recesses of the soul habitually forces imposture into light and cross-examines the villain into reluctant veracity. There never was in Parliament a more remorseless or more effectual hand in stripping off the tinsel of political pretension. His logic was contemptuous and his contempt was logical. His blows were all straightforward. He wasted no time in the flourish of the sword; he struck with the point. Even to the most powerful of his opponents this assault was formidable. But with the inferior ranks of Opposition he threw aside the sword and assumed the axe. Obviously regarding them as criminals against common sense and national polity he treated them as the executioner might treat culprits already bound to the wheel measuring the place for his blows with the professional eye and crushing limb after limb at his leisure. The imperfect reports of debating in his day have deprived parliamentary recollection of the most memorable of those great displays. But their evidence is given in the fact that with the most numerous powerful and able Opposition of Ireland in his front and the feeblest Ministerial strength behind him the Attorney-general governed the parliament until the hour when its gates were closed for ever--when its substance was dissipated into thin air and all but its memories sank into the returnless grave. In the House of Lords as chancellor he instantly became the virtual viceroy. It is true that a succession of opulent and accomplished noblemen every two or three years were transmitted from Whitehall to the Castle to pillow themselves upon a splendid sinecure rehearse an annual King's speech exhibit the acknowledged elegance of noble English life and having given the destined number of balls and suppers await the warrant of a secretary's letter to terminate their political existence. But the chancellor was made of ""sterner stuff."" His material was not soluble by a blast of ministerial breath. Not even the giant grasp of Pitt would have dared to pluck the sceptre from his hand. If struck he might have answered the blow as the flint answers by fire. But the premier had higher reasons for leaving him in the possession of power; he was pure. In all the uproar of public calumny no voice was ever heard impeaching his integrity; with the ten thousand arrows of party flying round him from every quarter none ever found a chink in his ministerial mail. He loved power as all men do who are worthy of it. He disdained wealth as all men do who are fitted to use it. He scorned the popularity of the day as all men do who know the essential baseness of its purchase; and aspiring after a name in the annals of his country like all men to whom it is due--like them he proudly left the debt to be discharged by posterity. The chancellor was not without his faults. His scorn was too palpable. He despised too many and the many too much. His haughtiness converted the perishable and purchasable malice of party into the ""study of revenge immortal hate."" When he struck down an opponent in the fair strife of Parliament his scorn was like poison in the wound and the blow was never forgotten but in the grave. But as a statesman his chief and unconquerable misfortune was the narrowness of his scene of action. He was but the ruler of a province while his faculties were fitted for the administration of an empire. His errors were the offspring of his position. He was the strong man within four walls; by the very length of his stride striking against them at every step and bruised by the very energy of his impulse against his hopeless boundaries. At length a time of desperate trial arose. The Rebellion of 1798 burst out. He had foreseen it. But the men of the Castle lolling on their couches would not believe in its possibility. The men of the populace stirring up the rabble with the point of the dagger derided him as a libeller of the people; and even the Government of England--too anxiously engaged in watching the movements of the French legions from the heights of Dover to have time for a glance at disturbers behind the Irish Channel--for a time left him to his fate. But he was equal to the emergency. He had been scoffingly called ""the Cassandra of the aristocracy;"" but he had neither the fortunes nor the failures of a Cassandra; he had not forfeited his virtues for his gift and his prophecy was too soon and too terribly realized to be disbelieved. Of such times it is painful to speak but of the men by whom such times are met it is dishonourable not to speak with homage. Almost abandoned by authority assailed almost by a nation with the ground shaking under his feet and the whole frame of Government quivering at every roar of the multitude in arms he stood the shock and finally restored the country. Language like this has not been the first tribute to the memory of this ardent vigorous and unshrinking statesman. But its chief use and the noblest use of all tributes to the tomb of civil heroism is to tell others by what strength of principle and by what perseverance of purpose the rescue of nations is alone to be achieved. In the midst of alarm excited by the extent of the revolt of ignorance from the novelty of the crisis and of indecision from the dread of responsibility he stood firm. The original intrepidity of his nature was even strengthened by the perils of the time; and with the whole storm of unpopularity roaring round him he sternly pursued his course and combated the surge until it sank and the state vessel neared if it did not yet enter the harbour. It is the natural fate of such men in such times to be misunderstood and to be maligned. The libel which cast every stone within its reach at his living name long continued to heap them on his grave. But all this has passed away and the manlier portion of his countrymen now appeal to the administration of the ""Great Chancellor "" in proof of the national capacity for the highest trusts of empire. Why has not the history of this man and of his day been written? Why has not some generous spirit impelled alike by a sense of justice and a sense of patriotism adopted this argument for the intellectual opulence and moral energy which may still exist in the Irish mind? Is there no descendant to claim the performance of a duty which would reflect a lustre on himself from the light which his filial piety planted on the sepulchre? Or why are the recollections of rebels to be taken down from the gibbet and embalmed in history while the name of him who smote the rebellion is suffered to moulder away? I am not writing a panegyric. He had his infirmities; his temper was too excitable and his measures were too prompt for prudence. But his heart was sound and his spirit was made for the guidance of a state in the hour of its danger. If a feebler mind had then presided in the public councils Ireland within a twelvemonth would have been a republic; and in every hour since would have been agonizing under the daggers of rival factions or paying the fearful price of her frenzy in indissoluble chains. If this were the single act of his life it was sufficient for fame. It is enough to inscribe on the mausoleum of any man that ""he rescued his country from a DEMOCRACY!"" The first news of the revolt which reached England produced a formidable effect on the legislature. Even the sagacity of the premier had been deceived and his cabinet evidently staggered on the effect of the surprise. Opposition had been equally startled and were still more perplexed in their decision. Dealing for years in all the high-sounding topics of national wrong and national difficulty they were astonished at the first actual realization of popular revenge. The Englishman had heard of wars as the child hears of spectres--none had seen them and the narratives served only to excite the imagination. But the tremendous nove
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ty of revolt was now at their doors. Whether the Irish revolters acted in concert with the undying hostility of France or with the factions reform of England; the danger in either case assumed a shape of the most appalling magnitude. Opposition in the very prospect of power shrank from possession; as the stormers of a fortress might start back when they saw the walls rolling down before them in some sudden convulsion of nature. They had predicted every casualty which could befall a country ruled by a cabinet inexorably closed against themselves. But when their predictions had changed their character from the fantastic and remote into the substantial and immediate--when the clouds which they so often predicted to be advancing over the prosperity of the land seemed to have suddenly rushed forward and condensed and darkened with the full freight of national havoc; they as suddenly flew to shelter in utter inaction and left the minister to meet the storm. Pitt was soon equal to the crisis. The orders which he dispatched to Ireland were stamped with all the considerate vigour of his matchless ability. I had sent him all the information which could be obtained of the progress and purposes of the revolt with the suggestions arising from the contingency. His remarks on my communication were brief but incomparably clear direct and decided. Their tenor was that I should distinguish accurately between the deluded and the deluders--that I should assure the loyal of the unhesitating support of England--and that in all instances I should cultivate the national loyalty reward the generous obedience and sympathize with all the gallant and generous qualities of a people with whom every thing was to be done by taking an interest in their feelings. These principles were so entirely my own that I acted upon them with double zeal and with complete success. The loyalty of Ireland rapidly exhibited itself in the most willing sacrifices; all ranks of opinion coincided in the necessity of bold and instant action; and from day to day party absorbed in the sense of the national exigency disappeared and patriotism rose. The leading men of both sides of the House ranged themselves in the ranks of the voluntary corps which came forward to assist in the public defence and the fine metaphor which had once made the senate thunder with applause--""The serpent's teeth sown in the ground sprang up armed men ""--was now amply but more fortunately realized. The bitternesses and schisms of public opinion were hidden in the earth and the harvest was a brave and spontaneous armament of men prepared to undergo all hazards for the sake of their country. ""Happy "" says the French wit ""the land which has nothing for history."" This happiness has never belonged to Ireland. Her annals are a romance. But the period of which I speak exhibited her senatorial strength with an energy almost compensating for her popular misfortunes. While Parliament in England languished parliament in Ireland started into sudden power. It was aroused by the visible presence of the public peril. Ireland was the outpost while England was the camp; there the skirmish was at its height while the great English brigade moved up slowly from the rear. The ardour and activity of the national temperament were exercised in perpetual conflict and every conflict produced some new champion. The actual construction of the senate house stimulated the national propensity for display. The House of Commons was an immense circular hall surmounted with a lofty dome. A gallery supported by columns was formed round the base of the dome with seats for seven hundred persons but on crowded occasions capable of containing more; the whole highly ornamented and constituting a rotunda uniting grandeur with remarkable architectural elegance. Thus every member acted in the sight of a large audience however thin might be the assemblage below; for the curiosity attached to the debates was so powerful that the spacious gallery was generally full. But the nature of that audience excited the still stronger temptation to the bold extravagances of the Irish temperament. The chief portion of this auditory were females and those the most distinguished of Ireland; women of wit beauty and title the leaders of fashion and often the most vivid and zealous partizans in politics--of all audiences the most hazardous to the soberness of public deliberation. As if with the express purpose of including every element adverse to the calmness of council the students of the neighbouring university possessed the privilege of _entrée_ to the gallery; and there with the heated imaginations of youth and every feeling trained by the theories of Greek and Roman Republicanism they sat night after night watching the ministerial movements of a harassed monarchy. What must be the condition of a minister rising before such an audience to pronounce the grave doctrines of public prudence; to oppose argument to brilliant declamation; to proclaim regulated obedience in the midst of spirits fantastic as the winds; and to lay restraints essential to the public peace on a population proud of their past defiances and ready to welcome even civil war? I was not conscious of any natural timidity; nor have I ever found occasion to distrust my nerve on any great demand; but I must acknowledge that when in some of the leading debates of that most absorbing and most perilous period I rose to take the initiative the sight of the vast audience to whom I raised my eyes was one of the severest trials of my philosophy. The members round me excited no alarm; with them I was prepared to grapple; it was a contest of argument; I had facts for their facts answers for their captiousness and a fearless tongue for their declamation. But the gallery thus filled was beyond my reach; its passions and prejudices were inaccessible by any logic of mine; and I stood before them less as in the presence of a casual auditory than of a tribunal and at that tribunal less as an advocate than as a culprit on the point of being arraigned. Another peculiar evil resulted from the admission of this crowd and of its composition. Every casual collision of debate became personal. The most trivial play of pleasantry was embittered into an insult; the simplest sting of passing controversy was often to be healed only by a rencounter in the field. For the whole was acted on a public stage with the _élite_ of the nation looking down on the performance. The hundreds of bright eyes glancing down from the gallery were critics whose contempt was not to be resisted; and no public assembly since the days of the Polish pospolite ever settled so many points of debate in the shape of points of honour. At length Opposition rallied and resolved to make a general assault upon the Administration. Like their English friends they had been stunned for a while by the suddenness of the outbreak. But as the Turkish populace in a conflagration or the plague no sooner recover from their first fright than they discover the cause in the government and march to demand the head of the vizier; the popular orators had no sooner found leisure to look round them than they marshalled their bands and demanded the dismissal of all antagonist authority. _I_ was first to be torn down. _I_ stood in the gate and while I held the keys there was no entrance for expectant ambition. _I_ waved the flag in the breach and until the banner was swept away the storm was ineffectual. Yet this turning the whole weight of party vindictiveness on my head gave me a new courage the courage of passion the determination which arises from a sense of injury and which magnifies with the magnitude of the trial. In other times I might have abandoned the struggle; but with the eyes of a nation thus brought upon me and all the ablest men of the opposite benches making my overthrow the very prize of their victory I determined ""to stand the hazard of the die."" The eventful night came at last; for days before every organ of public opinion was in the most feverish activity; lampoons pamphlets and letters to the leading journals the whole machinery of the paragraph-world was in full work round me; and even the Administration despaired of my being able to resist the uproar--all but one and that one the noblest and the most gifted of them all my friend the chancellor. I had sat long past midnight with him on the eve of the coming struggle; and I received his plaudits for my determination. He talked with all his usual loftiness but with more than his usual feeling. ""Within the next twenty-four hours "" said he ""your fate will be decided. But in public life the event is not the dishonour; it is the countenance with which we meet it that makes all the difference between success and shame. If you fall you will fall like a man of character. If you triumph your success will be unalloyed by any baseness of purchase."" I told him sincerely that I saw in the vigour and resolution of his conduct a model for public men. ""However the matter may turn out in the debate "" said he rising and taking his leave ""there shall be no humiliation in the conduct of government even if we should be defeated. Persevere to the last. The world is all chances and ten to one of them are in favour of the man who is resolved not to be frightened out of any thing. Farewell."" Still the crisis was a trying one and my occupation during the day was but little calculated to smooth its anxieties. The intelligence from the county announced the increased extent of the revolt; and the intercepted correspondence gave startling proof of an organization altogether superior to the rude tumults of an angry peasantry. Several sharp encounters had taken place with the soldiery and in some of them the troops scattered in small detachments and unprepared had suffered losses. Insurrectionary proclamations had been issued and the revolt was already assuming a military form; camps were collected on the mountains and the arming of the population was become general. My day was occupied in writing hurried despatches to the magistrates and officers in command of the disturbed districts; until the moment when the debate was expected to begin. On my way to the House every thing round me conspired to give a gloomy impression to my mind weary and dark as it was already. Public alarm was at its height and the city with the usual exaggerations of undefined danger presented the appearance of a place about to be taken by storm. The streets were crowded with people hurrying in search of news or gathered in groups retailing what they had obtained and evidently filled with the most formidable conceptions of the public danger. The armed yeomanry were hurrying to their stations for the night patrols of cavalry were moving out to scour the environs and the carriages of the gentry from the adjoining counties were driving to the hotels crowded with children and domestics; while waggons loaded with the furniture of families resident in the metropolis were making their way for security into the country. All was confusion hurry and consternation. The scene of a great city in alarm is absolutely inconceivable but by those who have been on the spot. It singularly harassed and exhausted me; and at length for the purpose of escaping the whole sight and sensation together I turned from the spacious range of streets which led to the House; and made my way along one of the narrow and obscure lanes which by a libel on the national taste were still suffered to remain in the vicinity of an edifice worthy of the days of Imperial Rome. My choice was an unlucky one for I had scarcely gone a hundred yards when I found my passage obstructed by a crowd evidently waiting with some sinister purpose. A signal was given and I was called on to answer. I had no answer to make but required that I should be suffered to pass on. ""A spy a spy! down with him!"" was the exclamation of a dozen voices. A rush was made upon me and notwithstanding my struggle to break through I was overwhelmed grasped by the arms and hurried into the entrance of a house in utter darkness. I expected only a dagger in my heart and from the muttered tones and words which escaped my captors not one of whom could I discern I seemed evidently about to encounter the fate of the spy which they deemed me. But convinced that nothing was to be gained by submission I loudly demanded by what right I was seized declared myself a member of Parliament and threatened them with the especial vengeance of the law for obstructing me in the performance of my duty. This announcement evidently had its effect at least in changing the subject of their consultation; and after another whisper one of their number stepped up to me and said that I must follow him. My refusal brought the group again round me and I was forced down the stairs and through a succession of airless and ruined vaults until we reached a massive door. There a signal was given and was answered from within; but the door continued closed. My emotions during all this period were agonizing. I might not have felt more than others that fear of death which belongs to human nature; but death in darkness without the power of a struggle or the chance of my fate being ever accounted for; death by the hands of assassins and in a spot of obscure butchery was doubly appalling. But an hour before I had been the first man in the country and now what was I? an unhappy object of ruffian thirst of blood destined to die in a charnel and be tossed among the rubbish of ruffian hands to moulder unknown. Without condescending to implore I now strongly attempted to reason with my captors on the atrocity of offering violence to a stranger and on the certainty that they would gain more by giving me my liberty than they could possibly do by burying their knives in my bosom. But all was in vain. They made no reply. One conception alone was wanting to the torture of the time; and it came. I heard through the depth of the vaults the sound of a church clock striking ""eight."" It was the very hour which had been agreed on for commencing the debate of the night. What must be thought of my absence? What answer could be made to any enquiry for my presence? What conceivable escape could my character as a minister have from the charge of scandalous neglect or more scandalous pusillanimity; from treachery to my friends or from an utter insensibility to personal name and official honour in myself? The thought had nearly deprived me of my senses. The perspiration of mental torment ran down my face. I stamped the ground and would have dashed my forehead against the wall had not the whole group instantly clung round me. A few moments more of this wretchedness and I must have died; but the door at length was cautiously opened and I bounded in. At a long narrow table on which were a few lights and several books and rolls of paper sat about twenty men evidently of the lower order though one or two exhibited a marked superiority to the rest. A case of pistols lay on the table which had probably been brought out on the signal of my arrival; and in the corners of the room or rather vault were several muskets and other weapons piled against the wall. From the obvious disturbance of the meeting I was clearly an unwelcome guest; and after a general sweep of the papers off the table and a whisper which communicated to the chairman the circumstances of my capture I was asked my name and ""why I had intruded on their meeting?"" To the latter question my reply was an indignant demand ""why my liberty had been infringed on?"" To the former I gave my name and office at full length and in a tone of authority. No announcement could have been more startling. The president actually bounded from his chair; others plucked out knives and pistols; all looked pallid and thunderstruck. With the first minister of the realm in this cavern of conspirators every life of whom was in peril of the axe; my presence among them was like the dropping of a shell into a powder magazine. But the dismay soon passed; their native daring returned and I saw that my fate hung once more on the balance. After a brief consultation and many a gloomy glance at their prisoner the president summed up the opinion of the board. ""You must be sensible sir "" said he addressing me; ""that in times like the present every man must be prepared to make sacrifices for his cause. The call of Ireland has summoned us here--that call is irresistible; and whatever may be our feelings for you sir who have been brought into this place wholly without our desire the interests of a great country determined to be free must not be put in competition with the life of any individual be his rank what it may."" He paused but a general murmur of applause showed the full approval of his grim auditory. ""You sir "" he continued with the solemnity of a judge passing sentence ""are one great obstacle to the possession of our public rights. You are a man of talents and courage and so much the more dangerous to the patriot cause. You would disdain our folly if we threw away the chance which fortune has put into our hands;--you must die. If we were in your power the scaffold would be our portion. You are now in ours and the question between us is decided."" I felt from his tone that all remonstrance was useless; and I scorned to supplicate. ""Do as you will "" I indignantly exclaimed. ""I make but one request. It is that no imputation shall be suffered to rest on my memory; that the manner of my death shall be made known; and that no man shall ever be suffered to believe that I died a coward or a traitor."" ""It shall be done "" slowly pronounced the president. I heard the click of a trigger and looking up at the sound saw one of the sitters at this board of terror without moving from his place deliberately levelling it at my head. I closed my eyes. In the next instant I heard a scuffle; the pistol was knocked out of his hand and a voice hurriedly exclaimed ""Are you all mad? For what purpose is this butchery? Whom are you about to murder? Do you want to bring a curse upon our cause?"" All rose in confusion; but the stranger made but one spring to the spot where I stood and fixing his eyes on me with astonishment loudly repeated my name. As the light fell on him I recollected at once though his hat was deeply drawn over his eyes and a huge cloak was wrapped round him palpably for the purpose of concealment the rebel leader whom I had so strangely met before. He turned to the table. ""And is it in this infamous way "" he fiercely exclaimed ""that you show your love of liberty? Is it in blood that you are to dip your charter; is it in making every man of common sense despise and every man of humanity abhor you that you are to seek for popular good-will? Down with your weapons! The first man who dares to use them I declare a traitor to his country!"" His energy made an impression; and giving me his hand which even in that anxious moment I could perceive to be as cold as stone he pronounced the words ""Sir you are free!"" But for this they were not prepared; and some exclamations rose in which they seemed to regard him as false to the cause and the words--""sold "" and ""traitor""--were more than once audible. He flamed out at the charge and passionately demanded proofs. He then touched another string. ""Now listen to what I have to tell you and then call me traitor if you will. You are in the jaws of ruin. I have but just discovered that Government has obtained knowledge of your meeting; and that within five minutes every man of you will be arrested. I flew to save you; now judge of my honour to the cause. You have only to make your escape and thank the chance which has rescued your lives."" Still my safety was not complete. There were furious spirits among them who talked of revenge for the blood already shed and graver spirits who insisted on my being kept as a hostage. But my protector declaimed so powerfully on the folly of exacting terms from me under duress; on the wisdom of appealing to my generosity in case of reverses; and above all on the certainty of their falling into the hands of authority if they wasted their time in quarrelling as to my disposal; that he again brought them to a pause. A loud knocking at the door of one of the distant vaults and a sound like the breaking down of the wall gave a sudden success to his argument and the meeting snatching up their papers and weapons glided away as silently as so many shadows. I naturally attempted to thank my protector but he put his finger to his lip and pointed to the quarter from which the police were apparently forcing their way into the subterranean. This was clearly a time of peril for himself as well as his associates and I followed him silently through the windings of this hideous locale. We shortly reached the open air and I cannot describe the solemn and grateful sense with which I saw the sky above my head the lights glimmering in the windows and felt that I was once more in the land of the living. My conductor led me within sight of the door of the House of Commons and with a slight pressure of the hand turned from me and was lost among the crowd. I rushed in exhausted overpowered sinking with apprehension of the evil which might have been done in my absence and blushing at the shame which probably awaited me. But I was fortunately disappointed. By some means which I could never subsequently ascertain a rumour of my seizure had reached the House; and the strongest alarm was excited by the dread of my assassination. The commencement of the debate was suspended. Opposition with the dignified courtesy which distinguished their leaders even proposed the adjournment of their motion; the messengers of the House were dispatched in all directions to bring some tidings of me; and I had afterwards the satisfaction to find that none imputed my absence to any motive unbecoming my personal and official honour. Thus when I entered the House nervous with apprehension I was received with a general cheer; my colleagues crowded round me with enquiries and congratulations; members crossed from the opposite benches to express their welcome. The galaxy of the living and the lovely in the gallery which the expectation of the great debate had filled with all the fashionable portion of the capital chiefly too in full dress as was the custom of the time glanced down approvingly on me; and when at last I took my seat I felt myself flattered by being the centre of one of the most splendid and interesting assemblies in the world. The House was at length hushed and Grattan rose. I cannot revert to the memory of that extraordinary man without a mixture of admiration and melancholy--admiration for his talents and melancholy for the feeling that such talents should expire with the time and be buried in the common dust of the sepulchre. As a senatorial orator he was incontestably the greatest whom I have ever heard. With but little pathos and with no pleasantry I never heard any man so universally perpetually and powerfully command the attention of the House. Thee was the remarkable peculiarity in his language that while the happiest study of others is to conceal their art his simplicity had the manner of art. It was keen concentrated and polished by nature. His element was grandeur; the plainest conception in his hands assumed a loftiness and power which elevated the mind of his hearers as much as it convinced their reason. As it was said of Michael Angelo that every touch of his chisel was life and that he struck out features and forms from the marble with the power of a creator Grattan's mastery of high conceptions was so innate that he invested every topic with a sudden magnitude which gave the most casual things a commanding existence to the popular eye. It was thus that the grievance of a casual impost the delinquencies of a police the artifices of an election or the informalities of a measure of finance became under his hand historic subjects immortal themes splendid features and recollections of intellectual triumph. If the Pyramids were built to contain the dust of nameless kings and sacrificed cattle his eloquence erected over materials equally transitory memorials equally imperishable. His style has been criticised and has been called affected and epigrammatic. But what is style to the true orator? His triumph is effect--what is to him its compound? What is it to the man who has the thunderbolt in his hands of what various nay what earthly--nay what vaporous material it may be formed? Its blaze its rapidity and its penetration are its essential value; and smiting piercing and consuming it is the instrument of irresistible power. But Grattan was an orator by profession and the only one of his day. The great English speakers adopted oratory simply as the means of their public superiority. Pitt's was the oratory of a ruler of empire; with Fox oratory was the strong massive and yet flexible instrument of a leader of party. But with Grattan it was a faculty making a portion of the man scarcely connected with external things and neither curbed nor guided by the necessities of his political existence. If Grattan had been born among the backwoodsmen he would have been an orator and have been persuasive among the men of the hatchet and the rifle. Wherever the tongue of man could have given superiority or the flow and vigour of conception could have given pleasure he would have attained eminence and dispensed delight. If he had not found an audience he would have addressed the torrents and the trees; he would have sent forth his voice to the inaccessible mountains and have appealed to the inscrutable stars. It is admitted that in the suffering condition of Ireland he had a prodigious opportunity; but among thousands of bold ardent and intellectual men what is his praise who alone rushes to their front and seizes the opportunity? The English rule over the sister country has been charged sometimes as tyranny which was a libel; and sometimes as injustice which was an error; but it had an unhappy quality which embraced the evils of both--it was invidious. The only map of Ireland which lay before the English cabinet of the eighteenth century was the map of the sixteenth--a chart spotted with the gore of many battles not the less bloody that they were obscure; and disfigured with huge discoloured spaces of barbarism. They forgot the lapse of time and that time had since covered the graves of the past with a living race and was filling up the swamps of the wilderness with the vigour and the passions of a new and glowing people. They still governed on the guidance of the obsolete map and continued to administer a civilized nation with the only sceptre fit for barbarism--the sword. By a similar misconception while they declared the islands one indivisible empire they governed them on the principle of eternal separation. No Irishman was ever called across the narrow strait between the two countries to take a share in the offices or enjoy the honors of England. Irish ambition thwarted in its own country might wander for ever like Virgil's unburied ghosts on the banks of the Irish Channel without a hope of passing that political Styx. The sole connexion of the islands was between Whitehall and the Castle--between power and placemen--between cabinets and viceroys. It never descended to the level of the nation. It was a slight and scarcely visible communication a galvanic wire significant only at the extremities instead of a public language and human association--instead of a bond of heart with heart--an amalgamation of people with people. Posterity will scarcely believe that the neglect of unity should have so nearly approached to the study of separation. Even the coin of the two countries was different in impress and in value--the privileges of trade were different--the tenure of property was different--the regulations of the customs (things which penetrate through all ranks) were different--and a whole army of revenue officers were embodied to carry on those commercial hostilities. The shores of the ""Sister Islands"" presented to each other the view of rival frontiers and the passage of a fragment of Irish produce was as impracticable as if it had been contraband of war. It was Grattan who first broke down this barrier and he thus rendered the mighty service of doubling the strength of the empire; perhaps rendered the still mightier service of averting its separation and its ruin. As the nation had grown strong it had grown sullen; its disgust was ripening into wrath; and its sense of injury might speedily have sought its relief in national revenge. And yet it is only justice to acknowledge that this evil arose simply from negligence on the part of England; that there was no design of tyranny none of the capriciousness of superiority none of the sultan spirit in the treatment of the rayah. But no minister had yet started up in English councils capable of the boldness of throwing open the barrier; none of intellectual stature sufficient to look beyond the old partition wall of the countries; no example of that statesmanlike sagacity which discovers in the present the shape of the future and pierces the mists which to inferior minds magnify the near into giant size while they extinguish the distant altogether. But no man can ever write the annals of England without a growing consciousness that magnanimity has been the instinct of her dominion; that she has been liberal on principle and honest by nature; that even in the chillest and darkest hour of her sovereignity this influence has existed unimpaired and like gravitation on the globe that it has accompanied and impelled her day and night alike through the whole circuit of her proud and powerful career. This was the glorious period of Grattan's public life. His task by universal confession was the noblest that could be enjoined on man and he sustained it with powers fitted to its nobleness. On the later portion of his history I have no desire to touch. The most hazardous temptation of early eminence is the fondness which it generates for perpetual publicity. The almost preternatural trial of human fortitude is to see faction with its vulgar and easy triumph seizing the fame which was once to be won only by the purest and rarest achievements of patriotism. When the banner which had flamed at the head of the nation on their march to Right and which was consigned to the hand of Grattan as its legitimate bearer was raised again in a day threatening the subversion of every throne of Europe; he exhibited a jealousy of his obscure competitors unworthy of his renown. But he did not join in their procession. He was unstained. If he felt the avarice of ambition he exhibited no decay of that original dignity of nature which in his political nonage had made him the leader of bearded men and a model to the maturity of his country's virtue. On this night he spoke with remarkable power but in a style wholly distinct from his former appeals to the passions of the House. His accents usually sharp and high were now lingering and low; his fiery phraseology was solemn and touching and even his gesture habitually wild distorted and pantomimical was subdued and simple. He seemed to labour under an unavowed impression of the share which the declamatory zeal of his party had to lay to its charge in the national peril. But I never saw more expressive evidence of his genius than on this night of universal consternation. His language ominous and sorrowful had the force of an oracle and was listened to like an oracle. No eye or ear strayed from him for a moment while he wandered dejectedly among the leading events of the time throwing a brief and gloomy light over each in passing as if he carried a funeral lamp in his hand and was straying among tombs. This was to me a wholly new aspect of his extraordinary faculties. I had regarded rapidity brilliancy and boldness of thought as his inseparable attributes; but his speech was now a magnificent elegy. I had seen him when he furnished my mind almost with the image of some of those men of might and mystery sent to denounce the guilt and heap coals of fire on the heads of nations. He now gave me the image of the prophet lamenting over the desolation which he had once proclaimed and deprecating less the crimes than the calamities of the land of his nativity. I never was more struck with the richness and variety of his conceptions but their sadness was sublime. Again I desire to guard against the supposition that I implicitly did homage to either his talents or his political vi
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ws. From the latter I often and deeply dissented; in the former I could often perceive the infirmity that belongs even to the highest natural powers He was no ""faultless monster."" I am content to recollect him as a first-rate human being. He had enemies and may have them still. But all private feelings are hourly more and more extinguished in the burst of praise still ascending round the spot where his dust is laid. Time does ultimate justice to all and while it crumbles down the fabricated fame only clears and separates the solid renown from the common level of things. The foibles of human character pass away. The fluctuations of the human features are forgotten in the fixed majesty of the statue; and the foes of the living man unite in carrying the memorial of the mighty dead to its place in that temple where posterity comes to refresh its spirit and elevate its nature with the worship of genius and virtue. BETHAM'S ETRURIA CELTICA. Herodotus has this amusing story of a philological experiment made by the Egyptian king Psammetichus who may not inappropriately be termed the James the First of his dynasty:-- ""The Egyptians before the reign of Psammetichus considered themselves the oldest of mankind; but after the reign of Psammetichus enquiry having been made as to whether that were the case thenceforth they considered the Phrygians to be their elders themselves being next in seniority. For Psammetichus finding no satisfactory solution to his enquiry on this subject devised the following plan: He took two infant boys born of humble parents and committed them to the care of a shepherd to be educated in this manner--that he should not permit any one to utter a sound in their hearing but should keep them by themselves in a lonely house admitting only she-goats at stated times to suckle them and rendering them the other requisite services himself. So he did so; and Psammetichus directed him as soon as the infants should cease their inarticulate cries that he should carefully note what word they should first utter. And so it was that after the lapse of two years both infants with outstretched hands running to meet their attendant the shepherd as he entered one day cried out 'becco.' Of which the shepherd at first made no report but hearing them reiterate the same as often as he went to visit them he informed his lord and by his commands brought the boys and exhibited them; whereupon Psammetichus as soon as he heard them enquired 'what nation they were who called any thing by the name of _becco_?' to which enquiry he learned for answer that the Phrygians call _bread_ by that name. So the Egyptians being convinced by that argument conceded the point that the Phrygians had existed before them. 'All which ' says the father of history 'I learned from the priests of Vulcan at Memphis.'"" This story after exciting the smiles of the learned for about two thousand years fell in an evil hour for the peace of mind of modern philologers into the hands of John Goropius Becan a man of letters at Antwerp who recollecting that _bec_ has a like signification in Dutch (_bec_ in that language meaning bread and _becker_ as in our own a baker ) immediately jumped to the conclusion that Dutch must have been the language of the Phrygians and that the Dutch were consequently the most ancient of mankind. This insane proposition he puts forward as the sole foundation of his two great folios entitled ""_Origines Antwerpianæ sive Cimmeriorum Beceselana_ "" printed at Antwerp in 1569 in which he derives all the nations of antiquity from the Dutch and makes all the names of gods demigods heroes and places of the Old World to have their only proper and characteristic signification in that language. The grave precision with which he lays the first and only foundation-stone of this monstrous superstructure is sufficiently entertaining. ""The Phrygians spoke the Scythic (_i. e._ the High-Dutch) tongue; and the Egyptians allowed the Phrygian language to be the primitive one. For when their king had ascertained that bec was a word of the original language of mankind and could not understand it he was informed that among the Phrygians it signified bread; whereupon he adjudged that language to be of all others the first in which _bec_ hath that meaning; which _bec_ being at this day our word for bread and _becker_ (""baker"") for bread-maker it stands consequently confessed on this most ancient testimony of Psammetichus that our language is of all others the first and oldest."" From so extravagant a commencement nothing but the most fantastical results could be expected and the reader will not be surprised to find Goropius making Adam and Eve a Dutchman and a Dutchwoman as one of the very first corollaries from his fundamental proposition; the Patriarchs follow; then the Gentile gods goddesses and heroes; the Titans the Cyclops the pigmies griffins and ""Gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire ""-- nations tribes territories seas rivers lakes mountains valleys cities and villages--all are drawn into this vast vortex of nonsense set agoing originally by the single syllable _bec_ which after all if this story of the priests of Vulcan have any foundation in fact was most probably nothing more than an imitation of the peculiar cry of the goats by which the infants had been suckled. Goropius's book was published at a time when the learned world were in no humour to tolerate such absurdities; and therefore although exhibiting a considerable amount of learning in its own mad way and a proportionate and characteristic degree of ingenuity it called forth one of the severest reproofs that literary presumption has ever brought down from the pen of Joseph Scaliger whose condemnation was re-echoed by all the literary men of note of the day. It being part of Goropius's system that the ancient Gauls were Dutch and the task of showing all the known words of the old Gaulish language to be significant in Dutch being consequently incumbent on him as a first step to his bolder speculations on the unexplained names of men and places he had among others given some ridiculous Dutch equivalents from the word _ambactus_ which as we are informed by Festus meant a slave or retainer in the old Gaulish tongue. Scaliger shortly after editing Festus with annotations and coming to the word in question took that opportunity to administer to Goropius the following castigation--""I am unable to restrain my laughter "" he says ""at what this singularly audacious and impudent person has written against Turnebus on this word. But as all his books exhibit nothing else than a most impudent confidence in himself so I reject his opinion on this matter as utterly impertinent and nonsensical. Never have I read greater absurdities; never have I seen neither heard of greater or more audacious temerity seeking as he does to derive all languages from his own barbarous dialect so as to make the Hebrew itself inferior to the Dutch; nay even reprehending Moses for taking the names of the patriarchs from his native Hebrew. Unlucky patriarchs and fathers that were born Philistines of Palestine and not Dutchmen of Antwerp!"" Abrahan Mylius another great scholar though not of so extended a reputation as either of the Scaligers soon after expressed much the same sentiments. ""I am not "" he says ""so full of wantonness as to be able to crack his insufferably absurd jokes with Becan and give the palm of antiquity to the language of Flanders in preference to the Hebrew making it the parent tongue not only of all other languages but of the Hebrew itself."" Schrevelius the lexicographer gave vent to his contempt in verse:-- ""Quis tales probet oscitationes! Quis has respectat meras chimeras! Non Judæus Apella de proseucha Non qui de Solymis venit perustis Aut quisquam de grege Tabatariorum Queis phoeni cophinique cura major: Cimmerii denique non puto probabunt Et si prognatos Japhet putantur Gomoroque parente procreati."" Our own Cambden about the same time commencing his great work on British Antiquities began by a protestation against being supposed ""insaniam Becani insanire."" Justus Lipsius alone of all the learned men of the day restrained the expression of positive indignation. ""We often speak of Becan and his book about our language "" he says writing to Schottius ""and have frequent jokes on the subject. He as you know would have it not only to be an elegant and polished tongue but the primitive one and mother of all the rest. But we 'Stupuimus omnes tentamina tanta Conatusque novos.' And indeed many of us laugh heartily. What do I? I love the man himself and I admire his quick keen and happy wit; happy indeed if he would turn it to some other subject-matter. But these speculations of his what credit can we give to them or what advantage expect from them? Whom shall I persuade that our language is thus supremely ancient--thus pregnant with mysterious meanings? That we here next the Frozen Pole are the earliest of mankind? that we alone preserve our language unadulterate and free from foreign admixture? Such assertions challenge laughter not opposition."" Goropius did not live to make any reply dying shortly after in 1572; but his etymological mantle descended on a worthy successor in the person of his countryman Adrien Von Scrieck lord of Rodorn who followed up the subject on a slightly modified plan in three-and-twenty books of _Celtic and Belgic Origins_ published at Ypres A.D. 1614. Scrieck adopted as the principle of his investigation this position from the _Cratylus_ of Plato. ""All things possess some quality which is the proper reason of their respective names; and those words which express things as they exist are the true names whereas those that give a contrary meaning are spurious."" Nothing can be truer than this provided only we knew the existing characteristics of each object as the original namers had them in view when imposing their nomenclature; but when this clue is wanting no labyrinth can lead an adventurer into more hopeless error. All articulate sounds necessarily resemble one another and there is no name either of a place or of a person in any articulate language that may not be constrained to bear some resemblance in sound to some words of any other given language. These it is true will seldom make sense and never be truly appropriate; yet with a little sleight-of-hand dropping a letter here and adding one there substituting a mute for a liquid or a liquid for a mute and so forth the ingenious etymologist will sometimes produce an equivalent sounding not unlike the original and making some sort of sense not altogether inapplicable to the subject-matter. As for instance if any one impressed with the conviction that our own language is the mother tongue of mankind were to derive Crotona from ""Crow-town "" he would produce an equivalent sounding much the same and having a meaning which might possibly have been quite applicable to Crotona though 'tis pretty certain that it was not as ""a city of kites and crows"" that place originally obtained its designation. So Swift's ""All-eggs-under-the-grate"" sounds very nearly identical with the name of the Macedonian conqueror though it by no means follows that the son of Philip either was partial to poached eggs or named accordingly. Absurd and ridiculous as these instances may appear they hardly exceed the folly of some of Becan's and Scrieck's derivations from the Dutch. Thus Goropius makes [Greek: Apollôs] _Af-hol-los_ (""off-hole-loose "") _i. e._ ""_ex antro libera_ "" or ""I _loose_ (the rays of light) off or out of the _hole_ or cavern (of darkness!"") and thus Scrieck derives Sequana (the river Seine) from _see gang_ _i. e._ ""_via maris_ "" or the ""_gang_-way to the _sea_!"" and Cecrops from _sea-crops_ _i. e._ ""_a marinâ gulâ_ "" because we suppose the Cecropidæ came to Greece with their _crops_ full (or empty as the case might be ) after their _sea_ voyage from Egypt. The indignation and contempt of the learned world seem to have spent themselves on Goropius; and Scrieck's preposterous labour appears only to have excited laughter. The most illustrious writers in every department of erudition had just ceased to occupy the stage. Scrieck coming out with his thousand folios of puerilities among a public familiar with the works of the two Scaligers of Cassaubon Lipsius Cluver Cambden and the other great lights of learning that shed such a lustre on the latter end of the sixteenth century was regarded much as Beau Coates may have been in latter days presenting himself in the character of Romeo before audiences accustomed to the highest histrionic efforts of the Kembles. And as Coates not satisfied with convulsing his audience by dying before them in the regular course of the play would sometimes die over and over again for their entertainment; so Scrieck not content with torturing all the names of men and places in Chaldea Phoenicia Egypt Greece Italy Spain and Gaul into Dutch equivalents through the three-and-twenty books of his first impression followed up his fantasy in 1615 by an additional essay in which whatever was extravagant before became if possible still more transcendently nonsensical. Perhaps no part of the entire work is more characteristic of the vanity and blindness of the writer than his preface to this second part where he gravely takes his guide Goropius to task for founding so large a work as the _Becceselana_ on so small a foundation as the ""_bec_"" of Psammetichus and regrets that his predecessor did not confine himself to etymons more consistent with the local and personal characteristics of his several subjects. For his own part the ground he goes upon is this that the names of men and places among the Chaldeans Egyptians Greeks and Latins as also among the Scythians Celts Etruscans and Belgæ (which latter he says are all Celts ) are properly significant in that Scythic tongue which the Belgæ and Dutch to this day preserve; whence it follows says he ""as an argument superior to all exception that not only the Chaldaic Egyptian Greek and Latin tongues (he does not mention the Hebrew which he concedes to be the language of Paradise) are inferior and posterior to the tongue now used by the Belgæ and Dutch; but also that the same Belgæ and Dutchmen are extracted from a more ancient people and a higher original than the said Chaldeans Egyptians Greeks or Romans."" And that this may appear by sufficient proofs he proceeds to show that the chief names of men and places in each of these counties are rightly significant in Dutch and not in their respective proper languages: as for example-- ""ADAM--_Scythicè Ad-ham_ sive _Haid-am_ ens conjunctivum 'a united entity.' The Chaldeans "" says he ""interpreted Adam to mean 'red ' for what reason I cannot see. It doth not appear a name of sufficient dignity for the first and most perfect and absolute of men. 'Tis much more to the purpose that he should have got the name of an united entity from the first institution of marriage by his Creator. ""EVA--_i. e. heve_ significat _prægnans_ vel _elevata_ ab _elevatione_ ventris; than which nothing could be said more _in rem_. ""NOE--_N'hohe_ that is _altus_ _celsus_; as Noah was at the head of time after the deluge. The Chaldeans interpret it _cessatio_ _quies_; but Noah "" says he ""had neither _rest_ nor _quiet_ during the deluge. ""MOSES--_mos-es_ that is the 'mud of the waters;' being when an infant exposed and raised out of the mud and slime of the river Nile. The Chaldeans interpret his name 'raised ' simply according to the mere circumstance of his being taken up; but the Celtic (_i. e._ the Dutch) signification denotes the whole fact. ""DAVID--_D'af-heid_ that is to say 'lowness ' 'humility.' For David was not only of a low stature but above all low and humble in his mind as appears from 1 Kings "" &c. &c. After Teutonising the Hebrew in this manner he next proceeds to the Egyptian. ""AEGYPTOS--_haeg-up-t'hos_ that is 'sylvæ supra altitudines ' 'the woody heights above.' (How this is exactly applicable he does not inform us.) ""NILUS--_N'hil-ho_ that is the 'high descent ' to wit of waters; for the Nile descends from the Mountains of the Moon which are very high. ""SEBENUTICUM--(a town of the Delta ) _Seben-vuyticum_ that is 'the _seven_-fold _outcome_;' for the Nile is seven-fold and hath seven mouths or outlets. ""PHAROS--_Phær-ho_ signifying _adnavigatio alti_ or the navigation towards the high places; for Pharos is an island with a lofty tower "" &c. &c. Then he takes his course into Greece and Latium but it would be idle to follow him through a hundredth part of these vagaries. In not a single instance does he pay the least attention to what the Greeks and Romans themselves thought or taught on these subjects except indeed in the solitary case of the Peloponnesus which he admits _may_ possibly have had its name from Pelops though he thinks it more likely that it expresses the more appropriate Scythic phrase _Pfel-op-on-es_--""Campus superior ad aquas "" or the _fell_ or plain _up_ _on_ or _above_ the water. Coming in the course of his peregrinations to Etruria and being equally successful in making all the ancient names of men and places there significant in Dutch he boldly attempts the interpretation of the Eugubian tablets. These singular remains of the extinct language of Etruria had already exercised the skill of some of the best scholars of the 16th century but none of them had succeeded in bending this new bow of Ulysses. To the insane all things are easy. Scrieck made no more of the task than did Ulysses-- ""When the wary hero wise His hand now familiar with the bow Poising it and examining--at once; As when in harp and song adept a bard Unlabouring strains the chord to a new lyre The twisted entrails of a sheep below With fingers nice inserting and above-- With such facility Ulysses bent His own huge bow and with his right hand play'd The nerve which in its quick vibration sung Clear as a swallow's voice."" With equal confidence Scrieck addresses himself to decipher the tablets of Gubbio. ""That the Dutch was the language of Etruria "" he says ""appears not only from these unquestionably Celtic (_i. e._ Dutch) names of the most ancient places in Italy but also by that extraordinary monument of antiquity the Etruscan inscription which Gruter writes me was found some years back at Eugubio (Gubbio) in Etruria on eight brazen tablets: the first written in inverted Greek letters and the rest in Latin characters."" These upon examination he pronounces to be clearly Dutch and as a specimen adds some sentences of the sixth table beginning--SERVERENT: PEMIMUMS: SERVERENT: DEITU: ETAIS EUO: PRIMATER &c.; and containing according to his account near the end the following passage: SERBA MARTIA EPUSTOTE SERFIA SERFIR MARTIA TENSA SERFIR SARFER MARTIA FUTUTO. Of which he gives the following version premising that the 's' in his copy has an additional stroke which makes it sound ST. STERVE MAR TIE EVVERSTOTE STERFTE STERVER MAER TIER DUERSAFT STERTE STERVER MAR TIER VUT-VUTE; _i. e._ ""Let him only die the death who is an extern; let them only die the death who are externs; let them only die the death who are outer externs;"" being as he says a deprecation merely of the evils of mortality and a prayer for their infliction on strangers as Horace says-- Hinc bellum lacrymosum hinc miseram famem Pestemque a populo et principe Cæsare in Persas atque Britannos Vestrâ motus aget prece."" Having rendered this and the incantation for the cure of sprains given in Cato ""De Re Rustica "" into the old Dutch of which we have had so many specimens he closes this summary of his labours with the declaration that whoever after these proofs will assert that the Etruscan language was other than the Dutch cannot be considered otherwise than as _non compos mentis_. We had little expectation when laughing at these vagaries of Scrieck and Becan many years ago that it would yet be our lot to see the same follies revived in our own time and among ourselves. But follies are like fashions which having once prevailed in the metropolis usually run the round of the provinces. And so this fantastic trick of interpreting the names of antiquity by modern equivalents spreading from the schools of Antwerp and Ypres still shows itself occasionally in the outskirts of the republic of letters and has here lately had a new Avatar fully as absurd as any of its prior exhibitions among those Jupiters Stators of every exploded folly of the Continent--the English writers on the antiquities of Ireland. This new Irish Becceselana is entitled ""Etruria-Celtica. Etruscan Literature and Antiquities investigated or the language of that ancient and illustrious people compared and identified with the Iberno-Celtic and both shown to be Phoenician by Sir William Betham Ulster King-at-Arms Vice-President of the Royal Dublin Society F.S.A. M.R.I.A. &c. &c.""[6] This title exhibits a design in no respect different from that of Goropius and Scrieck except in the substitution of the Iberno-Celtic by the Irish writer for the Belgico-Celtic equivalents of the Dutch. If there were sufficient reason to suppose that the vice-president of the Royal Dublin Society was acquainted with the Greek and Latin writers who concur in establishing the non-identity of these nations we would say that he exhibits as culpable a contempt for their authority as his Batavian precursors; but Sir William Betham appears scarcely to have read on the subject at all; and what was wilful presumption on their part may be the innocence of mere want of knowledge on his; for both Scrieck and Becan were perfectly aware that in identifying so many nations of antiquity with their own they were flying in the face of all authority; but Betham Hibernicizes all the nations from Taprobana to Thule apparently unconscious of any recorded reason against their universal identity. That the Etruscans spoke Irish he concludes just as Goropius concluded that the Phrygians spoke Dutch from the coincidence of a single word having as he alleges the same sound and meaning in each; and as a single passage from Herodotus was the sole foundation for the vast inverted pyramid of nonsense piled up by Goropius on that individual point (and kept from toppling over only by sheer force of impudence ) so the single well-known passage from Suetonius ascertaining the Etruscan _Aesar_ to be a designation of the Deity (_Aesar_ being also as it is said Irish for the same ) gives the only ground on which Betham rests his extravagant assertion that the Eugubian inscriptions contain an account of the discovery of Ireland by the Etruscan navigators and with a pretended version of which through the medium of Irish as he alleges he has filled the whole first volume of his book. ""In reading in Suetonius the life of Augustus "" he says ""I found that _Aesar in the Etruscan tongue_ signified _God_. The import in Irish being the same it struck me forcibly that this might not be accidental but that the Etruscan language might be essentially Celtic and therefore capable of interpretation by the Irish. On examination the conjecture proved well-founded. The results of the investigation consequent on the discovery of this clue will be found in the following pages."" It is true the Etruscan _Aesar_ is said to have a like meaning with an alleged Irish word coined and spelled by Vallancy _aosfhear_; but it has also an identical meaning with the Indian _eswara_ and the Egyptian _osiris_ and the Islandic _aesæ_ which makes _æsar_ in the plural; and it would be just as reasonable to infer that therefore the Etruscans spoke the Hindostanee or the Coptic or the Islandic language as that they spoke Irish. All the nations of Christendom give God the name Christ; but he would be justly deemed insane who would argue that therefore English is the proper medium of interpretation for a Russian ukase. Common sense without any further learning might have told Sir William Betham that till he stood on some surer ground than the coincidence of a single word even supposing that word a genuine one it would be the excess of folly to venture on such an application of a modern language; and further learning (if he had possessed it) would have confirmed the suggestion of common sense. With a moderate amount of learning he would have known that besides the names of known deities--_Kupra_ _Nyrtia_ _Mantus_ _Aukelos_ _Camillus_ corresponding to the heathen Juno Fortuna Pluto Aurora Mercury--there are also several other Etruscan words of which we know the meanings such as _faland_ the heavens; _andras_ the north wind; _lucumo_ a king; _drouna_ a kingdom or principality; _damnos_ a horse; _capra_ a goat; _agalletor_ a youth; _verse_ fire; _ites_ the ides of a month; _hister_ a stage-player; _subulo_ a trumpeter; _italos_ a bull; _arimoi_ monkeys _antar_ an eagle; _arakos_ a lark; _gnis_ a crane; _capys_ a falcon; _gapos_ a chariot; _burros_ a bowl; _atarin_ a wine-cruet; _nanos_ a wanderer; _mantissa_ an increase or addition; _turseis_ a space enclosed with walls; and several others not one of which bears the remotest resemblance to any Irish or Celtic word of equivalent meaning. Further learning also would have taught him the hopelessness of reconciling the Etruscan with any of the languages of Europe known as spoken languages immediately before the Christian era--Dionysius of Halicarnassus having expressly declared that neither in language nor in customs were the Etruscans of his time similar to any other known nation; and Dionysius was well acquainted with both Celts and Phoenicians. Besides the Phoenician equivalents for most of the Etruscan words in the list we have just enumerated are known and ought to have been known to any writer undertaking an investigation of either language; and if known to Sir William Betham ought at once to have deterred him from this preposterous attempt. Thus the Phoenician equivalent of aesar is _aloni_ or _alonim_; of kypra _astarte_; of nyrtia _god_; of mantus _much_; of faland _samen_; of andras _carbon_; of lucumo _malaho_; of damnos _rackabe_ &c. &c. in none of which except _samen_ does there appear the least similarity either with the Etruscan or the Irish words of like signification. So also in respect of a number of Gaulish words the meanings of which have come down to us and of which no one pretending competency to such enquiries ought to be ignorant but of the existence of which this vice-president of a leading literary society of Ireland seems utterly unconscious. But fools will rush in where angels fear to tread and Ignoramus walks with confidence where Eruditus fears to take a step. Reader do not think that Christopher is too severe! For what but condemnation and contempt can any rational mind conceive for a writer so incapable of dealing with even the rudiments of his subject and yet so presumptuous in the temerity of his ignorance as to declare that ""till _now_ not a scintilla of light has appeared on the subject of Etruscan antiquities?"" We can pardon learned trifling but when a man wholly unlearned on a subject of the greatest interest to the learned world presumes to dogmatize in this manner we strip him in an instant and have no mercy in exposing to both learned and simple the nakedness of his pretensions. Still facts are facts and if the fact be that the tablets of Gubbio are written in the Irish language and that Sir William Betham though as ignorant of his subject as was the boy who invented the safety-valve of the steam-engine has happened in any way by skill or by chance learnedly or unadvisedly modestly or arrogantly on the truth let him together with the condemnation have the credit he deserves if not as a Columbus of a new world of letters at least as a Madoc or a Thorfinn. The first line of the first table reading from right to left he reads thus: we say _he_ for the very form of some of the letters are still doubtful:--PUNE: CARNE: SPETURIE: ATUERIE: ABIECATI: NAROCLUM. Is this Irish? If so we would expect some six Irish words to be adduced of corresponding sound and having a grammatical dependence and sensible meaning among themselves. Instead of this Betham professes to find the equivalent expressions in _twenty-four_ Irish or _quasi_-Irish words which have neither grammatical relation to one another nor any coherent meaning in their united senses--viz. _Pune car na is be tur i e at i i er i e a bi e ca ta na ra ac lu am_; i. e. ""Phoenician to Carne (the turn) it is night voyage in it likewise in knowledge great in it the being away how it is the going with water on the ocean."" And this he tells us being interpreted signifies ""O Phoenicians this is a statement of the night voyage to Carne (the turn [7]) and of the manner of going such great seawise over by the waters of the ocean!"" The only glimmering of any thing like meaning in this string of unconnected verbiage appears in the detached phrases ""night voyage "" ""the being away "" and ""going with water on the ocean."" But the syllable _be_ which he renders ""night "" (on what authority Night and Chaos only know ) is not found in the original; and ""being away "" depends for its meaning wholly on the certainty that _e_ means ""away"" in that collocation of words and not ""it "" as in the phrases immediately preceding; and there is no suggestion of any reason why it should not here have the same signification as above or why it should not mean ""of"" or ""from "" in both of which senses the writer employs it in the subsequent sentences. ""Going with water on the ocean "" owes its only pretension to meaning however absurd to ""going"" and ""ocean;"" but there is no _am_ for ""ocean"" in the original and the ""ra"" which he interprets ""going"" and ""moving "" is wholly a coinage of his own brain. The same may be observed throughout the endless rigmarole of ""moon "" ""stars "" ""steering "" ""ocean "" ""night "" ""day "" ""knowledge "" ""science "" and ""O Phoenician!"" that succeed one another in monotonous repetition for the next 200 pages. Wherever there appears the least symptom of connected meaning or applicable language (admitting the preposterous supposition that these tables are the records of early voyagers to Ireland ) we invariably find that either the original is departed from or that the alleged equivalents belong to no known language of articulately-speaking men. Taking the same liberty of arbitrary division any one of moderate ingenuity might turn these inscriptions into a jargon just as readable in any language of the world. Divide any sentence of any articulate language into syllables and apply these alleged Irish words used by Betham as their equivalents and you may make it an equally authentic record of a voyage to Ireland or to the moon or a recipe for the toothache or any thing else you please with the greatest facility. Curious reader tell us pray which is the more readable jargon--this ""God to knowledge agreeable it is quick and water lonely star indeed the to it in day the month this in knowledge with is from the sea very solitary being water with the water the voyage always the coast steering being throughout moon to knowledge in water God indeed the water to danger this the in knowledge with with altogether to night the man from current the being water the to cause knowledge steering water by Ocean the north."" Or this? ""Was which security day and night inform Phoenician from night means in defence by skill throughout the means being also water means voyage from the means as indeed the voyage in it far away people water of the sea in gentle inward it is by wisdom day and night in it is gentle indeed the sea by science which by night in the will be to will be means of the star it far away Phoenician far away steering night and day and then to whence is in the ocean night sailing happy."" We believe most of our readers will incline to say that the one is about as insane gibberish as the other; or if they discover a distinction will give the palm of a less degree of incoherency to the first. The first is our own; the second is Betham's--being his literal version of the first three sentences of the second table and in no material respect different from his version of any other three sentences of any of the rest of the series.[8] The other is our own literal version on the same principle of a sentence of his own marked in italics in the following extracts in which he defends his arbitrary division of the Etruscan text into monosyllables though the punctuation of the original plainly divides it into many-syllabled words. In defence of this un
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ustifiable corruption of the original he alleges these excuses-- ""In the chapter on language p. 52 &c. are a few remarks upon the division of the words in these inscriptions in answer to the criticism of the learned Committee of the Royal Irish Academy who charged me with 'having made alterations' in the text unwarrantably 'especially in the division of the words.' The charge of having made any alterations is altogether groundless I might add unjust uncourteous and uncalled for. I have not altered a single letter. I have added a letter here and there in the Irish when by the genius and character of that language it was justifiable as (when) the addition of a word was required to make sense and when in the original the sound did not require it to be expressed; but this is fully answered and explained in the chapter alluded to. The 'division of the words' requires a few brief observations here. ""It will be observed that in the first five tables there are divisions marked with colons thus (:); in the sixth and seventh tables and in the Perugian inscription the divisions are marked with a single period (.) ""In the first few lines of the first table it appears that although these divisions generally include perfect syllables and words yet the same words are differently divided. In the fifth line the second division contains JUBEBATREBUMPERACNE and in the fourth division PERAKNE stands alone. The first division of this fifth line contains SAKRE:--in the next line it is worded thus UNUERIETUSAKRE; this same variation of division pervades all the tables and indeed almost every line of each table; the same may be observed on the Perugian inscription. The hypercriticism of the learned committee was therefore altogether erroneous and their observations not borne out.[9] These marks are evidently not intended as divisions of words but of sentences and they are not sufficiently precise even in that respect to constitute an accurate guide. The syllabic division however is governed by rule is precise uniform fixed and consistent and may therefore be acted on with some degree of certainty. Instances occur where three or four consonants follow each other and vowels are altogether omitted; but a little exertion of sagacity after some practice and study enables us to judge of this and supply the omissions.""--(Vol. i. p. 369.) And again in the passage referred to at p. 53 ""Whether I was arbitrary and unauthorized in the division of the words will now appear by comparison as the columns stand in juxtaposition and all are able to judge. _The division is merely made into syllables which so far from being an unnatural or arbitrary division is the only division which could be reasonably and fairly adopted._"" That is to say _Hibernicè_ or rather _Bethamicè_--_The ti fis e on is mear i lu om a do an do is i la bil se i i ac is o bar bro om be en go_ (we only ""add a letter here and there in the Irish when by the genius and character of that language it is justifiable as when the addition of a vowel is required to make sense and when in the original the sound does not require it to be explained "") _an en na tur al ur ar bi tre re ti fis i en is the an lu ti fis si an i i ac co al do be re as a ra be lu an do fa i ar lu a taob tuait_. But _are_ these singular-looking syllables Irish? They certainly are neither sense nor grammar; but we take them all _as_ they appear with their alleged meanings in English from that copious store of ungrammatical nonsense called Irish collected in those pretended versions of the tables of Gubbio; and the reader has already seen what a characteristic jargon they make when rendered by their English equivalents. His fatuity and presumption appear almost incredible. Knowing but a single Etruscan word and that a word of two syllables and finding it as he alleges identical with an Irish word also of two syllables he concludes that the Etruscan and Irish languages are the same and both _monosyllabic_. Had he known all that men of ordinary learning know upon the subject he would have known that of the remaining two or three-and-thirty ascertained Etruscan words some are of two--some of three--some of four syllables--but not one of them all a monosyllable. Yet thus ignorant even of the commonest rudiments of learning on his subject he takes it upon him to talk of men of real learning in the following strain-- ""That the language of Etruria has hitherto defied the laborious investigations of the learned of Italy is now on all hands admitted. Passavi Gori and Landsi have done something to obscure but little if any thing towards its elucidation. Nor have the German investigators been more successful. Dr Lepsius has lately given an account of the Eugubian tables and Dr Grotefend a work on the rudiments of the Umbrian tongue and still the subject is as much at sea as ever. These profound scholars have made no real impression--no light has been elicited--the meaning of a single word has not been obtained with any certainty. The solemn learned trifling and absurd speculations of Passavi Gori and Landsi and their followers are now treated with deserved contempt. This is an age of critical enquiry; commonplace twaddling inane generalities and magniloquent essays and lectures even if delivered by professors who enjoy the happiness of presiding over Roman colleges only excite derision. Learned savans must now put forth reasonable and intelligible postulates and opinions must be supported by facts or they will only expose themselves to deserved contempt.""--(Vol. i. p. 22.) Swift himself could not hit the style of the literary quack more perfectly. ""I have considered the gross abuse of astrology in this kingdom "" says Mr Bickerstaff ""and upon debating the matter with myself I could not possibly lay the fault upon the art but upon those gross impostors who have set up to be the artists. I know several learned men have contended that the whole is a cheat; and whoever hath not bent his studies that way may be excused for thinking so when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is treated by a few mean illiterate traders between us and the stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense lies folly and impertinence which they offer to the world as genuine from the planets though they descend from no greater height than their own brains. I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence of this art; and therefore shall say no more in its justification at present."" But here indeed the comparison falls; for while Bickerstaff postpones his proofs for another occasion Betham proudly displays his ""reasonable and intelligible postulate "" in his one fact that the dissyllable _Aesar_ is God alike in Etruscan and in Irish. Whence he concludes that Etruscan and Irish are therefore the same language and that both consist of words of one syllable each. ""The discovery "" he says (Vol. ii. page 286 ) ""if 'wonderful' was also accidental at least the first clue to it was the solitary fact mentioned in Vol. i. p. 33 of the passage in Suetonius' life of Augustus where _Aesar_ is said to mean in the Etruscan language _God_. So small a spark lighted up the large fire."" We are irresistibly reminded of Goropius and his ""consequenter fatendum est antiquissimâ hoc Psammetichi sententiâ."" The translation of the Eugubian tablets however is but a part of the huge mass of absurdity piled up on these two little syllables _Ae-sar_. There is a second volume in which all the topographical extravagances of Scrieck are played over again _præconis ad fastidium_ with this difference however that where Scrieck in his interpretations gave genuine Dutch Betham in his gives spurious Irish; for he owns himself that ""if a sentence be formed of these obsolete monosyllabic words the translation in English making good sense the original if read to the best Irish scholar of the day will appear to him an unknown tongue."" He begins first with Sanconiathan which he makes the name of the book not of the author _sean cead na than_; i. e. ""the old beginning of time "" when the gods spoke in monosyllabic Irish and called chaos _cead-os_ ""the first intelligence."" And here it must be admitted that the Dutchmen are outdone: for neither Becan nor Scrieck went above Adam. But Betham is as much at home on Olympus as either of the Dutchmen was in Paradise; and with the aid of his monosyllabic glossary transmutes the celestials into Teagues and Oonahs as fast as his sybilline syllables can be put together. Apollo is _ab ol lo_ ""the mighty lord of the waters;"" (this is hardly as good as the _off-hole-loose_ of Goropius:) Minerva is _Ma na er ar fad_ (a terribly long recipe for a name this ) or ""the good the illustrious guiding wisdom."" Hermes is _tur-mees_ ""the messenger of the wind."" Hercules is _er cu lais_ ""the illustrious hero of light;"" but he seems to be sadly at sea for a derivation for Neptune whom he is obliged to turn into a Tyrrhenian catamaran or Irish currow _Naebh tonn_ ""the ship of the sea."" Jupiter (not being an Etruscan he is not here allowed the _pas_) _iudh bit er_ ""day being great "" (which is a very dark saying.) Bacchus _bac aois_ ""the sustainer of time."" Mercury _meer cu re_ ""the swift champion of the moon""--really this is mere lunacy. Any one might with equal plausibility derive the whole Pantheon from the English as Apollo ""aye follow "" because day always follows night and Apollo always followed pretty girls Daphne in particular; Mercury ""mirk hurry "" because Mercury hurried the ghosts down through the mirk or murky darkness to the Styx. Hercules ""he reckless "" because Hercules was a great daredevil. Venus ""vain is "" because a pretty woman is too often vain of her good looks. Juno ""do now "" because people were in the habit of making their requests to her or perhaps because Jupiter used to say so when he wished her to give him a kiss. Jupiter ""stupider "" because it was natural that Juno should say he was the stupider of the two when they happened to differ; or _pace viri tanti_ ""you pitier "" when poor mortals raised their sorrowful supplications to him. Scrieck's foundation for all his extravagant topographical derivations was the passage from Plato. Doctor Johnson seems to have been the Plato of these new etymological rambles; but we apprehend that neither the Greek nor the British philosopher would be much edified by the philological excursions of the Irish disciple. Nothing can be more perfect in its way than the dogmatic audacity with which he assigns his derivations; it is in the true vein of Bickerstaff and a model to quacks of all classes. ""Before we commence our examination into the geographical divisions of Italy it is necessary to say something of that portion of the world with which the Phoenicians became for the first time acquainted after their settlements in Syria since called _Europe_ by an accident as trivial and unlikely to happen as that by which the new world in modern times was denominated _America_ that is by a blunder of the Greeks. The fable of the rape of Europa &c. was a mere national allegory of which the following is the substance. When the Phoenician Homeritæ had discovered the Mediterranean &c.--they sent out vessels to explore it _e_ 'it ' _u_ 'from ' _ro_ 'to go ' _ba_ 'was ' _tur_ 'voyage ' _ros_ 'to the promontory;' I. E. _it was to go from a voyage to (Italy) the promontory_. This was as usual of the Greeks taking sound for sense made into a _lady_ and a _bull_--_tur ros_ must be the Greek [Greek: tauros] and the Lady Europa was to ride the bull to Crete which was one of the first discoveries and settlements. Of the _children or results_ Minos has been already explained as _mian_ 'minis ' nos 'knowledge ' or 'the art of mining.' Rhadamanthus means nothing more than that the voyage to Crete was the first great result of discoveries on this sea: _ra_ 'going ' _ad_ 'illustrious ' _am_ 'great sea ' _en_ 'the ' _tus_ 'first.' So simple is the explanation!--(Vol. ii. p. 244.) Scrieck had some remains of the modesty of learning which prevent his becoming a complete master of this style. The Peloponnesus might perhaps possibly he owned have been derived from Pelops; though 'twas more likely it should come from _Pfel-op-on_ &c. &c. That admission was ill-judged: he ought to have denied that Pelops ever existed and laughed at the blundering Greeks. But the Irishman is a deacon of his craft and settles the point like an adept. ""PELOPONNESUS according to the Greek the island of Pelops. But the name was of much greater antiquity than Greek civilization and was like all others given by the Phoenicians. Pelops was an imaginary character. The meaning of the word is _the promontory of the courteous people_; _bel_ 'mouth ' _aiobh_ 'courteous ' _a_ 'the' _neas_ 'promontory ' _aos_ 'community race of people.'""--(Vol. ii. p. 254.) When Partridge the almanack-maker had overlived the fatal day assigned for his decease by Bickerstaff he intimated as much to his friends and the public assuring them that he was not only then alive but had also been alive on the very 29th March when the wise astrologer had foretold he should die. ""Now "" says Bickerstaff in reply ""I will plainly prove him to be dead out of his own almanack for this year and from the very passage which he produceth to make us think him alive. He says _he is not only now alive but was alive upon that very 29th of March which I foretold he should die on_; by this he declares his opinion that a man may be alive now who was not alive a twelvemonth ago. And indeed there lies the sophistry of his argument. He dares not assert that he was alive ever since that 29th of March but that he _is now alive and was so on_ that day. I grant the latter for he did not die till night as appears by the printed account of his death in a _letter to a lord_ and whether he since revived I leave the world to judge. This indeed is perfect cavilling; and I am ashamed to dwell any longer upon it."" So if the shade of Pelops will receive our counsel we advise him to abstain from vouching any of the family of Tantalus to testify to the reality of his existence; for he has to deal with a Bickerstaff by whom it has been demonstrated that Tantalus is nothing but _tain tal ais_ ""water receding backwards "" or an incarnation of those fabulous times when water was supposed to run uphill whence it appears that the whole race of Atreus is a mere series of non-existences. It is true we take this latter derivation from an extract from another of this judicious discriminator's labours in the Transactions of his Academy where among other etymological curiosities we have that very Irish youth Narcissus a beautiful youth who seeing his _own_ image reflected in a stream became enamoured of it thinking it the _nymph_ of the water. _Naobh ceas as_--""the sight of a nymph in the stream."" Pythia ""the priestess of Apollo at Delphos. She _always_ delivered her oracles in hexameter verses and with musical intonation--_pitead_ 'music ' from whence the name.""[10] Sanconiathon no longer the ""old beginning of time "" appears here as _san_ ""holy "" _con_ ""understanding sense or wise men "" _niod_ ""real "" _tain_ ""of the country""--""the sacred writer or wise recorder of the events of his country."" Pygmalion _big_ ""little "" _mallein_ ""mule "" the _little mule_ or person of a low stature and obstinate disposition. This is hardly so good as Swift's _pigmy lion_. ""Pasiphæ _ba sabas_ 'the propensity fancy or disposition of a cow;' and _proh pudor_ Venus 'herself ' _bhean_ 'the woman ' _aois_ 'of the community'--pronounced _vanus_ 'the ---- or _woman of the town_!'"" But to come back to the geographical division of the Levant to which _e u ro ba tur ros_ which the foolish Greeks construed Europa and the bull were only preparatory we have another luculent example of the Bickerstaff style in _Gallia Togata_. ""It is said the country was called _Togata_ by the Romans because they wore the Roman _toga_ or gown. This seems doubtful for when a country became a Roman province the same reason for the name should apply universally. We must therefore seek a more satisfactory derivation for that name to be found in the circumstances of the country. Gallia Togata consists of the plain country intersected by the Po and its numerous tributaries and surrounded on the north and west by the high ranges of the Alps on the south by the Apennines and on the east by the Adriatic. It is perhaps the best-watered and most fertile country in Europe enjoying a delightful climate. Its name Togata says all this _togh_ _it is the chosen land_ or to use an English idiom _choice land the most desirable and delightful country_; _togh a ta_ literally _the chosen spot or place_. Sound not sense suggested the Roman derivation."" Of course Gallia _Braccata_ and Gallia _Comata_ had just as little to say to ""long hair "" or a ""pair of breeches "" as Gallia Togata to a Roman gown and the application of _gens togata_ to the inhabitants of Italy as contradistinguished from the transalpine and other provinces was altogether a blunder of the ancients. ""We have before us again CRETA the largest of the Greek islands. Its name is derived by some from the Curetes who are said to have been its first inhabitants; by others from the nymph Crete daughter of Hesperus; and by others from Creos a son of Jupiter and the nymph Idoea. These are private conceits. It derives its name from its shape and external appearance from the sea; and had such an island been discovered in modern times by English navigators it would have been called _the ridge_ island the precise meaning of its name in Celtic _creit a_ ""the ridge "" putting the article last in conformity to idiom."" CYTHERA ""one of the Ionian Islands. Like all the other names for which the Greeks had no known origin they derived it from an individual called _Cytherus_. It is subject to _heavy showers_ from which the name _cith_ showers _er_ great _a_ the --that is _the island of heavy showers_."" ZACYNTHUS.--""A small island to the south of Cephalonia (_ce fal ia_; _i. e._ the fruitful plains country.) The Greeks say the island was named from a companion of Hercules who dying from the bite of a serpent was buried there. It was so called because a strong current is there first felt by the mariner coming from the east _za cing thus_ current strong first."" We really find some difficulty in believing that it is not Swift's _Essay on the Antiquity of the English Language_ that we have before us. ""My present attempt is to assert the antiquity of our English tongue which as I shall undertake to prove by invincible arguments hath varied very little for these two thousand six hundred and thirty-four years past. And my proof shall be drawn from etymology wherein I shall use my matter much better than Skinner Verstegan Cambden and many other superficial pretenders have done; for I will put no force upon the words nor desire any more favour than to allow for the usual accidents of composition or the avoiding a _cacophonia_. ""I will begin with the Grecians among whom the most ancient are the Greek leaders on both sides at the siege of Troy. For it is plain from Homer that the Trojans spoke Greek as well as the Grecians. Of these latter _Achilles_ was the most valiant. This hero was of a restless unquiet nature and therefore as Guy of Warwick was called a _Kill-care_ and another terrible man a _Kill-Devil_ so this general was called a _Kill-Ease_ or destroyer of ease and at length by corruption _Achilles_. ""Hector on the other side was the bravest among the Trojans. He had destroyed so many of the Greeks by _hacking_ and _tearing_ them that his soldiers when they saw him fighting would cry out 'Now the enemy will be _hackt_--now he will be _tore_.' At last by putting both words together the appellation was given to their leader under the name of _Hack-tore_ and for the more commodious sounding _Hector_. ""The next I shall mention is _Andromache_ the famous wife of Hector. Her father was a Scottish gentleman of a noble family still subsisting in that ancient kingdom; but being a foreigner in Troy to which city he led some of his countrymen in the defence of Priam as _Dictys Cretensis_ learnedly observes Hector fell in love with his daughter and the father's name was _Andrew Mackay_. The young lady was called by the same name only a little softened to the Greek accent."" And now and as no Irish antiquary can be well supposed to write a complete book without giving his own theory of the round towers of that country we come to the chapter on these singular structures in which of course all former enquirers are proved to have been egregiously wrong and a new theory established on incontrovertible evidence; viz. that the round towers were monuments erected over different incarnations of the god Buddho. As usual there is the alleged mistake of sound for sense to account for the reason why their common appellation of _clogteach_ or ""bell house "" should not truly express their use. ""I shall remark upon a _vulgar error_ which has had great currency among Irish antiquarians who have asserted that they were called _clogteach_ 'steeples belfries.' Bells are of comparatively recent introduction into Ireland and _clock_ from which the word has evidently been derived still more modern. The blunder has arisen from ignorance of the language. I have a memorandum in an Irish MS. that they were called by the people _leactaidh_ that is _monuments of the dead_ the sound of which has been mistaken by those who but imperfectly knew the language. Many writers have been mistaken by this."" The memorandum in the Irish MS. looks very like Bickerstaff's _Letter to a Lord_. We could wager our crutch against the baton of the Ulster king that the memorandum is in his own or his scribe's handwriting and the language in which it is imagined a variety of that new dialect in which Mr Silk Buckingham declares that his Irish friends converse with the Phoenician aborigines of Mount Atlas. But the proof of the pudding is the eating of it and it seems that under one of the towers they have found Buddho himself body and bones which puts the matter beyond controversy; for if Buddho be buried under the tower the tower itself must needs be Buddho's monument. At p. 210 (Vol. ii. ) we have a representation of the Indian divinity (how comes it that Buddho is not made an Etruscan?) lying buried in the basement of the tower at a place called Ardmore. There seems to be no question that a skeleton was got in the bottom of this tower and another in another; and the discoverers of the fact deserve credit for their addition to the slight stock of knowledge that the Irish antiquarians seem to possess of those which are perhaps the most singular monuments in their country; but that the bones are those of a Buddho! really this exceeds our largest estimate of human fatuity. But for the communications announcing these discoveries the two volumes would be altogether destitute of a single fact or even useful hint bearing on the diversified subjects which their prodigiously ignorant and audacious author has presumed to handle. How far the fact of these skeletons being found in such a situation may affect the rational investigation of the question we do not pretend to judge. We would merely observe that human interments are found under most ecclesiastical foundations and that their occurrence under the ""turres ecclesiasticæ"" of Cambrensis seems at present no more wonderful than their occurrence in the vaults of an ordinary church. But we really were surprised after our long familiarity with ""the holy illustrious guiding one of the sea""--""the mighty lord of the waters""--""the swift champion of the moon "" and the other moonstruck pseudo deities of the Eugubian tables to find the chief place and honour in the island of their own discovery and adoption taken from them and bestowed on the Indian Buddho. The ""swift champion of the moon"" seems to have been sensible of the affront and to have made his indignation perceptible in the suggestion of an argument that can hardly have descended from any but the lunar sphere; viz. that because the Buddhists of the east raise monumental dagobas over the relics of their deity and the Irish round towers as is alleged (by a nameless interpolation in a nameless Irish MS. ) have been called by a name arguing monumental purposes that therefore the Irish towers are dagobas and any bones that may be found in or about their foundations are relics of Buddho. The dagobas of Ceylon and India are buildings of a totally different character from these towers; they do strongly resemble the pyramidal structures of Yucatan but bear not the remotest likeness to any round tower either in Ireland or elsewhere. Such facts might furnish grounds for arguing an identity between Buddho and Quaccalcoatle (and such an identity appears by no means improbable;) but thence to attempt the deduction of any argument applicable to the round towers in Ireland or Great Britain only shows the illogical constitution of the arguer's mind. We have given the book and the subject more space than we intended and certainly much more than the former by itself is worth; but the subject is one that whether magnified into an undue importance by having been repeatedly treated by men of note and learning or not does in the present state of European literature stand high among the loftiest marks aimed at by human intellect; and any one singling himself from the crowd of lookers-on and addressing himself to hit it makes himself for the moment the observed of the whole learned world and by his success or his failure acquires honour or brings down reproach upon his country. We cannot permit British literature to be scandalized by the failure of one from our ranks who is manifestly inadequate to the task even of handling his piece much less of bringing down the popinjay without condemning the rashness of the attempt and exonerating ourselves from any charge of participating in it. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. PART I.--(_Continued from last Number._) ""_But you forgot her _"" says the Cynic; ""_you happened one day to forget this sister of yours?_""--Why not? To cite the beautiful words of Wallenstein ""What pang Is permanent with man? From the highest As from the vilest thing of every day He learns to wean himself. For the strong hours Conquer him.""[11] Yes _there_ lies the fountain of human oblivions. It is TIME the great conqueror it is the ""strong hours"" whose batteries storm every passion of men. For in the fine expression of Schiller ""_Was verschmerzte nicht der mensch?_"" What sorrow is it in man that will not finally fret itself to sleep? Conquering at last gates of brass or pyramids of granite why should it be a marvel to us or a triumph to Time that he is able to conquer a frail human heart? However for this once my Cynic must submit to be told--that he is wrong. Doubtless it is presumption in me to suggest that his sneers can ever go awry any more than the shafts of Apollo. But still however impossible such a thing is in this one case it happens that they _have_. And when it happens that they do not I will tell you reader why in my opinion it is; and you will see that it warrants no exultation in the Cynic. Repeatedly I have heard a mother reproaching herself when the birthday revolved of the little daughter whom so suddenly she had lost with her own insensibility that could so soon need a remembrancer of the day. But besides that the majority of people in this world (as being people called to labour) have no time left for cherishing grief by solitude and meditation always it is proper to ask whether the memory of the lost person were chiefly dependent upon a visual image. No death is usually half so affecting as the death of a young child from two to five years old. But yet for the same reason which makes the grief more exquisite generally for such a loss it is likely to be more perishable. Wherever the image visually or audibly of the lost person is more essential to the life of the grief there the grief will be more transitory. Faces begin soon (in Shakspeare's fine expression) to ""dislimn:"" features fluctuate: combinations of feature unsettle. Even the expression becomes a mere idea that you can describe to another but not an image that you can reproduce for yourself. Therefore it is that the faces of infants though they are divine as flowers in a savanna of Texas or as the carolling of birds in a forest are like flowers in Texas and the carolling of birds in a forest soon overtaken by the pursuing darkness that swallows up all things human. All glories of flesh vanish; and this the glory of infantine beauty seen in the mirror of the memory soonest of all. But when the departed person worked upon yourself by powers that were intellectual and moral--powers _in_ the flesh though not _of_ the flesh--the memorials in your own heart become more steadfast if less affecting at the first. Now in my sister were combined for me both graces--the graces of childhood and the graces of expanding thought. Besides that as regards merely the _personal_ image always the smooth rotundity of baby features must vanish sooner as being less individual than the features in a child of eight touched with a pensive tenderness and exalted into a characteristic expression by a premature intellect. Rarely do things perish from my memory that are worth remembering. Rubbish dies instantly. Hence it happens that passages in Latin or English poets which I never could have read but once (and _that_ thirty years ago ) often begin to blossom anew when I am lying awake unable to sleep. I become a distinguished compositor in the darkness; and with my aërial composing-stick sometimes I ""set up"" half a page of verses that would be found tolerably correct if collated with the volume that I never had in my hand but once. I mention this in no spirit of boasting. Far from it; for on the contrary amongst my mortifications have been compliments to my memory when in fact any compliment that I had merited was due to the higher faculty of an electric aptitude for seizing analogies and by means of those aërial pontoons passing over like lightning from one topic to another. Still it is a fact that this pertinacious life of memory for things that simply touch the ear without touching the consciousness does in fact beset me. Said but once said but softly not marked at all words revive before me in darkness and solitude; and they arrange themselves gradually into sentences but through an effort sometimes of a distressing kind to which I am in a manner forced to become a party. This being so it was no great instance of that power--that three separate passages in the funeral service all of which but one had escaped my notice at the time and even that one as to the part I am going to mention but all of which must have struck on my ear restored themselves perfectly when I was lying awake in bed; and though struck by their beauty I was also incensed by what seemed to be the harsh sentiment expressed in two of these passages. I will cite all the three in an abbreviated form both for my immediate purpose and for the indirect purpose of giving to those unacquainted with the English funeral service some specimen of its beauty. The first passage was this ""Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister here departed we therefore commit her body to the ground earth to earth ashes to ashes dust to dust in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life."" * * * I pause to remark that a sublime effect arises at this point through a sudden rapturous interpolation from the Apocalypse which according to the rubric ""shall be said or sung;"" but always let it be sung and by the full choir:-- ""I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me Write from henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; even so saith the Spirit; for they rest from their labours."" The second passage almost immediately succeeding to this awful burst of heavenly trumpets and the one which more particularly offended me though otherwise even then in my seventh year I could not but be touched by its beauty was this:--""Almighty God with whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord and with whom the souls of the faithful after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh are in joy and felicity; WE give thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our sister out of th
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miseries of this sinful world; beseeching thee that it may please thee of thy gracious goodness shortly to accomplish the number of thine elect and to hasten thy kingdom."" * * In what world was I living when a man (calling himself a man of God) could stand up publicly and give God ""hearty thanks"" that he had taken away my sister? But young child understand--taken her away from the miseries of this sinful world. Oh yes! I hear what you say; I understand _that_; but that makes no difference at all. She being gone this world doubtless (as you say) is a world of unhappiness. But for me _ubi Cæsar ibi Roma_--where my sister was there was paradise; no matter whether in heaven above or on the earth beneath. And he had taken her away cruel priest! of his ""_great_ mercy?"" I did not presume child though I was to think rebelliously against _that_. The reason was not any hypocritical or canting submission where my heart yielded none but because already my deep musing intellect had perceived a mystery and a labyrinth in the economies of this world. God I saw moved not as _we_ moved--walked not as _we_ walked--thought not as _we_ think. Still I saw no mercy to myself a poor frail dependent creature--torn away so suddenly from the prop on which altogether it depended. Oh yes! perhaps there was; and many years after I came to suspect it. Nevertheless it was a benignity that pointed far a-head; such as by a child could not have been perceived because then the great arch had not come round; could not have been recognized if it _had_ come round; could not have been valued if it had even been dimly recognized. Finally as the closing prayer in the whole service stood this--which I acknowledged then and now acknowledge as equally beautiful and consolatory; for in this was no harsh peremptory challenge to the infirmities of human grief as to a thing not meriting notice in a religious rite. On the contrary there was a gracious condescension from the great apostle to grief as to a passion that he might perhaps himself have participated. ""Oh merciful God! the father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is the resurrection and the life in whom whosoever believeth shall live though he die; who also taught us by his holy apostle St Paul not to be sorry as men without hope for them that sleep in _him_; WE meekly beseech thee O Father! to raise us from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness; that when we shall depart this life we may rest in _him_ as our hope is--that this our sister doth."" Ah _that_ was beautiful; that was heavenly! We might be sorry we had leave to be sorry; only not without hope. And we were by hope to rest in _Him_ as this our sister doth. And howsoever a man may think that he is without hope I that have read the writing upon these great abysses of grief and viewed their shadows under the correction of mightier shadows from deeper abysses since then abysses of aboriginal fear and eldest darkness in which yet I believe that all hope had not absolutely died know that he is in a natural error. If for a moment I and so many others wallowing in the dust of affliction could yet rise up suddenly like the dry corpse[12] which stood upright in the glory of life when touched by the bones of the prophet; if in those vast choral anthems heard by my childish ear the voice of God wrapt itself as in a cloud of music saying--""Child that sorrowest I command thee to rise up and ascend for a season into my heaven of heavens""--then it was plain that despair that the anguish of darkness was not _essential_ to such sorrow but might come and go even as light comes and goes upon our troubled earth. Yes! the light may come and go; grief may wax and wane; grief may sink; and grief again may rise as in impassioned minds oftentimes it does even to the heaven of heavens; but there is a necessity--that if too much left to itself in solitude finally it will descend into a depth from which there is no re-ascent; into a disease which seems no disease; into a languishing which from its very sweetness perplexes the mind and is fancied to be very health. Witchcraft has seized upon you nympholepsy has struck you. Now you rave no more. You acquiesce; nay you are passionately delighted in your condition. Sweet becomes the grave because you also hope immediately to travel thither: luxurious is the separation because only perhaps for a few weeks shall it exist for you; and it will then prove but the brief summer night that had retarded a little by a refinement of rapture the heavenly dawn of reunion. Inevitable sometimes it is in solitude--that this should happen with minds morbidly meditative; that when we stretch out our arms in darkness vainly striving to draw back the sweet faces that have vanished slowly arises a new stratagem of grief and we say--""Be it that they no more come back to us yet what hinders but we should go to _them_?"" Perilous is that crisis for the young. In its effect perfectly the same as the ignoble witchcraft of the poor African _Obeah_ [13] this sublimer witchcraft of grief will if left to follow its own natural course terminate in the same catastrophe of death. Poetry which neglects no phenomena that are interesting to the heart of man has sometimes touched a little ""On the sublime attractions of the grave."" But you think that these attractions existing at times for the adult could not exist for the child. Understand that you are wrong. Understand that these attractions _do_ exist for the child; and perhaps as much more strongly than they _can_ exist for the adult by the whole difference between the concentration of a childish love and the inevitable distraction upon multiplied objects of any love that can affect an adult. There is a German superstition (well-known by a popular translation) of the Erl-king's Daughter who fixes her love upon some child and seeks to wile him away into her own shadowy kingdom in forests. ""Who is it that rides through the forest so fast?"" It is a knight who carries his child before him on the saddle. The Erl-king's Daughter rides on his right hand and still whispers temptations to the infant audible only to _him_. ""If thou wilt dear baby with me go away We will see a fine show we will play a fine play."" The consent of the baby is essential to her success. And finally she _does_ succeed. Other charms other temptations would have been requisite for me. My intellect was too advanced for those fascinations. But could the Erl-king's Daughter have revealed herself to me and promised to lead me where my sister was she might have wiled me by the hand into the dimmest forests upon earth. Languishing was my condition at that time. Still I languished for things ""which"" (a voice from heaven seemed to answer through my own heart) ""_can_not be granted;"" and which when again I languished again the voice repeated ""_cannot_ be granted."" * * * * * Well it was for me that at this crisis I was summoned to put on the harness of life by commencing my classical studies under one of my guardians a clergyman of the English Church and (so far as regarded Latin) a most accomplished scholar. At the very commencement of my new studies there happened an incident which afflicted me much for a short time and left behind a gloomy impression that suffering and wretchedness were diffused amongst all creatures that breathe. A person had given me a kitten. There are three animals which seem beyond all others to reflect the beauty of human infancy in two of its elements--viz. joy and guileless innocence though less in its third element of simplicity because _that_ requires language for its full expression: these three animals are the kitten the lamb and the fawn. Other creatures may be as happy but they do not show it so much. Great was the love which poor silly I had for this little kitten; but as I left home at ten in the morning and did not return till near five in the afternoon I was obliged with some anxiety to throw it for those seven hours upon its own discretion as infirm a basis for reasonable hope as could be imagined. I did not wish the kitten indeed at all less foolish than it was except just when I was leaving home and then its exceeding folly gave me a pang. Just about that time it happened that we had received as a present from Leicestershire a fine young Newfoundland dog who was under a cloud of disgrace for crimes of his youthful blood committed in that county. One day he had taken too great a liberty with a pretty little cousin of mine Emma H---- about four years old. He had in fact bitten off her cheek which remaining attached by a shred was through the energy of a governess replaced and subsequently healed without a scar. His name being _Turk_ he was immediately pronounced by the best Greek scholar of that neighbourhood [Greek: epônymos] (_i. e._ named significantly or reporting his nature in his name.) But as Miss Emma confessed to having been engaged in taking away a bone from him on which subject no dog can be taught to understand a joke it did not strike our own authorities that he was to be considered in a state of reprobation; and as our gardens (near to a great town) were on account chiefly of melons constantly robbed it was held that a moderate degree of fierceness was rather a favourable trait in his character. My poor kitten it was supposed had been engaged in the same playful trespass upon Turk's property as my Leicestershire cousin and Turk laid her dead on the spot. It is impossible to describe my grief when the case was made known to me at five o'clock in the evening by a man's holding out the little creature dead: she that I had left so full of glorious life--life which even in a kitten is infinite--was now stretched in motionless repose. I remember that there was a large coal stack in the yard. I dropped my Latin books sat down upon a huge block of coal and burst into a passion of tears. The man struck with my tumultuous grief hurried into the house; and from the lower regions deployed instantly the women of the laundry and the kitchen. No one subject is so absolutely sacred and enjoys so _classical_ a sanctity among girls as 1. Grief; and 2. Love which is unfortunate. All the young women took me up in their arms and kissed me; and last of all an elderly who was the cook not only kissed me but wept so audibly from some suggestion doubtless of grief personal to herself that I threw my arms about her neck and kissed _her_ also. It is probable as I now suppose some account of my grief for my sister had reached them. Else I was never allowed to visit _their_ region of the house. But however _that_ might be afterwards it struck me that if I had met with so much sympathy or with any sympathy at all from the servant chiefly connected with myself in the desolating grief I had suffered possibly I should not have been so profoundly shaken. But did I in the mean time feel anger towards Turk? Not the least. And the reason was this:--My guardian who taught me Latin was in the habit of coming over and dining at my mother's table whenever he pleased. On these occasions he who like myself pitied _dependant_ animals went invariably into the yard of the offices taking me with him and unchained the dogs. There were two--_Grim_ a mastiff and _Turk_ our young friend. My guardian was a bold athletic man and delighted in dogs. He told me which also my own heart told me that these poor dogs languished out their lives under this confinement. The moment that I and my guardian (_ego et rex meus_) appeared in sight of the two kennels it is impossible to express the joy of the dogs. Turk was usually restless; Grim slept away his life in surliness. But at the sight of us--of my little insignificant self and my six-foot guardian--both dogs yelled with delight. We unfastened their chains with our own hands they licking our hands; and as to myself licking my miserable little face; and at one bound they re-entered upon their natural heritage of joy. Always we took them through the fields where they molested nothing and closed with giving them a cold bath in the brook which bounded my father's property. What despair must have possessed our dogs when they were taken back to their hateful prisons! and I for my part not enduring to see their misery slunk away when the rechaining commenced. It was in vain to tell me that all people who had property out of doors to protect chained up dogs in the same way; _this_ only proved the extent of the oppression; for a monstrous oppression it _did_ seem that creatures boiling with life and the desires of life should be thus detained in captivity until they were set free by death. That liberation visited poor _Grim_ and _Turk_ sooner than any of us expected for they were both poisoned within the year that followed by a party of burglars. At the end of that year I was reading the Æneid; and it struck me who remembered the howling recusancy of _Turk_ as a peculiarly fine circumstance introduced amongst the horrors of Tartarus that sudden gleam of powerful animals full of life and conscious rights rebelling against chains:-- ""Iræque leonum Vincla recusantum.""[14] Virgil had doubtless picked up that gem in his visits at feeding-time to the _caveæ_ of the Roman amphitheatre. But the rights of brute creatures to a merciful forbearance on the part of man could not enter into the feeblest conceptions of one belonging to a nation that (although too noble to be _wantonly_ cruel ) yet in the same amphitheatre manifested so little regard even to human rights. Under Christianity the condition of the brute has improved and will improve much more. There is ample room. For I am sorry to say that the commonest vice of Christian children too often surveyed with careless eyes by mothers that in their _human_ relations are full of kindness is cruelty to the inferior creatures thrown upon their mercy. For my own part what had formed the groundwork of my happiness (since joyous was my nature though overspread with a cloud of sadness ) had been from the first a heart overflowing with love. And I had drunk in too profoundly the spirit of Christianity from our many nursery readings not to read also in its divine words the justification of my own tendencies. That which I desired was the thing which I ought to desire; the mercy that I loved was the mercy that God had blessed. From the sermon on the Mount resounded for ever in my ears--""Blessed are the merciful!"" I needed not to add--""For they shall obtain mercy."" By lips so holy and when standing in the atmosphere of truths so divine simply to have been blessed--_that_ was a sufficient ratification; every truth so revealed and so hallowed by position starts into sudden life and becomes to itself its own authentication needing no proof to convince needing no promise to allure. It may well be supposed therefore that having so early awakened within me what may be philosophically called the _transcendental_ justice of Christianity I blamed not _Turk_ for yielding to the coercion of his nature. He had killed the object of my love. But besides that he was under the constraint of a primary appetite--Turk was himself the victim of a killing oppression. He was doomed to a fretful existence so long as he should exist at all. Nothing could reconcile this to my benignity which at that time rested upon two pillars--upon the deep deep heart which God had given to me at my birth and upon exquisite health. Up to the age of two and almost through that entire space of twenty-four months I had suffered from ague; but when _that_ left me all germs and traces of ill health fled away for ever--except only such (and those how curable!) as I inherited from my schoolboy distresses in London or had created by means of opium. Even the long ague was not without ministrations of favour to my prevailing temper; and on the whole no subject for pity; since naturally it won for me the sweet caresses of female tenderness both young and old. I was a little petted; but you see by this time reader that I must have been too much of a philosopher even in the year one _ab urbe condita_ of my frail earthly tenement to abuse such indulgence. It also won for me a ride on horseback whenever the weather permitted. I was placed on a pillow in front of a cankered old man upon a large white horse not so young as _I_ was but still showing traces of blood. And even the old man who was both the oldest and the worst of the three talked with gentleness to myself reserving his surliness--for all the rest of the world. These things pressed with a gracious power of incubation upon my predispositions; and in my overflowing love I did things fitted to make the reader laugh and sometimes fitted to bring myself into perplexity. One instance from a thousand may illustrate the combination of both effects. At four years old I had repeatedly seen the housemaid raising her long broom and pursuing (generally destroying) a vagrant spider. The holiness of all life in my eyes forced me to devise plots for saving the poor doomed wretch; and thinking intercession likely to prove useless my policy was--to draw off the housemaid on pretence of showing her a picture until the spider already _en route_ should have had time to escape. Very soon however the shrewd housemaid marking the coincidence of these picture exhibitions with the agonies of fugitive spiders detected my stratagem; so that if the reader will pardon an expression borrowed from the street henceforwards the picture was ""no go."" However as she approved of my motive she told me of the many murders that the spider had committed and next (which was worse) of the many that he certainly _would_ commit if reprieved. This staggered me. I could have gladly forgiven the past; but it _did_ seem a false mercy to spare one spider in order to scatter death amongst fifty flies. I thought timidly for a moment of suggesting that people sometimes repented and that _he_ might repent; but I checked myself on considering that I had never read any account and that she might laugh at the idea of a penitent spider. To desist was a necessity in these circumstances. But the difficulty which the housemaid had suggested did not depart; it troubled my musing mind to perceive that the welfare of one creature might stand upon the ruin of another: and the case of the spider remained thenceforwards even more perplexing to my understanding than it was painful to my heart. The reader is likely to differ from me upon the question moved by recurring to such experiences of childhood whether much value attaches to the perceptions and intellectual glimpses of a child. Children like men range through a gamut that is infinite of temperaments and characters ascending from the very dust below our feet to highest heaven. I have seen children that were sensual brutal devilish. But thanks be to the _vis medicatrix_ of human nature and to the goodness of God these are as rare exhibitions as all other monsters. People thought when seeing such odious travesties and burlesques upon lovely human infancy that perhaps the little wretches might be _kilcrops_.[15] Yet possibly (it has since occurred to me ) even these children of the fiend as they seemed might have one chord in their horrible natures that answered to the call of some sublime purpose. There is a mimic instance of this kind often found amongst ourselves in natures that are not really ""horrible "" but which _seem_ such to persons viewing them from a station not sufficiently central:--Always there are mischievous boys in a neighbourhood boys who tie canisters to the tails of cats belonging to ladies--a thing which _greatly_ I disapprove; and who rob orchards--a thing which _slightly_ I disapprove; and behold! the next day on meeting the injured ladies they say to me ""Oh my dear friend never pretend to argue for him! This boy we shall all see will come to be hanged."" Well _that_ seems a disagreeable prospect for all parties; so I change the subject; and lo! five years later there is an English frigate fighting with a frigate of heavier metal (no matter of what nation.) The noble captain has manoeuvred as only _his_ countrymen can manoeuvre; he has delivered his broadsides as only the proud islanders can deliver them. Suddenly he sees the opening for a _coup-de-main_; through his speaking-trumpet he shouts--""_Where are my boarders?_"" And instantly rise upon the deck with the gaiety of boyhood in white shirt sleeves bound with black ribands fifty men the _élite_ of the crew; and behold! at the very head of them cutlass in hand is our friend the tyer of canisters to the tails of ladies' cats--a thing which _greatly_ I disapprove and also the robber of orchards--a thing which _slightly_ I disapprove. But here is a man that will not suffer you either greatly or slightly to disapprove him. Fire celestial burns in his eye; his nation his glorious nation is in his mind; himself he regards no more than the life of a cat or the ruin of a canister. On the deck of the enemy he throws himself with rapture and if _he_ is amongst the killed if he for an object so gloriously unselfish lays down with joy his life and glittering youth mark this--that perhaps he will not be the least in heaven. But coming back to the case of childhood I maintain steadfastly--that into all the _elementary_ feelings of man children look with more searching gaze than adults. My opinion is that where circumstances favour where the heart is deep where humility and tenderness exist in strength where the situation is favourable as to solitude and as to genial feelings children have a specific power of contemplating the truth which departs as they enter the world. It is clear to me that children upon elementary paths which require no knowledge of the world to unravel tread more firmly than men; have a more pathetic sense of the beauty which lies in justice; and according to the immortal ode of our great laureate [ode ""On the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood ""] a far closer communion with God. I if you observe do not much intermeddle with religion properly so called. My path lies on the interspace between religion and philosophy that connects them both. Yet here for once I shall trespass on grounds not properly mine and desire you to observe in St Matthew chap. xxi. and v. 15 _who_ were those that crying in the temple made the first public recognition of Christianity. Then if you say ""Oh but children echo what they hear and are no independent authorities!"" I must request you to extend your reading into v. 16 where you will find that the testimony of these children as bearing an _original_ value was ratified by the highest testimony; and the recognition of these children did itself receive a heavenly recognition. And this could _not_ have been unless there were children in Jerusalem who saw into truth with a far sharper eye than Sanhedrims and Rabbis. It is impossible with respect to any memorable grief that it can be adequately exhibited so as to indicate the enormity of the convulsion which really it caused without viewing it under a variety of aspects--a thing which is here almost necessary for the effect of proportion to what follows: 1st for instance in its immediate pressure so stunning and confounding; 2dly in its oscillations as in its earlier agitations frantic with tumults that borrow the wings of the winds; or in its diseased impulses of sick languishing desire through which sorrow transforms itself to a sunny angel that beckons us to a sweet repose. These phases of revolving affection I have already sketched. And I shall also sketch a third _i. e._ where the affliction seemingly hushing itself to sleep suddenly soars upwards again upon combining with _another_ mode of sorrow; viz. anxiety without definite limits and the trouble of a reproaching conscience. As sometimes [16] upon the English lakes waterfowl that have careered in the air until the eye is wearied with the eternal wheelings of their inimitable flight--Grecian simplicities of motion amidst a labyrinthine infinity of curves that would baffle the geometry of Apollonius--seek the water at last as if with some settled purpose (you imagine) of reposing. Ah how little have you understood the omnipotence of that life which they inherit! _They_ want no rest; they laugh at resting; all is ""make believe "" as when an infant hides its laughing face behind its mother's shawl. For a moment it is still. Is it meaning to rest? Will its impatient heart endure to lurk there for long? Ask rather if a cataract will stop from fatigue. Will a sunbeam sleep on its travels? Or the Atlantic rest from its labours? As little can the infant as little can the waterfowl of the lakes suspend their play except as a variety of play or rest unless when nature compels them. Suddenly starts off the infant suddenly ascend the birds to new evolutions as incalculable as the caprices of a kaleidoscope; and the glory of their motions from the mixed immortalities of beauty and inexhaustible variety becomes at least pathetic to survey. So also and with such life of variation do the _primary_ convulsions of nature--such perhaps as only _primary_[17] formations in the human system can experience--come round again and again by reverberating shocks. The new intercourse with my guardian and the changes of scene which naturally it led to were of use in weaning my mind from the mere disease which threatened it in case I had been left any longer to my total solitude. But out of these changes grew an incident which restored my grief though in a more troubled shape and now for the first time associated with something like remorse and deadly anxiety. I can safely say that this was my earliest trespass and perhaps a venial one--all things considered. Nobody ever discovered it; and but for my own frankness it would not be know to this day. But _that_ I could not know; and for years that is from seven or earlier up to ten such was my simplicity that I lived in constant terror. This though it revived my grief did me probably great service; because it was no longer a state of languishing desire tending to torpor but of feverish irritation and gnawing care that kept alive the activity of my understanding. The case was this:--It happened that I had now and commencing with my first introduction to Latin studies a large weekly allowance of pocket-money too large for my age but safely entrusted to myself who never spent or desired to spend one fraction of it upon any thing but books. But all proved too little for my colossal schemes. Had the Vatican the Bodleian and the _Bibliothéque du Roi_ been all emptied into one collection for my private gratification little progress would have been made towards content in this particular craving. Very soon I had run ahead of my allowance and was about three guineas deep in debt. There I paused; for deep anxiety now began to oppress me as to the course in which this mysterious (and indeed guilty) current of debt would finally flow. For the present it was frozen up; but I had some reason for thinking that Christmas thawed all debts whatsoever and set them in motion towards innumerable pockets. Now _my_ debt would be thawed with all the rest; and in what direction would it flow? There was no river that would carry it off to sea; to somebody's pocket it would beyond a doubt make its way; and who _was_ that somebody? This question haunted me for ever. Christmas had come Christmas had gone and I heard nothing of the three guineas. But I was not easier for _that_. Far rather I _would_ have heard of it; for this indefinite approach of a loitering catastrophe gnawed and fretted my feelings. No Grecian audience ever waited with more shuddering horror for the anagnorisis[18] of the OEdipus than I for the explosion of my debt. Had I been less ignorant I should have proposed to mortgage my weekly allowance for the debt or to form a sinking fund for redeeming it; for the _weekly_ sum was nearly five per cent on the entire debt. But I had a mysterious awe of ever alluding to it. This arose from my want of some confidential friend; whilst my grief pointed continually to the remembrance--that _so_ it had not always been. But was not the bookseller to blame in suffering a child scarcely seven years old to contract such a debt? Not in the least. He was both a rich man who could not possibly care for my trifling custom and notoriously an honourable man. Indeed the money which I myself spent every week in books would reasonably have caused him to presume that so small a sum as three guineas might well be authorized by my family. He stood however on plainer ground. For my guardian who was very indolent (as people chose to call it ) that is like his little melancholy ward spent all his time in reading often enough would send me to the bookseller's with a written order for books. This was to prevent my forgetting. But when he found that such a thing as ""forgetting"" in the case of a book was wholly out of the question for me the trouble of writing was dismissed. And thus I had become factor-general on the part of my guardian both for _his_ books and for such as were wanted on my own account in the natural course of my education. My private ""little account"" had therefore in fact flowed homewards at Christmas not (as I anticipated) in the shape of an independent current but as a little tributary rill that was lost in the waters of some more important river. This I now know but could not then have known with any certainty. So far however the affair would gradually have sunk out of my anxieties as time wore on. But there was another item in the case which from the excess of my ignorance preyed upon my spirits far more keenly; and this keeping itself alive kept also the other incident alive. With respect to the debt I was not so ignorant as to think it of much danger by the mere amount: my own allowance furnished a scale for preventing _that_ mistake: it was the principle the having presumed to contract debts on my own account that I feared to have exposed. But this other case was a ground for anxiety even as regarded the amount; not really; but under the jesting representation made to me which I (as ever before and after) swallowed in perfect faith. Amongst the books which I had bought all English was a history of Great Britain commencing of course with Brutus and a thousand years of impossibilities; these fables being generously thrown in as a little gratuitous _extra_ to the mass of truths which were to follow. This was to be completed in sixty or eighty parts I believe. But there was another work left more indefinite as to its ultimate extent and which from its nature seemed to imply a far wider range. It was a general history of navigation supported by a vast body of voyages. Now when I considered with myself what a huge thing the sea was and that so many thousands of captains commodores admirals were eternally running up and down it and scoring lines upon its face so rankly that in some of the main ""streets"" and ""squares"" (as one might call them) their tracks would blend into one undistinguishable blot --I began to fear that such a work tended to infinity. What was little England to the universal sea? And yet _that_ went perhaps to fourscore parts. Not enduring the uncertainty that now besieged my tranquillity I resolved to know the worst; and on a day ever memorable to me I went down to the bookseller's. He was a mild elderly man and to myself had always shown a kind indulgent manner. Partly perhaps he had been struck by my extreme gravity; and partly during the many conversations I had with him on occasion of my guardian's orders for books with my laughable simplicity. But there was another reason which had early won for me his paternal regard. For the first three or four months I had found Latin something of a drudgery; and the incident which for ever knocked away the ""shores "" at that time preventing my launch upon the general bosom of Latin literature was this:--One day the bookseller took down a Beza's _Latin Testament_; and opening it asked me to translate for him the chapter which he pointed to. I was struck by perceiving that it was the great chapter of St Paul on the grave and resurrection. I had never seen a Latin version: yet from the simplicity of the scriptural style in _any_ translation (though Beza's is far from good) I could not well have failed in construing. But as it happened to be this particular chapter which in English I had read again and again with so passionate a sense of its grandeur I read it off with a fluency and effect like some great opera-singer uttering a rapturous _bravura_. My kind old friend expressed himself gr
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tified making me a present of the book as a mark of his approbation. And it is remarkable that from this moment when the deep memory of the English words had forced me into seeing the precise correspondence of the two concurrent streams--Latin and English--never again did any difficulty arise to check the velocity of my progress in this particular language. At less than eleven years of age when as yet I was a very indifferent Grecian I had become a brilliant master of Latinity as my Alcaics and Choriambics remain to testify: and the whole occasion of a change so memorable to a boy was this casual summons to translate a composition with which my heart was filled. Ever after this he showed me a caressing kindness and so condescendingly that generally he would leave any people for a moment with whom he was engaged to come and speak to me. On this fatal day however for such it proved to me he could not do this. He saw me indeed and nodded but could not leave a party of elderly strangers. This accident threw me unavoidably upon one of his young people. Now this was a market-day; and there was a press of country people present whom I did not wish to hear my question. Never did human creature with his heart palpitating at Delphi for the solution of some killing mystery stand before the priestess of the oracle with lips that moved more sadly than mine when now advancing to a smiling young man at a desk. His answer was to decide though I could not exactly know _that_ whether for the next two years I was to have an hour of peace. He was a handsome good-natured young man but full of fun and frolic; and I dare say was amused with what must have seemed to _him_ the absurd anxiety of my features. I described the work to him and he understood me at once: how many volumes did he think it would extend to? There was a whimsical expression perhaps of drollery about his eyes but which unhappily under my preconceptions I translated into scorn as he replied --""How may volumes? Oh! really I can't say maybe a matter of 15 000 be the same more or less."" ""_More?_"" I said in horror altogether neglecting the contingency of ""less."" ""Why "" he said ""we can't settle these things to a nicety. But considering the subject "" [ay _that_ was the very thing which I myself considered ] ""I should say there might be some trifle over as suppose 400 or 500 volumes be the same more or less."" What then here there might be supplements to supplements--the work might positively _never_ end. On one pretence or another if an author or publisher might add 500 volumes he might add another round 15 000. Indeed it strikes one even now that by the time all the one-legged commodores and yellow admirals of that generation had exhausted their long yarns another generation would have grown another crop of the same gallant spinners. I asked no more but slunk out of the shop and never again entered it with cheerfulness or propounded any frank questions as heretofore. For I was now seriously afraid of pointing attention to myself as one that by having purchased some numbers and obtained others on credit had silently contracted an engagement to take all the rest though they should stretch to the crack of doom. Certainly I had never heard of a work that extended to 15 000 volumes; but still there was no natural impossibility that it should; and if in any case in none so reasonably as one upon the inexhaustible sea. Besides any slight mistake as to the letter of the number could not affect the horror of the final prospect. I saw by the imprint and I heard that this work emanated from London a vast centre of mystery to me and the more so as a thing unseen at any time by my eyes and nearly 200 miles distant. I felt the fatal truth that here was a ghostly cobweb radiating into all the provinces from the mighty metropolis. I secretly had trodden upon the outer circumference had damaged or deranged the fine threads and links --concealment or reparation there could be none. Slowly perhaps but surely the vibration would travel back to London. The ancient spider that sat there at the centre would rush along the network through all longitudes and latitudes until he found the responsible caitiff author of so much mischief. Even with less ignorance than mine there _was_ something to appal a child's imagination in the vast systematic machinery by which any elaborate work could disperse itself could levy money could put questions and get answers--all in profound silence nay even in darkness--searching every nook of every town and of every hamlet in so populous a kingdom. I had some dim terrors also connected with the Stationers' Company. I had often observed them in popular works threatening unknown men with unknown chastisements for offences equally unknown; nay to myself absolutely inconceivable. Could _I_ be the mysterious criminal so long pointed out as it were in prophecy? I figured the stationers doubtless all powerful men pulling at one rope and my unhappy self hanging at the other end. But an image which seems now even more ludicrous than the rest at that time was the one most connected with the revival of my grief. It occurred to my subtlety that the Stationers' Company or any other company could not possibly demand the money until they had delivered the volumes. And as no man could say that I had ever positively refused to receive them they would have no pretence for not accomplishing this delivery in a civil manner. Unless I should turn out to be no customer at all at present it was clear that I had a right to be considered a most excellent customer; one in fact who had given an order for fifteen thousand volumes. Then rose up before me this great opera-house ""scena"" of the delivery. There would be a ring at the front door. A waggoner in the front with a bland voice would ask for ""a young gentleman who had given an order to _their_ house."" Looking out I should perceive a procession of carts and waggons all advancing in measured movements; each in turn would present its rear deliver its cargo of volumes by shooting them like a load of coals on the lawn and wheel off to the rear by way of clearing the road for its successors. Then the impossibility of even asking the servants to cover with sheets or counterpanes or tablecloths such a mountainous such a ""star-y-pointing"" record of my past offences lying in so conspicuous a situation! Men would not know my guilt merely they would see it. But the reason why this form of the consequences so much more than any other stuck by my imagination was that it connected itself with one of the Arabian nights which had particularly interested myself and my sister. It was that tale where a young porter having his ropes about his person had stumbled into the special ""preserve"" of some old magician. He finds a beautiful lady imprisoned to whom (and not without prospects of success) he recommends himself as a suitor more in harmony with her own years than a withered magician. At this crisis the magician returns. The young man bolts and for that day successfully; but unluckily he leaves his ropes behind. Next morning he hears the magician too honest by half enquiring at the front door with much expression of condolence for the unfortunate young man who had lost his ropes in his own zenana. Upon this story I used to amuse my sister by ventriloquizing to the magician from the lips of the trembling young man--""Oh Mr Magician these ropes cannot be mine! They are far too good; and one wouldn't like you know to rob some other poor young man. If you please Mr Magician I never had money enough to buy so beautiful a set of ropes."" But argument is thrown away upon a magician and off he sets on his travels with the young porter--not forgetting to take the ropes along with him. Here now was the case that had once seemed so impressive to me in a mere fiction from a far-distant age and land literally reproduced in myself. For what did it matter whether a magician dunned one with old ropes for his engines of torture or Stationers' Hall with 15 000 volumes (in the rear of which there might also be ropes?) Should _I_ have ventriloquized would my sister have laughed had either of us but guessed the possibility that I myself and within one twelve months and alas! standing alone in the world as regarded _confidential_ counsel should repeat within my own inner experience the shadowy panic of the young Bagdat intruder upon the privacy of magicians? It appeared then that I had been reading a legend concerning myself in the _Arabian Nights_. I had been contemplated in types a thousand years before on the banks of the Tigris. It was horror and grief that prompted that thought. Oh heavens! that the misery of a child should by possibility become the laughter of adults!--that even I the sufferer should be capable of amusing myself as if it had been a jest with what for three years had constituted the secret affliction of my life and its eternal trepidation--like the ticking of a death-watch to patients lying awake in the plague. I durst ask no counsel; there was no one to ask. Possibly my sister could lave given me none in a case which neither of us should have understood and where to seek for information from others would have been at once to betray the whole reason for seeking it. But if no advice she would have given me her pity and the expression of her endless love; and with the relief of sympathy that heals for a season all distresses she would have given me that exquisite luxury--the knowledge that having parted with my secret yet also I had _not_ parted with it since it was in the power only of one that could much less betray me than I could betray myself. At this time that is about the year when I suffered most I was reading Cæsar. Oh laurelled scholar--sun-bright intellect--""foremost man of all this world""--how often did I make out of thy immortal volume a pillow to support my wearied brow as at evening on my homeward road I used to turn into some silent field where I might give way unobserved to the reveries which besieged me! I wondered and found no end of wondering at the revolution that one short year had made in my happiness. I wondered that such billows _could_ overtake me! At the beginning of that year how radiantly happy! At the end how insupportably alone! ""Into what depth thou see'st From what height fallen."" For ever I searched the abysses with some wandering thoughts unintelligible to myself. For ever I dallied with some obscure notion how my sister's love might be made in some dim way available for delivering me from misery; or else how the misery I had suffered and was suffering might be made in some way equally dim the ransom for winning back her love. * * * * * Here pause reader! Imagine yourself seated in some cloud-scaling swing oscillating under the impulse of lunatic hands; for the strength of lunacy may belong to human dreams the fearful caprice of lunacy and the malice of lunacy whilst the _victim_ of those dreams may be all the more certainly removed from lunacy; even as a bridge gathers cohesion and strength from the increasing resistance into which it is forced by increasing pressure. Seated in such a swing fast as you reach the lowest point of depression may you rely on racing up to a starry altitude of corresponding ascent. Ups and downs you will see heights and depths in our fiery course together such as will sometimes tempt you to look shyly and suspiciously at me your guide and the ruler of the oscillations. Here at the point where I have called a halt the reader has reached the lowest depth in my nursery afflictions. From that point according to the principles of _art_ which govern the movement of these Confessions I had meant to launch him upwards through the whole arch of ascending visions which seemed requisite to balance the sweep downwards so recently described in his course. But accidents of the press have made it impossible to accomplish this purpose in the present month's journal. There is reason to regret that the advantages of position which were essential to the full effect of passages planned for equipoise and mutual resistance have thus been lost. Meantime upon the principle of the mariner who rigs a _jury_-mast in default of his regular spars I find my resource in a sort of ""jury"" peroration--not sufficient in the way of a balance by its _proportions_ but sufficient to indicate the _quality_ of the balance which I had contemplated. He who has _really_ read the preceding parts of these present Confessions will be aware that a stricter scrutiny of the past such as was natural after the whole economy of the dreaming faculty had been convulsed beyond all precedents on record led me to the conviction that not one agency but two agencies had co-operated to the tremendous result. The nursery experience had been the ally and the natural co-efficient of the opium. For that reason it was that the nursery experience has been narrated. Logically it bears the very same relation to the convulsions of the dreaming faculty as the opium. The idealizing tendency existed in the dream-theatre of my childhood; but the preternatural strength of its action and colouring was first developed after the confluence of the _two_ causes. The reader must suppose me at Oxford: twelve years and a half are gone by; I am in the glory of youthful happiness; but I have now first tampered with opium; and now first the agitations of my childhood reopened in strength now first they swept in upon the brain with power and the grandeur of recovered life under the separate and the concurring inspirations of opium. Once again after twelve years' interval the nursery of my childhood expanded before me--my sister was moaning in bed--I was beginning to be restless with fears not intelligible to myself. Once again the nurse but now dilated to colossal proportions stood as upon some Grecian stage with her uplifted hand and like the superb Medea standing alone with her children in the nursery at Corinth [19] smote me senseless to the ground. Again I was in the chamber with my sister's corpse--again the pomps of life rose up in silence the glory of summer the frost of death. Dream formed itself mysteriously within dream; within these Oxford dreams remoulded itself continually the trance in my sister's chamber --the blue heavens the everlasting vault the soaring billows the throne steeped in the thought (but not the sight) of ""Him that sate thereon;"" the flight the pursuit the irrecoverable steps of my return to earth. Once more the funeral procession gathered; the priest in his white surplice stood waiting with a book in his hand by the side of an open grave the sacristan with his shovel; the coffin sank; the _dust to dust_ descended. Again I was in the church on a heavenly Sunday morning. The golden sunlight of God slept amongst the heads of his apostles his martyrs his saints; the fragment from the litany--the fragment from the clouds--awoke again the lawny beds that went up to scale the heavens--awoke again the shadowy arms that moved downwards to meet them. Once again arose the swell of the anthem--the burst of the Hallelujah chorus--the storm--the trampling movement of the choral passion--the agitation of my own trembling sympathy--the tumult of the choir--the wrath of the organ. Once more I that wallowed became he that rose up to the clouds. And now in Oxford all was bound up into unity; the first state and the last were melted into each other as in some sunny glorifying haze. For high above my own station hovered a gleaming host of heavenly beings surrounding the pillows of the dying children. And such beings sympathize equally with sorrow that grovels and with sorrow that soars. Such beings pity alike the children that are languishing in death and the children that live only to languish in tears. NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. III. DRYDEN. Sir Walter Scott's admirable Life of Dryden concludes with this passage:--""I have thus detailed the life and offered some remarks on the literary character of JOHN DRYDEN; who educated in a pedantic taste and a fanatical religion was destined if not to give laws to the stage of England at least to defend its liberties; to improve burlesque into satire; to free translation from the fetters of verbal metaphrase and exclude from it the license of paraphrase; to teach posterity the powerful and varied poetical harmony of which their language was capable; to give an example of the lyric ode of unapproached excellence; and to leave a name SECOND ONLY TO THOSE OF MILTON AND OF SHAKSPEARE."" Two names we miss and muse where the immortal author of Waverley would have placed them; not surely below Dryden's--those of CHAUCER and SPENSER. Let those Four names form a constellation--and the star Dryden large and bright though it be must not be looked for in the same region of the heavens. First in the second order of English poets--let glorious John keep the place assigned him by the greatest of Scotsmen. We desire not that he shall vacate the throne. But between the first order and the second let that be remembered which seems here to have been forgotten that immeasurable spaces intervene. ""Second only to Shakspeare and Milton "" implies near approach to them of another greatness inferior but in degree and Dryden is thus lifted up in our imagination into the sphere of the Creators. On such mention of Milton let us converse about him for a short half hour and then venture to descend on Dryden not with precipitation but as in a balloon. To an Englishman recollecting the poetical glories of his country the Seventeenth Century often appears as the mother of one great name--MILTON. Original and mighty poets express at its highest the mind of their time as it is localized on their own soil. With Elizabeth the splendour of the feudal and chivalrous ages for England finally sets. A world expires and erelong a new world rises. The Wars which signalize the new period contrast deeply with those which heretofore tore the land. Those were the factions of high lineages. Now thought seizes the weapons of earthly warfare. The rights vesting in an English subject by the statutes of the country--the rights vesting in man as the subject of civil government by the laws of God and nature are scanned by awakened reason and put arms into men's hands. The highest of all the interests of the human being--higher than all others as eternity excels time--Religion--is equally debated. The Protestant church is beleaguered by hostile sects--the Reformation subjected to the demand for a more searching and effective reform. Creed worship ecclesiastical discipline and government all come into debate. A thraldom of opinion--a bondage of authority that held for many centuries the nation bound together in no powerless union is upon the sudden broken up. Men will know why they obey and why they believe; and human laws and divine truths are searched as far as the wit of man is capable to the roots. It is the spirit of the new time that has broken forth and begins ambitiously and riotously to try its powers but nobly magnanimously and heroically too. MILTON owned and showed himself a son of the time. Gifted with powers eminently fitted for severe investigation--apt for learning and learned beyond most men--of a temper adverse and rebellious to an assumed and ungrounded control--large-hearted and large-minded to comprehend the diverse interests of men--personally fearless--devout in the highest and boldest sense of the word; namely as acknowledging no supreme law but from heaven and as confiding in the immediate communication of divine assistance to the faithful servants of heaven--possessing moreover in amplest measure that peculiar endowment of sovereign poets which enables them to stand up as the teachers of a lofty and tender wisdom as moral prophets to the species the clear faculty of profound self-inspection--he was prepared to share in the intellectual strife and change of that day even had some interposing pacific angel charmed away from the bosom of the land all other warfare and revolution--and to shine in that age's work even had the muse never smiled upon his cradled forehead never laid the magical murmurs of song on his chosen lips. He was a politician a theologian of his age--amidst the demolition of established things the clang of arms and the streaming of blood whether in the field or upon the scaffold a thinker and a writer. There are times that naturally produce real others that naturally produce imitative poetry. Tranquil stagnating times produce the imitative; times that rouse in man self-consciousnesses produce the real. All great poetry has a moral foundation. It is imagination building upon the great deep universal eternal human will. Therefore profound sympathy with man and profound intelligence of man aided by or growing out of that profound sympathy is vital to the true poet. But in stagnating times both sympathy with man sleeps and the disclosure of man sleeps. Troubled times bring out humanity--show its terrible depths--also its might and grandeur--both ways its truth. A great poet seems to require his birth in an age when there are about him great self-revelations of man for his vaticination. Moreover his own particular being is more deeply and strongly stirred and shown to him in such a time. But the moral tempest may be too violent for poetry--as the Civil War of the Roses appeared to blast it and all letters--that of the Parliament contrariwise. The intellect of Milton in the _Paradise Lost_ shows that it had seen ""the giant-world enraged."" Happily for the literary fame of his country--for the solid exaltation in these latter ages of the sublime art which he cultivated--for the lovers of poetry who by inheritance or by acquisition speak the masculine and expressive language which he still ennobled--for the serene fame of the august poet himself--the political repose which a new change (the restoration of detruded and exiled royalty to its ancestral throne) spread over the land by shutting up the public hopes of the civil and ecclesiastical republican in despair and by crushing his faction in the dust gave him back in the visionary blindness of undecaying age to ""the still air of delightful studies "" in order that in seclusion from all ""barbarous dissonance "" he might achieve the work destined to him from the beginning--not less than the greatest ever achieved by man. Educated by such a strife to power--and not more sublimely gifted than strenuously exercised--Milton had constantly carried in his soul the twofold consciousness of the highest destination. He knew himself born a great poet; and the names of great poets sounding through all time rang in his ears. What Homer was to his people and to his language he would be to his; and this was the lower vocation--glorious as earthly things may be glorious--and self-respecting while he thought of his own head as of one that shall be laurel-bound; yet magnanimous and public-spirited while he trusted to shed upon his language and upon his country the beams of his own fame. This we say was his lower vocation taken among thoughts and feelings high but merely human. But a higher one accompanied it. The sense of a sanctity native to the human soul and indestructible--the assiduous hallowing of himself and of all his powers by religious offices that seek nothing lower than communion with the fountain-head of all holiness and of all good. And Milton labouring ""in the eye of his great taskmaster""--trained by all recluse and silent studies--trained by the turmoil raging around him of the times and by his own share in the general contention--according to the self-dedication of his mind trained within the temple--he stricken with darkness and amidst the gloom of extinguished earthly hopes assumed the singing robes of the poet. The purpose of the Paradise Lost is wholly religious. He strikes the loudest and at the same time the sweetest-toned harp of the Muse with the hand of a Christian theologian. He girds up all the highest powers of the human mind to wrestling with the most arduous question with which the human faculties can engage--the all-involving question--How is the world governed? Do we live under chance or fate or Providence? Is there a God? And is he holy loving wise and just? He will ""Assert eternal providence And justify the ways of God to man."" The justifying answer he reads in the Scriptures. Man fell tempted from without by another but by the act of his own free-will and by his own choice. Thus according to the theology of Milton is the divine Rule of the universe completely justified in the sin into which man has fallen--in the punishment which has fallen upon man. The Justice of God is cleared. And his Love? That shines out when man has perversely fallen by the Covenant of Mercy by finding out for him a Redeemer. And thus the two events in the history of mankind which the Scriptures present as infinitely surpassing all others in importance which are cardinal to the destinies of the human race upon which all our woe and in the highest sense all our weal are hung become the subject of the work--the Fall of man consoled by the promise and undertaking of his Redemption. The narrative of the Fall delivered with an awful and a pathetic simplicity to us in a few words in the first chapter of Genesis becomes accordingly the groundwork of the Poem; and these few words with a few more scattered through the Scriptures and barely hinting Celestial transactions the War and Fall of the Angels are by a genius as daringly as powerfully creative expanded into the mighty dimensions of an Epic. That unspeakable hope foreshown to Adam as to be accomplished in distant generations pouring an exhilarating beam upon the darkness of man's self-wrought destruction which saves the catastrophe of the poem from utter despair and which tranquillizes the sadness has to be interwoven in the poet's narrative of the Fall. How stupendous the art that has disposed and ordered the immensity!--comprehended the complexity of the subject into a clearly harmonized musically proportionate Whole! Unless the Paradise Lost had risen from the soul of Milton as a hymn--unless he had begun to sing as a worshipper with his hands uplifted before the altar of incense the choice of the subject would have been more than bold--it would have been the daring of presumption--an act of impiety. For he will put in dialogue God the Father and God the Son--disclosing their supreme counsels. He has prayed to the Third Person of the Godhead for light and succour. If this were a fetch of human wit it was in the austere zealot and puritan a mockery. To a devout Roman Catholic poet we could forgive every thing. For nursed among legends and visual representations of the invisible--panoplied in a childlike imposed faith from the access of impiety--his paternoster and his ave-marie more familiar to his lips than his bread almost so as their breath--the most audacious representations may come to him vividly and naturally without a scruple and without a thought. But Milton the purged the chastened a spiritual iconoclast drinking his faith by his own thirst on the waters of Zion a champion whose weapons from the armoury of God ""are given him tempered""--he to holy things cannot lay other than an awful hand. We know that he believed himself under a peculiar guidance. Surely he had had visions of glory which when he designed the poem that would include scenes in heaven offered themselves again almost like very revelations. If we hesitate in believing this of him it is because we conceive in him a stern intellectual pride and strength which could not easily kneel to adore. But there we should greatly err. For he recognized in himself-- ""Self-knowing and from thence Magnanimous to correspond with heaven""-- that capacity of song which nothing but sacred Epos could satisfy. Diodati asks him--""_Quid studes?_"" and he answers--""_Mehercle immortalitatem!_"" This might persuade us that he finally chose the Fall of Man as he at first had chosen King Arthur. But not so. When Arthur dropped away from his purposes naturally displaced by the after-choice the will toward an Epic underwent an answerable revolution. The first subject was called by the ""longing after immortality."" But another longing or the longing after another immortality carried the will and the man to the second. The learning and the learned art of the _Paradise Lost_ concur in inclining us to look upon Milton as an artist rather than a worshipper. On closer consideration of its spirit we cannot think of his putting his hand to such a work without the inwardly felt conviction that _God was with him in it_. And what is the feeling with which a youthful mind first regards the _Paradise Lost_? A holy awe--something as if it were a second Bible. So too have felt towards it our great poets. Elwood the Quaker has told us but we cannot believe him that _he_ suggested to Milton the _Paradise Regained_! Hardly credible that being the natural sequel and complement of the _Paradise Lost_ it should not have occurred to Milton. Pray did the Quaker _suggest the treatment_? To conceive that man was virtually redeemed when Jesus had avouched by proof his perfect obedience was a view we think proper to spring in a religious mind. It is remarkable however certainly that the Atoning Sacrifice which in the _Paradise Lost_ is brought into the front of the Divine rule and of the poem in the _Paradise Regained_ hardly appears--if at all. In both you see the holy awe with which Milton shuns describing the scenes of the Passion. Between Adam and Michael on that ""top of speculation"" the Visions end at the Deluge. The Crucifixion falls amongst the recorded events and is told with few and sparing words. You _must_ think that the removal of the dread Crucifixion from the action of the _Paradise Regained_ recommended that action to the poet--contradicting Warburton who blames him as a poet for not having chosen the more stupendous action. Milton thus obtained further a perfect Greek simplicity of plan. The Crucifixion has always seemed profaned when any modern poet has dared to describe it. The _Samson Agonistes_ was you know Milton's last work. How suitable above all other subjects to the Hebrew soul within him! Their common blindness--the simplicity of character that is proper to a strong man--""the plain heroic magnitude of mind""--the absolute dependence on God that is to say trustful dependence brought out by blindness--the submission under the visiting hand of heaven provoked by Samson's own disobedience--God's especial selection of him _as his own_ a dedicated Nazarite--his call to be a national deliverer--All these combined to affect his devout imagination; while one might almost think that in the youthful Milton the same fancy had delighted in the prowess and exploits of Samson which rejoiced in the heroes of chivalrous fable. What are Dryden's works to these? How shall we compare Poet with Poet--Man with Man? Let us then turn to the other clauses in Sir Walter's eulogium and we shall be able to go along with him in much--not all--of what he affirms of his darling Dryden. He was verily A GREAT TRANSLATOR. But before speaking of his performances or of his principles in that Fine Art Translation let us say a few words on its range and power. It is indeed most desirable to have the gift of tongues though the ""myriad-minded"" man had but that of his own. There are people who can parley all the European languages even like so many natives and read you off-hand any strange-looking page be it even MS. you can submit to their eyes. Yet we believe they always most feelingly understand the ""old familiar faces"" of the words they got by heart in lisping them and that became a part of their being not by process of study but by that seeming inspiration through which childhood is ever joyfully acquiring multifarious lore in the spirit of love. In waking and sleeping dreams we speak our mother tongue. In it we make love--in it we say our prayers. Had he lived till he was fourscore John Leyden in the dotage of genius would have maundered by the banks of the Ganges in the Doric that charmed his ears among the murmurs of the Teviot. Heaven bless the man who invented Translation! Heaven bless Translators all--especially those who give us in English all thoughts rich and rare that took life in foreign attire and continue to charm human hearts and souls and minds in a change of light that shows them sometimes even more beautiful than when first they had a place among airy creatures! But methinks we hear s
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me wiseacre who is no wizard exclaim:--""Oh! to be enjoyed it must be read in the original!"" What! the Bible? You have no Hebrew and little Greek but surely you sometimes dip into the Old and into the New Testament. To treat the question more argumentatively let Prose Composition be divided into History Philosophy Oratory. In History Translation--say into English--is easiest and in all cases practicable. The information transferred is the chief thing asked even if Style be lost--with some writers a small with others no doubt a considerable with a few a great loss. But the facts that is the events and all the characters too can be turned over although one finer historical fact--the spirit of the country and time as breathing in the very Style of the artist may yet need not evaporate. The Translator however should be himself an historian or antiquary and should confine himself--as indeed if left to himself he will do--to the nation in whose fate he happens to have had awakened in him--by influences hard to tell and perhaps to himself unknown--the perpetual interest of a sympathy that endears to him above all others that especial region and the ages that like shadows have passed over it. In Philosophy the Translator's task is harder and it is higher; but its accomplishment is open to the zealous lover of truth. The whole philosophy must be thoroughly possessed by him or meanings will be lost from or imposed on the author--cases fatal both. Besides of all writers a philosopher most collects extensive and penetrating theories into chosen words. No dictionary--the soul only of the philosopher interprets these words. In the new language you must have great power and mastery to seize equivalents if there; if not to create them or to extricate yourself with circumlocutions that do not bewilder or mislead--precise and exquisite. Have we in our language many any such Translations? Not Taylor's or Sydenham's Plato--not Gillies's Aristotle. Coleridge is dead--but De Quincey is alive. In Oratory the Style is all in all. It is the _ipsissimus homo_. He who ""wielded at will that fierce democratic "" does not appear unless the thunder growl and the lightning dazzle. From what hand shall it fulmine over England as over Greece? Yet the matter the facts the order the logic are all easily enough to be transferred--not the passion and the splendour except by an orator and even hardly by him; but Brougham has grappled manfully with Demosthenes though he hath somewhat diminished the power of the Crown. But in Poetry. Ay there the difficulties grow--there all are collected--and one equal to all or nearly so is added--VERSE! Of all writers the poet is the most exquisite in his words. His creations revolve in them--live in them--breathe and burn. Shakspeare expresses this--""the poet's _pen_ turns them to shape."" Ariel and Lear and Hamlet are not except in the very words--their very own words. For the poet of all men feels most susceptibly sensitively perceptively acutely accurately clearly tenderly kindly--the contact of his mind with yours; and the words are the _medium of contact_! Yet most of the ILIAD may be transferred--for it is a history. The manners are easily depicted in a Translation--so is the wonderful thinking that remains to us therein from that remote lost world--and makes the substratum of the poem. In short that old world which Homer preserves can be shown in a Translation but _not Homer himself_. The simplicity and sweetness and majesty and the musical soul and art require Greek and old Greek. A translation into Attic Greek by Sophocles would not be Homer. Into modern English? Alas and alack-a-day! An English translator might better undertake Euripides than Sophocles and Sophocles than Æschylus. Æschylus Pindar Homer--these are the three terrors of Translation. Why? They are doubly so remote! Distant so far and distant so high! We should not ourselves much care for undertaking Apollonius Rhodius and Callimachus although the Alexandrian schoolmaster abounds in the poetical riches of the Greek tongue and the Cyrenaic hymnist has an unattainable spirit of grace and elastic step. Yet we could with a safe conscience try; because if less glory be attempted by the translator less can be lost for his original. Whereas if we let down Homer Pindar Æschylus we are lowering the heights of the human spirit--_crimen læsoe majestatis_. In poetry the absolutely creative power of the human spirit--that immense endowment and privilege of the human being--is at its height. Many view this endowment and privilege with scepticism--renouncing their own glory--denying themselves. Therefore it is always important in civilized times that the majesty and might of poetry be sustained--surrounded by a body-guard of opinion. In rude times it can take good care of itself. Then the king walks among the people safe in their faith and love. Now you tremble to diminish the reverence of that creation. But courage! All cannot read Greek and they are as fellow men of Homer entitled to as much of him as they can get. Chapman Pope Cowper Sotheby all taken together impress an Englishman (Scotsman included) who is no Grecian with a belief in greatness. And then for the perpetual feeding of his faith he has his own Chaucer Spenser Shakspeare Milton. Translation you see then O gracious perusers! has divers motives. One is ambitious. It is to help in giving the poet his due fame and that is a motive honourably sprung since it comes of the belief that the poet belongs to the species at large; and that accordingly his praise has not had its full reverberation until it has rebounded from all hearts. Of the same impulse but dealing justice in another direction is the wish that the less learned shall not from that accident forfeit their share of the common patrimony; and that surely is among the best of all reasons. A peculiar sort of zeal is to cultivate the vernacular literature by transplanting the great works of other more happily cultivated languages as we naturalize fair and useful exotics. This is an early thought and goes off as the country advances. Probably the different reasons of Translation would affect even materially the characters of Translation; or at least if they coexist the predominance of one over the other moving causes. The different purposes will even give different orders of Translators. To undertake to aid in diffusing the version of Homer to the ends of the West would ask an Englishman tolerably confident in his own powers. It breathed in the fiery spirit of George Chapman who having rolled out the Iliad in our stateliest numbers the Odyssey in more moderate strain and finally dispatched the Homeric _Minora_ begins his own Epilogue of three consecutive labours with ""The work that I WAS BORN TO DO IS DONE!"" A little reflection will suggest to many a wishing Translator that HE is in danger of rather doing injustice to the celebrity of an admired original. Incapables! refrain desist be dumb. The use of Translations to the literature that has received them has been questioned. The native genius and energies of a country may it has been feared be oppressed by the importation of wealth and luxuries. The Hygeian maxim to remain poor for the sake of health and strength is hard to act upon. In another sense we might rather look upon the introduced strangers as dangerous rivals who rouse us to woo with better devotion and so are useful. Besides it looks like a timid policy to refuse to know what our fellows have done. Milton was not subdued but inflamed by conversing with _all_ the great originals. Burns did not the less Dorically tune his reed because Pope had sounded in his ear echoes of the Scamandrian trumpet-blast. The truer and more encouraging doctrine rather seems to be that if the land has in its mould the right nurture of genius genius will strike its roots and lift its flowers. In the mean time it is to be considered against such a policy of jealous protection that _not_ the influence on the vernacular literature is the first legitimate claim but the gain of enlightenment for the human mind intent upon enlarging itself by bringing under ken _every where_ that which itself has been and that which itself has done _every where_. The great distinction which we have observed in these remarks on Translation between compositions in Prose and Verse seems here to demand from us some remarks. A question of the very highest importance in literature arises--can the Fictitious which the poet relates in Verse be as well related in Prose? The voice of all ages countries languages answers--NO! The literature of every civilized nation presents this phenomenon--a division broad and deep running through it and marked by that distinction in the musical structure of discourse which we habitually designate by the names Prose and Verse. The distinction as we all know is as decided in the substance itself of the composition as it is in the musical putting together of the words. Homer Pindar Alcæus Æschylus Sophocles Euripides Aristophanes or Lucretius Virgil Horace Ovid upon the one side; and upon the other Herodotus and Thucydides Demosthenes Plato and the Stagyrite--or under another still fortunate sky Livy Cæsar Tacitus Cicero and Seneca--here bare names of the poets on the one side of the writers of prose on the other express alike to our soberest judgment and to our most awakened enthusiasm nothing less than two distinct _Worlds of Thinking_. How so commanding so permeating so vivifying and so transfusing a power should reside in a fact of human speech seemingly so slight and slender as that ruled and mechanical adjustment of a few syllables which we call a verse is perhaps not explicable by our philosophy; but of the power itself the uniform history of mankind leaves us no liberty to doubt. Yet may we understand something of this wonderful agency; and conceive how the new and strange wealth of music brought out from words of which the speaker in verse finds himself the privileged master may lift up as on wings his courage to think and utter. We may suppose that the sweet and melting or the solemn the prolonged the proud swell or flow or fall of his own numbers may surprise his own ear and seize his own soul with unexpected emotions; and that off his guard and unawares and as grave ancient writers have said in a sort of sacred madness he may be hurried into inventions of greatness of wonder and beauty which would have remained for ever locked up and forbidden to the colder and more reserved temper which seems fittingly to accompany prose the accustomed language of Reason. Versification is Measure and it is Harmony. If you hear the measure you listen expectantly and there is a recurring pleasure in the fulfilment of that expectation. But the pleasure thus afforded would soon be exhausted did not the power of Harmony tell. That is a musical pleasure which cannot be exhausted. Here then is a reason why the natural music of speech shall be elaborated to its height in verse. You assume that the mind of the orator the historian the philosopher is given up wholly to the truth of his matter. Therefore in him the palpable study of harmonious periods (as in Isocrates) impairs your confidence in his earnestness and sincerity. Not so we venture to say in the case of the poet. In his composition the very law of the verse instals the sound in a sort of mysterious sovereignty over the sense. He hurries or he protracts--he swells notes as of an organ he attenuates them as of a flute. He seeks in the sound of words their power--and their power is great--to paint notions and things--to imitate the twanging of a bow the hissing of an arrow the roaring of the winds the weltering of the waves. His verse laughs with merriment and wails with sorrow; and that which would in a grave writer of prose be frivolous be sonorous trifles crowns his muse with praise. Consequences follow deeply penetrating into the substance of the whole composition which is thus delivered up in a manner unknown to prose to the wonder-working power of a delighted inspiration. We know if any one begins to recite a passage of Milton that we expect to hear a charm of sound which we never for a moment dream of hearing in prose--a new and a more beautiful speech. For having made one mode of speech more musical than another we have placed it more immediately under the dominion of the faculty by which we are cognizant of beauty. Accordingly we feel and know and universally admit although Eloquence is musical that Poetry far excels Eloquence in its alliance with the beautiful. Music is beauty addressing itself to the sense of hearing and therefore the beautiful is showered upon poetry and therein everlastingly enshrined. Verse then is a language seized upon by the soul gratifying itself in the indulgence of its own emotions under a law of beauty. Thus we have seen a power introduced into human discourse by a cause that hardly promised such wonderful effects. A modulation of sounds a musical rising and falling and flowing fitted for expressing a fervour a boldness an enthusiasm in the thinking suddenly transforms the whole character of composition creates or infuses a new spirit of thought. A kind of literature is produced of a peculiar and that the highest order--Poetry. We have seen this take many beautiful august and imposing forms--the majesty of the Epopeia--the pathetic energy of the Tragic Drama--the rapturous exaltation and prodigal splendour of the Lyrical Ode. The names of the species recal the names of the great works belonging to each and of the great masters whose memory the works have made immortal. Those masters of the divine art thus breathing delight are numbered among the loftiest and most powerful spirits. Nations illustrious in peace and war heroic in character and action founders of stable and flourishing republics and empires have set on the front of their renown the fame of having produced this or that other glorious poem. What wonder since the poet in forms given by imagination embodies the profoundest the loftiest the tenderest the innermost acts and movements of that soul which lives in every human bosom? What wonder if each of us loves the poet when in his work as in a celestial mirror each of us beholds _himself_ naturally and truly pictured and yet ennobled? What wonder if the nation proud of itself of its position and of its memories exalts its own darling son of song who may have fixed in a precious throng of imperishable words the peculiar spirit of thinking of loving of daring which has made the nation what it has been is and hopes long to be? What wonder if humankind when mighty ages have departed and languages once cultivated in their beauty have ceased from being spoken should bring across lands and seas crowns of undying laurels to cast at the feet of some awful poet who cannot die? In whose true capacious and prophetic mind the coming civilization of his own people was long beforehand anticipated and predisposed? And in whose antique verse we the offspring of other ages and tongues and races drink still the freshly-flowing and ever-living waters of original and unexhausted humanity? Oh! how shall such strains as these in which each single word and syllable has in itself a spell more potent by its position survive in undiminished force and beauty the art that would fain spirit them away out of one language which they have breathed all life long into another which they have to learn to love? Lived there ever such a magician? Never. There is reason for sadness in the above little paragraph. But after due rumination let us forget it and proceed. Hear Dryden prosing away upon paraphrase and metaphrase and imitation in his very best style. ""All translation I suppose may be reduced to these three heads--First that of metaphrase or turning an author word by word and line by line from one language into another. Thus or near this manner was Horace his _Art of Poetry_ translated by Ben Jonson. The second way is that of paraphrase or translation with latitude where the author is kept in view by the translator so as never to be lost but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense; and that too is admitted to be amplified but not altered. Such is Mr Waller's translation of Virgil's fourth Æneid. The third way is that of imitation where the translator (if now he has not lost that name) assumes the liberty not only to vary from the words and sense but to forsake them both as he sees occasion and taking only some general hints from the original to run divisions on the ground-work as he pleases. Such is Mr Cowley's practice in turning two odes of Pindar and one of Horace into English. ""Concerning the first of these methods our master Horace has given us this caution-- 'Nec verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus Interpres'------ 'Nor word for word too faithfully translate ' as the Earl of Roscommon has excellently rendered it. 'Too faithfully is indeed pedantically.' It is a faith like that which proceeds from superstition blind and zealous. Take it in the expression of Sir John Denham to Sir Richard Fanshaw on his version of the _Pastor Fido_-- 'That servile path thou nobly dost decline Of tracing word by word and line by line: A new and nobler way thou dost pursue To make translations and translators too; They but preserve the ashes thou the flame True to his sense but truer to his fame.' ""It is almost impossible to translate verbally and well at the same time; for the Latin (a most severe and compendious language) often expresses that in one word which either the barbarity or the narrowness of modern tongues cannot supply in more. It is frequent also that the conceit is couched in some expression which will be lost in English-- 'Aque iidem venti vela fidemque ferent.' What poet of our nation is so happy as to express this thought literally in English and to strike wit or almost sense out of it? ""In short the verbal copier is encumbered with so many difficulties at once that he can never disentangle himself from them all. He is to consider at the same time the thought of his author and his words and to find out the counterpart to each in another language; and besides this he is to confine himself to the compass of numbers and the slavery of rhyme. It is much like dancing on ropes with fettered legs; a man may shun a fall by using caution but the gracefulness of motion is not to be expected; and when we have said the best of it it is but a foolish task for no sober man would put himself into a danger for the applause of escaping without breaking his neck. We see Ben Jonson could not avoid obscurity in his literal translation of Horace attempted in the same compass of lines; nay Horace himself could scarce have done it to a Greek poet 'Brevis esse laboro obscurus fio:' either perspicuity or gracefulness will frequently be wanting. Horace has indeed avoided both these rocks in his translation of the three first lines of Homer's _Odyssey_ which he has contracted into two:-- 'Dic mihi musa virum captæ post tempora Trojæ Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes. 'Muse speak the man who since the siege of Troy So many towns such change of manners saw.' But then the sufferings of Ulysses which are a considerable part of that sentence are omitted-- [Greek: Hos mala polla Plachthê.] The consideration of these difficulties in a servile literal translation not long since made two of our famous wits Sir John Denham and Mr Cowley to contrive another way of turning authors into our tongue called by the latter of them imitation. As they were friends I suppose they communicated their thoughts on this subject to each other; and therefore their reasons for it are little different though the practice of one is much more moderate. I take imitation of an author in their sense to be an endeavour of a later poet to write like one who has written before him on the same subject; that is not to translate his words or to be confined to his sense but only to set him as a pattern and to write as he supposes that author would have done had he lived in our age and in our country. Yet I dare not say that either of them have carried this libertine way of rendering authors (as Mr Cowley calls it) so far as my definition reaches for in the Pindaric Odes the customs and ceremonies of ancient Greece are still preserved. But I know not what mischief may arise hereafter from the example of such an innovation when writers of unequal parts to him shall imitate so bold an undertaking. To add and to diminish what we please in the way avowed by him ought only to be granted to Mr Cowley and that too only in his translation of Pindar; because he alone was able to make him amends by giving him better of his own whenever he refused his author's thoughts. Pindar is generally known to be a dark writer to want connexion (I mean as to our understanding ) to soar out of sight and to leave his reader at a gaze. So wild and ungovernable a poet cannot be translated literally; his genius is too strong to bear a chain and Samson-like he shakes it off. A genius so elevated and unconfixed as Mr Cowley's was but necessary to make Pindar speak English and that was to be performed by no other way than imitation. But if Virgil or Ovid or any regular intelligible authors be thus used it is no longer to be called their work when neither the thoughts nor words are drawn from the original; but instead of them there is something new produced which is almost the creation of another hand. By this way it is true somewhat that is excellent may be invented perhaps more excellent than the first design; though Virgil must be still excepted when that perhaps takes place. Yet he who is inquisitive to know an author's thoughts will be disappointed in his expectation; and it is not always that a man will be contented to have a present made him when he expects the payment of a debt. To state it fairly; imitation of an author is the most advantageous way for a translator to show himself but the greatest wrong which can be done to the memory and reputation of the dead. Sir John Denham (who advised more liberty than he took himself) gives his reason for his innovation in his admirable preface before the translation of the second Æneid. 'Poetry is of so subtle a spirit that in pouring out of one language into another it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the _transfusion_ there will remain nothing but a _caput mortuum_.' I confess this argument holds good against a literal translation; but who defends it? Imitation and verbal version are in my opinion the two extremes which ought to be avoided; and therefore when I have proposed the mean betwixt them it will be seen how far this argument will reach. ""No man is capable of translating poetry who besides a genius to that art is not a master both of his author's language and of his own; nor must we understand the language only of the poet but his particular turn of thoughts and expression which are the characters that distinguish and as it were individuate him from all other writers. When we are come thus far it is time to look into ourselves to conform our genius to his to give his thought either the same turn if our tongue will bear it or if not to vary but the dress not to alter or destroy the substance. The like care must be taken of the more outward ornaments--the words. When they appear (which is but seldom) literally graceful it were an injury to the author that they should be changed. But since every language is so full of its own proprieties that what is beautiful in one is often barbarous nay sometimes nonsense in another it would be unreasonable to limit a translator to the narrow compass of his author's words; it is enough if he choose out some expression which does not vitiate the sense. I suppose he may stretch his chain to such a latitude but by innovation of thoughts methinks he breaks it. By this means the spirit of an author may be transfused and yet not lost; and thus it is plain that the reason alleged by Sir John Denham has no further force than the expression; for thought if it be translated truly cannot be lost in another language; but the words that convey it to our apprehension (which are the image and ornament of that thought) may be so ill chosen as to make it appear in an unhandsome dress and rob it of its native lustre. There is therefore a liberty to be allowed for the expression; neither is it necessary that words and lines should be confined to the measure of the original. The sense of an author generally speaking is to be sacred and inviolable. If the fancy of Ovid be luxuriant it is his character to be so; and if I retrench it he is no longer Ovid. It will be replied that he receives advantage by this lopping of his superfluous branches but I rejoin that a translator has no such right. When a painter copies from the life I suppose he has no privilege to alter features and lineaments under pretence that his picture will look better: perhaps the face which he has drawn would be more exact if the eyes and nose were altered; but it is his business to make it resemble the original. In two cases only there may a seeming difficulty arise; that is if the thought be notoriously trivial or dishonest; but the same answer will serve for both that then they ought not to be translated-- 'Et qua Desperes tractata nitescere posse relinquas.' ""Thus I have ventured to give my opinion on this subject against the authority of two great men but I hope without offence to either of their memories; for I both loved them living and reverence them now they are dead. But if after what I have urged it be thought by better judges that the praise of a translation consists in adding new beauties to the piece thereby to recompense the loss which it sustains by change of language I shall be willing to be taught better and recant. In the meantime it seems to me that the true reason why we have so few versions which are tolerable is not from the too close pursuing of the author's sense but because that there are so few who have all the talents which are requisite for translation and that there is so little praise and so small encouragement for so considerable a part of learning."" We could write a useful commentary on each paragraph of that lively dissertation. The positions laid down are not in all their extent tenable; and Dryden himself in other places advocates principles of Translation altogether different from these and violates them in his practice by a thousand beauties as well as faults. We confine ourselves to one or two remarks. Dryden in assigning the qualifications of a poetical Translator seems to speak with due caution--""He must have a genius to the art."" How much then of the powers are asked in him which go to making the original poet? Not the great creative genius. In order effectively to translating the Song of Achilles he need not have been able to invent the character of Achilles or to delineate it if he found it as Homer might largely invented in tradition to his hands. But he must be the adequate critic of the Song full and whole. He must feel the Achilles whom Homer has given him through chilling blood and thrilling nerve and almost through shivering shuddering bone. Neither need he be inverse and word possibly the creator for thoughts of his own. That Homer is. He is not called upon to be in his own strength an audacious impetuous majestic and magnanimous thinker. It is enough if he have the sensibility the simplicity the sincerity the sympathy and the intellectual capacity to become all this on the strength of another. But if he could not create the thoughts neither could he upon his own behalf create the verbal and metrical expression of the thoughts; for in these last is the inspiration that brings into the light of existence both words and music. Yet nothing seems to hinder but that if endowed for perfectly accepting and appropriating the thoughts he may then become in secondary place inspired and a creator for the ""new utterance."" In all our observation of the various constitutions bestowed in different men upon the common human mind nothing appears to forbid that an exquisite and mastering faculty of language such as shall place the wealth of a mother-tongue at command and an exquisite ear and talent for melodious and significant numbers may be lodged in a spirit that is not gifted with original invention. Much rather the recognition of the compensating and separable way in which faculties are dealt would lead us to look from time to time for children of the Muse gifted for supereminent Translators. Do we not see engravers not themselves exalted and accomplished masters who yet absorb into their transcript the soul of the master? Dryden's phrase ""_have a genius_ "" seems to express this qualified gifting--the enthusiasm and the narrower creative faculty excellently given and kept alive and active by cultivation and exercise. Hoole's _Orlando Furioso_ and _Jerusalem Delivered_ are among the world's duller achievements in the art of Translation. They have obtained some favour of public opinion by the interest which will break through them and which they in their unambitious way singularly attest--the interest of the matter. What is the native deficiency which extinguishes in them every glimmer of the original Style? The clerk at the India-House or some other house had not in the moulding of heart or brain any touch of the romantic. And Ariosto and Tasso are the two poets of Romance. Take a translator of no higher intellectual endowment than Mr Hoole--perform some unknown adjuration to the goddess Nature which shall move her to infuse into him the species of sensibility which grounds the two poems and which we have said that we desiderate in the bold Accountant --read the poems through with him taking care that he understands them--as far as a matter of the sort may be seen to teach him which is all fair a trick or two of our English verse to relieve the terrible couplet monotony--run an eye over the MS. on its way to the printer and he shall have enriched the literature of his country with if not two rightly representative yet too justifiable Translations. Dryden's defence of the manner in which Pindar has been made to speak English by Cowley cannot be sustained. A translator must give the meaning of his author so as that they who are scholars in the vernacular only--for to the unread and uncultivated he does not address himself--may be as nearly as possible so impressed and affected as scholars in the original tongue are by the author; or soaring a little more ambitiously as nearly as may be as they were affected to whom the original work was native. To Anglicize Pindar is not the adventure. It is to Hellenize an English reader. Homer is not dyed in Grecism as Pindar is. The profound universal overpowering humanity of Homer makes him of the soil everywhere. The boundaries of nations and of races fade out and vanish. He and we are of the family--of the brotherhood--Man. That is all that we feel and know. The manners are a little gone by. That is all the difference. We read an ancestral chronicle rather than the diary of to-day. But Pindar is all Greek--Greek to the backbone. There the stately and splendid mythology stands in its own power--not allied to us by infused human blood--but estranged from us in a dazling divine glory. The great theological poet of Greece the hymnist of her deities remembers in celebrating athlete and charioteer his grave and superior function. To hear Pindar in English you must open your wings and away to the field of Elis or the Isthmian strand. Under the canopying smoke of London or Edinburgh even amongst the beautiful fields of England or Scotland there is nothing to be made of him. You must be a Greek among Greeks. Therefore in the Translator no condescension to our ignorance at least. And no ignoble dread of our ignorant prejudices. The difficult connexion of the thoughts which Dryden duly allows to the foreign and ancient poet a commentary might clear where it does as much for the reader of the Greek; or sometimes possibly a word interpolated might help. But the difficulty of translating Pindar is quite distinct from his obscurity. For it is his light. It is the super-terrestrial splendour of the lyrical phraseology which satisfied the Greek imagination lifted into transport by the ardour joy and triumph of those Panhellenic Games. It is the simple yet dignified strength of the short pithy sage Sentences. It is the rendering of the now bold and abrupt now enchained sequences of expressive sound in those measures which we hardly yet kn
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w how to scan. It is not the track but the wing of the Theban eagle that is the desperation. It is always delightful to hear Dryden speaking of Cowley. He was indeed a man made to be loved. But to students in the divine art his poetry will for ever remain the great puzzle. His ""Pindarque Odes written in imitation of the style and manner of the Odes of Pindar "" are unique. Cowley was a scholar. In Latin verse he is one of the greatest among the modern masters; and he had much Greek. There can be no doubt that he could construe Pindar--none that he could have understood him--had he tried to do so. ""If a man should undertake to translate Pindar word for word it would be thought that one madman had translated another."" Instead therefore of translating him word for word ""the ingenious Cowley"" set about imitating his style and manner and that he thought might best be effected by changing his measures and discarding almost all his words except the proper names to which he added many others of person or place illustrious at the time or in tradition. Events and exploits brought vividly back by Pindar to the memory of listeners to whom a word sufficed are descanted on by Cowley in explanatory strains often unintelligible to all living men. The two opening lies of his first Imitation characterize his muse. ""Queen of all harmonious things Dancing words and speaking things."" The words do dance indeed; and ""Cowley's Medley"" combines the Polka and the Gallopade. Yet throughout these Two Odes (the Second Olympic and the First Nemæan) may be detected flowing the poetry of Pindar. Compare Cowley with him--book in hand--and ever and anon you behold Pindar. Cowley all along had him in his mind--but Cowley's mind played him queer tricks--his heart never; yet had he a soul capable of taking flight with the Theban eagle. There are many fine lines sentimental and descriptive in these extraordinary performances. There is sometimes ""a golden ferment"" on the page which for the moment pleases more than the cold correctness of Carey. For example--THE ISLE OF THE BLEST. ""Far other lot befalls the good; A life from trouble free; Nor with laborious hands To vex the stubborn lands Nor beat the billowy sea For a scanty livelihood. But with the honour'd of the gods Who love the faithful their abodes; By day or night the sun quits not their sphere Living a dateless age without a tear. The others urge meanwhile Loathsome to light their endless toil. But whoso thrice on either side With firm endurance have been tried Keeping the soul exempted still Through every change from taint of ill To the tower of Saturn they Travel Jove's eternal way. On that blest Isle's enchanted ground Airs from ocean breathe around; Burn the bright immortal flowers Some on beds and some on bowers From the branches hanging high; Some fed by waters where they lie; Of whose blossoms these do braid Armlets and crowns their brows to shade. Such bliss is their's assured by just decree Of Rhadamanth who doth the judgment share With father Saturn spouse of Rhea she Who hath o'er all in heav'n the highest chair. With them are Peleus Cadmus number'd And he whom as in trance he slumber'd His mother Thetis wafted there Softening the heart of Jove with prayer Her own Achilles that o'erthrew Hector gigantic column of old Troy And valiant Cycnus slew And Morning's Æthiop boy."" CAREY. ""Whilst in the lands of unexhausted light O'er which the godlike sun's unwearied light Ne'er winks in clouds nor sleeps in night An endless spring of age the good enjoy Where neither want does pinch nor plenty cloy. There neither earth nor sea they plow Nor ought to labour owe For food that whilst it nourishes does decay And in the lamp of life consumes away. Thrice had these men through mortal bodies past Did thrice the tryal undergo Till all their little dross was purged at last The furnace had no more to do. There in rich Saturn's peaceful state Were they for sacred treasures placed-- The Muse-discovered world of Islands Fortunate. Soft-footed winds with tuneful voyces there Dance through the perfumed air. There silver rivers through enamell'd meadows glide And golden trees enrich their side. Th' illustrious leaves no dropping autumn fear And jewels for their fruit they bear Which by the blest are gathered For bracelets to the arm and garlands to the head. Here all the heroes and their poets live Wise Radamanthus did the sentence give Who for his justice was thought fit With sovereign Saturn on the bench to sit. Peleus here and Cadmus reign. Here great Achilles wrathful now no more Since his blest mother (who before Had try'd it on his body in vain) Dipt now his soul in Stygian lake Which did from thence a divine hardness take That does from passion and from vice invulnerable make."" Carey's commencement is dull--his close is good--but the whole will never on this earth be gotten by heart. Cowley's conceits are cruel in Pindar's case--yet in spite of them there is a strange sublimity in the strain--at the end moral grandeur. Reginald Heber and Abraham Moore--especially Reginald--excel Carey; but Pindar in English is reserved for another age. Dryden dashed at every poet--Theocritus Lucretius Persius Horace Juvenal Ovid Virgil Homer--each in his turn unhesitatingly doth he take into his translating hands. In his Essay on Satire he compares with one another the three Roman Satirists; but though he draws their characters with his usual force and freedom of touch they are not finely distinctive--if coloured _con amore_ yet without due consideration. In the Preface to the Second Miscellany he says of Horace's Satires that they ""are incomparably beyond Juvenal's if to laugh and rally is to be preferred to raillery and declaiming."" In his Essay he says ""In my particular opinion Juvenal is the more delightful writer."" And again--""Juvenal is of a more vigorous and masculine wit; he gives me as much pleasure as I can bear; he fully satisfies my expectation; he treats his subject home; his spleen is raised and he raises mine. I have the pleasure of concernment in all he says; he drives his reader along with him. * * * His thoughts are sharper; his indignation against vice more vehement; his spirit has more of the commonwealth genius; he treats tyranny and all the vices attending it as they deserve with the utmost rigour; and consequently a noble soul is better pleased with a zealous vindicator of Roman liberty than with _a temporizing poet a well-manner'd court-slave and a man who is often afraid of laughing in the right place who is ever decent because he is naturally servile_."" Is this Quintus Horatius Flaccus! In Dryden and Juvenal are met peer and peer. Indignant scorn and moral disgust instigated the nervous hand of Juvenal moulded to wield the scourge of satire. He is an orator in verse speaking with power and command skilled in the strength of the Roman speech and practised in the weapons of rhetoric. But he is nevertheless a poet. Seized with impressions you see his sail caught with driving gusts if his eye be on the card. He snatches images right and left on his impetuous way and flings them forth suddenly and vividly so that they always tell. Perhaps he is more apt at binding a weighty thought in fewer words than his Translator who felt himself as this disadvantage when he expressively portrayed the Latin as ""a severe and compendious language."" The Roman satirist has more care of himself; he maintains a prouder step; and the justifying incentive to this kind of poetry hate with disdain of the vices and miseries to be lashed more possesses his bosom. And what a wild insurrection of crimes and vices! What a challenge to hate and disdain in the minds in which the tradition of the antique virtues the old _mores_ those edifiers of the sublime Republic had yet life! Rome under Nero and Domitian! Pedants have presumed to question the sincerity of his indignation and have more than hinted that his power of picturing those enormous profligacies was inspired by the pleasure of a depraved imagination. Never was there falser charge. The times and the topics were not for delicate handling --they were to be looked at boldly in the face --and if spoken of at all at full and with unmistakable words. There is no gloating in his eyes when fixed in fire on guilt. Antipathy and abhorrence load with more revolting colours the hideous visage from which but for that moral purpose they would recoil. But what it may be asked is the worth and use of a satire that drags out vices from their hiding-holes to flay them in sunshine? They had no hiding-holes. They affronted the daylight. But the question must be answered more comprehensively. The things told _are_--the corruption of our own spirit has engendered them--and every great city in one age or another is a Rome. Consult Cowper. To know such things is one bitter and offending lesson in the knowledge of our nature. For the pure and simple such records are not written. It is a galling disclosure a frightful warning for the anomalous race of the proud-impure. Gifford finely said of this greatest of satirists that ""disregarding the claims of a vain urbanity and fixing all his soul on the eternal distinctions of moral good and evil he laboured with a magnificence of language peculiar to himself to set forth the loveliness of virtue and the deformity and horror of vice in full and perfect display."" The loveliness of virtue! Ay in many a picture of the innocence and simplicity of the olden time--unelaborate but truthful--ever and anon presented for a few moments to show how happy humanity is in its goodness and how its wickedness is degradation and misery. And there are many prolonged lofty strains sounding the praise of victorious virtue. They are for all time--and they too that magnify and glorify the spirit of liberty then exiled from the city it had built and never more to have dominion there but regnant now in nations that know how to prize the genius it still continued to inspire when public virtue was dead. Yet Dryden has not been altogether successful with Juvenal. In many places he is most slovenly--in many elaborately coarse beyond the coarseness ready-made to his hand--in some of the great passages he leaves out what he feared to equal and in the face of all the principles in his own creed on Translation he often paraphrases with all possible effrontery and lets himself loose to what is called imitation till the original evanishes to return however on a sudden apparition-like and with a voice of power giving assurance of the real Juvenal. His criticism on Lucretius is characteristic of them both. See how rashly we had almost said foolishly he rates the Epicurean for his belief in the mortality of the soul. Were there no better reason afforded by the light of nature for a belief in its immortality than what Dryden throws out human nature would not so earnestly have embraced and so profoundly felt and so clearly seen the truth of the Christian dispensation. ""If he was not of the best age of Roman poetry he was at least of that which preceded it; and he himself refined it to that degree of perfection both in the language and the thoughts that he left an easy task to Virgil; who as he succeeded him in time so he copied his excellences; for the method of the Georgics is plainly derived from him. Lucretius had chosen a subject naturally crabbed; he therefore adorned it with poetical descriptions and precepts of morality in the beginning and ending of his books which you see Virgil has imitated with great success in those four books which in my opinion are more perfect in their kind than even his divine Æneid. The turn of his verses he has likewise followed in those places where Lucretius has most laboured and some of his very lines he has transplanted into his own works without much variation. If I am not mistaken the distinguishing character of Lucretius (I mean of his soul and genius ) is a certain kind of noble pride and positive assertion of his opinions. He is every where confident of his own reason and assuming an absolute command not only over his vulgar reader but even his patron Memmius. For he is always bidding him attend as if he had the rod over him; and using a magisterial authority while he instructs him. From his time to ours I know none so like him as our poet and philosopher of Malmesbury. This is that perpetual dictatorship which is exercised by Lucretius who though often in the wrong yet seems to deal _bona fide_ with his reader and tells him nothing but what he thinks; in which plain sincerity I believe he differs from our Hobbes who could not but be convinced or at least doubt of some eternal truths which he has opposed. But for Lucretius he seems to disdain all manner of replies and is so confident of his cause that he is beforehand with his antagonists; urging for them whatever he imagined they could say and leaving them as he supposes without an objection for the future; all this too with so much scorn and indignation as if he were assured of the triumph before he entered into the lists. From this sublime and daring genius of his it must of necessity come to pass that his thoughts must be masculine full of argumentation and that sufficiently warm. From the same fiery temper proceeds the loftiness of his expressions and the perpetual torrent of his verse where the barrenness of his subject does not too much constrain the quickness of his fancy. For there is no doubt to be made but that he could have been every where as poetical as he is in his descriptions and in the moral part of his philosophy if he had not aimed more to instruct in his system of nature than to delight. But he was bent on making Memmius a materialist and teaching him to defy an invisible power; in short he was so much an atheist that he forgot sometimes to be a poet. These are the considerations which I had of that author before I attempted to translate some parts of him. And accordingly I laid by my natural diffidence and scepticism for a while to take up that dogmatical way of his which as I said is so much his character as to make him that individual poet. As for his opinions concerning the mortality of the soul they are so absurd that I cannot if I would believe them. I think a future state demonstrable even by natural arguments; at least to take away rewards and punishments is only a pleasing prospect to a man who resolves before hand not to live morally. But on the other side the thought of being nothing after death is a burden insupportable to a virtuous man even though a heathen. We naturally aim at happiness and cannot bear to have it confined to the shortness of our present being; especially when we consider that virtue is generally unhappy in this world and vice fortunate; so that it is hope of futurity alone that makes this life tolerable in expectation of a better. Who would not commit all the excesses to which he is prompted by his natural inclinations if he may do them with security while he is alive and be incapable of punishment after he is dead? If he be cunning and secret enough to avoid the laws there is no band of morality to restrain him; for fame and reputation are weak ties; many men have not the least sense of them. Powerful men are only awed by them as they conduce to their interest and that not always when a passion is predominant; and no man will be contained within the bounds of duty when he may safely transgress them. These are my thoughts abstractedly and without entering into the notions of our Christian faith which is the proper business of divines. ""But there are other arguments in this poem (which I have turned into English) not belonging to the mortality of the soul which are strong enough to a reasonable man to make him less in love with life and consequently in less apprehension of death. Such are the natural satiety proceeding from a perpetual enjoyment of the same things; the inconveniences of old age which make him incapable of corporeal pleasures the decay of understanding and memory which render him contemptible and useless to others. These and many other reasons so pathetically urged so beautifully expressed so adorned with examples and so admirably raised by the _prosopopeia_ of nature who is brought in speaking to her children with so much authority and vigour deserve the pains I have taken with them which I hope have not been unsuccessful or unworthy of my author; at least I must take the liberty to own that I was pleased with my own endeavours which but rarely happens to me; and that I am not dissatisfied upon the review of any thing I have done in this author."" Lucretius is a poet of a sublimer order than Dryden. Yet have they psychical affinities. The rush of poetical composition characterizes both--a ready pomp and splendour--more prodigality than economy--bold felicity rather than finish though neither is that wanting--mastery of language and measure--touches from the natural world that fall in more as a colouring of style than the utterances of a heart imbued with a deep love of nature. Indeed if the genial belongs to the physiognomy of Dryden's writing the cordial is hardly a constituent in the character of either poet although at need both can find eloquent expression even for the pathetic. In both if in different measure a sceptical vein is inherent; but in Lucretius this arms itself in logic and he appears in his cosmogony as a philosophical atheist. In Dryden it might seem rather a humour leaned to because on that side lies the pleasure of mockery and scoffing. Lucretius pleads his philosophy like a man who is incredulous in earnest. But you can seldom say what it is that Dryden embraces with seriousness unless it be in his better and happier undertakings his own part in executing the work. The subject-matter might seem almost always rather accidentally brought to him than affectionately sought by him; once out of his hands it is dismissed from his heart; he often seems utterly to have forgotten opinions and persons in whom not long before he had taken the liveliest interest--careless of inconsistencies even in the same essay assuredly one of the most self-contradicting of mortals. No man some say has a right to question another's religious faith but all men have a right to judge of the professed principles on which it has been adopted when those principles have been triumphantly propounded to the public in controversial treatises of elaborate verse. To reason powerfully not only in verse but rhyme is no common achievement and such fame is justly Dryden's; but how would the same reasoning have looked in prose? His controversy with Stillingfleet shows--but so so. Does Lucretius write from a strong heart and a seduced understanding? Or is it now to be quoted as a blameable unbelief that ridded itself of the Greek and Roman Heaven and Hell? There is one great and essential difference on the side of the Epicurean. An original poet he seems to speak from a sweeping contemplation of the universe. We grudge that the boundless exuberance of painting should go to decorate the argumentation of an unfruitful system of doctrine. We want the sympathy with the purpose of the poet that should for us harmonize the poem. He often strikes singularly high tones. Witness among many other great passages his argument on death and his thunderstorm. And had the description of the heifer bemoaning and seeking her lost calf been Virgil's we should have thought it had sprung from the heart of rural simplicity and love. Dryden and Lucretius agree in the negligent indifference which they show when mere argumentation is in hand to smoothness and ornament and also in the wonderful facility with which they compel logical forms to obey the measure. There they are indeed truly great. Lucretius's magnificent opening has invited Dryden to put forth his happiest strength. The profuse eloquence and beauty of the original is rendered. The passage which may compete with any piece of translation in the language is with Dryden a fragment:-- ""Delight of human kind and gods above Parent of Rome propitious Queen of Love; Whose vital power air earth and sea supplies And breeds whate'er is born beneath the rolling skies; For every kind by thy prolific might Springs and beholds the regions of the light. Thee goddess thee the clouds and tempests fear And at thy pleasing presence disappear; For thee the land in fragrant flowers is drest; For thee the ocean smiles and smooths her wavy breast And heaven itself with more serene and purer light is blest. For when the rising spring adorns the mead And a new scene of nature stands display'd When teeming buds and cheerful greens appear And western gales unlock the lazy year; The joyous birds thy welcome first express Whose native songs thy genial fire confess; Then savage beasts bound o'er their slighted food Struck with thy darts and tempt the raging flood. All nature is thy gift; earth air and sea; Of all that breathes; the various progeny Stung with delight is goaded on by thee. O'er barren mountains o'er the flowery plain The leafy forest and the liquid main Extends thy uncontroll'd and boundless reign; Through all the living regions dost thou move And scatter'st where thou goest the kindly seeds of love. Since then the race of every living thing Obeys thy power; since nothing new can spring Without thy warmth without thy influence bear Or beautiful or lovesome can appear; Be thou my aid my tuneful song inspire And kindle with thy own productive fire; While all thy province Nature I survey And sing to Memmius an immortal lay Of heaven and earth and every where thy wondrous power display: To Memmius under thy sweet influence born Whom thou with all thy gifts and graces dost adorn; The rather then assist my muse and me Infusing verses worthy him and thee. Meantime on land and sea let barbarous discord cease And lull the listening world in universal peace. To thee mankind their soft repose must owe For thou alone that blessing canst bestow; Because the brutal business of the war Is managed by thy dreadful servant's care; Who oft retires from fighting fields to prove The pleasing pains of thy eternal love; And panting on thy breast supinely lies While with thy heavenly form he feeds his eyes. When wishing all he nothing can deny Thy charms in that auspicious moment try; With winning eloquence our peace implore And quiet to the weary world restore."" Excellent English! and excellently representative of the Latin! Dryden sometimes estranges his language from vulgar use by a Latinism; (he himself insists upon this as a deliberate act of enriching our poor and barbarous tongue;) and in his highest writings even where he has good matter that will sustain itself at due poetical height here and there he has touches of an ornamental imitative and false poetical diction. But that is not his own style--not the style which he uses where he is fully himself. This is pure English simple masculine; turned into poetry by a true life of expression and by the inhering melody of the numbers. That Lucretian Exordium he must have written in one of his happiest veins--under the sting of the poetical oestrum. It is an instance where he was called to his task by desire. In his greatest undertaking--his Translation of Virgil--he often had to write when the fervour was low and slack. The task was to be driven on; and it was luck if the best places of his author fell to the uncertain hour of his own inspiration. So possibly we may understand why sometimes when his original seems to challenge a full exertion of power he comes short of himself. The weariness of the long labour must often apologise for languor where the claims of the matter are less importunate. But it is not easy--when culling for comparison some of the majestic or softer strains into which Virgil has thrown his full soul which he has wrought with his most loving and exquisite skill--wholly to shut the door of belief against the uncharitable suggestion --that the Translator less livelily apprehended than you yourself do some Virgilian charm which lay away from his own manner of thinking and feeling and of poetical art. The story so marvellous and pathetic of the Thracian harper-king and his bride stung by the serpent is from of old the own tale of lovers and poets. The heart of the Lover dares the terrific and unimaginable road; and the voice and hand of the Minstrel subdue all impossibilities. Virgil was fortunate in a link which gave to his Italian Man of the Fields an interest in the antique strange and touching Hellenic tradition; and he has improved his opportunity worthily of his theme of his work and of himself. The dexterous episode of Aristæus visited with a plague in his bee-hives for his fault in the death of Eurydice ends and by ending consummates the poem which took life in the soul of the Mincian ploughboy and to which the chief artist of Augustan Rome was content in bequeathing the perpetual trust of his fame. Impassioned profound tenderness --the creating high and pure spirit of beauty--the outwardly watchful and sensitive eye and ear--with tones at will fetched by listening imagination from the great deep of the wonderful the solemn the sublime --these and crowning these that sweet and subtle and rare mastery which avails through translucent words to reveal quick or slow motions and varying hues of the now visible mind--which on the stream of articulate sounds rolls along self-evolving and changing as the passion changes a power of music --these all are surprisingly contained within the SEVENTY-FIVE VERSES which unfold the anger of Orpheus now a forlorn and yet powerful ghost and of the Nymphs once her companions for the twice-lost Eurydice. It is a hard but a fair trial to set the Translator against the best of his author. It is to be presumed that Dryden matched against the best of Virgil has done his best. We have not room for the whole diamond but shall display one or two of the brightest facets. Who has forgotten that shrinking of the awed and tender imagination which shuns the actual telling that Eurydice died? Which announces her as doomed to die--_Moritura!_ then says merely that she did not see in the deep grass the huge water-snake before her feet guarding the river-bank along which she fled! and then turns to pour on the ear the clamorous wail of her companions. ""Illa quidem dum te fugeret per flumina præceps Immanem ante pedes hydrum _moritura_ puella Servantem ripas altâ non vidit in herbâ."" At this first losing of Eurydice the impetuous wild wail of the Nymph-sisterhood may in the verse of the Mantuan be heard with one burst swelling and ringing over how many hills champaigns and rivers! At chorus æqualis Dryadum clamore supremos Implerunt montes; flerunt Rhodopeiæ arces Altaque Pangaea ac Rhesi Mavortia tellus Atque Getæ atque Hebrus et Actias Orithyia. That the vivid emphasis of a stormy sorrow--given to a picture of sound in the foregoing verses by that distinctiveness of the multitudinous repetition--declines in the melodious four English representatives to a greatly more generalized expression must one may think be ascribed to Dryden's despair of reconciling in his own rougher tongue the geography and the music. Nevertheless the version is evidently and successfully studied to mourn and complain. But all her fellow nymphs the mountains tear With loud lament and break the yielding air: The realms of Mars remurmur all around And echoes to the Athenian shores resound. It is good but hardly reaches the purpose of the original clamour so passionate dirge-like unearthly and supernatural--at once telling the death--as they say that in some countries the king's death is never told in words but with a clangour of shrieks only from the palace-top which is echoed by voices to voices on to the borders of his kingdom--at once we say supplying this point of the relation and impressing upon you the superhuman character of the mourners who are able not only to deplore but likewise mysteriously and mightily to avenge. The next three lines are also as might be presumed at the height for they describe the paragon of lovers and harpers harping his affliction of love-- Ipse cavâ solans ægrum testudine amorem Te dulcis conjux te solo in litore secum Te veniente die te decedente canebat! Musical dolorous iteration iteration! Musical woe-begone iteration iteration! What have we in English? ""The unhappy husband husband now no more Did on his tuneful harp his loss deplore And sought his mournful mind with music to restore. On thee dear wife in desarts all alone He call'd sigh'd sang; his griefs with day begun Nor were they finish'd with the setting sun."" Studied verses undoubtedly--musical and mournful and iterative. The two triplets of rhyme have unquestionably this meaning; and the bold choice of the homely-affectionate ""_dear wife_ "" to render the more ornate ""_dulcis conjux_ "" is of a sincere simplicity and as good English as may be. We see here a poetical method of equivalents--for ""on _thee_ he _call'd sigh'd sang_ "" is intended to render the urgency and incessancy of _Te Te Te Te!_ But the singular and purely Virgilian artifice of construction in the second and third line is abandoned without hope of imitation. Orpheus goes down into hell. ""Tænarias etiam fauces alta ostia Ditis Et caligantem nigrâ formidine lucum Ingressus Manesque adiit Regemque tremendum Nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda."" ""Even to the dark dominions of the night He took his way thro' forests void of light And dared amidst the trembling ghosts to sing And stood before the inexorable king."" They are good verses and might satisfy an English reader who knew not the original: albeit they do not attain--how should they?--to the sullen weight of dark dread that loads the Latin Hexameters. Look at that--REGEMQUE TREMENDUM! And then still the insisting upon something more! To what nameless Powers do they belong--those unassigned hearts that are without the experience and intelligence of complying with human prayers? The infatuation--_dementia_--which on the verge of the rejoined light turns back too soon the head of Orpheus towards her who follows him is by Virgil said to be ""Ignoscenda quidem scirent si ignoscere Manes!"" A verse awful by the measure which it preserves between the human of the first half--_ignoscenda quidem_--and the infernal of the second half--_scirent si ignoscere Manes_. It places before us in comparison the Flexible which lives in sunshine upon the earth--and the Inflexible which reigns in the gloom of Erebus underneath it. What does Dryden? He takes down the still severe majesty of Virgil by too much of the Flexible--by a double dose of humanity. ""A fault _which easy pardon might receive Were lovers judges_ or could Hell forgive."" It is remarkable that he has himself quoted the line of Virgil with great praise as one that approaches within measure to an Ovidian ""turn."" He has himself overstepped the measure and made it quite Ovidian. The four verses which describe the fault of Orpheus and the perception of it in hell are unsurpassed:-- ""Restitit; Eurydicenque suam jam luce sub ipsâ Immemor heu! victusque animi respexit. Ibi omnis Effusus labor: atque immitis rupta tyranni Foedera: terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis."" Only note the growing pathos from the beloved name to the naming of the dread act. EURYDICEN--_suam_--_jam luce sub ipsâ_--_immemor_--_heu!_-- _victusque animi_--RESPEXIT. Five links! Look too what a long way on in the verse that sin of backward-looking has brought you. There shall hardly be found another verse in Virgil which has a pause of that magnitude at that advance in the measure. It is a great stretching on of the thought against the law of music which usually controls you to place the logical in coincidence with the musical--stop; but here you are urged on into the very midst and beyond the midst of the last dactyl--a musical sleight which must needs heighten that feeling impressed by the grammatical structure of a voluntary delay --of unwillingness to utter the word fraught with inevitable death--that mortal RESPEXIT! After this there is here no poured out toil--no clashing and rending--No! here is the deep note of victory--the proclamation sounding out from the abyss that the prize which was carried off is regained. Thrice down--down--as low as the pools of Avernus breaks out a peal-- ""Terque fragor stagnis auditus Avernis."" This is the master with whom--and this the language and this the measure with which--our translator competes--""_imparibus armis_."" ""For near the confines of ethereal light And long
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ng for the glimmering of a sight The unwary lover cast his eyes behind Forgetful of the law nor master of his mind. Straight all his hopes exhaled in empty smoke And his long toils were forfeit for a look. Three flashes of blue lightning gave the sign Of covenants broke three peals of thunder join."" The falling off--the failure at the end is deplorable indeed; yet Dryden recovers himself and much of what follows is very fine. The outline of the Iliad interests man's everyday heart. A wife carried off--the retaliation--an invasion or siege--a fair captive withheld from ransom--a displeased God sending a plague--a high prince wronged offended sullenly withdrawn to his tent--war prosperous and adverse--a dear friend lost and wailed--a general by his death reconciled--that death avenged--a dead son redeemed by his father and mourned by his people --To receive all this sufferance into the heart's depths wants no specific association--no grounding historical knowledge. By virtue of those anthropical elements--which are by a change of accidents one to him and you Homer who happens to be a Greek makes you one and a Trojan too or rather you are with him in the human regions and that fact sufficeth for all your soul's desires. But though no critic and unversed in the laws of Epos which by the way are only discoverable in the poem which he created in obedience to them and that were first revealed to him from heaven by its inspiring genius--nevertheless you are affected throughout all your being by those laws and but by them could not have been made ""greater than you know "" by the Iliad. For the main action or Achilleid though you may not know it has four great steps. From Achilles' wrong by Agamemnon to the death of Patroclus is a movement of one tenor. From the death of Patroclus to the death of Hector is an entirely new movement though causally bound in the closest manner to that antecedent. The Games and Funeral of Patroclus is an independent action. The Restoration of Hector's body is a dependent and necessarily springing action having a certain subsistency within itself. To the whole the seat of moving power is the bosom of Achilles. All the parts have perfect inter-obligation. Cut away any one and there would be not a perilous gash but a detruncation fatal to the living frame. There is vital integrity from the beginning to the end. Nowhere can you stop till the great poet stops. Then you obtain rest--not glad rest; for say not that the Iliad ends happily. The spirit of war sits on the sepulchral mound of Hector expecting its prey and the topmost towers of Ilion in the gloom of doom lower with the ruining that shall soon hide Mount Ida in a night of dust. Forbid it ye muses all! that we should whisper a word in dispraise of Maro. But for what it is not for what it is not we love the Æneid. The wafting over sea from an Asiatic to an Italian soil and the setting there of the acorn which by the decree of the Destinies shall in distant ages grow up into Rome and the overshadowing Roman Empire--this majestic theme appeals to the reason and to the reason taught in the history of the world. It is a deliberate not an impassioning interest. And how dominionless over our sympathy has the glowing and tender-hearted Virgil perhaps unavoidably made the Hero who impersonates his rational interest! How unlike is this Æneas to that Achilles round whose young head sacred to glory Homer has gathered as about one magnetic centre his tearful fiery turbulent majestic and magnanimous humanities! Confess we must reluctantly that Æneas chills the Æneid. It was not that Virgil had embraced a design greater than his poetical strength. But it was in more than one respect unfortunately unpoetically conditioned. That political foundation itself is to be made good by aggressive arms; and by tearing a betrothed and enamoured beautiful bride from the youthful and stately chivalrous prince her lover slain in fight against the invaders; whilst the poor girl is to be made over to a widower of whose gallantry the most that we know is his ill-care of his wife and his running away from his mistress. And thus alas! it cannot be denied the design of the _Æneis_ is carried through without our great natural sympathies as respects its end--against them as respects its means. An insuperable difficulty! Did Virgil mistake then in taking the subject? One hardly dares say so. The national tradition offers to the national Epic poet the national Epic transaction; and he accepts the offer. In doing so he allies by his theme his own to the Homeric Epos. With all this however we do feel that fiery and all-powerful and all-comprehensive genius projects the outline of the _Iliad_ upon the canvass; whilst in this poetical history of the Trojan plantation in Italy we can ascribe to the general disposition and invention hardly more than a prudent and skilful intelligence. But the poetical soul the creative fire then enters to possess the remainder of the task. Was after all a pitched battle not exactly the thing in the world the most kindly to the feelings and the best meted to the understanding of the poet commissioned to renown with verse the people who fought more and more successful pitched battles than any other in the world? Were Virgil to write now and you had to allot him his theme what would it be? A romance of knight-errantry? You would allot him none. You would leave him free to the suggestions of his own delicious spirit. But he thought himself bound to the Latin Epos. To speak in true critical severity the _Æneis_ has no Hero. It has a HEROINE. And who pray is SHE? The seven-hilled Queen of the World. Like another Cybele with her turreted diadem and gods for her children in her arms and in her lap. Herself heaven-descended--IMPERIAL ROME. The two prophetical episodes--the Muster of the pre-existing ghosts before the eyes of the great human ancestor Anchises in his Elysium--and those anticipatory narrative Embossings of the Vulcanian shield become in this view integral and principal portions of the poem. That reviewing beside that Elysian river of the souls that are to animate Roman breasts and to figure in Roman chronicles gave opportunity to Virgil of one Prophecy that mingled mourning with triumph and triumph with mourning. Victorious over the Punic--victorious over the Gallic foe--carrying to the temple the arms which he a leader stripped from a leader--the third consecrator of such spoils--goes Marcellus. But who is He that moves at the side of the hero? A youth distinguished by his beauty and by his lustrous arms. The Souls throng with officious tumult about him--and how much he resembles his great companion! But on his destined brow sits no triumphal lustre--mists and night cling about his head. Who is it? Æneas enquires--and Anchises would fain withhold the reply. It is the descendant of that elder Marcellus; and promises were fatal decrees mutable to renew the prowess and praises of his famed progenitor. Fatal decrees might not change and the nephew of Augustus the destined successor of his reign and the hopes of the Romans--OBIIT. You have often wept over Virgil's verses--here are Dryden's:-- ""Æneas here beheld of form divine A godlike youth in glittering armour shine With great Marcellus keeping equal pace; But gloomy were his eyes dejected was his face. He saw and wond'ring ask'd his airy guide What and of whence was he who press'd the hero's side? 'His son or one of his illustrious name How like the former and almost the same! Observe the crowds that compass him around; All gaze and all admire and raise shouting sound: But hov'ring mists around his brows are spread And night with sable shades involve his head.' 'Seek not to know (the ghost replied with tears) The sorrows of thy sons in future years. This youth (the blissful vision of a day) Shall just be shown on earth then snatch'd away. The gods too high had raised the Roman state Were but their gifts as permanent as great. What groans of men shall fill the Martian field! How fierce a blaze his flaming pile shall yield! What funeral pomp shall floating Tyber see When rising from his bed he views the sad solemnity! No youth shall equal hopes of glory give No youth afford so great a cause to grieve. The Trojan honour and the Roman boast Admired when living and adored when lost! Mirror of ancient faith in early youth! Undaunted worth inviolable truth! No foe unpunish'd in the fighting-field Shall dare thee foot to foot with sword and shield. Much less in arms oppose thy matchless force When thy sharp spurs shall urge thy foaming horse. Ah! couldst thou break through Fate's severe decree A new Marcellus shall arise in thee! Full canisters of fragrant lilies bring Mix'd with the purple roses of the spring; Let me with funeral flowers his body strow; This gift which parents to their children owe This unavailing gift at least I may bestow!'"" Here is an excellent flow. The sorrow and the pride and the public love which are the life of the original are all taken to heart by the translator who succeeds in imparting to you the most touching of poetical eulogies. You find as usually every where that the vigorous purpose of the original is maintained and well rendered but that certain Virgilian fascinations which--whether they bewitch your heart or your fancy or our ear you do not know--are hardly given you back. Thus it might be very hard to say what you have found that you cannot forget again in such a verse as that which introduces to your eye the subject of the more effusive praise. ""Atque hic Æneas una namque ire videbat Egregium formâ juvenem et fulgentibus armis."" Yet you do not again forget that second line. Dryden's rendering is equivalent for the meaning and unblameable. ""Æneas here beheld of _form divine A godlike youth in glittering armour shine_."" The phrase is even heightened; but it does not loiter like that other in your memory. The very heightening has injured the image--the shadow that shone brighter in simple words. The shadow then thrown across-- ""Sed _frons_ læta parum""-- is well given with a variation by-- ""But gloomy were his _eyes_."" The lightlessness is feelingly placed where the chief light should be. The unequalled ""Ostendent terris hunc tantum Fata "" so fully signifying the magnitude of the gift offered and withdrawn--so sadly the brief promise and all so concisely meets with a soft and bright rendering in ""The _blissful vision_ of a day."" But Dryden's ""shown _on_ earth "" less positively affirms the loss fallen upon the earth than the Latin ""shall show to the nations."" The praise involving the recollection of the manners which were-- ""Heu pietas! heu prisca fides! invictaque bello Dextera!"" is given with admirable fervour. ""Mirror of ancient faith in early youth Undaunted worth! inviolable truth!"" As for _those three words_ that smote as the tradition goes the heart of the too deeply concerned auditress the bereaved mother herself to swooning-- ""_Tu Marcellus eris!_""-- they are no doubt in their overwhelming simplicity untransferable to our uncouth idiom; and our ears may thank Dryden for the skill with which by a ""New Marcellus "" and an otherwise explanatory paraphrase he has kept the Virgilian music. Meantime the passionate vehemence of the breaking away from that prophecy of intolerable grief--the call for the bestrewment of flowers-- ""Manibus date lilia plenis "" &c.-- _must_ be weakened if the moment of the transition is to fall as we see it in Dryden at the interval between verse and verse and not as we have just seen it with Virgil at the juncture within the verse of hemistich with hemistich. ""Tu Marcellus eris.--Manibus date lilia plenis "" &c. There is a pause in that line during which the mother had she not swooned might have calmed her heart! It is usual to discover that Virgil wants originality--that he transcribes his battles from Homer. In truth it was not easy with fights of the Homeric ages to do otherwise. However Virgil has done otherwise if any one will be at the pains to look. For instance an incident not in the battles by the Xanthus is the following:-- A powerful Tuscan warrior infuriated by the ill fighting of his men distinguishes himself by an extraordinary feat. Clasping round the body and so unhorsing a lighter antagonist he rides off with him; snaps the javelin which his captive still grasps near the head and with its point probes and aims for a vulnerable place. The unfortunate Latine as he lies across the horse's neck struggles and will baffle the deathly blow. Landseer could suggest no more vivid comparison than one which leaps into your own imagination--a snake soused upon by an eagle. ""So stoops the yellow eagle from on high And bears a speckled serpent through the sky Fastening his crooked talons on the prey: The prisoner hisses through the liquid way; Resists the royal hawk and though oppresst She fights in columns and erects her crest: Turn'd to her foe she stiffens every scale And shoots her forky tongue and whisks her threat'ning tail. Against the victor all defence is weak; The imperial bird still plies her with his beak He tears her bowels and her heart he gores Then clasps his pinions and securely soars."" A glorious paraphrase! This is an incident more like a knight of Ariosto's the terrible Sarazin Rhodomont or Orlando himself than Homer's who did not indeed combat on horseback. But speaking of the moderns we will venture to say that if Virgil has copied he is also an original who has been copied. And we will ask who is the prototype of the ladies turned knights who flourish in favour with our poets of romance?--with Ariosto with Tasso with our own Spenser? Who but the heroic virgin ally of the Rutulian prince--who but CAMILLA? We name her however neither for her own sake nor for Virgil's but for Dryden's who seems also to have taken her into favour and to have written with a peculiar spirit and feeling the parts of the poem which represent her in action. She leads her Amazons into Italian fields warring against the fate-driven fugitives of overthrown Troy. Whence were her Amazon followers? Whence is She? Her history her divine patroness Diana relates. Her father the strong-limbed rude-souled Metabus a wild and intractable Volscian king fled from the face and from the pursuit of his people. He bore in his arms one dear treasure; a companion of his flight; yet an infant--this daughter. He flies. The Amasenus in flood bars his way. More doubtful for his charge than for himself hastily with love-prompted art he swathes the babe in stripped bark--binds her to the shaft of his huge oaken spear--dedicates her with a prayer to the virgin goddess of woods and of the woodland chase--hurls from a gigantic hand the weapon across the tempestuous flood--and ere his pursuers have reached him plunges in breasts the waters and saving and saved swims across. In the forest depths amongst imbosoming hills the rugged sire fosters the vowed follower of Diana. The nursling of the wild grows up a bold and skilled huntress; and now that war storms in the land she with her huntress companions joins the war. Some unexplained reconciliation or perhaps restoration has taken effect; for along with her armed maidens she leads the troops of the Volscians. In the field she fights like a virago; but her entrance thither was against the desire of the goddess for it dooms her to die. Her eager following of a gorgeously armed warrior exposes her to a treacherous aim and she falls. The provident goddess had put her own bow and an arrow from her own quiver into the hands of a nymph chosen to execute the vengeance of the impending death and that arrow flies to its mark. ""Nor after that in towns which walls enclose Would trust his hunted life amidst his foes; But rough in open air he chose to lie; Earth was his couch his covering was the sky. On hills unshorn or in a desert den He shunn'd the dire society of men. A shepherd's solitary life he led; His daughter with the milk of mares he fed. The dugs of bears and every savage beast He drew and through her lips the liquor press'd. The little amazon could scarcely go He loads her with a quiver and a bow; And that she might her staggering steps command He with a slender javelin fills her hand. Her flowing hair no golden fillet bound; Nor swept her trailing robe the dusty ground. Instead of these a tiger's hide o'erspread Her back and shoulders fasten'd to her head. The flying dart she first attempts to fling And round her tender temples toss'd the sling; Then as her strength with years increased began } To pierce aloft in air the soaring swan } And from the clouds to fetch the heron and the crane. } The Tuscan matrons with each other vied To bless their rival sons with such a bride; But she disdains their love to share with me The sylvan shades and vow'd virginity. And oh! I wish contented with my cares Of savage spoils she had not sought the wars. Then had she been of my celestial train And shunn'd the fate that dooms her to be slain. But since opposing heaven's decree she goes To find her death among forbidden foes Haste with these arms and take thy steepy flight Where with the gods adverse the Latins fight. This bow to thee this quiver I bequeath This chosen arrow to avenge her death: By whate'er hand Camilla shall be slain Or of the Trojan or Italian train Let him not pass unpunish'd from the plain. Then in a hollow cloud myself will aid To bear the breathless body of my maid: Unspoil'd shall be her arms and unprofaned Her holy limbs with any human hand And in a marble tomb laid in her native land."" What is Virgil's in this fair and romantically cast fiction? What hints did the traditionary fable give him? You are not concerned to make an enquiry which you have no means of satisfying. You must hold Camilla to be as much Virgil's as any thing is Homer's in the Iliad. The painting throughout is to the life and perfectly graceful. The subject was one likely to attach the imagination of a modern poet and you feel all along that pleasure inspirits the happy translation of Dryden. The Destruction of Troy the Love of Dido the Descent into Hell entire Cantos of the poem take deep and lasting possession of every reader; and like the first and second books of the Paradise Lost too much seduce admiration from the remainder of the work. You pick out from the whole Italian war Lausus Pallas Nisus and Euryalus and think that you have done with Virgil. We beg to propose a literary experiment. Homer has left us two poems--a War and a Wandering. Virgil has bequeathed us one representing those two and that proportionally; although in the Latin the Odyssey comes first and the Iliad follows. For the first six Æneids relate the wandering; whilst the latter six display the war. Let us therefore fairly cut the great outrolling unfolding picture in two and have two poems distinct although closely allied; twins moulded in one womb nourished from the same blood. We dare to predict that the poem of ""Æneas in Italy "" now considered with its own independent interests and after its own art and management will duly compete with its rival ""Æneas Fugitive."" How the whole movement and march and original conduct of the Italian war will come out! The peaceful entertainment of the Trojans by Latinus moved with old and new prophecies and his ready offer of his daughter Lavinia to Æneas in marriage--the adverse interposition of Juno--her summoning of Alecto from hell--the glad Fury's fine discharge of her part--her maddening of the Queen Amata who loves Turnus hates the strangers and catches in her own madness all the Latian mothers--the INFURIATING of the young gallant ardent defrauded princely lover himself--a splendid scene where the hot warrior's jeers of the fiend in her beldam disguise sting her Tartarean heart as if it had been a woman's and for the very wrath she reveals her terrible self--then that exquisite incident won from the new matter of the poet from the PASTORAL manners with which he is historically obliged to deal in Italy--the Fury's third and last feat--her drawing-on of Ascanius's hounds to hunt the beautiful favourite stag which the daughter of the King's chief herdsman petted--and thence a quarrel a skirmish slaughter begun and the whole population of the plains aroused. And so with bacchanal women with Rutulians and with his own rude liegemen in tumult the old King overborne--shutting himself up in his palace; and war inflamed in Hesperia to the full heart's-wish of Jove's imperial wife who has nothing left her to do more than descending again from the sky to push open with her own hands the brazen-gated temple of Janus. All this is very poetical--is very different from the _Iliad_ and is perfectly measured to the scale of a war moved not by confederated Greece for the overthrow of an Asiatic empire but by the tribes of the coast for beating back the crews of a few straggling ships from planting a colony who have nothing on their side but their valour their fame and their fates. Analyze this war; make out for yourself distinctly the story of which in a poem one always too easily loses the sequence delight and emotion making one less observant; then understand the poetical workings out in their places and after their bearings; and you will satisfy yourself that although the cleaving of heads and the transpiercing of trunks and the hewing off of limbs are processes that must always keep up a certain general resemblance to themselves you have not a campaign imitated from the Iliad; but an original one--proper to person and place. _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ Footnotes: [1] Raphael was born in 1483 Michael Angelo in 1474. [2] [Greek: ""Mê man aspoudei ge kai akleiôs apoloimên Alla mega rhexas ti kai essomenoisi pythesthai.""] _Iliad_ XXII. 304. [3] We were about to make some remarks on the alleged production of _animated globules in albumen by electricity_; but we find that in a note to the third edition the author virtually relinquishes this ground. We had made enquiries amongst scientific men; but no such experiment had been received or accredited amongst them. [4] ""In tracing the series of fossiliferous formations from the most ancient to the more modern the first deposits in which we meet with assemblages of organic remains having a near analogy to the _Fauna_ of certain parts of the globe in our own time are those commonly called tertiary. Even in the Eocene or oldest subdivision of these tertiary formations some few of the testacea belong to existing species although almost all of them and apparently all the associated vertebrata are now extinct. These Eocene strata are succeeded by a great number of modern deposits which depart gradually in the character of their fossils from the Eocene type and approach more and more to that of the living creation. In the present state of science it is chiefly by the aid of shells that we are enabled to arrive at the results; for of all classes the testacea are the most generally diffused in a fossil state and may be called the medals principally employed by nature in recording the chronology of past events. In the Miocene deposits which succeed next to the Eocene we begin to find a considerable number although still a minority of recent species intermixed with some fossils common to the preceding epoch. We then arrive at the Pliocene strata in which species now contemporary with man begin to preponderate and in the newest of which nine-tenths of the fossils agree with species still inhabiting the neighbouring sea. ""In thus passing from the older to the newer members of the tertiary system we meet with many chasms; but none which separate entirely and by a broad line of demarcation one state of the organic world from another. There are no signs of an abrupt termination of one _Fauna_ and _Flora_ and the starting into life of new and wholly distinct forms. Although we are far from being able to demonstrate geologically an insensible transition from the Eocene to the recent _Fauna_ yet we may affirm that the more we enlarge and perfect our survey of Europe the more nearly do we approximate to such a continuous series and the more gradually are we conducted from times when many of the genera and nearly all the species were extinct to those in which scarcely a single species flourished which we do not know to exist at present.""--LYELL'S _Principles of Geology_. Vol. i. p. 283. [5] This lower jaw is described in another part of the work as showing in the human embryo the last trace of the monkey. [6] Printed at Dublin for Philip Dixon Hardy & Sons 1842. [7] A place in Ireland? [8] We subjoin the original Etruscan text as read by our author with its alleged Irish equivalents. BUCUCUM : IUBIU : PUNE : UBEF : FURFATH : TREF : BITLUF : TURUF : | MARTE : THURIE : FETU : PUPLEEPER : TUTAS : HUBINAS : TUTAPER : ICUBINA : | BATUBA : FERINE : FETU : PUNI : FETU : ARBIC : USTENTU : CUTEP : PES- NIMU. _Bu co com iudh be in Pune u be fa for fath tre fa be at lu fa tur u fa | mer ta tur i e fad u prob lu bar to ta is i iudh be i na is to ta bar i co be i na | ba do ba fa ain e fad u Puni fad u ar be iudh us tan do co taib be sni mo._ [9] It appears that the Royal Irish Academy had refused to publish these speculations in its Transactions. We are surprised they should have admitted some others of the same stamp to which reference is made further on. [10] ""Now as Serapio was about to have added something of the same nature the stranger taking the words out of his mouth--I am wonderfully pleased said he to hear discourses upon such subjects as these; but am constrained to claim your first promise to tell the reason wherefore now the Pythian prophetess no longer delivers her oracles in poetic numbers and measures. Upon which Theo interposing--It cannot be denied said he but that there have been great changes and innovations in reference to poetry and the sciences yet it is as certain that from all antiquity oracles have been delivered in prose. For we find in Thucydides that the Lacedæmonians desirous to know the issue of the war then entered into against the Athenians were answered in prose."" * * * ""And so of Dinomenes the Sicilian Procles tyrant of Epidaurus and Timarchus; and which is more the oracular answers according to which Lycurgus conferred the form of the Lacedæmonian commonwealth were also so given.""--_Plutarch. Moral._ [11] _Death of Wallenstein_ Act v. Scene 1 (Coleridge's Translation ) relating to his remembrances of the younger Piccolomini. [12] ""_Like the dry corpse which stood upright._""--See the _Second_ Book of Kings chap. xiii. v. 20 and 21. Thirty years ago this impressive incident was made the subject of a large altar-piece by Mr Alston an interesting American artist then resident in London. [13] ""_African Obeah._""--Thirty-years ago it would not have been necessary to say one word of the Obi or Obeah magic; because at that time several distinguished writers (Miss Edgeworth for instance in her Belinda) had made use of this superstition in fictions and because the remarkable history of Three-finger'd Jack a story brought upon the stage had made the superstition notorious as a fact. Now however so long after the case has probably passed out of the public mind it may be proper to mention--that when an Obeah man _i. e._ a professor of this dark collusion with human fears and human credulity had once woven his dreadful net of ghostly terrors and had thrown it over his selected victim vainly did that victim flutter struggle languish in the meshes; unless the spells were reversed he generally perished; and without a wound except from his own too domineering fancy. [14] What follows I think (for book I have none of any kind where this paper is proceeding ) viz. _et serâ sub nocte rudentum_ is probably a mistake of Virgil's; the lions did not roar because night was approaching but because night brought with it their principal meal and consequently the impatience of hunger. [15] ""_Kilcrops._""--See amongst Southey's early poems one upon this superstition. Southey argues _contra_; but for my part I should have been more disposed to hold a brief on the other side. [16] In this place I derive my feeling partly from a lovely sketch of the appearance in verse by Mr Wordsworth; partly from my own experience of the case; and not having the poems here I know not how to proportion my acknowledgments. [17] ""And so then "" the Cynic objects ""you rank your own mind (and you tell us so frankly) amongst the primary formations?"" As I love to annoy him it would give me pleasure to reply--""Perhaps I do."" But as I never answer more questions than are necessary I confine myself to saying that this is not a necessary construction of the words. Some minds stand nearer to the type of the original nature in man are truer than others to the great magnet in our dark planet. Minds that are impassioned on a more colossal scale than ordinary deeper in their vibrations and more extensive in the scale of their vibrations--whether in other parts of their intellectual system they had or had not a corresponding compass--will tremble to greater depths from a fearful convulsion and will come round by a longer curve of undulations. [18] _i. e._ (As on account of English readers is added ) the recognition of his true identity which in one moment and by a horrid flash of revelation connects him with acts incestuous murderous parricidal in the past and with a mysterious fatality of woe lurking in the future. [19] Euripides. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. The following misprints have been corrected: ""inexorbably"" corrected to ""inexorably"" (page 466) ""daugher"" corrected to ""daughter"" (page 489) ""expresssion"" corrected to ""expression"" (page 492) Other than the corrections listed above printer's inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained. "
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file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Library of Early Journals.) BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. NO. CCCLV. MAY 1845. VOL. LVII. CONTENTS. SISMONDI 529 MY FIRST SPEC IN THE BIGGLESWADES 549 GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES. PART THE THIRD 561 THE RECTOR'S DAUGHTER 580 A GLANCE AT THE PENINSULA 595 ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS. NO. III. 608 NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. IV.--DRYDEN ON CHAUCER 617 MAYNOOTH 647 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. CCCLV. MAY 1845. VOL. LVII. SISMONDI.[1] Never was there a juster observation than that in ordinary times in the same state genius moves in a circle; originality is lost amidst imitation; we breathe thought not less than vital air. This is more especially the case in all those branches of opinion or philosophy which relate to internal economy or the social concerns of men. There it is not merely abstract principle or disinterested reasoning which have struck their roots into the human mind; interest prejudice passion have moved it yet more deeply and rendered the change from one set of opinions to another still more difficult. Universally it will be found that in regard to the social concerns of men which are so closely interwoven with our habits interests and affections the transition from error to truth can rarely be accomplished by any intellect how powerful soever which has not imbibed in part at least the maxims of foreign states. New ideas like lightning are produced by the blending of two streams of thought wafted from different ages or parts of the world. The French political revolution was brought about by the meeting of new-born French fervour with long-established English ideas: the Anglomania which immediately preceded that convulsion is the proof of it. The English social revolution has proceeded from the same cause: it is the junction of British practical habits with French speculative views which has produced the political economy of modern times: and the whole doctrines of free-trade which Adam Smith matured and recent times have reduced to practice are to be found in the _Physiocratie_ of Dupont de Nemours and the political pamphlets of Turgot. It was in the year 1775 that these doctrines imported from France were first broached in this country by the publication of the _Wealth of Nations_; and it took half a century for them to pass from the solitary meditation of the recluse into the cabinets of statesmen and the hustings of the populace. Now however this transformation of thought is general at least in a considerable part of the mercantile and manufacturing portions of the community. Few in the great cities of the empire think of doubting the doctrines of free-trade: fewer still if they doubt them venture to give publicity to their opinions. The reason of this general concurrence among commercial men and of this in social matters rapid conversion of general thought is to be found in the circumstance that the new opinions fell in with the interests or at least the immediate interests of the leaders and influential men among the mercantile classes. The remainder not understanding the subject yielded by degrees to what they were told by their superiors in wealth and intelligence were incontrovertible propositions. Manufacturers who enjoyed the advantages of coal ironstone canals railroads and harbours at their doors very readily embraced the doctrine that all restrictions on commercial intercourse were contrary to reason; and that all mankind how destitute soever of these advantages themselves could do nothing so wise as to admit all their goods without any protective duties whatever. Merchants widely engaged in mercantile speculations who were buying and selling in all parts of the world and whose interest it was to purchase as largely and as cheaply as possible and to sell as extensively and as dearly as was consistent with that extent had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that commerce should be left perfectly free that all protective duties for the shelter of native industry should be abolished and that the only charges on the transport of goods should be the cost of transit and their own profits. Every shilling taken from the import duties was so much put in their pockets either directly by their gaining the remitted duty or by their indirectly feeling the benefit of it in the reduction of price and the widening of the market. Capitalists and bankers who had vast sums to lend found nothing so reasonable as that they should be permitted without restraint to exact any amount of usury they chose from the necessities the folly or the cupidity of their debtors. The opinion became general that a nation could only be made rich by the same means as an individual manufacturer and that the excess of the price obtained for the produce of national labour above the cost of production was the measure of national wealth. Under the influence of these opinions prohibitions restrictions and import duties gave way on all sides. To the huge mass of the ignorant vulgar the very sound of "_abolition of restrictions_" was delightful. Restraint was what they hated exclusive privilege was their abomination liberty of thought and action their supposed elysium. To abolish monopolies incorporations crafts guildries and statutes of apprenticeship seemed a mighty step in the emancipation of the human race. Thus they cordially and universally joined in the cry for liberation from every sort of restriction alike in thought commerce industry and action which had been first raised by the philosophers and afterwards generally embraced by the capitalists and merchants. Amidst a chorus of congratulations mutual applauses and sanguine anticipations with the cordial approbation of the political economists the general concurrence of the merchants and the loud shouts of the multitude the doctrines of free-trade were progressively applied to every part of the social body. Taxes upon imports have been diminished till on all save a few articles they are now entirely removed; native industry has been exposed with a very slender protection to the competition of foreign states; the restraints on the exportation of machinery has been removed to allow foreign nations every advantage in competing with us; punishment has been alleviated till the penalty of death save in cases of wilful murder has become practically abolished; the liberty of the press pushed the length of allowing without control its utmost licentiousness; unbounded toleration permitted in matters of opinion even so far as generally to proclaim impunity to the worst Chartist or Socialist doctrines; combinations among workmen to raise their wages declared legal and carried into practice on the greatest scale in all the manufacturing districts; a great organic change introduced into the constitution to render Government more thoroughly dependent on public opinion; taxes to the amount of above thirty millions sterling on articles of consumption repealed in less than thirty years; a vast monetary change to lower prices by raising the value of money introduced and steadily enforced in spite of unbounded consequent distress; and the principle of free competition introduced generally as the basis of the social union the only sure guarantee of national prosperity. "Experience " says Dr Johnson "is the great test of truth and is perpetually contradicting the theories of men." Never since the beginning of the world had the doctrines of philosophers been so generally embraced by Government or measures really intended for the public good so extensively carried into effect by the Legislature. Unbounded were the anticipations of prosperity and happiness in which men generally indulged on the adoption of this system; inflexible has been the steadiness with which it has been adhered to amidst an amount of suffering which would long ago have proved fatal to any set of measures among men except those dictated by their own opinions. But amidst all these anticipations and this steadiness in carrying out the doctrines of free-trade in every department of thought and action various unpleasant indications began to manifest themselves in every part of society; and it became evident to all that the fruits of the tree of knowledge were not in this generation at least destined to be different from what they had proved to our First Parents. While wealth was increasing to an unparalleled extent among the commercial classes suffering and distress as generally ensued among the rural inhabitants; and the multitude of ruined fortunes among them rendered it certain that at no distant period the old race of landed proprietors would with the exception of a few magnates be all rooted out and their place supplied by a new set of purchasers from the commercial towns. While population was advancing with unparalleled strides in the manufacturing districts pauperism even more than kept pace with it in all; and the extraordinary fact has now been revealed by statistical researches that in an age of unparalleled wealth and general and long-continued peace a _seventh_ part of the whole inhabitants of the British islands are in a state of destitution or painfully supported by legal relief.[2] While all attempts even to pay off the national debt have been abandoned by Government and the principle openly proclaimed by the Prime Minister that any surplus of revenue above expenditure must to relieve the necessities of the country be applied to the reduction of taxation without a thought to the reduction of the debt; the Home Secretary has announced the not less alarming fact that since the peace above two hundred millions sterling or a fourth of the national debt has been raised for the relief of the poor in England alone. While the returns of the income-tax have demonstrated that seventy thousand persons in Great Britain possess among them an annual revenue of two hundred millions a-year or about L.2300 each on an average the melancholy fact has been revealed by the result of attempts to increase the national revenue by means of indirect taxation that that source of income can no longer be relied on; and in a time of profound and at the close of a period of long-continued peace it has become indispensable to recur to an assessment on property and direct taxation as it was in Rome in the decaying periods of the empire. The blue folios of the Houses of Parliament teem with authentic and decisive evidence of the vast increase during the last thirty years of crime and frequent destitution among the working classes in all parts of the empire; every four or five years a brief feverish period of gambling extravagance and commercial prosperity is succeeded by a long and dreary season of anxiety distress and depression; frightful strikes among the workmen attended with boundless distress among and hideous democratic tyranny over them invariably succeed in the close of those periods of suffering as pestilence stalks in the rear of famine; and popular insurrection has become so common that it is a rare thing to see two years pass over without martial law being of necessity practically enforced in some part of the empire. Efforts unheard-of have been made to extend the religious establishments of the state or augment the means of moral and intellectual instruction among the people; but hitherto with no perceptible effect in checking the habits of sensuality improvidence and intemperance which prevail amongst them; and in an age and a country abounding beyond any other that ever existed with declamations in favour of the blessings of knowledge and the elements of happiness and moral improvement which free-trade and a general liberation from restraint were to procure for society the scandal has been exhibited of serious crime having during the last forty years increased TEN TIMES as fast as the number of the people.[3] We are so accustomed in this country to those things that they have ceased to make any impression upon us. The great majority of men actively engaged in the business of life pay no attention to them whatever but go on labouring to make money or keep themselves afloat in the world without bestowing even a passing thought of whither that world on which they are so intent is tending. Philosophers and political economists confounded at beholding such results flowing from the adoption and practical application of their favourite principles quietly pass by on the other side; and without denying the facts content themselves with disregarding them altogether and continuing to prophesy unbounded national prosperity and moral elevation from the ultimate effect of the further abolition of restraint on thought and action. The religious portion of the community--and they form a large and highly respectable body--consider these alarming symptoms as the judgment of Heaven upon us for our sins and the natural and well-deserved consequence of our neglect of the means of salvation which have been so mercifully put into our hands. The merchants and manufacturers who are rapidly making fortunes under the new system maintain that it is founded on pure and tried reason and that in no other way can the national resources be fully developed. The landowners who are as rapidly losing them are in part so paralysed by their individual embarrassments in part so perplexed with the intricacy of the subject that they are incapable of making any efforts except on particular occasions in their own defence but resign themselves quietly to the stroke of fate as the Moslem does to the bowstring of the Sultaun. The working classes are quiet during the brief periods of prosperity; but nourish in their hearts at all times a profound jealousy and hatred of the monied interest. The opinion is almost universally diffused among them that the gains of their employers are scandalously great and wrung out of their heart's blood--that they and their masters are naturally at war with each other--and that whatever is gained by the one is lost by the other. Meanwhile Government obeying the new and as matters stand irresistible impulse let in upon the monarchy by the Reform Bill quietly slide into the principles and measures dictated to them by the dominant most active and most influential class in the state; and shutting their eyes to the consequences in future times content themselves with getting through the present with as much practical support and as little obloquy as possible. But although this is generally speaking the state of opinion on all social questions in the British islands it may well be imagined that they are looked upon with very different eyes by men of intelligence out of the whirl of passing events and beyond the reach of the passions or interests which mislead so many in this country. The civilization of Great Britain; the social questions at issue amongst us; the experiment making on so extended a scale of the effect of the new doctrines on the happiness of the people in the British islands; the prodigious wealth which has been accumulated in this country of late years; the magnitude and long duration of our political power; and the celebrity in arts in arms and in literature we have long enjoyed have struck all surrounding nations with astonishment which so far from diminishing is hourly on the increase. This effect appears variously according to the temper and previous prepossessions of those among whom it has taken place. In the French our ancient rivals our persevering antagonists in the revolutionary war it has produced no other effect generally speaking but envy hatred and malice. In the Americans it has engendered a mingled feeling of respect admiration and jealousy which appears in the strenuous efforts they are making to augment their wealth power and territory by every possible means and in every possible direction. But in reflecting minds on the Continent on the really great in all countries it has produced the effect of deep reflection and anxious investigation. They have already begun to contemplate the astonishing and long-continued empire of Great Britain as we and all subsequent ages have so long done the corresponding and only parallel dominion reared by the arms of the Roman legions. In the causes of the greatness and seeds of ruin in both there is a striking and to us portentous resemblance. The analogy has been already traced by more than one master-hand on the Continent. But none was better qualified to do justice to the subject or has treated it in a more luminous or philosophic spirit than SISMONDI; and it is to his observations on the present social state of the British empire that we have now to direct our readers' attention. As the views of this great philosopher and historian are almost entirely at variance with those which now generally prevail amongst us and to which the liberal party in every part of the country have in an especial manner pinned their faith and at the same time seem to be deserving of very great attention from their novelty and importance and direct bearing on the dearest interests of the society with which we are surrounded--we hasten to premise that in forming them Sismondi has at least not been blinded by any _political_ partiality for the side to which in _social_ questions he inclines. He is as all persons acquainted with foreign literature well know a decided liberal indeed republican in his political opinions. Born and educated in the democratic canton of Geneva a Protestant both by birth and connexion the decided opponent of tyranny in all its forms of Romish domination in all its guises he first matured his powerful mind in writing the history of the Italian republics and afterwards had his opinions confirmed by tracing the long annuals of the French monarchy. The brilliant episodes in the history of the former contrasted with the hideous catalogue of persecutions and crimes which stain the latter have confirmed in his mind to a degree which considering the extent of his information and candour of his thoughts appears surprising--the original prepossessions he had imbibed in favour of republican institutions. He even carries this so far as to advocate in his Essays which form the immediate subject of this paper an elective in preference to an hereditary monarchy. He is as ardent an enthusiast in the cause of civil and religious liberty as Russell or Sidney though his views are modified as to time by observation and experience. He yields to none of the optimist school of more recent times in sanguine expectations of the benefits which may be expected from training the people to the duties of self-government and ultimately entrusting them with its powers. He is adverse to an hereditary aristocracy and strongly advocates the division of landed property by adopting in all countries the law of equal succession which has given its powers their deathblow both in France and America. His life has been spent in painting the bright efflorescence of freedom and genius in the modern Italian republics and their long blight under the combined powers of feudal power and Romish superstition in the French monarchy. The perfection of society in his estimation would be an aggregate of little republics like those of Greece or southern Italy in ancient or of Holland Florence Pisa or Genoa in modern times--in which supreme power was vested in the hands of magistrates named by the heads of trades who had been themselves elected by the general suffrage of their respective bodies. Many readers will probably be surprised at finding such political opinions entertained by a man of such acquirements and class it with the numerous instances which history affords of the inability of the greatest minds entirely to throw off the sway of early impressions and hereditary prepossessions. But we are not concerned in this place with Sismondi's political opinions; it is his views on social questions that appear peculiarly important and which we are desirous of making known to our readers. And we mention his political opinions in order to show that he at least cannot be accused of a prejudice in favour of the monarchical or aristocratic side of the question. It is from a leaning to and sympathy with the opposite class in society that his strong and important views on the tendency of social change in Europe and especially in Great Britain and France are directed. He is decidedly of opinion that this tendency is to the last degree disastrous; that it is it which is the cause of the continued depression of industry degradation of character and increase of depravity and crime among the people; and that so great and alarming are these causes of evil that unless they are arrested by a change of opinion among the influential classes of society or the good providence of God they will infallibly destroy the whole fabric of European civilization as they did that of the ancient world. They are in his own opinion the more alarming that they have sprung not from the blighting but the triumph of what we call civilization; not from the retention of men in ignorance but their advance in knowledge; not from the upholding of restraint but its removal. All these the former evils with which mankind had to contend will in his opinion yield to the growth of industry and the progress of knowledge; but in their stead a new set of evils--more serious more wide-spread more irremediable--will rise up which to all appearance must in the end destroy all the states of modern Europe. England and France he considers and probably with reason as the states most likely to be the first victims of those social evils far more serious and irremediable than any of the political which attract so much attention and are the objects of such vehement contention between parties into which society is divided. England and France are not alone exposed to the danger; all the other European states are advancing in the same career and are threatened in the end with the same calamities. England and France have been the first to be reached and are now most endangered by them only because they are in advance of the others in the career of knowledge freedom and civilization and have attained more rapidly than their neighbours the power and energy by which modern society is distinguished and the perils by which it is menaced. In the social evils therefore with which Great Britain is now environed he sees the precursor of those which are certainly at one period or another to afflict all Europe; and in the overthrow of our empire from the corroding effect of the calamities they will induce the ultimate destiny of all the states of modern times. That these views are melancholy all will admit; that they are important if true none will deny; that they are new at least in this country will be conceded by the best informed. They come however recommended to us not merely by the powerful arguments and copious facts by which they are supported but by the peculiar turn of mind and varied qualifications of the author by whom they are supported. We have long been of opinion that it is the separation of political economy from history which is the chief cause of the numerous errors into which since the days of Adam Smith its professors have been betrayed and the general discredit into which the science itself has fallen with a large portion of the thinking men in the community. This effect has taken place as it was very natural it should in the infancy of a science from the habit into which philosophers and men of abstract thought were led of reasoning on human affairs as if they were the movement of inanimate bodies and considering only their own arguments not the illustration of their truth or falsehood which experience has afforded. This habit is peculiarly conspicuous in the advocates of free-trade the reciprocity system and Mr Malthus's doctrines on pauperism and the poor-laws; they rest on abstract arguments and are perfectly indifferent to the refutation of their principles which every day's experience is affording. Probably the whole present generation of political economists must go to their graves before this general error is eradicated from the human mind. It is an error however of the most fatal kind and which while it is persevered in must render political economy one of the greatest of the many curses which the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge has let loose upon mankind. It is like a system of medicine formed as such systems are in every age not on experience or observation but on the theories of certain physicians on the structure of the human body and the proper way of developing its various functions. Many a patient in every age has been killed before the absurdity of such theories has been put down by the experience and common-sense of mankind. And many a nation in Sismondi's opinion will perish before the nostrums of its state physicians have been expelled from the general opinion of man. It is his profound and varied historical information which has given Sismondi his deep distrust of nearly all the conclusions of modern political economy and inspired him with the gloomy presentiments with which he is filled in regard to the tendency of society under the practical application of its principles. He has fixed his eyes not on abstract principles but actual nations and traced the result not of theoretical views on the best regulations for society but of such as have actually been established and had their tendency tested by the experience of centuries in different ages and countries of the world. He sees with dismay in the state of society in modern Europe under the combined influence of free-trade increasing knowledge popular institutions vast wealth and long-established civilization a mere repetition under different names of those dreadful social evils which corroded the Roman empire and in the end overturned the vast physical dominion of the legions. He sees in that state of rural society which is nearly extinct in the British islands and fast wearing out in France Belgium and other parts of Europe where civilization is most advanced the only solid foundation for general happiness the only durable bulwark of public morality the only permanent security for national existence. This state of society is disappearing and a new condition of men coming on from causes which seem beyond the power of human control but the fatal effect of which is as apparent as the sun at noonday. And thence the gloomy views with which he is inspired on the future prospects of Europe and his profound hostility to the principles of political economy from which he considers them as having mainly arisen. Political economy as a science dates its origin by the common consent of men from the famous work "On the Nature and Causes of the _Wealth_ of Nations." But a greater authority than Adam Smith has told us that "he that HASTENETH TO BE RICH SHALL NOT BE INNOCENT." Sismondi's doctrines on political economy are a commentary on these words applied to the management of nations and the social concerns of man. It is in the fatal thirst for wealth and the application of all the powers of knowledge and all the resources of art to _that single object_ that he sees the all-powerful cause both of the present degradation of so many of the working classes of the false direction of political philosophy and of the spread of social evils which will to all appearance in the end prove fatal to the existence of the British empire and of all the European communities. But it is not any general or vague declamation on the progress of corruption and the growing evils of society which he has brought forward; he has given a close and cogent chain of reasoning supported by a formidable array of historical facts and shown how it is that the evils have arisen--how they bear upon the condition of the great bulk of the people how they degrade their character how their habits corrupt their morals and destroy their happiness; and how irremediable under the prevailing ideas of the influential classes in society these evils have become. The social injustice and political delusions which history has now clearly ascertained were the causes of the ruin of the Roman empire he sees re-appearing amidst us under different names but in still more aggravated forms and with more hopeless influences on society. All this he traces mainly to the ruinous pursuit of wealth which has seized alike upon our philosophers our statesmen and our practical men; which has too fatally verified the saying of Scripture that "the love of money is the root of all evil;" and converted the noble science of political economy the end of which is "ut homines feliciter vivant " into the degrading handmaid of wealth. So strongly is he impressed with this idea and so convinced of the ruinous direction which the social sciences are taking under the combined influence of philosophic error and monied ambition that he thinks it indispensable that language should mark the lasting and indelible crisis of distinction between the philosophy of general happiness and the means by which national wealth may be augmented. The first he calls "Economie Politique " or "Les Sciences Sociales;" the last "_Chrematistique_ " or the art of accumulating riches in a state.[4] It is in the conversion of political economy or the science of making men happy which of course can only be done by rendering them orderly moral and religious into Chrematistique or the mere pursuit of the means by which we may augment the sum of national riches that the unobserved source of by far the greatest social evils of the present day is to be found. These evils are greater than either the slavery of the Romans or the bondage of serfs in modern times; for they have induced the ruinous effects of both these degrading systems without the alleviating and counteracting advantages with which either was attended. And the way in which this effect flows from the social doctrines of modern times is this. An augmentation of production is generally considered as an addition to national wealth; and it is on this ground that all nations under the guidance of the _Chrematists_ are making such strenuous efforts to increase their agricultural and manufactured produce. Such an augmentation however says Sismondi is not only by no means in every case an addition to national wealth but it is often a useless and pernicious addition to national suffering. If the supply of any article exceeds what can be consumed in the early and simple ages of society or disposed of to advantage in the later it is not only no advantage but a positive loss. What avails it that the yards of cotton cloth manufactured or the quarters of wheat raised are increased in a country from 50 000 000 to 100 000 000 if in consequence of the increased supply the price is lowered one-half? The producers get their trouble for their pains--they gain nothing--the consumers get more than they require--great part of the superfluity is wasted or sent abroad at a ruinous loss. Augmentation of production therefore is not in every case a sign of increased national wealth; it is the _maintenance of a due proportion between production and consumption_ which is the real desideratum and forms the only real basis of lasting national opulence. According to the _Chrematists_ the wealth of a nation as of an individual producer is to be measured by the excess of the value of production over its cost. This says Sismondi is the most fatal of all errors and the grand source of the misery of the working classes and instability of society in all the manufacturing states of Europe. It is true the wealth of a master-manufacturer is to be measured by the excess of the price he obtains for his produce over the cost of its production; but a master-manufacturer is not a nation. A nation consists not only of masters but of workmen; not only of consumers but producers. The latter class is by far the most numerous the most important the most likely to increase. If they are reduced to misery in consequence of the reduction of their wages by the introduction of machinery the employment of juvenile or female labour the immigration of foreign labourers or any other cause it is a poor compensation to say that the profits of their employers have been greatly augmented at their expense. If the excess of the value of production above its cost were either the measure or even an important element in national
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ealth Ireland where the wages of field labour are 6d. a-day and Poland where they are 3d. should be the richest nations in the world whereas they are notoriously the poorest. The real measure of national wealth is to be found not in the excess of production above the consumption employed in it but in the means of comfortable livelihood which their industry affords to the _whole_ classes of the community; and that is only to be attained where wealth is very generally distributed. The mere increase of national wealth is far from being in every instance an addition either to national strength national security or national happiness. On the contrary it is often the greatest possible diminution to the whole three. It is not the increase of wealth but _its distribution_ which is the great thing to be desired. It is on that that the welfare and happiness of society depend. When wealth whether in capital or revenue runs into a few hands--when landed property accumulates in the persons of a knot of territorial magnates and commerce centres in the warehouse of a limited number of merchant princes and manufactures in the workshop of a small body of colossal companies or individual master-employers it is _absolutely certain_ that the great bulk of the people will be in a state of degradation and distress. The reason is that these huge fortunes have been made by diminishing the cost of production--that is the wages of labour--to such an extent as to have enormously and unjustly increased the profits of the stock employed in conducting it. Society in such circumstances is in the unstable equilibrium: it rests on the colossal wealth territorial or commercial of a few; but it has no hold on the affections or interests of the great majority of the community. It is liable to be overturned by the first shock of adverse fortune. Any serious external disaster any considerable internal suffering may at once overturn the whole fabric of society and expose the wealth of the magnates only as a tempting plunder to the cupidity and recklessness of the destitute classes of society. ""There is as much true philosophy as poetry "" says Sismondi ""in the well-known lines of Goldsmith-- 'Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey Where wealth accumulates and men decay! Princes and lords may flourish or may fade-- A breath may make them as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry their country's pride When once destroy'd can never be supplied.'"" The _Chrematists_ always represent an increase of national wealth as necessarily flowing from an augmentation of the riches of the individuals who compose it. But this is the greatest possible mistake. Great part of the riches obtained by individuals in a state so far from being an addition to the national wealth is an abstraction from it. The reason is that it is made at the expense of others in the same community; it is a transference of riches from one hand to another not an addition to their total amount. Every one sees that the gains of the gamester the opera-dancer the lawyer are of this description; what they take is taken from others in the same community. But the magnitude of the gains of merchants and manufacturers blinds the world to the real nature of their profits which in great part at least are made at the expense of others in the state. If the importing merchant makes extravagant gains he indeed is enriched; but how is he enriched? In part at least he is so by impoverishing such of his countrymen as purchase his goods at the exorbitant price which constitute his profits. If the exporting merchant or manufacturer drives a gainful trade it is in part without doubt derived from the industry of foreign nations to whom the export goods are sold; but it is too often earned at the expense also of the workmen he employs who have been compelled by competition or destitution to sell their labour to him at a rate barely sufficient for the support of existence. We are not to flatter ourselves that the nation is becoming rich because the exporters of Irish grain Paisley shawls or Manchester cotton goods are making fortunes when the labourers they employ are earning from sixpence to eightpence a-day only. On the contrary the magnitude of the gains of the former is too often only a measure of the destitution and degradation of the latter. It is usually considered that it is a sufficient answer to this to observe that if riches are thus from the direction which national industry has taken drawn to a distressing extent from one class of the community to concentrate them in another a corresponding benefit is conferred upon other classes by the increased expenditure which takes place on the part of those in whose hands the wealth has accumulated. There can be no doubt that a certain compensation does take place in this way; and it is the existence of that compensation which alone renders society tolerable under such circumstances. But the benefit accruing is no adequate set-off if society be viewed as a whole to the evil incurred. If two millions of Irish labourers are working at sixpence a-day each and two millions more of human beings in the Emerald Isle are in a state of destitution it is a poor compensation for such a dreadful state of things to observe that some hundred Irish noblemen or absentee proprietors are spending ten or twenty thousand a-year each amidst the luxuries of London Paris or Naples; and that they sometimes extract five or six guineas an acre from their starving tenants. If weavers in Renfrewshire and cotton operatives in Lancashire are making cotton cloths at eightpence a-day of wages we are not to be deluded into the belief that society is prosperous because every year six or eight cotton lords buy estates for a hundred thousand pounds a-piece; and one-half of the railways in the kingdom are constructed with the wealth of Manchester and Glasgow. There are no two things more different than national riches and the wealth of the rich in a nation. It is the fatal and ruinous effect of wealth thus accumulated in the hands of a few at the expense of the great bulk of the industrious classes in a state that it tends to perpetuate and increase the diseased and perilous state of society from which it sprang. The common observations that money makes money and that poverty breeds poverty show how universally the experience of mankind has felt that capital in the long run gives an overwhelming advantage in the race for riches to the rich and that poverty as uniformly erelong gives the vast superiority in numbers to the poor. We often hear of an earl or a merchant-prince mourning the want of an heir but scarcely ever of a Highland couple or an Irish hovel wanting their overflowing brood of little half-naked savages. We occasionally hear of a poor man raising himself by talent and industry to fortune; but in general he does so only by associating his skill with some existing capital and giving its owner thus the extraordinary advantage of uniting old wealth with a new discovery. To get on in the world without capital is daily becoming more difficult to the great bulk of men: it is in trade or commerce at least wholly impossible. Thus as wealth accumulates in the capital and great cities of the empire destitution poverty and of course crime and immorality multiply around the seats where that wealth was originally created. And this evil so far from abating with the lapse of time daily increases and must increase till some dreadful convulsion takes place and restores the subverted balance of society; because the power of capital like that of a lever which is continually lengthened is daily augmenting in the centres of wealth; and the power of numbers in the centres of destitution is hourly on the increase from the reckless and improvident habits which that destitution has engendered. The happiness of a nation its morality order and security are mainly if not entirely dependent on the extent to which _property_ with its attendant blessings and habits of reflection regularity and industry are diffused among the people. But the doctrines of the _Chrematists_ and of nearly the whole school of modern political economists go almost entirely to uproot this inestimable blessing. The principle being once fixed in men's minds and acted upon by individual men and the legislature that the great thing is to diminish the _cost of production_ it follows as a very natural consequence that the main thing is to diminish the _wages of the producers_. Every thing which can conduce to that object is vigorously pursued without the slightest regard to the effect the changes must have on the fortunes and ultimate fate in life of whole classes in society. It is thus that in agriculture the engrossing of farms takes place--an evil so sorely felt in England during the seventeenth and in Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--and that hundreds and thousands of happy families are dispossessed from their hereditary possessions to make room for that ""devourer of the human race "" as the old writers called it the sheep. It is thus that in our own times the small tenants and cotters have been so generally dispossessed in Scotland and Ireland to make room for the large cultivator or store farmer. It is thus that the race of hand-loom weavers who carry on their trade in their own houses and with the advantages of rural residence gardens fields and country air is every where becoming extinct or their wages have fallen so low as barely to support existence in the very humblest rank of life. In the room of these sturdy old children of the soil has sprung up a race of puny operatives or labourers living by wages and having no durable connexion either with the land or even with the capitalist who employs them. Employed at weekly wages they are constantly on the verge of famine if turned out of their employment. Every thing now is concentrated in huge mills manufacturing districts and great towns where the labour of men is too often supplanted by women that of women by children that of children almost entirely by machinery on which they attend. The cost of production indeed is prodigiously diminished by the substitute of these feeble or tiny labourers for that of full-grown men; and with it the profits of the masters and the circle of the export sale are proportionally augmented; but at what expense is this profit to a few gained? At the expense in some degree at least it is to be feared of the independence the comfort the morals the lives of whole classes of the labouring portions of the community. The application of knowledge to the arts of science to manufactures so far from diminishing has hitherto at least had the most ruinous possible effect in increasing this fatal tendency of great capital and extensive manufactured industry upon mankind. Watt Arkwright Crompton--those giants of intellectual power whose discoveries have augmented tenfold often an hundredfold the productive powers of manufacturing labour--have been the worst enemies that the happiness and morals of the working manufacturers ever knew. For what is it that by means of great capital working with the powers which their immortal discoveries have conferred manufacturing industry has become? Why it has all or nearly all run into huge mills or other establishments in which machinery at a cost of thirty forty or fifty thousand pounds is erected and a crown of needy women and children are employed in ordinary times at the lowest wages which can support existence with a few men at a guinea or twenty-five shillings a-week to direct and superintend their labours. It need not be told what the habits of such a crowd of young women most of them from fourteen to twenty must in general be. These evils in manufacturing districts are universally felt and complained of; but it is not equally generally admitted that they arise invariably and as matters at present stand inevitably from that very extension of science and mechanical power to the arts which is in the view of the increase of national wealth so just a subject of exultation and which it is so much the object both of legislative enactment and of individual ingenuity to augment and extend. Yet is not the crushing effect of these great discoveries on the welfare of the labouring classes as manifest as their elevating influence on the fortunes of their employers and the sum total of the produce of national manufactured industry? On no other principle is it possible to explain the prodigious accumulation of wealth in one class of the British empire and of degradation misery crime and destitution in the other and far more numerous classes. The division of labour and the confining of each workman or workchild to one limited sphere of employment while it is productive of a very great increase in the skill which each exerts in his own department and in consequence augments in a similar proportion the net produce of manufactured industry is still more fatal to the morals habits and independence of the manufacturing classes. Variety of occupation is indispensable to vigour of mind or independence of character. The exclusive chaining of the human mind to one employment even though that employment is of the most intellectual kind as the duties of the lawyer the statesman the physician or the divine speedily contracts the understanding narrows the interest circumscribes the field of enjoyment and often hardens the heart. If this is the case as undoubtedly it is with those who are exclusively immersed even in the learned professions which require an exercise of thought and can be founded only on a long and cultivated education how much more must it be the case with those whose occupation is purely mechanical and so trivial that it may be learned in a few days--as twirling a film twisting a cotton dabbing a plate or drawing a cloth out of a vat? Such operatives are exposed at every period of their lives to the greatest evils which can debase humanity--uncertainty of subsistence and monotony of occupation. Their work is so simple that any one can learn it in a few days--therefore they are exposed to competition with the whole labouring classes of the community;--it is so uniform that it neither requires nor is compatible with intellectual elevation--therefore it is speedily made by the effect of competition for such simple employment to engross their whole time. Mental improvement moral or religious cultivation are scarcely possible to any but the strongest minds united to the strongest bodies in the circumstances to which the working classes under such a system are speedily reduced. If any one doubts this let him dig or hoe or walk along the road or trundle a hoop or bear a fowling-piece for twelve hours a-day without intermission save at breakfast and dinner and then see with what appetite he can take to moral or intellectual improvement when he comes in at night. It is the deplorable effect of such a state of things that it tends not merely to perpetuate but increase the very evils from which it has arisen and reduce the working classes to that state wherein extrication from them is next to impossible. Under the pressure of the ceaseless desire to cheapen production and diminish the cost of manufacture young persons of both sexes are huddled together into mills and factories at so early a period of life that they are scarcely fit to leave the nursery. It has recently been found necessary to introduce a special statute to prohibit children being employed in print-fields in England under _eight_ years of age. They are so because they can at once earn sixpence or eightpence a-day by standing beside a wheel or watching a film of cotton which is discharged out of a machine; and this cheap and infantine labour is equally attractive to the parents who thus discover in their offspring a source of income instead of a burden--and the manufacturer who finds his work done by little docile labourers too weak to engage in a strike and yet strong enough to do the work. No exertion of strength is required at least none at any one moment in many of these occupations--though the work when long continued is to the last degree exhausting; the steam-engine lifts all the weights and furnishes all the power. Thus there is from the necessities and interests of all concerned a constant demand for juvenile labour; and this demand speedily produces its own supply by promoting early marriages or fostering a swarm of bastards among persons thus thrown together at the period of life when the passions are the strongest with a total separation at all times save bed-time from that only school of virtue the parental home. Moral and intellectual cultivation is God be praised not rendered impossible in the more superior and industrious of the manufacturing operatives; but it may be doubted whether the species of literature which is in general presented to them and unhappily proves most attractive either strengthens their minds or improves their happiness. Exciting novels such as those of Victor Hugo Janin Sue and others of the class; highly wrought pictures of the manners and vices of high life; horrible stories of seduction murder and suicide such as compose so large a part of the modern romance school of France;--are most sure of circulation among the working classes of great towns because they at once interest and excite the imagination. They are read to the extent and for the reason that novels are so generally devoured by the young the imaginative and the indolent of both sexes in the higher ranks. The poor operatives however have an excuse for the exclusive reading of such exciting inanities which does not belong to their higher fellow-citizens; they are so worn out by long-continued toil that they are unable to _bear the fatigue_ of any kind of reading which requires application or reflection. Some no doubt are improved by works of a more elevated class which they contrive to purchase out of their savings and to devour during the brief period allowed them between labour and repose. But their number is very small in comparison of the whole as is decisively proved by the limited number of booksellers' shops in the manufacturing towns compared to those which supply the means of sensual enjoyment. It is seldom in such cities you will find one bookseller's shop for an hundred where beer or spirits are retailed. Many even of those who read are rather injured than improved both in their habits and their happiness by the mental cultivation they receive. They contract exaggerated ideas of the enjoyment of riches and the avenues to distinction which may be opened by intellectual effort; they become dissatisfied with the station in the world which Providence has assigned them; they strive to exchange bodily for intellectual toil; and in the vain attempt to exchange their lot for a better one numbers are precipitated into difficulties crimes and ruin. The social organization of trades in all the European cities during the middle ages was eminently favourable to the working classes; and it was perhaps the greatest calamity that ever befell them that in the madness of democratic ambition they united with the master employers to pull down these institutions. When each craft was organized in a little republic of its own with its office-bearers stated meetings funds for the indigent and exclusive privileges a gradation of ranks was created amidst the poor--a little aristocracy of industry which often proved itself capable of contending with the proudest aristocracy of land or riches. The poor were not left alone; the wrongs of individuals were taken up by their craft; joint measures for the common behoof were pursued; the dreadful feeling of isolation in the midst of a crowd was unknown; all were enrolled under some banner or entered with some craft. Thus every one felt himself in a fixed and definite place in society; he had privileges and advantages of a tangible kind to forfeit by losing it. But when exclusive privileges crafts and incorporations were abolished amidst cries of joy and shouts of triumph from the whole popular party all over the world these inestimable blessings were lost. The poor became a mixed indiscriminate multitude having no more coherence or power of resistance than a rope of sand. They degenerated into a huge assembly of private soldiers without officers incapable either of organizing any thing for their own durable benefit or of resisting the progressive encroachments of capital machinery and competition on the sole domain left them--the wages of their labour. Universally it has been found that upon the abolition of incorporations and crafts the condition of the working classes has rapidly and fearfully changed for the worse. The principle of free competition--of breaking down all barriers--allowing every one to elbow his neighbour out of employment and bringing every thing down to the lowest and cheapest level--has tended only to lower the wages of labour and aggravate the insecurity of the poor. No one has a fixed or permanent station; every thing is done for days' or weeks' wages; and the penalty of dismissal is destitution famine and a lingering death. Hence the constant complaint now on the part of the poor that they cannot get work; and the prodigious multitude of the lowest class who are constantly moving about seeking in one situation that employment they have lost in another. This however is of all things the most fatal to their habits character and prospects; they get among people to whom they are total strangers who regard them with aversion as intruders and are neither inclined to relieve their distresses nor to facilitate their advance in the world. The most powerful check next to religion on human conduct--_the opinion of friends_--is lost on the very class who stand most in need of its control. Obscurity screens immorality from detection; numbers shelter crime from punishment. The temptations to vice multiply while the barriers against it are cut away. The really good poor are invariably stationary; moving about is as fatal to their habits as it is to those of children. The _free circulation of labour_ of which we hear so much from master employers and the Chrematists is often an advantage with a view to the creation of wealth or the sudden completion of great undertakings: considered with reference to national morals happiness and ultimate safety it is one of the greatest curses which can befall a people. It is a sense of the evils arising from this feeling of isolation amidst multitudes and the experienced inability of the poor all struggling against each other for subsistence to resist the progressive decline of their wages till they reach the lowest point consistent with the support of existence which has made the working classes in France and England of late years so generally embrace and make such incredible efforts to support trades'-unions. They have endeavoured in so doing to regain that organization of crafts in separate classes and bodies which was overturned amidst the shouts of triumph consequent on the French Revolution. But this attempt so far from palliating the existing evils has had the greatest possible tendency to aggravate them; for it has too often vested irresponsible power in hands wholly unfit to wield it. Perhaps the greatest the most wide-spread the most acute suffering endured by the labouring poor in Great Britain during the last thirty years has arisen from strikes. Nothing has tended so strongly to shake society to its centre; to array the working classes against their employers; to spread habits of recklessness violence and improvidence among them and alienate their natural supporters from them by the frightful crimes to which they have given rise. Foresight industry regularity of conduct frugality saving habits--those prime guardians of humble virtue--are out of the question when men are subjected to the tyranny of these dreadful popularly elected despots. The last and only possession left to the poor--their own labour--is liable to be reft from them by the imperious commands of an unknown and irresponsible committee; which elevated to importance by the public distress uses every means to prolong it by preventing a return to habits of regular industry. The suffering produced by the compulsory cessation from labour which these committees command often for an incredibly long period never could be borne but by men inflamed by the spirit of party and contending for what they ignorantly deem their best interests. It equals all that we read of in heroic besieged towns enduring the extremities of famine before they submit to the besiegers. The Committee of Public Salvation was often shaken by a scarcity of provisions in the capital and never failed to tremble at the forests of pikes which when want became severe issued from the Faubourg St Antoine; but a trades'-union committee succeeds in compelling men by threats of the torch and the dagger to remain in idleness for months together and surrender their birthright and inheritance the support of themselves the food of their children to the commands of an unknown power which retains them in the agonies of want till suffering nature can no longer endure. The actual suffering resulting from this unparalleled tyranny while it continues is the least of its evils. A far greater because more durable and irremediable calamity is to be found in the demoralizing of the poor by depriving them of occupation and dividing society by arraying whole classes against each other. Industry during the feudal ages was often exposed to the most ruthless violence from the hand of power and men possessed scarce any security against the occasional oppression of arbitrary monarchs or the savage devastation of martial incursions. But great as these political evils were it may be doubted whether they occasioned in the long run so serious an invasion on human happiness and the springs of human virtue as the _social evils_ which on the cessation of these political disorders have unobserved insinuated themselves through society. The annals of the middle ages are filled with the most heart-rending accounts of the outbreaks of savage violence to which the people were subjected; and it appears impossible that society could ever have recovered the dreadful devastation to which it was frequently exposed. Yet it invariably did recover and that too in an incredibly short space of time. The Crusades were the overflow of the full nations of Europe after two centuries of that apparently withering hostility. We read of no such resurrection of national strength in Rome under the emperors after the devastations of the barbarians began; nor do we hear of any such after the oppression of the pachas and ages in Turkey and Persia at this time. Superficial writers explain this by saying these nations are in their decline and the Gothic nations during the feudal ages were in their youth. But the human race is in all ages equally young; there are an equal number of young men in proportion to the population in every country and in every age. The reason of the difference is that social evils have arisen in the one case which were unknown in the other--they have spread and diffused their baneful influence. The feudal institutions amidst all their want of protection against political violence or external oppression had one admirable quality which enabled society to bear up and advance under all these accumulated evils. They conferred power and influence at home on those only who were _interested_ in the welfare of the people. The feudal baron at the head of his armed followers was doubtless always ready at the summons of his sovereign to perform his fifty days' military service or at the call of an injured clansman to make an inroad into the territories of a neighbouring but hostile feudatory; but when he did so he had nothing to depend upon but his own retainers serfs or followers. If they were depressed starving alienated or lukewarm he was lost; he was defeated in the field and speedily besieged in his last stronghold. Thus the most valuable element was universally diffused over society; viz. a sense of mutual dependence and of the benefit each derived from the prosperity of his neighbours. If the baron was weak or unsupported his vassals were liable to be plundered his serfs found themselves without bread. If the vassals were oppressed the baron was undone: instead of a formidable array of stout men-at-arms sturdy archers and gallant spearmen to defend his domains he found himself followed only by a weak and feeble array giving awful evidence in the decisive moment of the ruinous effects of his disorderly or tyrannical government. Even the serfs were bound up with the prosperity of the little community. If they were weakened by bad usage or driven from the domain by cruelty the fields were untilled the swine unherded the baron and vassals without bread. Thus it was the interest of all to stand by protect and spare each other. Each felt the consequences of the neglect of these social duties in immediate and often irreparable injury to himself. It was this experienced necessity of mutual forbearance and support which was the mainspring of social improvement during the feudal ages and enabled society so quickly to repair the chasm produced by the dreadful political evils to which it was occasionally exposed. Its spring of improvement and happiness was within--its evils were without. We often read in the annals of those times of the unbounded plunder and devastation exercised by armed violence upon pacific industry and the great fortunes sometimes amassed by the robber chivalry by such predatory incursions.--That is the most decisive proof of the presence of political and the absence of social evils. The people must have been previously protected and prosperous or they could not have been worth plundering. The annals of these times will transmit no account of fortunes made by pillaging or taxing the cotters of Ireland the weavers of Paisley or the cotton-piecers of Manchester. What rendered the feudal system in the end insupportable was the change of manners strengthening of government and cessation of private wars which left its evils and took away its blessings. When the baron lived in rude plenty on his estate surrounded by his followers respected by his vassals feared by his neighbours his presence was a benefit his protection a blessing. But when the central government had acquired such strength as to have stopped private warfare; when standing armies had come to supersede the tumultuary feudal array and the thirst for luxury or office had attracted the nobles to the capital these blessings were at an end. The advantages of the feudal system had ceased with the removal of the evils it went so far to alleviate; its burdens and restrictions remained and were felt as an insupportable restraint without any corresponding benefit on the rising industry of the people. The seigneur no longer was seen either at the chateau or in the village. In his stead the bailiff made half-yearly visits to exact the rent or feudal services from vassals whose prosperity had ceased to be any object either of interest or solicitude to their lord. Whether they were rich or poor happy or miserable contented or repining was immaterial to him after he had ceased to reside in his castle and to be protected by his armed vassals. The one thing needful was to pay their rents or perform their services to maintain his extravagances; and these were accordingly exacted with merciless severity. Thence the general oppression of the poor and universal outcry against the system which produced the French Revolution. The powerful central government regular taxation and large standing armies of modern Europe have removed the chief _political_ evils which were at times felt with such dreadful severity during the middle ages; but have they not introduced _social_ evils of a still more pernicious and irretrievable character? Private wars have disappeared; we no longer hear of chateaux burnt fields ravaged or serfs massacred in pursuance of the deadly feuds of hostile barons. War has become a separate profession; military service is no longer required from the rural tenants; the undivided attention of industry is permitted to be directed to pacific pursuits. The ravages of hostility and the destruction of conquest have been diminished in amount and greatly alleviated in severity. Taxes levied on the whole community have superseded the necessity save in extreme cases of ruinous exactions from individuals; war is often felt rather as a stimulus to industry by its
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xpenditure than a blight to it from its contributions. It is the influence of these circumstances joined to the protection of a regular government and the unbounded stimulus of general freedom which have given so marvellous an impulse to the prosperity of modern Europe and rendered the British Empire in particular where their fostering tendency has been most strongly felt the admiration the terror and the envy of the world. But in lieu of the political oppression and military exactions which in former days were felt as so disastrous a host of _social_ evils have sprung up and are rapidly spreading their baneful influence through every class of society to such an extent as to render it doubtful whether their effect will not ultimately be to uproot society and destroy the whole states of modern Europe. These effects have taken place amidst general peace and apparent general prosperity; at a time when wealth was accumulating with unheard-of rapidity and knowledge was diffused to an unprecedented extent. Law was regularly administered; illegal acts generally checked; foreign hostility averted; domestic oppression removed or softened. The Chrematists were in exultation; production was every day becoming cheaper; exports and imports in consequence increasing; and all the external symptoms of the highest prosperity according to the doctrine of the _wealth_ of nations in the most flourishing state. But all these blessings have been neutralized and a large portion of the community precipitated into the most woful degradation by the operation of the very causes which have produced this vast increase of wealth and its astonishing accumulation in the hands of the commercial community. The incessant efforts to lessen the cost of production have beat down the wages of labour in many departments to the lowest point; the strenuous exertions made to facilitate cheaper importation have reduced the remuneration of domestic industry to the lowest point consistent with its existence. Incredible have been the efforts made by all classes to counterbalance by additional industry this disastrous progress; but the only effect of these efforts has been to augment the evil complained of by increasing the necessity for exertion and augmenting the mass of productions with which society is flooded. Production in every line has come in ordinary times to outstrip consumption. Machinery has quadrupled its power; gorged markets are constantly complained of as depriving industry of its just and often of any reward at all. Society has become a great gambling-house in which colossal fortunes are made by a few and the great majority are turned adrift penniless friendless to destitution ruin or suicide. The condition of a considerable portion of the working-classes has in this terrible strife generally been wofully changed for the worse. Brief periods of high prices which induce habits of extravagance among them are succeeded by long seasons of distress which spread the reality of woe. In the desperate effort made to extend the foreign market by cheapening production nearly all the kindly relations of life have been snapped asunder. The operative is unknown to the master-employer; he is turned off at a moment's warning into a cold world in which he can find no other employment. The tenant is too often unknown to the landlord; or at least strangers are constantly brought on the land. The labourer even is unknown to the farmer; his place can always be supplied by a stranger ready probably to work for less wages because in greater distress. Every thing is put up to auction and sold to the highest bidder. Labour only is awarded to the lowest. A nation which has surrendered its government to the commercial classes and at the same time has a large population and considerable territorial possessions cannot fail to incur ruin if their rule is long continued. The reason is that their interest is adverse to that of the most numerous important and valuable classes of society; and they never cease to prosecute that interest till they have destroyed them. To import largely is for their interest; therefore they promote all measures tending to favour the introduction of foreign productions though their effect must be to depress and in the end extinguish native industry. They would have the people pay for these imports by enlarged exports; in other words they would convert society into a mere appendage of the trading classes. To enlarge these exports they make the most strenuous effort in every possible way to cheapen production--that is to lower the wages of labour. Their idea of a perfect society is one in which the labouring classes are reduced to the rank of mere attendants on machines because that is the cheapest form of production. They would have them attend on these machines at sixpence or ninepence a-day live chiefly on potatoes and eat no bread but what is imported in foreign vessels and from foreign countries because they are cheaper than their own. In this way both exports and imports would be elevated to the highest pitch; for the main part of the national food would figure in the imports and the main part of national labour in the exports. Mercantile business would come to supersede every other--it alone would be attended with any profit. Meanwhile domestic industry would languish and decline--the home market would be destroyed--the rural population the main stay of a nation gradually withered away and wasted. Poverty and misery would weaken and alienate the working classes; and amidst a constant increase of exports and imports and growth of commercial wealth the nation would be destroyed. This is no imaginary picture. The ruin of the Roman empire in ancient the desolation of the Campagna of Rome in modern times are permanent proofs of its reality. It is generally said that slavery was the devouring cancer which destroyed the Roman Empire and thence it is concluded by the Chrematists that as we have no slaves we can never be ruined like them. They forget that the reality of slavery may exist and its evils remain although its name has been expunged from the statute book. It is always to be recollected that slavery existed to just as great an extent in the most flourishing as in the decaying periods of the Roman dominion--in the days of Scipio and Cæsar as in those of Constantine or Honorius. Cato was a great dealer in slaves. He was especially careful to sell his slaves when they _became old_ lest when worn out they should become chargeable. The republic was brought to the brink of ruin an hundred years before the birth of Christ by the Servile War; yet with that devouring cancer in its intestines it afterwards conquered the world. It was not slavery but the combination of slavery with free-trade and vast patrician and commercial wealth which really brought ruin on the ancient world. ""Verumque confitentibus "" says Pliny ""_latifundia_ perdidere Italiam: jam vero et provincias."" It was the accumulation of patrician revenue and commercial wealth in the capital when the provinces were cultivated only by slaves and the gradual extinction of Italian agriculture by the introduction of Egyptian and Lybian grain where it could be raised cheaper than in the Italian fields because money was less plentiful in the impoverished extremities than in the gorged centre of the Empire which was the real cause of its ruin. The free race of Italian cultivators the strength of the legions disappeared before the fleets which wafted cheap grain from the banks of the Nile and the shores of Africa to the Tiber. Thence the impoverishing of the small freeholders--the buying up of all small freeholds by the great families--the extinction of grain culture in Italy--the managing of the huge estates into which the country was parcelled in pasture cultivation by means of slaves--the disappearance of Italian free-husbandmen--and the ruin of the Empire. So rich was the capital when it fell that Ammianus Marcellinus has recorded that when Alaric appeared before Rome it contained within its walls seventeen hundred and fifty great families many of whom had estates almost entirely in pasturage which yielded them what was equivalent in English money to one hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling of yearly rent. To the same cause is to be ascribed the continued desolation of the Campagna of Rome in modern times. Slavery has disappeared; but the curse of an unlimited and extraordinary supply of foreign grain to the Tiber still continues and chains the proprietors of the _Agro Romano_ to pasturage as the only means of profitable cultivation. Travellers are never weary of expressing their astonishment at the desolation which comes up to the very gates of Rome as of Constantinople; but a very simple cause explains it in both. It is more profitable to keep the land in pasturage than to lay it out in grain cultivation by reason of the deluge of foreign grain raised in semi-barbarous countries with which the capital is flooded. From official documents laid before the Papal Government which made the most anxious and minute enquiries into this subject it appears that 8000 crowns laid out in agriculture in the Campagna of Rome at the prices of Rome would bring in a profit of only 30 crowns a-year; while the same sum laid out on pasturage of sheep on the same land would bring in 1972 crowns. It is not surprising in these circumstances that the Campagna remains in grass.[5] The cause of this extraordinary state of things is to be found not in any peculiar adaptation of the Campagna to grass cultivation; for the land is generally of the most extraordinary fertility and in former times in the infancy of Rome literally speaking ""every rood had its man."" The cause and the sole cause is to be found in the constant low price of grain in the capital and the purchase of the _whole of its supply_ from foreign states. The Papal Government inherited from its Imperial predecessor the habit and the necessity of making periodical distributions of grain at a cheap rate to the people. The people inherited from the lazy successors of the conquerors of the world the habit of looking to the public stores for cheap distributions of food as those of Paris did during the Revolution. Government elective weak without any armed force and in the hands of priests had not courage to incur the present hazard consequent on a departure from this ruinous system; and they bought their grain of course where they could get it cheapest--in Egypt Odessa and the Levant. The banks of the Volga are to modern what those of the Nile were to ancient Rome. The Campagna has been chained to sterility and desolation by the same cause in modern as in ancient times--under the Popes as the Emperors. So far has this evil gone that in 1797 when the Papal Government was overturned by the French the _Casa Annonaria_ of the Apostolic Chamber or Board of Public Subsistence exhibited a deficit of 3 293 000 crowns (£645 000 ) incurred in retailing bread to the people cheaper than they could purchase it even in the cheapest foreign markets.[6] The Campagna of Rome is the great type of the state to which the doctrine of the Chrematists would reduce the states of modern Europe. Agriculture ruined by the perpetual curse of foreign importation; urban industry alone flourishing by the stimulus of foreign export; vast fortunes accumulated in the hands of a few merchants and great proprietors; constant distress among the labouring poor; all the symptoms of prosperity in the cities--all the marks of decay in the country; luxury the most unbounded side by side with penury the most pinching; an overflow of wealth which cannot find employment in one class of society; a mass of destitution that seeks in vain for work in another; a middle class daily diminishing in number and declining in importance between the two extremes; and government under the influence of popular institutions yielding to all the demands of the opulent class because it gives money: and deaf to all the cries of the impoverished because they can only ask for bread. The name of slavery is indeed abolished in Western Europe but is its reality are its evils not present? Have we not retained its fetters its restraints its degradations without its obligation to support? Are not the English factory children often practically in a worse servitude than in the Eastern harem? If the men are not ""ascripti glebæ "" are they not ""_ascripti molinis ac carbonariis_?"" What trade can a factory girl or coal-mine child take to if thrown out of employment? The master cannot flog them or bring then back by force to his workshop. Mighty difference! He can starve them if they leave it: he chains them to their mills by the invincible bond of necessity. They have the evils of slavery without its advantages. Can or ought such a state of things long continue? Whether this is descriptive of the state of society in France and England let those determine who are familiar with the people of either of these countries. Such are Sismondi's political views which are enforced in the volumes before us by a vast array of historical and statistical facts which as well as the deservedly acknowledged talent and character of the writer entitle them to the highest respect and render then of the deepest interest. That they are ""important if true "" as the Americans say no one will deny: that they are of immediate and pressing application to the state of society in the British islands none acquainted with it especially in the manufacturing districts will be so bold as to dispute. We have deemed it best to give an abstract of his opinions and principles in a condensed form in preference to quoting individual passages because he expands his ideas so much that the latter course would have enabled us to give only a limited number of his views. Those who will take the trouble to turn to the original volumes will find every sentence in the preceding abstract enforced and illustrated at least a dozen times in this most able and original work. That we consider his ideas as in the main just and his anticipations too likely to prove well-founded may be inferred from the pains we have taken to form a digest of them in the preceding pages. We only hope that though he possibly has not much exaggerated the social evils which now threaten society he has not given their due weight to the many alleviating or corrective causes which in a free religious and moral community are constantly called into activity when society has come to require their operation. Sismondi says though he has been enforcing these principles for twenty years he has found few converts to his opinion in France; and that he does not think he would have found one if the English Parliamentary Reports had not afforded decisive evidence of the existence of many of these social evils amidst unbounded commercial prosperity and the highest political power in Great Britain. The social evils which destroyed Rome he reminds us were in full activity during the eighty years of the splendid pacific and wise rule of the Antonines; the most happy to external appearance which the world ever knew. Their baneful influence appeared at once when political dangers commenced with the accession of Commodus. These doctrines are not the less likely to be true that they are contrary to general opinion that they run counter to many important interests that they are incapable of present application that they are adverse to the policy of the rulers of the state. Government rules men but Providence rules government and will in the end assert its supremacy and right the moral evils of mankind or punish the sins of nations. MY FIRST SPEC IN THE BIGGLESWADES. My uncle Scipio Dodger was one of the most extraordinary men of the age. Figure to yourself a short stout and rather pot-bellied individual with keen eyes moving in a perpetual twinkle a mouth marked at the corners with innumerable tiny wrinkles hair of the shortest and most furzy white scant at the front but gathered behind into a pig-tail about the size of a cigar; and you have a fair full-length portrait of my avuncular relative. My father in early years had married an American lady--I must own it--a Pennsylvanian and uncle Scipio was her brother. I was the only fruit of that union and at an early age was left an orphan in circumstances of sufficient embarrassment. A mere accident saved me from being shipped off to America like a parcel of cotton goods. Uncle Scip who was left my guardian had some transaction which required his personal attendance at Liverpool. He set foot for the first time on the old country--calculated that it was an almighty fine location--guessed that a spry hand might do a good streak of business there; and in short finally repudiated America as coolly as America has since repudiated her engagements. He would settle down to no fixed trade or profession; but as he possessed a considerable capital he entered into the field of speculation. Never perhaps was there a man better qualified by nature for success in that usually dangerous game. His powers and readiness of calculation were unequalled--his information quite startling from its extent and accuracy--his fore-sight a gift like prophecy. I verily believe he never lost a single shilling in any one of the numerous schemes in which he was engaged; what he made I have private reasons for keeping to myself. If the apostolic order against taking scrip is to be considered in a literal sense Scipio was a frightful defaulter. He scampered out of one railway into another like a rabbit perambulating a warren and was the wonder of the brokers and the glory of the Stock Exchange. Men perverted his Roman prefix and knew him solely by the endearing appellation of old Scripio. To me who was his only living relative Mr Dodger supplied the place of a parent. He placed me at school and college gave me as good an education and liberal allowance as I required and came down regularly once a-year to Scotland to see how I was getting on. Scripio though he never failed to taunt the Scotch with their poverty was in reality very partial to that nation; he had a high opinion of their 'cuteness and reputation for driving a good bargain and--somewhat incongruously for he was a thorough democrat--piqued himself on his connexion with my family which was old enough in all conscience but as poor in my particular case as if I had been the lineal descendant of Lazarus. In fact all my patrimony was the sum of a thousand pounds firmly secured over land and not available until I came of age--a circumstance which frequently elicited tornadoes of wrath from uncle Dodger who swore that if he had got the management of it he could have multiplied it tenfold. Subsequent events have convinced me that he was perfectly right. Be that as it may I was ultimately called to the Scottish bar and entered upon my profession with the same zeal promptitude and success which are exhibited by and attend three-fourths of the unhappy young gentlemen who select that school of jurisprudence. I appeared punctually in the Parliament House at nine cravatted wigged and gowned to a nicety; took my prescribed exercise of at least ten miles _per diem_ on the boards; talked scandal with my brethren (when we could get it ) and invented execrable jokes; lounged at stove and library; wrote lampoons against the seniors; and in short went through the whole curriculum expected from a rising votary of Themis. I followed the law diligently; but somehow or other I could never overtake it. The agents in Edinburgh must be a remarkably slow set for they never would appreciate my merits. At the close of two years a decree in absence and a claim in a multiplepoinding remained the sole trophies of my legal renown. One day I was surprised in my study by a visit from uncle Scripio who had just arrived from Liverpool. I was reading a novel (none of Justinian's) at the moment and hastily shoved it into my desk. After the usual congratulations were over the aged file took a rapid survey of the apartment which fortunately was in tolerable order glanced curiously at a pile of legal papers procured--shall I confess it?--from my friend Cotton the eminent tobacconist of Prince's Street uttered a hem in which incredulity seemed mingled with satisfaction and then having been supplied with a tumbler of sherry and ginger-beer--a compound which he particularly affected--he commenced the work of inquisition. ""Well Fred my boy how goes it? Slick eh? Lots of clients coming in I suppose? You must be driving a pretty smart trade to judge by them 'ere bundles."" ""Pretty well;"" I replied ""when my standing at the bar is considered I have no great reason to complain."" The old fellow looked at me with so quizzical an expression that I could hardly play the hypocrite longer. ""I'll trouble you for that packet "" he said; and remorselessly clutching a bundle made up with red tape to resemble a process he took out a written pleading to which the signature of a counsel now ten years in the grave was appended. ""What a devil of a time these lawsuits last!"" remarked Mr Dodger unfolding another document. Worse and worse! It was the juvenile production of a judge in the Inner-House. I had nothing for it but to make a clean breast. ""The fact is my dear uncle "" said I ""these papers are just part of the furniture of a lawyer's room. It would never do you know to have an empty table if an agent _should_ happen to come in; but the real truth of the matter is that the only agents I know are lads with as little business as myself who sometimes look in of an evening to solace themselves with a cigar."" ""I knew it Fred--I knew it!"" said Scripio rubbing his hands as if he thought it a remarkably good joke; ""there are tricks in all trades my boy and the American blood will break out. But you can't do for me though you cunning young villain. Oh no! though you wanted to try it on."" And he chuckled as heartily as any of Mr Dickens' characters in the Christmas Carol. ""So you ar'n't making a farthing Freddy?"" he resumed; ""I'm glad of it. You'll never grease your coach-wheels here. Where's the thousand pounds that were lent over the Invertumblers estate?"" ""Mr Constat the agent of old M'Alcohol paid it to me about three months ago "" replied I rather astonished at the question which seemed to have no connexion with the former subject. ""I have put it into the National Bank."" ""Two per cent? Pshaw--trash!"" said my uncle. ""Here look at this;"" and he shoved a printed paper into my hands. It was headed ""Prospectus of the Grand Union Biggleswade Puddockfield and Pedlington Railway in 50 000 shares of £20 each. Deposit £1 on each share."" If the line had run through the garden of Eden supposing that place to have furnished a large passenger traffic besides agricultural produce with London at one terminus and Pekin at the other the description could not have been more flattering than that which I perused. Nature seemed to have lavished all her blessings upon Biggleswade Puddockfield and the country thereunto adjacent; in short I never recollect so flattering a picture with one solitary exception drawn by my friend Frizzle who had stuck twenty pounds into some railway in a mineral district. ""When we recollect "" said Bob in a burst of poetical frenzy ""the enormous population of the district the softness and geniality of the climate and the fairy aspect of its scenery--when we think of the varied traffic which now chokes up the ordinary avenues of industry--when we estimate the inexhaustible beds of ore and minerals absolutely heaving themselves from the ground as though to entreat the aid of man in adapting them to their proper destination;--when we consider all these things I say and finally combine them together fancy closes her astonished eyes and even imagination swoons!"" I will not say that the writer of the Biggleswade prospectus was as soaring a genius as Bob; but he was quite enough of a Claude to seduce the investing public. I forget what amount of return he promised but it was something hitherto unheard of and my mouth watered as I read. ""That's the spec!"" said my uncle Dodger. ""Sit down and write me an order for your thousand."" ""Eh uncle--for the whole?"" said I somewhat aghast. ""Every sixpence. There--that will do "" and Mr Dodger disappeared with the cheque. To say the truth I was not quite pleased with this proceeding; for although I had confidence in my uncle's sagacity it was decidedly a serious thing to hazard one's whole patrimony on a speculation which might so far as I knew be as visionary as the Aërial Machine. However my constitutional carelessness very speedily relieved me of all anxiety. I went out to balls and steeple-chases as formerly attended the House _pro formâ_ in the mornings and messed three times a-week with the cavalry at Piershill. The pace indeed was rather rapid but then I had a strong constitution. For three or four weeks I saw little of my respected uncle. He had--heaven knows how--got himself affiliated to one of the clubs and sat half the day in the reading-room poring over the Railway Journals and the Money-market article in the Times. He played whist of an evening on a system peculiar to himself and levied a very fair contribution from the pockets of certain country gentlemen who piqued themselves on understanding the antiquated tactics of Major A.; but never had the fortune before to measure trumps with an American. On the whole he appeared remarkably comfortable and contented. One morning I was honoured with an early domiciliary visit. ""Fred "" said my uncle ""put up half-a-dozen shirts and a tooth-brush. We start for Liverpool this evening."" ""This evening!"" said I in amazement. ""Impossible my dear sir! Only reflect--the Session is not over yet and what would become of my business if I were to levant without notice?"" ""I'll insure all your losses for a pound-note. Tell them you've got business elsewhere: I daresay a good many of the old hands are up to that trick already."" ""But my engagements""--persisted I. ""There's Mrs M'Crinoline's ball on Tuesday and Lady M'Loup's the week after--really uncle I don't see how I can possibly get away."" ""Do you wish to make your fortune sir?"" ""Undoubtedly."" ""Then do as I bid you. Get up and shave and in the mean time I'll look after breakfast."" There was nothing for it but obedience so I rose and polished my outer man. Mr Scripio was apparently in high feather and digestion. He put the finishing stroke to what had once been a prize mutton ham and dug as diligently into a pot of marmalade as though he expected to find a layer of doubloons at the bottom. To my amazement he dedicated his last cup of coffee as a special bumper to the health of the Noble President of the Board of Trade. ""What's in the wind now?"" thought I. ""Uncle have you any thing dependent before Parliament? Perhaps you want a junior counsel for a bill."" ""Confound Parliament!"" said the irreverent Columbian; ""I don't care a cent more for it than I do for Congress. The Board of Trade's the thing for my money! That's your constitutional tribunal--close-fitting boxes and Bramah locks--no humbug there! 'Zooks won't we smash old Jobson after all!"" and Scripio neighed like a Shetland pony at its first introduction to oats--all the while helping himself to a caulker of genuine Glenlivat. We set off in the afternoon accordingly and next morning arrived at Liverpool. Our stay there was very short. I was led captive to the Exchange and hurried into a stockbroker's office in an obscure alley behind. The Plutus of this den an old bald-pated gentleman in a blue coat and drab terminations started up from his seat as we entered with more manifestations of respect than would have welcomed the avatar of the Cham of Tartary. Two consumptive clerks looked up with awe as they heard their master pronounce the venerated name of Dodger. It was clear that my uncle was well-known and appreciated here--his mere patronymic acted as a species of talisman. We were conducted into an inner sanctum where having nothing else to do I betook myself to the study of a map of England where lines of railway already laid down in black and projected ones in red intersected the surface as closely as veins and arteries in an anatomical preparation. Mean time the two seniors entered into a deep and apparently interesting conversation the purport of which I did not very clearly understand. ""How's Dovers?"" asked my uncle. ""Up. Forty to forty-two ex div. "" replied the broker. ""Sell sixty. Bumpton Watfords?"" ""Rather better this morning."" ""Good!"" said Scripio evidently gratified by the amendment of the interesting convalescent. ""What's doing in the Slushpool Docks?"" ""Heavy "" replied the broker. ""There's been a forced sale or two but they won't go up."" ""I should think not "" said Scripio. ""Have you bought me these forty Jamaicas?"" I started at the prodigality of the order. ""Heaven and earth!"" thought I ""can this uncle of mine be a kind of occidental Aladdin? After this I should not be surprised to hear him bid for Texas and the Oregon territory!"" ""I've got them "" said the broker quietly; ""they are going up without steam. Have you got any Biggleswades?"" ""Yes "" said my uncle ""what about them? No screw loose eh? Sure to pass the standing orders I hope?"" ""All right "" said the broker ""hold for the bill and you'll make a good thing of it."" ""Well then "" said my uncle ""that's all and we're off. I'll write you from London about other matters. Good-day ""--and we sallied into the street. ""Fred you dog!"" said Mr Dodger in high glee ""you've put your teeth into it this time."" ""Into what sir?"" asked I very innocently. ""If you mean luncheon I'm sure I should have no objections."" ""Oh come! none of that humbug. I mean the Biggleswades. There hasn't been such a catch in Britain since the opening of the Coal-hill Junction."" ""I'm devilish glad to hear it "" said I with a vague kind of general impression that I was going to make money though I could not well tell how and a fixed determination since I _had_ got my teeth in to take as large a bite as possible though with regard to the process of mastication I was just as ignorant as a baby. That afternoon we set off for Wales and next day arrived at one of the most extraordinary households in the southern extremity of the principality which it ever was my fortune to visit. The house was large and spacious indeed a masterpiece of architecture and probably had been built in the time of Charles the Second. It stood upon the slope of a hill and immediately below were a succession of terraces with walks of smooth green turf and exotic shrubs which in summer must be most luxuriant. It was winter when I visited at Mervyn Hall but even then the terraces were beautiful. Every tree and spray was coated with armour of clear crystalline ice except the thick old yew-hedge at the bottom which kept its coat of dark perennial green. The Hall commanded the prospect of a large and fertile valley diversified by wood and domain tower and village spire; and in more than one place a pillar of smoke curling lazily upwards marked the situation of a famous forge or foundery. It was in fact one of the great iron districts though you scarcely could have believed so by day; but at night fire after fire seemed to burst out all down the reach of the valley; and probably years had gone by since the smallest of these was quenched. It is not often that nature lavishes her beauty and her wealth so prodigally upon the selfsame spot. Uncle Scripio strode into the house with the air of a proprietor. I am not sure that he had not some interest in the concern for Mervyn Hall was a kind of mystery to the neighbours. We were shown into a handsome apartment lined with black oak where a regiment of cavaliers might have dined with both credit and satisfaction; but times had altered and the banqueting-hall was now put to different uses. On two sofas and a table lay a pile of maps and plans sufficient according to my limited comprehension for a survey of the whole world. Then there was an ingenious model of a suspension bridge where a railway of white-painted cord spanned a valley of undulating putty with a stream in the centre which bore evident marks of being ravished from a fractured looking-glass. Bundles of thick clumsy sticks--they might be instruments--with brass knobs at the top like the morgenstern of a Norwegian watchman were huddled into the corners. There was a grievous hole in the centre of the carpet; and several but-ends of cigars scatter
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d on the mantelpiece showed me very clearly that female domination was not acknowledged by the inhabitants of Mervyn Hall. Our host Mr Ginger received us with great cordiality and a flagon of superior ale. There are worse things under the skirts of Plinlimmon than the ancient _cwrw_ of the Cymry. In five minutes the two gentlemen were deep in the discussion of certain disputed gradients and my jaws were on the very verge of dislocation when uncle Scripio good-naturedly suggested that I might retire to another apartment. ""How many of the lads have you here just now Ginger? I think Freddy had better step in and make their acquaintance."" Mr Ginger looked rather sour. ""There's Gordon and Mackinnon working at the estimates and William Cutts writing out the notices. I'm afraid they'll be disturbed."" ""No fear of that "" said I too glad to make my escape on any terms; and accordingly without further ceremony I entered the adjoining study. Mr Gordon the senior engineer as a sinewy-limbed fellow of some three-and-thirty whose countenance and complexion bore satisfactory evidence of a pure Caledonian extraction. He was considered by his scientific brethren as a kind of engineering Robert the Devil having performed various feats with the theodolite which were the marvel of the whole fraternity. If any old gentleman was foolish enough to object to a proposed line on account of its traversing his garden or preserve or invading the sanctity of his pig-stys Gordon was instantly sent for. No sooner were the stars out as also the lights in the mansion-house than on the verge of the disputed territory an accurate observer might have described something like the glimmer of a glow-worm advancing stealthily forwards. That was Master Gordon with his lantern staff and chain; and before the grey dawn of morning the whole gradients were booked and ready for the most searching inspection of a committee of the House of Commons. It is even alleged that despite the enmity of a northern thane this Protean Archimedes surveyed a Highland line with nothing but his leister or salmon-spear and actually killed three fish whilst ascertaining the practicability of a cutting through a tremendous Pass. Be this as it may he was certainly a clever fellow and as ugly a customer as a keeper could cope withal before the dew had vanished from the clover. Mackinnon was a quiet-looking lad with a latent dash of the dare-devil; proud of his name and of his genealogy and maintaining some show of a Highland gentleman's dignity in a following of three ragged Skye terriers who yelped incessantly at his heels. Cutts was a grand specimen of the Londoner redolent of the Fives' Court and Evans's; one of those fellows whom it is very desirable to have on your side in a row and very unpleasant to encounter if you happen to be particular about the colour and symmetry of your eyes. With these gentlemen I speedily became hand in glove and the afternoon passed rapidly away. It may be questionable however whether the accuracy of the estimates was improved by the introduction of cigars and a pitcher of the Welsh home-brewed. After dinner we all got remarkably merry. Mr Dodger related in his happiest manner several anecdotes of the way in which he had ""flummox'd"" old Jobson his arch-enemy and railway rival; Mr Ginger favoured us with an imitation of a locomotive train perfect even to the painful intensity of the whistle; and Gordon told with great gusto various miraculous adventures which might have done honour to a Borderer in the good old days of ""lifting."" Somehow or other as the evening got on we became confoundedly national. The Scotch of course being the majority had decidedly the best of it; and the American Scripio and Cambrian Ginger having joined our ranks we all fell foul of the unfortunate Cutts and abused everything Anglican as heartily as O'Connell upon the hill of Tara. We soon succeeded in extorting an admission that the Scots upon the whole had rather the best of it at Flodden; and thereupon and ever thereafter Mr Cutts was accosted by the endearing epithet of Saxon presently abbreviated for the sake of euphony into Sacks. I don't exactly recollect at what hour we retired to bed. ""Freddy "" said my uncle next morning ""I am going off to London with Mr Ginger; and I don't think you could do better than remain where you are. You'd be sure to get into no end of scrapes in town; and I haven't time to be continually bailing you out of Bow Street."" ""Very well sir; just as you please. I dare say I shall manage to make myself quite comfortable here."" ""I say though "" remonstrated Mr Ginger ""he'll keep the whole of the lads from their work. Gordon is too fond of fun at any time; and the moment our backs are turned they'll be after some devilry or other. Couldn't your nephew carry a theodolite and take a few practical lessons in surveying?"" ""Lord help you!"" said my uncle ""he's as innocent of mensuration as an infant. Can't you spare Cutts?"" ""Better than the other two certainly."" ""Well then we'll hand over Freddy to him; and let them amuse themselves the best way they can. Cutts you may do what you like for the next ten days; but remember Gordon and Mackinnon are not to be disturbed on any account. Now good-by and take care of yourselves."" The Saxon and I made ample use of the permission. We established our headquarters at the Saracen in Shrewsbury and went the pace for some days at a hand-gallop. I can't help laughing even now at the consternation into which South Wales was thrown by the re-appearance of Rebecca and her daughters who carried off in one night seven turnpike-gates. It was a pity that the London journals should have been at the expense of sending down special correspondents on that occasion; for I can bear personal testimony to the fact that no country could possibly be quieter. Even the tollkeepers appeared to slumber with a tenfold torpedo power. A little incident however soon occurred which completely changed the nature of my occupations. I went one day to call upon a family who resided some miles from Shrewsbury. It was a visit of ceremony; and I therefore considered it a bore. Cutts who was no lady's man preferred waiting for me at a neighbouring public-house; so I effected my _entrée_ alone. I went in a free-man; and came out two hours afterwards as complete a bond-slave as ever hoed the sugar-canes of Cupid. A pair of laughing blue eyes and the prettiest lips in the universe had undone me. Sweet Mary Morgan! yours was a rapid conquest! and--you need not pinch my ears. I went down to the inn in that state of pleasing bewilderment which characterises the first stage of the amatory complaint. Cutts had got tired in my absence; and being rather in a pensive mood had gone to the church-yard with a quart of beer where I found him copying the inscriptions on the tombstones. ""What the devil kept you so long?"" said the Saxon. ""Hold your tongue Sacks! I have just seen the prettiest angel! Who on earth can she be? No relation I dare be sworn of that fat old rascal Owenson."" ""Whew! that's the sort of thing is it?"" quoth Cutts. ""What may be the name of the divinity?"" ""Mary Morgan."" ""What? little Mary! Oh yes! I know her very well "" said the Saxon. ""She's the daughter of the principal medical man in Shrewsbury; a pompous old blockhead with twenty thousand pounds and a pigtail. Mary is a sweet little creature; and between you and me I rather flatter myself I have made an impression in that quarter. You have no idea how she laughed when I danced the fetter hornpipe at the Jones's."" ""Sacks "" said I quietly ""if you dare to mention that young lady's name in connexion with yourself again I shall knock out your brains on the nearest monument. I am perfectly serious. Now listen--how can I get an introduction to the doctor?"" ""It won't do old fellow if you have a complaint of the chest."" ""How so?"" ""The phlebotomizing Jew swears he won't marry his daughter to any man who is not as rich as himself. But I'll tell you what it is Fred.--You are a confoundedly good fellow though you _are_ a descendant of William the Lion which I consider to be utter gammon and I don't care if I lend you a helping hand. Miss Morgan is very intimate with Letty Jones who is a nice larking girl and understands how to manage her mamma. I'll arrange a quiet tea-party there to-morrow evening and you may make love as long as you like provided you don't interfere with supper."" No arrangement could possibly have pleased me better. The Saxon was as good as his word; and after an early dinner at which I tyrannously curtailed my friend of his usual allowance of liquor we made our way to the Jonesian habitation. Cutts very good-naturedly took the whole task of amusing the company upon himself. He gave pantomimic representations of T. P. Cooke and Taglioni sang half-a-dozen songs that are nightly encored at the Surrey side and finally performed a series of antique statues in his shirt-sleeves. For myself I was far too agreeably occupied to pay much attention to his masterpiece of ""Ajax defying the Lightning."" Mary Morgan was prettier and more fascinating than ever and before supper was announced I had made considerable progress. I saw her home and made an appointment for next day to visit a ruin in the neighbourhood. Cutts was rewarded for his good behaviour by three extra tumblers of brandy and water at the Saracen and became so affectionate that I had much difficulty in making my escape to bed. I shall pass over without condescending upon minute particulars the history of the ensuing week. Love-making is always pleasant; certainly more so in summer than in winter but there is a strange alchemy in the tender passion which despite of frost and snow can endow all nature with the hues and odours of spring. So at least it was with me. I met my charmer every day and at length succeeded in extorting from her lips the only confession to obtain which the labour of years is but a trifling sacrifice. What a pleasant thing it would be if in those matters there was nothing more to consult than the inclinations of the parties who are principally concerned! What in the name of cross-purposes have parents to do with controlling the affections of their children? Thirty years ago there is not one of them who would have submitted patiently to the dictation which they now exercise without scruple. I sometimes wonder whether twenty years after this I shall continue of the same opinion; but thank heaven there is ample time for consideration--Poor dear little Jemima is only cutting her teeth. Mary was quite alive to the difficulties which stood in her way. Old Morgan loved her it is true; but it was that sort of love which antiquarians and coin-collectors have for their rarest specimens--they cannot bear to see them for a moment in the hands of others. Wealth alone could bribe the doctor to part with his child and alas! of that I had little or nothing. True I might be considered as uncle Dodger's prospective heir; but that esteemed gentleman was as tough as India-rubber and very nearly as good a life as my own. Professional prospects--ahem!--they might do to talk about in Wales; certainly not in Edinburgh where few lawyers are accounted prophets. In this dilemma I resolved to take sweet counsel with the Saxon having no one else to apply to. As I had neglected him horribly for the last few days he was rather sulky until I gave him to understand that I was in downright earnest. Then you may be sure he brightened up amazingly. There was mischief evidently in the wind. ""That comes of your confounded Scotch education "" said Cutts interrupting a very pretty speech of mine about honourable conduct and disinterested motives. ""Who doubts that you are perfectly disinterested? Of course it's the girl and not the money you want. She _does_ happen to have twenty thousand but you don't care about that--you would marry her without a shilling wouldn't you?"" ""By the bones of King David the First""---- ""That's enough. Don't disturb the repose of the respectable old gentleman--he might not be over happy if he saw his descendant in breeches. The case seems clear enough; I wonder you have a doubt about it. Old Morgan won't give his consent so there is absolute necessity for a bolt. Leave it all to me. I'll provide a chaise and four and if the lady has no objection we can start to-morrow evening. I'll sit behind on the rumble and shoot the leader if there should be any pursuit. Only mind this I don't go unless there is a lady's maid. Every thing must be done with strict regard to decorum."" ""Is the lady's maid also to occupy the rumble?"" ""Of course. You wouldn't have her inside would you? Come now set about it like a good fellow. It will be a first-rate lark and you may command me at an hour's notice."" I confess that I felt very much inclined to adopt the suggestion of the Saxon. Most men I believe are averse to elopements as a general principle; but there are always exceptions as every one discovers when his own wishes are thwarted. I was not destined however to offer my hymeneal sacrifice at the shrine of the Gretna Pluto. A letter of mine to Mary rather amorously worded found its way into the hands of Doctor Morgan. The usual consequences followed--an explosion of paternal wrath filial incarceration and the polite message to myself that if I ventured to approach the house it would be at the risk of appropriating the contents of a blunderbuss. My feelings may be easily imagined. ""If you amuse yourself that way with your hair "" said my friend and consoler Cutts ""you'll have to buy a wig and that costs money. Hang it man cheer up! We'll do the old boy yet. Mackinnon will be here to-night and the deuce is in it if three clever fellows like us can't outwit a Welsh apothecary."" I assisted at that evening's conference which was conducted with due solemnity. We smoked a great deal after the manner of an Indian war-council and circulated ""the fire-water of the pale-face"" rather rapidly. Both my friends were clearly of opinion that our honour was at stake. They vowed that having gone so far it was imperative to carry off the lady and pledged their professional reputation upon a successful issue. Cutts had learned that on the following Friday there was to be a great ball in Shrewsbury; and through the medium of Letty Jones he understood that Mary Morgan and her father were to be there. This seemed a golden opportunity. It was finally arranged that I should withdraw myself from the neighbourhood in the mean time but return on the evening of the ball and conceal myself in a private apartment of the Saracen where the ball was to be held. Mackinnon was to attend the ball and lead Mary to the supper-room from which the retreat could be easily effected. Cutts was to remain below look after the horses and act as general spy. Nothing more seemed necessary than to make Miss Morgan aware of our plans; which the Saxon undertook to do by agency of his fair and larking friend who was in perfect ecstasies at the prospect of this coming elopement. The eventful Friday arrived; and from a solitary bed-room in the third floor of the Saracen I heard the caterwauling of fiddles announce the opening of the ball. I had asked Cutts to take a quiet chop with me up-stairs but that mercurial gentleman positively refused upon the ground of expediency. Nothing on earth could induce him to leave his post. He was to act the spy and therefore it was absolutely necessary that he should remain below. All my remonstrances could not prevent him from dining with Mackinnon in the coffee-room; so I was compelled to give him his own way merely extracting a pledge that for this once he would abstain from unbounded potations. Down went the two gentlemen and I was left alone to my solitary meditations. I have read Victor Hugo's _Dernier Jour d'un Condamné_ but I do not recollect in the course of my literary researches having met with any accurate journal of a gentleman's sensations before perpetrating an elopement. It is a thing that could easily be done at a moment's notice but the case seems very different after the calm contemplation of a week. You begin then to calculate the results. Fancy takes a leap beyond the honeymoon and dim apparitions of bakers' bills and the skeletons of cheap furniture obtrude themselves involuntarily on your view. I lay down on the bed and tried to sleep until I should receive the appointed signal. For some time it would not do. The nightmare in the form of a nurse with ponderous twins sat deliberately down upon my chest and requested one of them a hideous red-haired little imp to kiss its dear Papa! At last however I succeeded. In the mean time Messrs Cutts and Mackinnon sat down to their frugal banquet in the coffee-room. A glass of sherry after soup is allowed to the merest anchorite therefore my friends opined that they could not do less than order a bottle. After fish Mackinnon discovered that he was in very low spirits--a dismal foreboding had haunted him all forenoon; and as it would not do to betray any depression in the ball-room he rather thought that a flask of champagne would alleviate his melancholy symptoms. The Saxon loved his ally too much to interpose any objections so the cork of the Sillery was started. A jug of ale during dinner and a pint of port after cheese were fair and legitimate indulgences; and these being discussed Cutts proceeded to the stable to look after the horses. All was right; and after an affecting exhortation to the postilions to keep themselves rigidly sober the Saxon rejoined his friend. ""It is a great relief to my mind Mackinnon "" said Cutts throwing himself back in his chair and exposing his feet to the comfortable radiance of the fire ""to think that matters are likely to go on swimmingly. It's a fine frosty starlight night--just the sort of weather you would select for a bolt; and Freddy and his dove will be as comfortable inside the chaise as if they were in cotton."" ""Rather cold though on the rumble "" replied Mackinnon. ""Gad you're right "" said the Saxon. ""I say don't you think since I'm good-natured enough to expose myself in that way we might have a bottle of mulled port just by way of fortifier?"" ""You're a devilish sensible fellow Cutts "" said Mackinnon; and he rang the bell. ""Won't it be rare fun!"" said Sacks helping himself to a rummer of the reeking fluid. ""Think what a jolly scamper we shall have. The horses' feet ringing like metal as they tear full gallop along the road and old Morgan in a buggy behind swearing like an incarnate demon! Mac here's your good health; you're a capital fellow. Give us a song old chap! I won't see you again for three weeks at the soonest. My eyes! what a rage Ginger will be in!"" Mackinnon was of a Jacobite family who had rather burned their fingers in the Forty-five and being also somewhat of a sentimental turn he invariably became lachrymose over his liquor and poured out the passion of his soul in lamentations over the fall of the Stuarts. Instead therefore of favouring Cutts with any congenial ditty from the Coal-hole or Cider-cellar he struck up ""Drummossie muir Drummossie day "" in a style that would have drawn tears from an Edinburgh ticket-porter. Sacks without having any distinct idea of the period of history to which the ballad referred pronounced it to be deuced touching; whereupon Mackinnon commenced a eulogy on the clans in general and his own sept in particular. ""Ay that must have been a pleasant fellow "" said Cutts in response to a legend of Mackinnon's concerning a remote progenitor known by the _sobriquet_ of Angus with the bloody whiskers; ""a little too ready with his knife perhaps but a lively companion I daresay over a joint of his neighbour's beef. 'Pon my soul it's quite delightful to hear you talk Mackinnon; as good as reading one of Burns's novels. Just ring the bell will you for another jug; and then tell me the story of your great ancestor who killed the Earl of Northumberland."" This adroit stroke of the Saxon whose thirst in reality was for liquor not for lore proved perfectly irresistible. Mackinnon went on lying like a Sennachie and by the time the second jug was emptied both gentlemen were just tottering on the verge of inebriation. The sound of the music in the apartment above first recalled Mackinnon to the sense of his duties. ""I say though Cutts I must be off now. I'll bring the girl down to supper and Freddy will take her off my hands at the door; isn't that the agreement? Faith though I'll have a waltz with her first. I hope there's no smell of port-wine about me. It won't do for a ball-room."" ""Try a glass of brandy "" said Cutts and he administered the potation. ""Now you be off and I'll keep a sharp look-out below."" The Saxon's ideas of a look-out were rather original. In the first place he paid a visit to the bar where the niece of the landlady--a perfect little Hebe--presided and varied the charms of a flirtation with a modicum of brandy and water. He then returned to the coffee-room in which were two gentlemen who had seceded for a moment from the ball. They were both very accurately dressed proud of French polish white cravats and lemon-coloured gloves and altogether seemed to consider themselves as the finished D'Orsays of Shrewsbury. A few supercilious looks which they vouchsafed upon Cutts who to say the truth was no beauty in his shooting-jacket roused the Saxon lion. Some complimentary expressions passed between the parties which ended in an offer from Cutts to fight both gentlemen for a five-pound note; or if they had not so much ready cash to accommodate them with a thrashing on credit. This proposal was magnanimously declined by the strangers who edged gradually towards the door; however nothing but the arrival of several waiters who recognised from frequent practice the incipient symptoms of a row could have prevented some little display of pugilistic science. The temper of Cutts was of course a little ruffled by the encounter and in order to restore his mind to its usual equilibrium he treated himself to another soother and then ascended the stairs to see what I was doing. By that time it was late in the evening. A tremendous slap on the shoulder roused me from my dreams. I started up and there to my amazement was Cutts sitting upon the bed with a fresh-lighted cigar in his mouth puffing as vigorously as an engine. ""Good heavens Cutts!"" cried I ""what is the matter? I hope nothing has gone wrong? Where's Mary?"" ""All right old fellow "" said the Saxon with a mysterious smile. ""We've plenty time yet for another glass of brandy and water."" ""Surely Cutts you can't have been making a beast of yourself!"" and I seized a candle. There could be no doubt of the fact: he was very fearfully disguised. ""That I should have trusted myself in the hands of such a jackass!"" was my first exclamation. ""Leave the room this moment sir or I shall knock you down with a chair; and never let me see your disgusting countenance again."" ""Did you apply those epi--epitaphs to me sir?"" said the Saxon with an abortive attempt to look dignified. ""You shall hear from me in the morning. This is an ungrateful world--very! I've been doing all I can for him keeping all the liquor out of the postilions--and that is my reward! I can't help it "" continued Cutts lapsing into a melodramatic reminiscence of the Adelphi--""so I'll just belay my pipe. Bless my dear eyes--how came the salt-water here? Hold hard old boy --no snivelling!"" and he drew the back of his hand across his eyes as if he was parting from a messmate upon the eve of execution. ""This is intolerable!"" I cried. ""Get out sir or I shall throw you over the window!"" ""Like to see you try it "" said Cutts with a Coriolanus air of defiance. I had just enough command over myself to see that a row with the Saxon was worse than useless as it would effectually destroy my last remaining chance. I therefore changed my plans. ""Mark me sir. I am going to ring the bell for the waiters and if you don't choose to relieve me of your presence at once they shall have my orders to carry you down stairs. Will you go sir? No! then take the consequences;"" and I rang the bell like a demoniac. The music stopped in the room below. Cutts drunk as he was observed the circumstance; and no sooner were steps heard upon the stairs in obedience to the tocsin than he took his departure with the candle. I lay down again till the tumult should subside when I intended to apprise Mackinnon of the present state of matters. My appeal to the bell which was a vigorous one had produced a marked effect. Several of the company had come to the door of the ball-room in order to learn the true nature of the alarm; and Cutts on his descent was assailed by vehement enquiries. ""Oh don't ask me--don't ask me!"" said the villain wringing his hands like a male Antigone. ""My poor friend! he's just going! Oh gentlemen is there no medical man here to save him?"" ""Doctor Morgan! Doctor Morgan!"" shouted twenty voices. ""Bless my soul what's the matter here?"" said the doctor emerging from the ball-room. ""Any body taken suddenly ill eh?"" ""Oh my poor friend!"" groaned the traitor. ""Mercy on me! is it so bad as that?"" said the Doctor ""I must see him immediately. My dear sir what _is_ the matter with your friend?"" ""His head sir--his head!"" said Cutts with a sob--""he is quite mad at the present moment. If you go up-stairs to No. 3 you'll find him biting the bed-posts!"" ""This must be looked to instantly "" said the Doctor. ""Gentlemen if I want assistance I shall call for you; but we must use gentle means if possible. Poor young man! No. 3 did you say sir?"" and the doctor ascended the staircase. ""This is an awful thing Mr Cutts!"" said Mrs Hickson the comely mistress of the house; ""is there nothing that would do the poor gentleman any good?"" ""I think he'd be a great deal the better of a little brandy and water "" said Cutts--""the doctor hinted as much just now; and my dear madam you had better make two glasses of it rather stiff and send them up-stairs by the Boots."" I was startled by the entry of a stranger with a light who approached the bed with all the stealthiness of a cat. ""'Zounds sir what do you want here?"" cried I springing up. ""Hush my dear sir hush! we must be calm--really we must. It will never do to allow ourselves to be agitated in this way."" ""Confound you sir! what do you mean?"" ""Oh my dear sir! merely a friendly visit that's all. I would like to have a little quiet chat with you. How is our pulse? Do we feel any pain about the temples?"" ""I'll very soon make you feel pain enough somewhere "" cried I in towering passion. ""If you don't quit my room this moment you old idiot by the bones of the Bruce I'll toss you over the stairs!"" ""Oh if that be the case the sooner we send for a straight jacket the better!"" said the doctor. ""But eh! what! by Jove it's the young Scotch rascal who was making love to my daughter!"" ""Dr Morgan!"" I cried. ""Upon my honour sir I am quite annoyed""---- ""Hallo! what's this? We are calm enough now. Answer me directly sir; are you delirious or not?"" ""No more than yourself doctor."" ""This then was a concerted trick to make a fool of me!"" sputtered the Welsh Esculapius. ""But I'll be revenged. I'll have you before a magistrate for this you villain!"" ""Upon my honour sir I am perfectly innocent. If you'll only hear me for a single moment""---- ""To be exposed before the whole town of Shrewsbury too! I'll never forgive it!"" and the doctor banged out of the room. To his dismay he found himself face to face with Cutts who along with the Boots had been a delighted auditor of the scene. ""How is our patient doctor?"" said the Saxon ""Is our pulse good to-night? Did we take a look at our tongue?"" ""Sir you're a ruffian!"" roared the doctor. ""Oh come--we must be calm; it will never do to discompose ourselves. Take a glass of brandy and water doctor and we'll drink success to the profession. What! you won't eh? Well then Boots you take one and I'll finish the other. Here is Doctor Morgan's very good health "" cried Cutts advancing to the head of the stairs ""and may he long continue to be an ornament to his profession!"" ""Low scoundrel!"" cried one of the young gentlemen in lemon-coloured gloves recognising his former antagonist. ""There's the rest of it for you my fine fellow "" retorted Cutts and the tumbler whizzed within an inch of Young Shrewsbury's maccassared locks. A rush was made up the staircase by several of the aggravated natives; but Cutts stood at bay like a lion and threatened instant death to the first person who should approach him. The commotion was at its height when I recognised the voice of Mr Ginger. ""Cutts is that you? come down this instant sir!"" and the crestfallen Saxon obeyed. ""Freddy where are you?"" cried my uncle. ""Here!"" ""A pretty business you two fellows have been making of it!"" said Scripio with wonderful mildness. ""But never mind; let them laugh who win. We've done the trick for you!"" ""Indeed uncle! how so?"" ""The Biggleswade bill has passed and I've sold your shares at nineteen premium."" ""Then I have""---- ""Exactly twenty thousand pounds."" I felt as if my head were turning round. At that moment I caught a glimpse of Mary leaning on her father's arm. She looked prettier than ever. ""Doctor Morgan "" I said ""there has been a mistake here--will you suffer me to explain it?"" ""Certainly "" said the doctor in a very mollified tone; ""if you will breakfast with me to-morrow morning."" Twenty thousand pounds _do_ make a difference in a man's position. ""May I come too doctor?"" hiccuped Cutts. ""No sir; and if you do not wish to be prosecuted you had better send me a fee to-morrow morning."" ""Oh come!"" said old Scripio. ""I daresay it was merely a bit of fun. I'll settle the fees doctor. Put Cutts to bed and let the rest of us have a bit of supper."" On that day three weeks I married Mary Morgan and have never taken another share in any railway since. If the reader wishes to know the reason he may consult the list of present prices. GERMAN-AMERICAN ROMANCES. THE VICEROY AND THE ARISTOCRACY OR MEXICO IN 1812. PART THE THIRD. In commencing a brief final notice of ""The Viceroy and the Aristocracy "" we regret much to inform our readers that it is in a manner a story without an end. One of the most striking peculiarities of this anonymous author consists in his singular and unaccountable habit of leaving every thing unfinished. Despising the rule generally observed by romance writers of bringing their works to some sort of climax or _dénouement_ he in no one instance takes the trouble to dispose satisfactorily of his characters; but after strongly interesting the reader in their fate abandons them in the middle of their career as if he intended some day or other to complete their history in another volume. The inventive and descriptive powers displayed in his writings render it impossible to attribute this peculiarity to lack of ability. A chapter or two would frequently be sufficient to terminate every thing in one way or the other; but these chapters owing to some whim of the author are denied us. Manifold are the eccentricities of genius and our unknown friend has evidently no small share of them. We are compelled therefore to look upon his books less as regular novels than as a series of sketches scenes and adventures with slight connecting links; and resembling by their vivid colouring and graphic and characteristic details some admirably painted and gorgeous panorama of which the materials exhibit infinite variety and the most striking contrasts. We cannot hope in our translation to do full justice to so able an original; and the less so as in the extracts given we are compelled to take considerable liberties in the way of abridgement. We are nevertheless desirous of following the fortunes of Don Manuel as far as the author acquaints us with them; previously to which however we will lay before our readers one or two fragments having little connexion with the plot of the book but highly illustrative of the singular state of Mexican society and manners at the period referred to. We commence with a striking sketch of the Léperos as they appeared when assembled outside the city of Mexico awaiting the arrival of Vicénte Gueréro and the patriot army. * * * * * The morning of the ninth of February 1812 had scarcely dawned when the entire multitude of those wretched beings known by the name of Léperos left the city of Mexico and advanced along the Ajotla road a
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far as the chain of volcanic hills already alluded to. The road in question forms with the land adjacent to it one of the most dreary portions of the rich valley of Mexico or Tenochtitlan; and the swampy ground through which it passes and which is only exchanged beyond the hillocks for a stratum of lava exhibited even in the most palmy days of Mexican splendour the same gloomy and desert character as at the period here referred to. Wretched huts inhabited by half-naked Indians who either worked at the _desague_ [7] or gained a scanty existence by fishing and here and there a spot of ground planted with vegetables were the most agreeable objects to be met with; while the low grounds lay entirely waste even the obtuse Indians being deterred by their poisonous exhalations from attempting their cultivation. It was along this road early upon the above-named morning that hordes of brown squalid sullen-looking beings equally debased in mind and body were seen advancing; dragging themselves listlessly along now slowly then more rapidly in the direction of the hills. It was a disgusting and at the same time a lamentable sight to behold this mass of filth misery and degradation which came crawling and limping along scarcely human in aught except the form of those who composed it. The majority of the Léperos were completely naked unless the fragments of tattered blankets that hung in shreds over their shoulders could be reckoned as clothing. Here and there might be seen a thread-bare jacket or _manga_ or a pair of ragged calico trousers; while the _sombrero de petate_ or straw-hat was worn by nearly all of them. The women had their long lank hair hanging loose about their persons forming their chief covering with the exception of some scanty rags fastened round their hips. In groups of twenty to a hundred some of several hundreds on they came all wearing that vacant look which is the attribute of the degraded and cretin-like Indian of the Tenochtitlan valley; but which was now modified by an uneasy restlessness that seemed to impel them irresistibly towards the Rio Frio mountains. There was something strange and mysterious in the deportment of this sombre-looking mob; no shout no laugh--none of those boisterous outbreaks commonly witnessed amongst numerous assemblages of the lower classes. On most of their callous but naturally by no means stupid physiognomies the expression was one of spite and cunning combined with indications of a secret and anxious expectation. Over the whole column which was at least a mile in extent hung clouds of smoke more or less thick according to the greater or less density of the crowd. Destitute and wretchedly poor as the Léperos were they had nevertheless managed to provide themselves almost without exception with one article of luxury; men women and children all had cigars and the smoke of the tobacco was by far the most endurable of the odours emitted by this rank multitude. Upon reaching the rising ground the squalid throng distributed itself in groups over the road or on and around the hillocks as if intending to take up its position there. In all imaginable postures lying standing sitting and squatting down they waited; why and for whom it would have been hard to say since they themselves had only an indistinct perception of their object. Hours passed away and there they still were sunk in the lazy apathy which is a characteristic of the Mexican Indians and of all much-oppressed nations--a natural consequence of the despotism that crushes them and causes them at last to look upon the unseen power by which they are oppressed as the decree of an iron fate which it would be impossible to resist or evade. For a long time profound silence reigned among these thousands and tens of thousands--a silence broken only by an occasional indistinct murmur or sigh which found however neither reply nor echo. A group that had stationed itself on a projection of the hillock over which winds the road from Mexico to Ajotla at last had its attention attracted by a party of horsemen approaching from the direction of Buen Vista. This sight although by no means unusual on that frequented road appeared to interest the Léperos. They raised their heads gazed a while at the riders gave a kind of growl like dogs who perceive something strange or suspicious and then for the most part stretched themselves out again. Some however continued to mutter and grumble and at last began to utter audible curses. ""Ahuitzote!"" exclaimed one of the Guachinangos rising to his feet and fixing the oblique gaze of his eyes which were set wide apart upon the distant horsemen. ""Ahuitzote!"" repeated his companions--the last syllable of the word seeming to stick in their throats. ""I was lying yesterday under the _portales_ "" murmured an Indian ""when Agostino Iturbide came by""---- He was too indolent to finish what he would have said; but a glance at his legs and shoulders which were bloody and scarred with sabre cuts completed his meaning. ""The earth belongs to Tonantzin [8] the heavens to the Virgin of Guadalupe and the _portales_ to the red men "" said another Indian. ""The day will come when no Gachupin shall drive us out of them."" ""And when the sons of Tenochtitlan shall have pulque for their drink "" muttered a third. ""And tortillas with fat chili for their food "" chimed in a fourth. ""_Maldito Don Agostino!_ He is more the Ahuitzote of the children of Tenochtitlan than the Gachupins themselves."" During this dialogue an old Indian of powerful frame had ascended the hillock and squatted himself down on one of the blocks of lava with which the ground was strewed. The other Léperos seemed to regard him with a certain degree of respect and attention and after muttering the name of Tatli Ixtla [9] they remained silent as if expecting him to speak. As this however did not immediately follow they let their heads sink again and relapsed into their previous state of brooding apathy. The Indian gazed mysteriously around him lit a cigar and after a few puffs broke silence in the low murmuring tones peculiar to the Indian race. ""Ixtla has heard the discourse of the Cura Hippolito of Tlascala. It was no _cuento de fraile_.[10] Ixtla has often heard the same from the priests of his own race. Will my brothers hear the words of the Cura Hippolito?"" There was an unanimous sign of assent from the Indians. ""He who hath ears to hear let him hear! So said the Cura Hippolito and so saith Ixtla. When Don Abraham a most excellent caballero greatly esteemed both by the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe and by Mexicotl""---- The speaker paused for his cigar was going out. We take advantage of the pause to inform our readers that the Don Abraham who was thus strangely and according to the custom of the Mexican Indian priests brought into the society of Mexicotl and the Virgin of Guadalupe was no other than the Jewish patriarch. ""When Don Abraham "" continued the Indian ""felt his end approaching he called his son Don Isaac and bequeathed to him all his possessions; after which he died in the Lord. This Don Isaac was as the señores have perhaps heard a God-fearing man who had two sons Don Esau and Don Jago. Of these your worships must understand Don Esau was the elder or first-born and Don Jago the younger. And when Don Jago was twenty years old he had a dream in which he was told to go to the Madre Patria where great good fortune awaited him."" The man paused at the words Madre Patria by which the reader will always understand Spain. A number of Léperos had ascended the hillock and collected round the speaker. ""As Señor Don Jago "" resumed Tatli Ixtla ""as younger son had less claim upon the inheritance of his father than Don Esau he did according to his dream and betook himself to the Madre Patria where by his pleasant discourse he won the favour of the King of the Moors who bestowed on him his daughter the Princesa Doña Lea in marriage and also after two years his second daughter the Princesa Doña Rachel. By these two wives he had twelve sons and daughters who were all kings and queens in the Madre Patria as well as their father to whom the Gachupins still pray under the name of Sant Jago de Compostella."" The Indians and Metises of whom the crowd of Léperos consisted nodded with that air of quiet conviction which may be frequently remarked amongst the lower classes in certain European countries when they hear histories related which are supported by the authority of great names and to doubt the truth of which might endanger both body and soul. ""When Don Jago had established his kingdom "" continued the old Indian ""the wish came over him to visit his own land again; so he set out with his servants and after many days came to his father's house. And now listen Señores "" said the Indian raising his voice. ""Don Esau was as you know the first-born and as such would have possessed his father's land had not the traitor Don Jago or as the Gachupins call him San Jago cheated him out of it. Through this it was that the sons of Tenochtitlan became the slaves of the Gachupins who are the sons of Jago."" The countenances of the Léperos began to express increased interest in the narration. ""It was in the _estio_ ""[11] resumed the Indian ""that Jago returned to his father's house where a great entertainment was given to him. Don Esau was away at the hunting-grounds while Don Jago was feasting on the best of tortillas and the finest Tacotitlan pulque better no Count could have."" At the mention of the pulque there was a strong sensation amongst the listeners. ""Don Esau came home hungry from the chase and found his brother with a dish of _frijolos_ before him the best that ever were grown upon the Chinampas of the Chalco.[12] Now what think you the traitor Jago did?"" ""_Io sé! Io sé!_ We know!"" cried several Indians eagerly. ""The señores "" said the old man gravely ""will hear that Ixtla speaks no lies. Jago drew back his dish of frijolos as if from a dog; and when Don Esau begged for a mouthful he promised him the whole dish if he would give up his birthright; but if he would not do so then Jago swore that not a single frijolo should pass Don Esau's lips."" ""And Don Esau?"" cried the Léperos. ""What would my brothers have done had they been thirsty and a-hungered and had seen before them the skin of pulque and the dish of tortillas and frijolos?"" This _argumentum ad hominem_ elicited sundry greedy looks from the surrounding crowd; and cries of ""Ah tortillas! ah pulque!"" burst from the craving lips of the Léperos. ""In short "" continued the old Indian ""Don Esau gave what his hunger forced him to give and Don Jago gave in return the dish of frijolos and a fine large skin full of Tacotitlan pulque."" ""_Maldito gavacho!_"" growled the Léperos who in spite of their longings could not help finding the exchange an unfair one. ""Hush!"" said the Indian. ""Don Esau as you shall now hear was the father of the sons of Tenochtitlan."" At this new piece of intelligence the crowd opened their eyes wider than before. ""Well señores "" continued the Indian ""Don Esau had his dish of frijolos and Don Jago the inheritance which he had long coveted. Then Jago went back to the Madre Patria and Esau having lost his birthright wandered out into the wide world. You all know señores that Mexico is the world for Tenochtitlan is the capital of the world.""[13] The Léperos nodded. ""To Tenochtitlan then did Esau betake himself with his wives and his sons and built the great city on the lake and made the Chinampas; and soon the city became greater than any one in Mexico. For many hundred years did the sons of Don Esau rule in Tenochtitlan and Anahuac and his younger sons in Mechoacan and Cholula; and the children of his concubines lived as freemen in Tlascala."" ""_Es verdad_ "" murmured one of the Léperos. ""_Es verdad_ "" they all repeated. ""Well "" continued the narrator ""the sons of Don Esau throve and multiplied and had dollars and tortillas in plenty when of a sudden it came into the heads of Don Jago's children's children that their father had had the share of the first-born and that they as his descendants inherited the right over the whole world; that is to say over Mexico and that the sons of Esau owed them a tribute. Thereupon as they were a daring and knavish race they got upon their ships and landed in Yucatan and Vera Cruz and ascended the heights of Xalappa and Tlascala and by sweet words enticed the men of Tlascala into their nets and with their help got through the barrancas and over the mountains of Tenochtitlan. Then they besieged and destroyed the city put to death all those who bore spears and machetes and made slaves of the rest."" ""_Malditos hereges!_"" muttered the Léperos. ""And when they had taken Tenochtitlan "" continued the Indian ""they said 'See here it is good to dwell. Here let us build our ranchos and the sons of Esau shall plant our maize and sow our chili dig our gardens and tap our agave-trees; and their daughters shall spin our cotton their wives bake our tortillas their children seek for gold in the rivers and their men instead of warriors shall be caballitos and tenatores.' And so it came to pass."" The Indian who had given this _résumé_ of Father Hippolito's sermon now paused either because he had nothing further to say or because he was reflecting what would be the best application he could make to his hearers of these various wanderings and sufferings of the children of Esau. The pause that ensued however was sufficiently long for the Léperos entirely to forget all they had heard. Their look of stupid vacancy returned and they relapsed like so many swine into their various postures of lazy repose quite oblivious of the orator who had so skilfully transferred to Mexico the heroes of the Old Testament. Some of them continued gazing down the road at the horsemen who were now drawing near. ""_Ahuitzote!_"" grumbled an Indian. ""_Son Gachupinos._"" ""Don Agostino though a Creole is a worse Ahuitzote than the Gachupins "" murmured another Lépero. ""The Creoles "" screamed a Zambo ""are the _piques'_ eggs [14] the Gachupins the _piques_ themselves. The Creoles are the sons of the Marquis and of his conquistadores and camerados who made the Tlascalans help them against Anahuac and when they had won it made slaves of their allies. _Larifari! Viva la libertad!_"" ""_Viva la libertad!_"" cried another of the same negro-Indian race who was standing with his arms a-kimbo and looking down with sovereign contempt upon the mob of Léperos. ""_Viva la libertad! Viva! Viva!_ See there the house of Conde San Jago the richest caballero in Mexico who made netto six million dollars out of a single _bonanza_.[15] Netto señores. _Viva la libertad!_ D'ye know señores what liberty is? _We_ have been where it flourished in Guanaxato where we brought the dollars out of the Alhondega by baskets-full. _Si señorias_ the most beautiful milkwhite silver dollars to be had for the taking; that is liberty."" ""_Viva la libertad!_"" exclaimed the knot of Léperos. The cry was repeated by the next group and by the next till it was taken up by thousands of voices. ""_Todos diablos!_"" cried the Zambo ""a hurra for liberty that Cassio may take what he likes and where he likes. I will have the condesa Ruhl's donzella to pour out my pulque and the condesa herself--by the virgin of Guadalupe she shall be our _tortillera_!""[16] ""_Santa Brigida santa Agata santa Marta santa Ursula con todas sus diez mil virgenes_ pray for the senses of the señor Chino!"" cried the Léperos beyond measure astonished and angry at the presumption of the Zambo. ""Chino!"" screamed the negro-Indian furiously ""do you take me for a Chino? _Es posible?_ Is it possible?"" cried he tearing open his jacket and producing from a small silver case a dirty bit of paper which he held up in triumph. ""See here señorias '_Que se tenga por blanco!_'""[17] ""_Que se tenga por blanco!_"" yelled a hundred and soon a thousand Léperos roaring with laughter. And then dancing round him in a circle they again vociferated ""_Que se tenga por blanco!_"" The ragged Zambo who in his day-dream of ambition had selected a countess for his cupbearer did not seem disposed easily to give up his claims to a white skin. He gazed for a moment at the mad antics and grimaces of the filthy and ugly mob by which he was surrounded and then again vociferated ""_Io soy blanco y todo blanco es caballero!_"" ""A rascally thief from Vera Cruz that is what you are "" was the retort; ""a sand-fly that would fain creep in and make its nest amongst us."" ""I will show you who has the most power your Vicénte Gueréro or Cassio Isidro "" cried the Zambo. ""I will let you know it "" added he his hands stuck in his sides as if in defiance ""and before ten months are past I will have Vicénte Gueréro for my muleteer."" The Zambo's cup was filled to overflowing by this last piece of presumption and a thousand Indians forgetting their sloth and apathy sprang forward to seize and punish the man who had dared to speak lightly of one of the greatest heroes of the Revolution the representative of the interests of the coloured races. But the Zambo was far more nimble than the sluggish Léperos and his speed of foot and active bounds over the heaps of lava enabled him to laugh at the pursuit and menaces of those zealous partisans of the illustrious Vicénte Gueréro. * * * * * This kind of familiar not to say profane adaptation of the Scriptures to the comprehension of the lowest and most ignorant classes for the furtherance of a political or other temporal object is not altogether without example amongst the priesthood of some European countries. We pass on to a midday scene in the city of Mexico. There had been a disturbance followed by some menacing demonstrations on the part of the authorities; and the streets instead of being silent and entirely deserted as is usually the case in Mexico during the first three hours of the afternoon were traversed by numerous passengers. The following picture of a Spanish-American interior is peculiarly characteristic. * * * * * It was one of those delightful February afternoons when the freshness of the Mexican winter blends with the approaching summer heat which is so soon to succeed it when the sun begins to resume its power and the heavens appear so pure and deep and so transparent in the brilliancy of their golden-tinted azure that the eye seems to penetrate beyond them into infinite space. From the _mirador_ or balcony of the house of St Simon Stilitta whence they commanded a view of the cathedral of several palaces and for nearly a mile down the long Tacuba street three pairs of dark eyes were flashing bright glances through the gilt trellis-work. It was a stately and right Catholic-looking mansion that Casa de San Simon--which was so called because its front was adorned with the image of the aforesaid patron. An image of St. Francisco was his companion and between the two was the balcony occupied by three young girls whose blooming beauty contrasted strongly with the harsh-featured and indifferently carved and painted effigies of the two holy men. Although none of the three damsels were more than half through their teens they had not the less attained the full perfection and ripeness of Mexican womanhood. First there was the Señorita Doña Celestina daughter of the intendant of Valladolid a little round-faced beauty with some tendency to _embonpoint_ lips rather too full eyes black and brilliant although somewhat prominent a well-turned waist and a healthy Spanish complexion--that is to say bordering on the yellow--of which hue her teeth thanks to the filthy cigar also participated. Doña Ximene daughter of Señor Vivar one of the _oidores_ of the Audiencia was of more slender form than her above-named companion her lips also rather too thick--a defect modified however by the grace with which they occasionally parted and disclosed a symmetrical row of teeth. Her eyes although not sufficiently deep-set sparkled like diamonds and she smoked her _pajita_ with an elegance that was quite enchanting. Laura a round-chinned plump-cheeked damsel youngest daughter of the vice-president of the Hacienda Real made up the trio. All three had the smallest possible feet the most fairy-like hands the blackest eyes and the best Woodville cigars; and all three were suffering from a most extravagant fit of ennui. It was to get rid of this last that the poor girls who lived in the Calle de Aguila the fashionable Spanish street and had been awakened from their siesta by the _grito_ and disturbance had come attended by their negro waiting-maids to pay a visit to their friend Isidra whom they had found giving herself up to all the delights of Mexican _farniente_. The mirador on which the three girls were lounging and smoking was connected with the _sala_ or drawing-room by lofty folding-doors which stood open. At the further end of this sala was the _estrada_ a kind of raised platform; on the estrada a large low ottoman and on the ottoman two figures of which the one sat upright and the other was in a reclining posture. The girdle of the latter was loosened and the upper part of the body bare of all covering except a profusion of glossy black hair which was spread out over the bosom and shoulders; answering however less the purpose of a veil than that of making more evident the whiteness of the owner's skin. The lady thus unceremoniously disapparelled was apparently very young; but no inference could be drawn from her face which was concealed in the lap of her companion a mulatto girl whose fingers and eyes were alike busy in an investigation of her mistress's head; a search so eager active and absorbing that she resembled a huntress forgetting in the ardour of the chase all surrounding objects. The saloon occupied by these two damsels was furnished in the usual manner of Spanish houses of the better class; the floor spread with _esteras_ or mats a large table in the centre and two smaller ones at the sides the latter supporting images of the Virgen de los Remedios and of San Jago de Compostella. A dozen or two high-backed chairs dating probably from the time of Philip the Fourth made up the furniture. The walls were covered with square tiles of blue earthenware the hangings were of green Cordovan leather and instead of the chandelier which hung in one corner of the extensive apartment six silken cords were suspended from the large gilt hook in the centre of the ceiling. On the table in the middle of the room lay several musical instruments amongst them a Spanish guitar and a Mexican _teponatzli_ or lute--the latter a hollow wooden cylinder with two parallel holes cut in the centre and played upon by means of sticks tipped with caoutchouc. A cloister-like stillness reigned in the saloon as well as on the balcony and not a syllable was uttered although fully a quarter of an hour had elapsed since the arrival of the young ladies and their donzellas. Nor was there more vivacity of movement than of tongue. From time to time one or other of the three girls would push aside her mantilla and dart a flashing glance into the street and then meeting no return relapse into her former languor. ""_A ellos! a ellos!_ Go on!"" at length cried a voice out of the lap of the mulatto girl. ""_Que quiere?_ What do you want?"" replied the latter as she discontinued her diligent search amongst the raven locks and raising the head from her knees exposed to view a youthful and charming countenance. ""_Basta!_ enough!"" added she in a decided tone. The lady gave her an angry look. ""_Porque?_"" she asked ""_Porque acabar?_ Why leave off?"" ""_Que quiere vmd?_"" returned the waiting-maid; ""_matar los todos? A ninguna señora de calidad se los mata todos._ No lady of quality has them all killed."" ""_Mentira!_ 'Tis a lie!"" screamed her mistress peevishly. ""_Es verdad!_ 'Tis true!"" interposed Doñas Ximene Celestina and Laura putting their hands into their hair and after a short search producing manifest proofs of the truth of the waiting-maid's assertion and of their own powers of endurance. Thereupon the head sank once more into the lap of the mulatto maiden who began to disentangle and arrange the hair. Again all was still. The three señoritas gazed out into the street and smoked and yawned; the attendant twisted and plaited her mistress's abundant tresses; all was apathy leaden Mexican apathy. In a side chamber of which the door stood half open a voice was suddenly heard uttering sundry Oh's! and Ah's! in such a strange half-groaning half-screaming tone that the four young ladies burst into a loud fit of laughter. The chamber was much smaller than the saloon but yet far larger and higher than an ordinary European bedroom and like the sala was lined with blue china tiles. In one part of it there hung a hammock the occupant of which judging from his or her loud and regular snore was soundly sleeping. On the right hand stood a sort of hybrid machine between a bed and an ottoman which might have been cleaner and on which besides other articles of dress lay a blue cloak richly embroidered with gold. Hats crushed out of shape dusty trowsers dirty linen and implements of the toilet were scattered about the apartment side by side with costly articles of apparel the value of one of which would have sufficed to cleanse the whole house and keep it clean for half a year to come. Below the hammock sat an Indian girl with a fan of feathers upon her lap; her head was inclined upon her breast and sleep had overtaken her in the midst of the monotonous occupation of fanning the inmate of the hammock. Near the bed or sofa stood a mulatto holding a box of cigars and a light. ""Oh! Ah! Ih!"" again groaned the occupant of the bed from which a nightcap now emerged. A meagre grimy hand next appeared pulled off the nightcap and disclosed a dry brown physiognomy of which the cheeks temples and hollows round the eyes were puckered into innumerable dark olive-green wrinkles. This lamentable interjection which was somewhat louder than the preceding one caused a commotion in the hammock from which there now appeared another tawny countenance ornamented with a few warts as large as peas and with a beard which would have been a fitting decoration for a grenadier. All effort was made to raise the body as well as the head but the weight of the former made the attempt abortive and the whole figure again disappeared in the hollow of its hanging couch. A second and more vigorous trial was successful and there came into view the head neck shoulders and other component parts of a female bust the more minute description of which we will spare our readers. The lady of the house for it was no less a person did not seem in the least embarrassed by the presence of the mulatto but sat upright n her hammock. ""Manca!"" cried she in a voice like an ill-conditioned trumpet and gazing around her as she spoke. ""Manca!"" she repeated in a yet harsher tone; and then throwing her right foot and leg over the side of the hammock she by a tremendous kick knocked the drowsy Manca off her perch. By this exertion there was communicated to the hammock a swinging motion which seemed highly pleasing to the Spanish lady who allowed her left foot to follow her right neither of them being protected by stockings or any other covering; and then holding on with both hands to the cords of the hammock she rocked herself to and from with infinite satisfaction her sole garment being her chemise. For the third time did the Spaniard utter his lamentable Oh! Ah! ""Don Matanzas!"" screamed the señora ""it is impossible to shut one's eye for your groans. Can one have no quiet; not even for the siesta? _C--jo!_"" And again she jerked herself into her hammock which Manca now kept in a state of vibration creating a cool breeze in the room but at the same time raising clouds of dust. About two minutes elapsed during which not a word was spoken; the Spaniard had lighted a cigar and was puffing forth volumes of smoke. On a sudden he took the cigar from his mouth apparently in a great rage. ""_Muerte y infiernos!_"" he exclaimed. A twinge interrupted him and he relapsed into his groanings while his greenish-brown physiognomy was horribly distorted. ""_Muerte y infiernos!_"" he resumed as the pangs diminished in violence. ""No quiet say you? And whose fault is it? Who brought us up here from Acapulco?"" ""Would you have stopped there to be made minced meat of by the rebels?"" retorted his wife. ""_Maldito mal pais_ "" growled the Spaniard. ""Would that I had remained in the Madre Patria!"" The lady cast a glance of the most supreme contempt upon her shadow of a husband took a cigar from the Indian girl and beckoned the mulatto to bring her a light. It was only when her cigar was in full puff that she vouchsafed a reply. ""Remain in the Madre Patria say you? To dine with St Antonio [18] I suppose. To feast upon garlic soup with six-and-thirty garbanzos in it and as many drops of oil swimming on the hot water. _Porquerias! No hablas como Cristiano._"" ""Not speak like a Christian say you?"" cried the Spaniard with a sort of comical shudder. ""Jesus Maria y Jose! _Nosotros!_ We who descend from the oldest Christians of whom Castile can boast--we whose ancestors were at the fight by Roncesvalles""---- ""Pshaw! the man talks nonsense. Did we not come all the way from Acapulco to get him cured of his consumption? And now we are here the fool will not see the doctor because he would be obliged to call the Zambo Don or Señor. Cursed folly!"" ""Folly!"" returned her better half furiously--""Folly do you say? _You_ may call it so; you who have not a drop of the blood of the Matanzas in your veins. Folly quotha!"" continued he with a fresh outburst of indignation; ""the heroism of a Matanzas whose three hundred forefathers must look down on him from heaven with pride and exultation especially the great Matanzas who in the fight by Roncesvalles""---- ""Roncesvalles or no Roncesvalles!"" interrupted his spouse ""my ancestors were members of the Seville Consulado Señor! remember that; and it was through them that you got your present place and became what you now are a richer man than all your three hundred ancestors put together; three hundred beggars indeed who had only three cloaks amongst them all and as many soup-dishes in which they begged their _olla_."" The Spaniard threw a scornful glance at his wife. ""We have "" said he in mighty dudgeon----""Oh! ah!"" groaned the poor devil his features twisted up with pain. ""We have "" he continued after a moment ""a pedigree as long as the Tacuba Street Señora while yours--pshaw! it would not make a mat for this room."" The man had raised himself up and spoke in a sharp screaming voice but the last words he uttered were half stifled by pain. ""Folly!"" continued he after a pause--""folly do you call it! because we refuse to indulge an insolent Zambo who dares to expect that a descendant of the great Matanzas a _viejo Cristiano_ should style him Señor--a Matanzas whose nobility is older than that of the king himself!"" And so saying the shrivelled anatomy of a creature placed upon his head an enormous three-cornered cocked hat with a red cockade and waving plume of feathers. ""Folly! d'ye call it?"" he repeated. ""Yes folly "" laughed his wife; ""I would style the Zambo 'your majesty ' if I wanted him."" And she went on with her smoking and swinging. The Spaniard took a fresh cigar out of the mulatto's box lit it and soon enveloped himself and his cocked hat in a cloud of vapour. The truce between the contending parties lasted several minutes during which the Spaniard sat up in his bed without any other clothing than a flannel shirt and the cocked hat aforesaid and his lady lay quiescent in her hammock. She was the first to break silence. ""Matanzas you are an old fool "" cried she ""and if I were Don Toro""---- ""Don him no Dons!"" interrupted her husband. ""He has no right to them. Ah! oh!"" groaned the suffering wretch. ""No never will we give to a miserable Zambo the title of Señor; we whose ancestors were at the fight of Roncesvalles. And the dog expects that we should stand up on his entrance as before a _viejo Cristiano_ and greet him as Señor!"" ""The standing up might be dispensed with "" rejoined the lady ""seeing that you are not able to do it."" ""_We_ call the Zambo Don!"" reiterated the Spaniard ""and stand up on his entrance! Madre de Dios what insolence! No Señora that shall never be "" continued he with much solemnity. ""By the Virgen de los Remed
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os and the most excellent Sant Jago that shall never be! Were we a thousand times as ill and this Zambo could cure us by the mere touch of his staff as Señor Don Moses did the Israelites--Doña Anna "" said the man with an assumption of immense dignity ""we would rather die a thousand deaths that call the Zambo Señor or stand up before him. We are a _viejo Cristiano y basta_! Enough! I have spoken."" During this declaration of his principles the Spaniard's cigar had gone out; he lit another pressed down his huge cocked hat deeper upon his forehead took a long cross-hilted dagger from the wall with the words ""_Ven mi querida Virgen!_"" and kissing the sacred emblem laid it before him. Husband and wife had quarrelled themselves weary and now remained silent. The dispute seemed to have excited no interest in the saloon and mirador where the young ladies were still lounging yawning and smoking; their features wearing that disagreeable relaxed expression which is frequently to be observed in the countenances of Mexican women. A moment however was sufficient to change the scene. The Señorita Ximene had gazed awhile with the drooping underlip and careless glance of indifference upon a number of persons who were coming up the Tacuba Street and who to judge from their garb were for the most part members of the _cinco gremios_ the five guilds or handicrafts. On a sudden however her eyes lost their vague and languid look and became fixed and sparkling; her lips were protruded as if inviting a kiss; her hand was extended her mantilla fell as of itself into graceful folds--it was but an instant and the damsel was completely transformed. Her two companions had scarcely remarked this change when they in their turn underwent a like metamorphosis; their countenance became all animation their manner fascination itself; they were no longer the same beings. ""_Don Pinto y un superbo hombre!_"" whispered Ximene. ""_Quien es?_ Who is it?"" asked Celestine. ""_No sé_ "" replied the other two. The whispering and commotion in the balcony had roused Doña Isidra from her state of indolent apathy. Her hair was already tressed and knotted; she now hastily slipped on a gown darted through the folding-doors out upon the mirador and clapped her hands together uttering the words ""_Venid venid querido!_"" Then tripping back into the saloon with her three companions they all four seized the cords of variegated silk that hung down as already mentioned from the centre of the ceiling which was full fifteen feet high. The waiting-maid had just had time to slip on Doña Isidra's basquina and fasten her mantilla on the crown of her head when the door opened and Don Pinto accompanied by another cavalier entered the room. The damsels were now picturesquely beautiful. No trace was visible of the dull apathy which but two minutes before had seemed to weigh them down. The yellow tint of their cheeks had become a glowing carnation; the thick-lipped half-open mouth was closed with an arch expression the eyes flashed fire; all was grace and seduction. The fascinating basquina embellishing the full round form and reaching down to the knees; beneath it the petticoat of light blue silk; the elegant folds of both garments and the indescribable play of the mantilla now half veiling then revealing the speaking love-glancing eyes. It was an enchanting group which acquired additional grace when joined by the two cavaliers in their characteristic Mexican costume embroidered jackets and short cloaks. The girls bounded forward to welcome Don Pinto and his companion a handsome young Creole; and with a ""_Venid venid senores!_"" offered them the two remaining cords. A hasty pressure of the hand an ardent glance and the dancers stood ready to begin. ""The Chica of Yucatan "" whispered Don Pinto. The maidens were all fire glowing with eagerness. An Indian girl took up the guitar and began to play the dance that had been asked for accompanied by another on the Mexican instrument already described which yielded tones hollow and tremulous but yet melodious somewhat resembling those of an harmonica. The dance commenced with a slow gliding step the dancers holding the ropes with one hand while with the other the ladies coquetted their mantillas. It was impossible to behold any thing more fascinating than their movements as they glided past each other their eyes flashing mantillas waving their full and graceful forms exhibiting the most enchanting contours. Presently the step changed the movements became quicker ladies and cavaliers more animated crossing circling winding quite unembarrassed by the cords which they still held and which as they trode the complicated mazes of the dance gradually formed themselves into a sort of network. As the ropes grew shorter the movements of the dancers became necessarily more circumscribed until at length the completion of the net brought them together into one panting glowing voluptuous group. For an instant they remained motionless and the music ceased; but then again commencing they retraced their steps through the complicated mazes of this most singular of dances until the network they had so skilfully interwoven was as skilfully and gracefully disentwined. * * * * * _Y basta!_ as Don Matanzas says; for we cannot allow ourselves to follow our author any further in his somewhat glowing description of Mexican dances the license of which appears to be in accordance with the unrestrained morals and manners of the people. We return then to Don Manuel who cannot get over his remorse at having under the influence of a generous but fleeting impulse assisted the rebels against the troops of his rightful sovereign; and as his free-agency is in no way restrained by Gueréro he leaves the patriot army and repairs to Mexico. Whilst endeavouring to obtain an interview with the viceroy's sister Doña Isabella he is discovered apprehended and thrown into one of the subterranean dungeons which extend under a considerable portion of the viceregal palace. On discovering the name of the prisoner the viceroy in pursuance of his designs on the immense wealth of the Conde de San Jago resolves to make away with this his nephew and heir. The great power and influence of the count his popularity in Mexico a popularity which is in some degree shared by his nephew compel the viceroy to proceed with extreme caution in carrying out his design. While deliberating as to the best means to be employed one of Don Manuel's servants named Cosmo Blanco is brought in a prisoner and this circumstance suggests a plan to the plotting viceroy and his secretary and creature Don Ruy Gomez. The servant is put out of the way in a dungeon and his arrest not registered while Don Manuel under the name of Cosmo Blanco is brought before a sort of arbitrary tribunal which sits in the vaults adjoining the prison. Despairing and half frantic the unfortunate young nobleman takes no note of the name under which he is arraigned confesses all the charges brought against him and implores that the punishment which he acknowledges himself to have merited may be immediate. He is condemned to death; but before the sentence can be executed his real name gets wind and great alarm is excited even amongst the very judges and officials who have had to do with his capture and condemnation as to what the consequences of his death may be. Already have two of the alguazils who apprehended him been stabbed in the open street; there is a rumour and a murmur throughout the city of Mexico which bodes no good. Nevertheless the viceroy holds firm trusting to his Spanish bayonets to keep down rebellious demonstrations and to his assumed ignorance of Don Manuel's identity to bear him harmless with Count San Jago. It is a critical time; the hour appointed for Manuel's death draws near; the Count apparently unaware of his nephew's peril has made no visible effort to rescue him; when by a boldly devised and rapidly executed scheme which several Spanish officials are induced by their fears either to aid or connive at the viceroy's secretary who has been commissioned to witness the secret execution of Don Manuel is deceived and the young Creole's life saved. We will extract the chapter in which this occurs and the one that precedes it. The action of them both passes in the prisons beneath the viceregal palace. CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIRST. ""I'll see if his head will stand steadier on a pole or no:--Take him away and behead him.""--_King Henry VI._ Don Penafil alcalde of the right worshipful _cabildo_ or town-council of Mexico was in the act of raising a glass of sangaree to his lips when the chief alguazil entered the vault and informed him that his excellency the Oidor of the Audiencia wished to speak with him. Setting down his glass he looked searchingly at the messenger. ""His excellency wishes to speak with us? Shall be at his service as soon as we have finished with this rabble. Will cut it short; Don Ferro "" added he to his coadjutor who was busily writing ""how far have we got?"" ""No. 4 "" answered the escribano. ""Bring up No. 4 "" growled a voice at the further end of the vault and a hoarse laugh was heard although the person who uttered it still remained invisible. The lower part of the vault was gloomy being only lighted by glimmering lamps that hung on either side of a pillar and shed a misty imperfect gleam over surrounding objects. In various recesses dark figures might be seen lurking in the gloom as if they shrank from observation. Some of them were lying stretched upon stone benches wrapped in sheep-skin garments and snoring loudly. Here and there iron hooks protruded from the massive walls over which the damp was trickling in thick heavy drops. The whole aspect of the place was dismal and terrible. On the upper portion of the vault which was raised a couple of steps above the lower part from which it was separated by a bar more care had been expended. It was wainscoted the floor was covered with mats and furnished with cushioned chairs. Its appearance however was still rude enough but by no means out of keeping with that of the two hard-featured and surly officials by whom it was occupied. During the pause that ensued after No. 4 had been called out the chief alguazil held a brief conversation with the alcalde the effect of which seemed to be greatly to increase the impatience of the latter. ""_Muerte y infiernos!_"" exclaimed he violently. ""_Vengo! vengo!_"" replied a voice accompanied by the rattle of chains and then supported between two grim-looking executioner's aids an enfeebled and wretched object was dragged forward and placed at the bar. ""Your name is Andres Pachuca?"" asked the alcalde sharply. The prisoner a youth some twenty years of age gave no answer. ""Is it so or have you lost your tongue perchance?"" demanded the alcalde in an angry tone. ""He had tongue enough in the fonda of Trespana "" snarled a voice from the background ""when he proposed the health of the accursed Morellos."" ""You hear the charge "" said the alcalde too lazy to repeat it himself and converting the words of the police spy into a formal accusation. ""Señor for the sake of God's mother have mercy!"" cried the culprit beseechingly. ""I was misled."" ""So were eighty thousand others "" was the surly answer. ""Write down his confession and away with him to the Acordada."" ""Above or under ground?"" asked the escribano. ""Wherever the maestro has room "" replied the alcalde. ""No. 5."" The knees of the unfortunate youth smote together and he fell down as if he had received a sudden and stunning blow. ""Do not be a fool "" growled one of the executioner's assistants with a horrid laugh. ""You drank Morellos' health in sherry and sangaree; you can drink it now for a change in fresh Tezcuco water; it is a trifle saltish as you know but there is soft lying in it at least if the snakes and lizards will leave you alone. That is to say if you get into one of the lower cells where many people have lasted half a year. If you give the maestro fair words--gold and silver words mind ye--he will only put you the fifty pound chains on and it will be nearly a fortnight before _they_ begin to cut into your flesh."" With such consolations was the wretched prisoner dragged out of the vault while another designated as No. 5 took his place. He was also a young man apparently not much over twenty. ""Elmo Hernandez "" resumed the alcalde ""you are accused of having cursed his excellency the viceroy and of having uttered cries of '_Maldito Gobierno_ ' and '_Maldito Gachupin_ ' and of '_Mueran los Gachupinos_ ' in the quarter of the Trespana. You also shouted '_Abajo con la Virgen de los Remedios_.'[19] Crimes both against the state and the holy Catholic church. What can you say in reply to these accusations?"" ""Señor "" replied the prisoner who was violently agitated ""I have seen my own sister forcibly compelled to wed the sub-lieutenant Garcia my estate wrested from me my sister's health and happiness ruined by the ill-treatment and excesses of her husband."" ""Lieutenant Garcia is a Spaniard a _viejo Cristiano_; and if your sister--but enough you are a Creole and a malecontent."" The young man ground his teeth but said nothing. ""You are a malecontent "" repeated the alcalde. ""A malecontent has a discontented disposition and a discontented disposition is a rebellious one and he who has a rebellious disposition is a rebel. Write it down Don Ferro."" After coming to this just and logical conclusion the alcalde took a draught of sangaree and then again turned to the escribano. ""In the Cordelada--under ground--chains of the second class."" ""You have thirty pounds more to carry "" whispered a jailer to this new victim. ""Eighty pounds at the least. You may say your prayers for an _inferniello_ will be your portion."" The prisoner gnashed his teeth and shook his fetters with impotent rage. He was instantly led away. ""Cursed rebel!"" growled the alcalde after him. ""The rest are all _gente irracionale_ "" observed the escribano. ""So much the better--Nos. 12 to 21 "" cried the alcalde. For about a minute there was a deep silence only broken by the scratch of Don Ferro's pen and the snoring of the sleepers; then a rattle of chains was heard approaching accompanied by a hollow murmur that resounded strangely through the extensive vault; and at last several dark figures emerged from the gloom their coal-black and fiery eyes glittering out of the darkness like _ignes fatui_. They were ten in number; desperate-looking men who appeared neither bowed down by the sufferings they had already endured nor concerned about their future fate. Some were of gigantic frame and the form and materials of the rags which clothed them betokened Indians from the Baxio. With indomitable resolution and defiance depicted on their countenances and an expression of desperate cunning in their widely parted eyes they approached the bar. ""Accused of causing disturbances and exciting the Léperos to rebellion "" said the escribano. ""One also of having torn down the proclamation issued by the Audiencia."" ""Which is he?"" enquired the alcalde. ""That one "" replied a voice and the Zambo called Cassio Isidro stepped forward and pointed to the old Indian whose acquaintance we have already made under the name of Tatli Ixtla. ""So the Gachupins are the _piques_ that have laid their eggs in the flesh of Mexico?"" asked the judge reading from the police-spy's report which he held in his hand. ""Ixtla did not say that "" replied the old Indian. ""This dog of a negro said that."" ""You lie "" screamed the Zambo furiously. ""And the Gachupins who are the sons of Jago have despoiled the sons of Esau that is to say the _gente irracionale_ of their birthright?"" continued the alcalde. The Indian made no answer. The judge was silent for a moment and then uttered the word ""Verdugo."" A man of lofty stature and great strength with a bushy beard of an iron-grey colour and in a dress consisting entirely of white and blue patchwork [20] stepped forward and gazed for a moment expectantly at the alcalde. On a nod from the latter he cast a noose round the Indian's neck and dragged him away as the hunter does the buffalo he has caught in his lasso. ""Nos. 13 to 21 "" cried the alcalde. ""Accused of gritos and of stirring up the Léperos and being in correspondence with the Gavecillas. They are from Zitacuaco and Guanaxato and therefore rebels."" ""The nine Indians who were of various ages were now standing in a row at the bar. The alcalde addressed them. ""What if you were to say just once and for the joke's sake 'Death to the traitor Vicénte Gueréro!'"" The prisoners gazed at their interlocutor with a fixed and stolid look. ""Are ye all tongue-tied?"" resumed the judge. ""We will put it in another shape. Cry '_Muera el traidor Morellos!_' Perhaps that will suit ye better."" None of the Indians made any reply. ""Would you object to cry '_Viva el Rey?_'"" asked the alcalde with a sneer. ""They will not answer "" he added shaking his head. ""Away with them all."" And at the word half a dozen familiars sprang from the stone benches and out of the recesses passed lassos through the iron collars of the prisoners' fetters and dragged them away like calves to the slaughter. ""Cut it short Don Ferro "" said the alcalde abruptly. ""The shorter the better; his excellency is waiting for us. You know they do not pay much attention to the writing part of the business and right enough too seeing that the sentence is generally executed before it is signed."" The escribano took the hint and handed the paper to the Alcalde who signed it as did also the chief alguazil. ""Caramba!"" exclaimed the magistrate yawning and stretching himself. ""We have done for to-night but it is only to begin again to-morrow. Well--_oremos Señores!_"" And so saying the man rose from his seat approached a sideboard on which was a basin and can of water and after he and his two companions had washed their hands they took from the table the candles a crucifix and an image of the Virgin de los Remedios placed them upon a stool that stood against the wall knelt down and prayed audibly ""Ave Maria regina coeli audi nos peccatores!"" Those of the verdugos and jailers who still remained in the vault joined in the supplication with that solemn fervor which Spaniards are wont to blend with their devotions. When the prayer was ended the alcalde rose took up his papers and left the vault accompanied by the escribano and chief alguazil and followed by the inferior officials with the exception of one whose blue and white dress indicated an executioner. To this man the alguazil in going out had whispered something which made him start. Recovering however from his surprise he extinguished the candles wrapped himself in a sheep-skin and lay down upon one of the benches. CHAPTER THE FORTY-SECOND. ""Per me si va nella citta dolente Per me si va nell' eterno dolore Per me si va tra la perduta gente."" DANTE. All was now still in the spacious vault with the exception of a distant clank of chains and murmur of voices which echoed dismally along the massive walls and under the gloomy arches. Suddenly rapid but cautious footsteps were heard and three persons the foremost of whom was the chief alguazil entered looked cautiously around them and then beckoned to the executioner who rose from his hard couch and preceded them into a narrow gloomy corridor. This led them into another vault of dismal and dreary aspect. It was lighted by a single lamp of which the light fell so pale and dim upon the grey and gloomy walls that it seemed as if the intention had been to give those who entered only a gradual acquaintance with the horrors of the place. The roof was supported by pillars of enormous thickness; along the walls were fixed tables and benches of various construction some resembling chests others grates and some like small carts; but all of iron. Chains thick as a man's arm hung upon the walls and pillars which were running with moisture and in these fetters were figures in sitting standing and kneeling postures of which the outline was that of human beings but whether living or dead the imperfect lamp-light rendered it impossible to distinguish. They gave however no sign of vitality. There were also numerous low doors or rather iron gratings closing narrow holes in the wall. The aspect of the whole place was that of a subterranean slaughter-house with dens around it for wild beasts. Upon entering this vault two of the four persons who were wrapped in ample cloaks paused behind one of the pillars while the other two hastened to a cell and crept into it. It was one of those dungeons devised by the ingenious cruelty of Mexico's tyrannical rulers and which had received the appropriate name of _inferniellos_--five feet high six feet long and as many broad. No superfluity of furniture--a stone bench rings and chains. Upon the former a young man now sat or rather hung his neck encircled by a massive iron ring his hands stretched out and maintained by chains in the attitude of one upon the cross his head drooping forward over the iron collar. A cap that covered his head was drawn down over eyes and face allowing little more than the mouth and chin to be visible. From time to time the unfortunate captive uttered deep moans like those of some vanquished and expiring lion and which for an instant startled his two visitors. Recovering himself however the chief alguazil for he was one of them approached the prisoner and endeavoured to open the neck-iron. His companion the executioner hastily seized his arm. ""Beware Señor "" cried he; ""if you touch a wrong spring his neck is snapped as though it were a maize stalk; and by San Lorenzo! I think it would almost be a kindness to do it. The caballero is the first whom ever heard beg for death and call upon God and devil to send it him. But nevertheless may the lowermost hell catch me if I had not a notion that this manga would never see the inside of old Lorenzo's wallet."" While thus discoursing this wild executer of the laws had unfettered the prisoner. ""_Silencio!_"" said the alguazil. ""You were mistaken. The manga shall be yours."" ""He is to change his clothes then? Will your worship be pleased to give a helping hand for it will be a full hour before he gets the use of his limbs. A damnable shower-bath it is this inferniello; and for that matter so are they all."" It was with no small difficulty that the alguazil accomplished his task of undressing the prisoner who seemed more dead than alive and lay passive and motionless while he was stripped first of his manga then of his embroidered jacket and finally of his hose. He seemed to have lost nearly all sensation; only at times an agonized sigh burst from his over-charged breast and was accompanied by a convulsive quivering of the whole body. His sufferings had evidently been dreadful. ""We will leave him his under garments "" said the alcalde who had experienced on trying to remove them that kind of unconscious resistance which even persons in a swoon will sometimes make when their instinctive sense of modesty is wounded. Then throwing his cloak round the prisoner he took him in his arms and partly bore partly dragged him out of the inferniello. ""Is it he?"" asked one of the two figures who had remained near the pillar raising the cap a little as he spoke. ""It is "" muttered the other. ""It is "" repeated the alguazil. ""_De pregonero a verdugo_ "" muttered the executioner; ""so says the proverb but here things are reversed. Follow me Señorias--I will lead you to a place where he shall sleep safely; that is to say if the rats whom he will have for companions will allow him."" The party now disappeared in the windings of a corridor whence after a short absence the executioner and alguazil again emerged bringing with them a young man whose stature hair and general appearance coincided strongly with those of the prisoner they had just carried away. Like the latter the newcomer had a cap drawn over his face but he appeared much less exhausted and suffering. ""Jesus Maria! Where am I Señores? For the mother of God's sake where am I?"" ""_Silencio!_"" growled the hangman placing him against the wall and beginning to undress him. The manga as soon stripped off and the jacket followed. ""Lift your foot "" said the executioner pulling at his trousers. ""Now the other! So. The shirt is not worth much--you can take that with you. The botines and shoes tolerable. But don't be frightened Señoria; it is only an exchange."" ""Jesus Maria! Mercy gracious Señor!"" stammered the unfortunate wretch. ""Ah! if my poor mother who lives at the corner of the Plateria could""---- ""We will tell her of it Señoria "" interrupted the hangman in almost a feeling tone; ""and she will perhaps be able to get you an _indulgencia plenaria_--for we have no confessors here. It is short work with us particularly since the rack is done away with. But for twenty dollars she can get the best of indulgencias. They are cheap since the rebellion."" The poor fellow listened to this speech his head bent towards the speaker in an attitude of attention; but he did not seem to understand. He slivered like an aspen leaf; for he now stood nearly naked upon the cold damp stones. ""Jesus Maria!"" whimpered the lad ""what is it you want with me? I only went to accompany my young master. How could poor Cosmo help it? We begged and prayed of him--Maestro Alonzo Pedro and I--that he would not interfere when Major Ulloa charged the _gente irracionale_. Jesus! how cold it is!"" ""You will soon be warm Señor "" quoth the executioner. ""In our hands the coldest grows warm. There--take that!"" And he handed him one after the other the garments which the alguazil had taken off the other prisoner. The unfortunate creature caught at them and slipped them on with a haste that had something shocking in it. On a sudden he left off dressing himself passed his hands over the fur trimmings and gold embroidery of the jacket and exclaimed in a trembling voice--""Holy Virgin! they are my master's clothes!"" For a moment he stood shivering with the jacket in his hand. ""Quick Señor!"" cried the executioner; ""time is short."" The prisoner put his arm mechanically into the sleeve of the jacket. The hangman helped him on with it threw the short cloak over him and placed him hastily in the cell which had been so recently vacated. He had scarcely done so when the sound of a bell was heard from the adjacent vault. Alguazil and executioner listened for a moment and then hurried through a corridor in the direction whence the summons proceeded. After a couple of minutes they returned accompanied by the alcalde and by a person muffled in a blue cloak.[21] The two latter carried dark lanterns. ""Executioner do your duty!"" said the alcalde. ""No. 3."" The executioner disappeared in the inferniello; the clank of chains was heard and he again emerged from the den bringing with him the unfortunate prisoner. ""_Por el amor de Dios!_"" implored the latter. ""Cosmo will do any thing confess every thing""-- ""He raves "" interrupted the alcalde. ""Jesus Maria "" groaned Cosmo again. ""We begged we entreated him not to fire at Major Ulloa. Never in my life will I again take a trabuco in my hand."" ""That voice!""----exclaimed the cloaked figure-- ""Is altered "" hastily interposed the alcalde. ""The poor fellow has lost voice reason and courage. But it is always so."" ""There "" muttered the hangman; ""these bracelets might have been made for your Excellency; they just fit on over the fur cuffs."" And so saying he pushed the prisoner against the wall and placed both his arms in rings. ""_Santissima Madre ora pro nobis!_"" prayed poor Cosmo between his teeth which chattered as he spoke. Then suddenly he raised his voice and broke out into the beautiful hymn ""Madre dolorosa dulcissima y hermosa "" which he sang in this his moment of extreme anguish with such expression and melody that even the executioner suspended his proceedings and listened for a moment visibly moved. A sign from the alguazil recalled him to his duty. ""A little farther back Señoria. The legs asunder on either side of this stone. We want you to sit comfortably."" ""It is cold bitter cold!"" whined the poor fellow. ""Oh my poor mother!"" ""The head higher "" resumed the hangman ""or the springs might catch your skull. So--that is right. Don't be afraid. We are not going to hurt you."" The prisoner now stood with his legs straddled out a large stone that projected from the wall between them his neck in a huge iron collar his arms spread out and hanging in the rings. ""Remain standing Señoria till we have fastened your cravat. Don't tremble. We are doing nothing to you. In two minutes you will be as you should be."" While uttering these words of consolation the executioner had fastened a thinner chain of which the end was secured to the stone above mentioned round the neck of the victim who stood shaking and trembling and allowing himself to be thus dealt with as unresistingly as a lamb. The poor fellow had left off sobbing and was now repeating Ave Marias in a low hurried voice with all the agonized eagerness of one who in his last moments would fain make up for former omissions. ""Would you Señoria wish to have the sentence read?"" enquired the alcalde of the man in the blue cloak who stood observing the proceedings in deep silence and now made no answer to the question. ""Would Don Ruy Gomez be pleased to hear the sentence read?"" repeated the alcalde in a hoarse whisper. Still no reply. The alguazil made a sign to the executioner. The latter pressed the prisoner down upon the stone--the snap of a spring was heard--the stone fell out of the wall. ""Jesus Maria! Todos Santos!"" shrieked Cosmo. ""Madre mi""---- The last syllable was not uttered; in its place there was the noise of crushed and breaking bones; and then the tongue protruded from the mouth and the eyes from their sockets the face became of a deep purple colour and the victim hung a corpse in his manacles. ""_El ultimo suspiro!_"" said the executioner in an unusually solemn tone. The viceroy's secretary shuddered and gazed fixedly and in silence upon the corpse. ""The finest youth in Mexico!"" he murmured. And then as if devils had been goading him he hurried to the door. ""Show his Señoria a light "" cried the alguazil gravely; ""and may his dying hour be as easy as that of this unfortunate. By my soul "" continued he to the alcalde ""these great men are delicate. They take us for tongs made to pull their chestnuts out of the fire."" The alcalde nodded. ""Do not forget the prisoner "" said he. And with an abrupt ""_Adios_ "" he left the vault. ""Come and that quickly "" cried the alguazil anxiously; ""in a quarter of an hour it might be too late. An alcalde and an alguazil cannot be always blind."" His summons which had been uttered in a loud tone was replied to by the appearance of the original occupant of the No. 3 cell who now re-entered the vault supported by the two strangers with whom he had quitted it a short time previously. ""Where am I?"" he exclaimed. ""In a place which few ever leave alive Don Manuel "" was the answer; ""but he that has the Pope for his cousin as the proverb says need not fear hell-fire. Nevertheless let your Señoria beware! Another time it might not be so easy to rob the tiger of his prey."" And with these words the chief alguazil led the way out of the vault. * * * * * With this rescue of Don Manuel and sacrifice of his unfortunate servant the plot of the book may in great measure be said to terminate although there are still several lively and interesting chapters. Count San Jago next comes upon the scene and has an interview with the viceroy who at first is disposed to carry matters with a high hand; but the count exhibits such an accurate and dangerous knowledge of the viceroy's secrets and amongst others of some treasonable negotiations the latter had been carrying on with the French--proofs of which the count assures him are deposited out of the country in the hands of friends of his own ready to be used should aught happen to him--that the satrap is completely cowed. The count has no wish to have Vanegas deposed considering his continuance on the viceregal throne more favourable to the prospects of Mexican freedom than would be his replacement by Calleja who has a strong party in his favour amongst the Spaniards. The matter is therefore compromised; Don Manuel receives a passport for England or the United States; the Conde Carlos is promoted to an important command in the army; a
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d in return Count San Jago gives the viceroy his support against the cabal that is for pulling him down and elevating Calleja. The book to be complete should have a continuation dated ten or twelve years later showing the successful issue of the struggle of which these volumes narrate the commencement and terminating the various intrigues both private and political which are here commenced but not carried to a close. Our limits have prevented us from giving more than brief glimpses of work which if translated as a whole would fill three or four comely post octavos. We trust that it will be worthily done into English without greater abridgement than may be rendered indispensable by the epithets and expletives so abundant in the German language; many of which are unnecessary and some without equivalent in ours:--done however not as translations usually are but in a manner worthy of the admirable original. Out of the numerous translations of clever German books that have recently appeared it is lamentable to observe how few have been done we will not say _well_ but decently and how little justice has been rendered to the talent of the authors; the translators having been for the most part incompetent drudges working by the square foot or persons of some ability who apparently deemed it beneath them to bestow upon translations even a small portion of the pains they devote to original productions. We are aware of very few instances where this description of labour which to do well is not altogether so easy as is usually supposed has fallen into hands alike competent and conscientious. We trust that whenever the works of our German Unknown are translated they will be undertaken by persons at once sensible of their merits and able to do them justice. THE RECTOR'S DAUGHTER. CHAPTER I. The rapid shade of an October evening borrowing deeper gloom from the wildness of the adjacent Tipperary mountains was falling over the lonely town of Clogheen within whose classic precincts took place that important meeting between Sergeant Snap and Paddy Carey which has been recorded immortally in song. Forty years ago (of which period we are about to write ) when roads were not as good travellers as adventurous and markets as abundant as at present Clogheen was a smart or as the _Itinerary_ of that day has it ""a thriving place with a decent church "" boasting a comfortable inn and several hucksters' shops where every variety of merchandise from brandy and bandle-linen to hand-saws and halfpenny whistles was procurable. In a double-countered shop (for the appliances for the inward creature were sold at one side and those for the outward man at another) in one of the handsomest houses of the town--where a double-story slated roof and a sign-board with a red splash in the middle and the characters ""General Hutchinson "" underneath was the standard of excellence--on the evening in question stood Curly Cahill [22] spirit retailer and according to the signboard just quoted ""dealer in soft goods butter leather iron eggs and tobacco "" busily engaged in serving a customer. ""Beautyful baffety Miss "" said Curly a dapper middle-aged worthy his short black hair combed sleek over his low forehead with a face half smooth half smirking and--for the little fellow pretended to no small degree of sanctimony--his person dressed neatly in black as closely as possible to resemble the fashion just imported by the new _Co'juther_ from Maynooth. ""Beautyful baffety Miss Katey fit for any lady from this to Knocklofty let alone for servants' wear an' only tenpence-halfpenny a yard. It's giving it away I am."" ""It does not seem a very good colour "" said the purchaser in a musical voice. ""Is it the colour! Take your hand ov it take your hand ov it astore "" cried the dextrous merchant; ""a bleachground would look yallow an' that purty hand to the fore. An' here Padeen bring a candle--an' turn out them pigs you sir an' boult the half-dure till Miss Tyrrel sees the goods.--Now Miss "" he said when the light was brought and his behests obeyed slapping his hand in fond emphasis on the bale as he unrolled it wider along the counter ""there's an article!--that I may be happy if I'd wish finer for my windin' sheet; only to be sure a body would like _that_ to be linnen an' go to the grave decent. Yeh! what need you be so very particular for servants?"" ""I really do not like the calico Mr Cahill "" hesitated the lady ""and papa""---- ""You don't see it Miss "" interrupted Curly; ""push back them darlin' locks o' yours that's sweepin' the counther an' I'll be bound the goods 'll be at the Glebe afore an hour;"" and as he spoke he playfully but with great respect and tender fingers lifted aside some of the masses of golden hair that drooped above and as he truly insinuated in some measure overshadowed the good qualities of his merchandise. ""Curly you are a sad old flatterer "" said the young lady and she impatiently raised her head and shaking back its weight of ringlets exposed a fair high forehead and beautifully oval face to view. ""I find it always difficult to deal with you; however "" she added with a smile ""the better way perhaps is to send up the whole piece to the Glebe to-morrow and I shall then be able to judge of it."" ""Ah then that I may be soon sellin' you the weddin' sheets Miss Katey "" said the successful shop-keeper as he rolled up the bale and pushed it to the end of the counter; ""and "" he added in a very different tone modulated to the lowest key of suppleness and deference ""shure that 'ould be to-morrow if you take my advice an' were kind en' thrue-hearted to _the one you know_""---- ""Yes indeed!"" half ironically half regretfully murmured the young lady as she drew down her veil and prepared to depart but was stayed by a prognostication from Curly who pledged nothing less than his ""hand an' word to her "" that she'd break the heart of the anonymous individual alluded to ""afore long if she didn't take care!"" ""'Twas when the men wor goin' to work at broad daylight this mornin' Miss I hear _him_ in the next room to me stealin' to bed afther sittin' up the night readin' them books an' songs an' things that you're deludin' the poor fellow's senses with--ach""---- ""Oh! that reminds me "" said the listener producing a small volume from the folds of her cloak; ""I will just leave this book with my compliments. He is of course "" she carelessly observed ""not now at home?"" ""Jest took a short stick in his hand and went out for a solithary walk; by himself poor fellow down by the Shuire. 'Tis the only time o' the day he likes for walkin'."" ""The time of the night you mean Curly "" said the girl with a laugh glad to shake off a certain air of embarrassment she felt by affected gaiety. ""Tell him he should keep better hours; though upon my word "" as she prepared to face the darkening twilight ""I don't set him a very good example myself. Good evening."" ""The best of evenin's to you _a cushla_ "" said Mr Cahill as he bolted the shop-door after her. ""The bloody tithe-devourin' parson's daughter "" he muttered as he turned in and prepared to roll up his goods to be forwarded to the Glebe next morning; ""an' for all she's a darlin' herself an' a blessin' to every one that's about her--but her murdherin' father! Here Padeen!--Padeen I say!"" * * * * * Katey Tyrrel was the spoiled child of an indulgent parent. Her father the Reverend Edward Tyrrel was rector of the parish in which our story lies. A man whose disposition naturally soft and affectionate had in the course of years become sharp and irritable from the long series of petty vexations he had been subjected to in his efforts to collect the unsatisfactory revenues of his incumbency from as ingeniously-obstinate a set of parishioners as were to be found in the most litigation-loving island in the world. The district of country too in which Mr Tyrrel's lot had fallen although sufficiently fertile and wealthy was of all others from its situation at the foot of the high and sterile tract of the Kilworth mountains (then the favourite resort of highwaymen and fugitives from the law ) with the gloomy range of the Gaultees to the north and on its southern edge the long and lonely Commeragh hills that divided it from Waterford the most unfavourable to passing a life of quiet plenty and security. When to this it is added that from the scanty number of gentry the Government of the day deemed it prudent to entrust with the commission of the peace in self-defence he was obliged to be a magistrate an office which not unfrequently compelled him to be complainant counsel and convicting justice in his own cause some idea may be formed of the difficulties and vexations the Vicar of Clogheen had to encounter in the collection of those tithes from which his income was principally derived. Notwithstanding during the twenty or five-and-twenty years of his incumbency if his temper did not progress towards improvement his fortune did. By an ample dowery received with his wife and exact economy and prudence he had been enabled from time to time to make considerable purchases in land; until at length Mr Tyrrel was accounted if not the most popular at least one of the most prosperous clergymen from Dunmanway to the Devil's Bit. He had become a widower early in life and around his daughter Katey the sole offspring of his marriage those sympathies and affections which were denied vent in every other quarter were concentrated in a lavish and inexhaustible flood. A few short years of a mother's superintendence--some attempts at home-education (for he would not trust her from his sight ) in the shape of a little petticoated rebel who would be taught nothing and a sickly governess who had nothing to teach--a girlhood of romance-reading riding rough colts with her cousin Lysaght Osborne and rambling among the peasantry--and we have the result of the clergyman's fondness and folly in the wild lively blue-eyed maiden of nineteen now wending her way along the dim and elm-darkened road leading from the town of Clogheen to her father's mansion nearly a mile away. Even in the early part of an autumn evening few persons were desirous of travelling alone in that neighbourhood; but Katey trod her path in perfect security. She was known to every body and by the surrounding peasantry (to whom she ever came with her purse or prescriptions of pots of jam warm jackets and flannel bed-gowns a living and lovely Replevin for many of her sire's exactions) she was treated with a fond regard which can only be estimated by those who know how largely the smallest loan of kindness--of real _disinterested_ kindness--is repaid by that people. Wayward and innocent however as she was Katey on the evening in question had not without a motive dispensed with the companionship of the staid female domestic who usually attends young ladies in Ireland when they are necessitated to go out shopping after dinner by themselves. It might be for this reason that she hastened homeward with more anxiety than usual although her step was neither as elastic nor her brow as unclouded as they were wont to be. But she did not pursue her way uninterrupted. CHAPTER II. Half-way upon the road where a stile opened into the adjacent fields a man suddenly appeared and coming forward walked for some paces in silence by her side as though awaiting some recognition before he ventured to address her. He was of middle stature--his figure was entirely concealed in the thick and ample wrappings of a long dark riding-coat (or _bang-up_ as it was called ) common to that country; his step was firm and its very sound quick and decided so different from the shambling pace of the peasant told that whatever he might be he did not belong to that condition. As Miss Tyrrel showed no symptom of surprise or alarm it is possible his appearance was not entirely unlooked for. She likewise however forbore to speak and the stranger at length was obliged to commence the conversation--turning back at the same time the high collar by which his face was muffled and exhibiting features so extremely dark that they would have been deemed repulsive had they not been finely formed and enlivened by the full light of manhood which however some feeling of deep interest or passion seemed at the present to overcloud. ""The hour is come that we have so often talked of "" he said in a low tone. ""I have no time to waste Katey--_are you ready?_"" ""Then you were right in your conjecture "" said Miss Tyrrel with an unembarrassed air; ""your retreat is discovered?"" ""At least it can no longer shelter me. News arrived to-day that the soul of this ill-starred enterprize--Emmett--has perished by legal murder in Dublin. The gibbet awaits all those of his followers who may be arrested. Certain intelligence has reached me that my assumed name and character are no longer of avail--the local authorities are aware of my real offences. If I do not instantly escape before the coming midnight I shall be a prisoner."" ""I expected this "" said Katey half musingly; ""it could not be otherwise; you yourself anticipated it. And yet I have been to Cahill's "" she added looking down ""to--to--leave a book for I was anxious and _he_ seems to know nothing of your danger."" ""I have only just learned it myself and have hastened to seek you; the mine at our feet is about to be sprung and""---- ""So ends _your_ life of ignoble disguise and _mine_ of duplicity. We should both be thankful."" ""One of us at least--thankful as the wrecked seaman when the plank he clings to splits and sinks him within sight of shore. But time presses; I have come to test the truth of your character. Once more--are you ready?"" ""I am indeed--ready to part this instant. I knew it should be so; it was a pleasure to have known you but I am resigned--ready. Fly! O lose not a single moment; the moon is rising. Farewell and fly!"" ""Not without _you_! Girl you affect to misunderstand me; or have you forgotten those promises of friendship and faith even to death that you have made me so often and so lately?"" ""Promises--faith?"" cried his startled companion; ""even admitting those playful assurances of a wild country girl's friendship were a compact could you be cruel enough to insist upon my fulfilling it in this desperate hour?"" ""Then all the interest you have expressed hitherto in my fate "" pursued the stranger; ""the sympathy you have led me to think you felt for one suffering as I have suffered in the cause of my unhappy country--the hopes excited in this heart when as I pictured a delighted life passed with you and love and freedom beyond the Atlantic you listened on with a consenting smile--all this was but pastime for your vacant hours?"" ""It was wrong I know "" replied Katey yieldingly; ""yet Heaven knows it was no pastime. I found you in concealment--a fugitive--hunted you told me by the laws for your exertions in the cause of a country I have been taught by you to deem misgoverned; I saw you superior to all those around you; you complained of cheerlessness and solitude of ill health--I brought you books music all that I could judge likely to lighten your hours and dearly am I punished for it."" ""But think""---- ""_Think!_"" cried the girl passionately interrupting him for the chord had jarred ""I never _thought_--till now--when all my giddy imprudent conduct crowds on my mind as if to crush me. A few months back and we were ignorant of each other's existence."" ""Would that it had continued so "" he said in a voice of sadness; ""a few months more and my memory will be to you as the nameless gravestone telling alone that it hides the dead. Cruel but beloved farewell!"" and he turned to depart. ""Yet stay "" said Katey hurriedly. ""Why not let me tell my father of this business--I mean of your story--that I know it all and entreat of him as I have often urged you to let me do to interest himself with Government and procure your pardon which he can readily obtain? I will go this instant."" ""And give me up to justice--for such I assure you will be the result of an appeal to your father."" ""You wrong him believe me. He is perhaps stern and vindictive in his feelings towards those whom he considers instrumental in keeping alive a spirit of animosity and disturbance among the people; but you know not "" she said with a smile ""how all-powerful is my influence with him. Yes even at the risk of his displeasure--for he little dreams I am acquainted with you I will tell him your sad story--there is nothing in it a brave or noble man should be afraid of. I will go to him this moment "" and she moved on. ""Impossible!-you are mad. The very fact of your having known and befriended me in this clandestine way will incense your friends. I shall be arrested and you will accuse yourself for life as my destroyer. No dear girl "" he continued in a softer yet not less eager tone as he placed his arm round her ""why not yield to the impulses of your own high disinterested spirit and fly with me as I have so often implored you? Be mine first in the sight of man and heaven and then plead for me afterwards with your father?"" ""I dare not--it would break his heart--my own is breaking fast already "" and she trembled from head to foot in her attempts to subdue the sobbing of her bosom. ""And this is the energy the firm-mindedness you have so often boasted of! You have it in your power this instant to raise me to happiness wealth and safety; and forgetful it was the charm you threw across my path which has kept me near you until the bloodhounds have run me to bay you doom me to despair and death. I see _you_ have made your decision--hear _mine_. Life since I knew you has no value in my eyes if unshared by you. Exile from you would be worse than death. Here then I still await the pursuers. Never will I leave with life the mountains that surround you."" ""Oh--no--no! Heaven forbid your blood should be shed on my account! Fly I implore you before it is too late."" ""Never! I will sell my life dearly but my grave at least shall be where you can sometimes visit it and remember""---- ""Unkind dark inhuman man! was it _all_ my fault? My poor father what will he say? give me at least a day or two to think""---- ""It is now of no use the night has half past my doom is fixed."" ""No! again no! you will drive me mad! Oh fly fly but this once and I will at least I promise--I must see him--my father--before--fly now and return and I will do all you desire--only only save your life at once."" The man replied not for some minutes he then resumed--""I have here that copy of the Gospels you gave me--will you swear on that gift that when we next meet you will be prepared to share life be it happiness or horror with me?"" ""Yes I do--I will--any thing; but fly and save yourself."" ""Swear then "" he said as with one arm around her he prepared with the other to place the sacred Book upon her lips when at that very moment an aspersion of cold water was dashed with such ample profusion in the impassioned faces of the pair as to cause them to spring asunder with a start that had very nearly as much the character of discomfort as alarm. ""Hell and""----half-exclaimed the man as he tore open his coat and grasped one of several pistols it now appeared he was armed with. ""_Dhieu a's Marudha a's Phaidhrig a's_""[23]----said a voice following up the lustration with a blessing cut short however by the Stranger's clutching the throat of the pious intruder and dragging forward from beneath the trees which had hitherto overshadowed their way a little Bundle of some dark coloured cloth surmounted by a straw bonnet so battered in its outlines that to fix it there it must have been flattened down with no ordinary emphasis and from beneath which guttural shrieks now arose whose extent of volume was out of all proportion to the diminutive object from which they proceeded. ""Hold! let go for goodness sake!"" cried Miss Tyrrel ""it is only poor Sally-the-tin the Holy-Water woman."" ""A--a--a! my windpipe!"" cried the Bundle as soon as that interesting organ had been extricated. ""A--a--Miss Katey take the bushblunder out ov his hand 'fore he blows my brains out "" and the shrieks were renewed with more vociferation than before. ""She will raise the country. I must stop her were I to kill her "" said the stranger furiously. ""No no dear friend she is a deaf harmless thing--hush! I hear steps. Oh in mercy fly!"" ""Not without your promise "" he said doggedly. ""I am ready I promise--next time we meet; now farewell and away "" said Katey while she waved one hand to the departing fugitive as he dashed through the thicket and placed the other on the roaring mouth of the creature at her side whose terrors seemed under considerable self-control for they at once subsided. ""Mother o' Grace pray for us now an' at the hour ov our death amen!"" mumbled the Bundle as it righted itself and assumed the appearance of a withered and ancient little Woman who in flinging back her dark blue cloak to adjust herself exhibited a small scarecrow frame round which was hung until its shape became orbicular every variety of feminine attire from the petticoats under upper and quilted through the higher gradations of gown apron spencer jacket pelerine handkerchief and shawl. A broad leathern strap was buckled round her waist from which on one side hung a rosary or string of large beads to the other was fastened a _canteen_ or tin can without a cover containing a large supply of holy water procured from the neighbouring chapels on Sundays. She bore in her hand literally nothing but (as they would say in Ireland) her _fist_ which was of immense size and of whose convenience for the purposes of aspergation Katey and her friend had just been afforded such convincing proof. Footsteps now approached rapidly and Miss Tyrrel holding Sally-the-tin by the arm turned towards home. She was shortly encountered by a lively-voiced gentlemanly young man who saluted her in an affectionate tone with ""Katey pet what on earth has kept you out so late. Hallo! Sally I bar that!"" he exclaimed adroitly slipping aside and escaping the showery blessing which despite the lesson just bestowed on her this incorrigible lady of the Tin had (as was her wont with all she met) discharged at him. ""But did I not hear some one "" he continued ""screeching violently as I came up?"" ""Yes Lysaght "" said Miss Tyrrel ""this stupid deaf old creature here who is a torment to all who meet her with her benedictions and holy water suddenly threw some of the contents of her tin (as she always does when saluting a person) on a Stranger a man she happened to be passing close to which so irritated him that he has given her a proper fright."" ""I could chide you soundly dear Katey for such late scampers as these; but you take my hints----well don't be cross and have it all your own way if you like "" said the young man interrupting himself dejectedly. ""I _am_ very cross to-night Lysaght so don't talk. But here we are and I am glad of it "" and Katey knocked impatiently and loudly at the door of their home. ""Now don't go away sulky there's a good boy "" she cried after her cousin who turned towards the stables; ""and Lysaght I have done the rosettes for Lightfoot's headstall which you asked me to make though I said I wouldn't--you shall have them in the morning. And now to give this silly old woman her supper and a night's lodging "" and followed by Sally-the-tin still groaning heavily she entered the house. CHAPTER III. Sleepless and miserable to Katey Tyrrel was the night that followed her interview with the Stranger. The fearful and critical position in which she was placed caused her for the first time in her life to go through a rigid course of self-examination the result of which but added to her alarm and anxiety. For some months past the person she had just parted from had been a sojourner in lodgings at Cahill's under circumstances of great privacy--rarely venturing out during the day and in the evening only with secresy and caution. As that remote country ill-supplied at the period with police (and even those of the most ""ancient and quiet"" description ) and wholly inaccessible to bailiffs and all other functionaries attendant on county sheriffs was deemed peculiarly favourable as quarters for that class of magnanimous men whose expenditure happens to exceed their incomes to the detriment of their tailors and their own personal inconvenience it was soon whispered and as quickly believed that the resident at Cahill's was one of that generous brotherhood or in other words was ""a gentleman on his keeping.""[24] In her visits to the shop which from her idle though innocent life were frequent Katey had several times encountered him as he sauntered in and out. An intimacy sprang up. There was a frankness and a half-military air in his deportment that interested her. He had evidently seen much of the world and society his conversation was lively and varied his knowledge and accomplishments to the secluded country girl seemed extensive and round all circled a halo of mystery not the least of those attractions for Katey whose passion for riding to the Kilfane hounds had just been succeeded by a stronger one for Mrs Radcliffe and romances. Time flew on. Their daily interviews improved to evening rambles the interchange of notes supplies of books and flowers upon one side an avowal of love and tale of lofty but luckless patriotism on the other. To the object of his passion alone did the stranger confide his story. Fascinated by the principles of freedom with which France had lately inoculated mankind and maddened by the miseries of ill-government under which his own green Island groaned he had engaged full of hope and high aspirations in that enterprise for the recovery of her national independence which terminated in the martyrdom of as noble and pure-spirited a being as sleeps buried and unhonoured in ""the cross ways of fame""--ROBERT EMMETT. The Stranger had been dispatched he said to the south to forward the movement of his party in that quarter when their central Power in the capital prematurely exploded carrying dismay and destruction to every remoter organ of the confederacy. His name--the name of Fergus Hewitt citizen of the new Western Republic and major of brigade--was one of the first upon the list of the proscribed; a reward was offered for his head; and it was while lurking a hunted man amid the fastnesses of Tipperary that he wooed and ventured to win the heart and hand of the heiress of Clogheen. Such was the tale along whose vicissitudes the fair girl to whom it was imparted now glanced with a bewildered mind. The interview just terminated will have given the reader some idea of the unsettled state of her feelings; but it was in the solitude of her chamber when she found herself called on to part for ever or for ever to be united with this interesting stranger that she seemed to discover not without consternation how necessary to her happiness he had become. The waste vacancy of her time and thoughts before she had met him--broken only by dull and distant visits to duller and more distant aunts vapid rides through rude and solitary scenes and incessant feud and amnesty between her cousin Lysaght and herself--was this once more to be her portion? or would she fly with Him who had relieved her from them all and relinquish her father and her home? How she continued to ask herself would that beloved parent so stern to all else so blindly indulgent to her endure her loss? Would he proscribe her for ever? She felt not--assuredly not. No her father would once more receive her into his grace and affection; but Lysaght who had been reared with her who loved her so well so all the more deeply she knew that he had never told her so--what would _he_ feel? How would he look the first morning after her flight when he came in to breakfast and found the room solitary the urn cold her little spanniel Lapwing moaning about the hearth and Katey away over the mountains in the dead of night with a nameless and lawless man? Yes poor Lysaght she felt would _then_ be to be pitied: her father might once more be hers; but her cousin--even her little quarrels with him had something pleasant to her recollection and on this portion of the picture much as she desired to banish it from her mind she again and again returned to dwell; nor did she succeed in _overlaying_ it by painting her reconciliation with Lysaght on her return and her reparation in the shape of a large present of real and personal estate which her father should be induced to make to him and thereby enable Lysaght to settle in life. And then his wife--which of all her surrounding country friends would she choose for him? The sketch was still unfinished when the bell announced the morning's repast; and Katey sleepless agitated and undecided descended to breakfast. There was nothing in that meal calculated to allay her anxiety. She found her father and cousin (the latter having just come in from his matutinal tour through the farm and laden of course with the news of the neighbourhood) busily engaged with cold beef and conjectures upon the sudden flight of the gentleman resident at Curly Cahill's which had taken place during the night half-an-hour previous to a domiciliary visit from three peace-officers who came from Clonmel and departed as they came in profound silence regarding the object of their expedition upon discovering the stranger had left. As Mr Tyrrel had not been consulted by the authorities on this occasion the reverend magistrate testified no very poignant regret at the disappointment of the officers; but as his curiosity was commensurately excited he hazarded several ingenious solutions of the Problem that had been paying eighteen-pence a-week for ""dry-lodgings"" at Cahill's the last four months. Lysaght was loud in his decision that the fellow was ""some coiner or poaching blackguard;"" while his uncle rather inclined to the arson and agrarian-outrage line. Poor Katey sat behind the coffee-stand stifling her feelings in the manner she best might until she heard her father propose ""sheep-stealing"" as an emendation of the probable offence of her banished friend when she could support it no longer. Little accustomed at any time to hide her emotions the high-spirited girl burst into tears upbraided her respectable parent and thick-headed cousin for their hardheartedness and want of charity ventured at first to disbelieve every sentence they had uttered proceeded to confess that she had had the pleasure of the stranger's acquaintance and ended by proudly introducing him (in an imaginary way) to her astonished friends as Major Fergus Hewitt of the Second Republican Brigade of Artillery and Commissioner to Mononia from the Provisional Government. Had a petard from the Major's own brigade been projected into the centre of the little breakfast table it could not have played the mischief more effectually than did this stunning explosion. Lysaght Osborne after remaining speechless for some minutes having helped himself to a cup of scalding water from the urn was compelled to retreat upon the pump outside. His uncle who had received so large a portion of the shell necessarily too exhibited much suffering which his daughter at length attempted in vain to alleviate. But the spoiled and petted Katey had for once overcounted. There are in certain minds bursts of passion which like the tempests of tropical islands are all the more violent and unsparing from the halcyon seasons that precede them. Such was the storm of wrath that now for the first time descended from Tyrrel's lips upon his daughter's head. He raved and stamped at her like a maniac terrified her into an acknowledgment that she had listened even to amatory communications from the unhappy Hewitt commanded her from his presence then recalled her to be reprimanded for retiring so hastily and again expelling her pursued her with all but palpable fire and sword to her own territory where locking her in her bed-chamber he deposited the key in his pocket and set out on foot to finish the work of disaster by annihilating the ""dealer in soft goods "" who had he felt assured been a proximate agent in nearly ridding him of his child. His first intention was to hold no terms whatever in his approaches upon Curly's fortalice or in other words ""to make an open show of him;"" but a mile's walk of a muddy day has a sedative effect and by the time he arrived at Cahill's Mr Tyrrel had seen the impolicy of giving any publicity to what _he_ considered the folly of his daughter. His interview the
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efore with Curly took place in private and for any satisfaction that resulted from it he might as well have placed himself in communication with the intelligent milestone ""Clonmel XII. "" which he had passed as he entered the town. Cahill on his part received the first discharge of the clergyman's indignation with a look of stolid surprise to which one Liston a player could alone have done justice. For some time he seemed at a loss to comprehend whether the remarks had reference to his last year's arrear of tithes or the projected invasion from Boulogne; and when at length their real purport _did_ overtake him the shock was overwhelming. Well it was for the Fugitive that he was at the moment out of reach of his estimable host's indignation. To be ""skivered "" to ""have every bone in his body smashed to smithers "" or ""to be torn asunder as one would tear a lark "" was the mildest of the horrible fates he had escaped for attempting to inveigle the affections of ""the darlin' young lady."" As to Cahill himself having ever perceived the remotest approach to any intimacy between the parties he ""declared to his heart"" he never saw them together in his life; if he had his instant duty would have propelled him to inform the rector of it ""in a shake;"" so that as Mr Tyrrel saw his interview was likely to be a fruitless one he cut it short and departed while Curly was concluding a declaration that ""if he could go on his hands an' knees to Clo'mel for his rav'rence he'd be proud to do it."" During the rest of the day the discomfited parent had full occupation in his own self-upbraidings. In his boundless indulgence he had permitted his daughter to be perfectly mistress of her time and actions; and the conviction now pressed upon him that he had done so to a very culpable and unfortunate degree. In order to remedy one false step however he now took another in a contrary direction; and Katey so long the sole object of his tenderness and love was henceforth to experience a share of that hardness in his character which the rest of the world had so largely felt. Although he did not persist in keeping her locked up in one apartment he forbade her for the present to appear in his presence and strictly commanded that she should not on any account stir from the house. This was the step to the opposite extreme and it had the effect that might be expected. His daughter's sensibilities revolted at such severity--her prepossessions in favour of the hapless person on whose account she was subjected to it became more confirmed; she was determined she would not be thwarted that at least she would attempt to learn some intelligence of Hewitt's fate and if possible see him once more before they parted for ever. While however she awaited an opportunity of communicating with a faithful messenger who had sometimes conveyed notes from him when accident prevented their meeting she was attacked with illness a smart febrile indisposition--the result no doubt of the mental disquietude she had undergone--and several weeks elapsed before she was again able to reach the little conservatory which opening on the lower apartments of the mansion constituted the utmost limits of that domestic boundary beyond which she was not permitted to proceed. CHAPTER IV. It was late in a dreary night of November. The wind blew a perfect hurricane rushing up the thick avenue which led to the Glebe house of Clogheen driving before it in its fury vast clouds of withered leaves it had collected on its way and showering them in impotent wrath against the doors and windows of the house which shook and clattered as if each had its own separate assailant. Midnight--black midnight had passed and the faint light of a rising moon was beginning to mingle with the disturbed and dismal air. It was no night for mortals to forsake quiet and comfortable beds and least of all delicate female invalids; yet Katey Tyrrel shadowy and wan as a ghost was standing at this hour watching the roaring tempest from the windows of the conservatory that looked upon the front lawn of the dwelling. She had not however been long stationed there when the darkness of the spot in which she stood (for there was no candle) was made still murkier by the shadow of a man who appeared outside. Katey softly undid the Venetian door and Hewitt stood before her. ""Dear dear girl! how am I to thank you?"" he murmured as he pressed with impassioned eagerness the hand she extended to him. ""Speak low--low--low!"" whispered the confused and trembling maiden. ""Oh what a night--what an hour to meet in!"" ""Any where--every where--no where--no matter--with you it is paradise to me!"" ejaculated her lover with a random delight. ""How did you manage the dogs though?"" ""Oh--I--locked Buffer in the stables ever so far off--and Bang--indeed _he_ is so savage I was obliged to take him a field away to the potatoe-house;"" and Katey felt her cheek blush until she feared it would light the gloom. ""High-souled devoted being! how am I rewarded for all I have gone through! You are indeed worthy to share the existence of one like me whose hopes have been ruined in the holiest cause that----but there is not a single minute to lose--I have horses ready beyond the avenue gate--oh come my Katey--'fly from a world'--etcetera. You know the song."" ""Fly!--dear friend--you rave--do you not know how ill I have been? Can you not see what a wretched thin fright I have become."" ""Nonsense my love you look--(for dark as it is I can see that)--a thousand times more interesting with that pale sweet face. My own life this is no time to trifle--who could suppose you were so undecided you so lofty-spirited so _heroine_-like.--Oh Katey""---- ""Believe me Hewitt I have not strength even to mount much less to sit a horse at present."" ""Then why this meeting my love?"" ""Why--why--I scarce can tell; surely it is a pleasure to meet for once even in this way after all we have suffered."" ""Decidedly""--said her lover with an abstracted air. ""I'll tell you what "" he added eagerly as if struck by some sudden thought ""there is fearful danger of our being separated if we do not act quickly and for ever. Suppose--suppose my beloved one--you now here in this blest spot give me a _legal_ claim to your hand we may not again have such an opportunity?"" ""What--how do you mean?"" asked Katey bewilderingly. ""Why you see the truth is this--I _did_ dread your health might have interfered with active flight--might not have been such as seconded our wishes--and I came prepared--the fact is I have brought a Reverend Friend with me--you understand?--he is now not far away--indeed he is just outside."" ""Hewitt!--are you mad!"" exclaimed the overwhelmed girl shrinking away. ""I cannot--indeed I cannot think of such a thing."" ""Folly--stuff! I see my beloved one I must act for you in this matter""---- To go to the window--give a gentle tap--summon a low corpulent little man before it--to seize him by the neck and drag him softly into the room as though the unwieldy individual were unable to accomplish the feat himself--was but the work of an instant; the next Hewitt had caught the half-swooning Katey's hand and led her forward. ""'_D-d-dom-dominus adimp-p-p-lea bened-d-dic_ (hic!) _benedictionem suam in v-v-v-obis!_ (hic!)"" stutteringly whispered the new-comer while the powerful smell of whisky-punch which began to pervade the apartment bore far less testimony to his piety than to his potations. ""Douce your lingo!"" muttered Hewitt. ""Keep it till 'tis called for.----Now my own dear Katey "" he said in his most persuasive tone ""let this moment make you mine--mine indissolubly. Come Father Larr [25] there is not an instant to spare--do your office;"" and supporting Katey and half-forcibly half-entreatingly bringing her forward he stood with her before the priest--if indeed it is right to profane that name by conferring it on the drunken and dissolute creature who long since expelled from the altar was forced to depend for a livelihood on his services in such desperate hours of need as the present. ""Oh Hewitt give me a moment--my father--Lysaght--I did not look for this""--murmured the agitated bride. ""Then such is your faith after all?"" whispered Hewitt; ""but as you please--even here--at this moment I give you up for ever since you desire it."" ""No--it is God's will--there is no use in struggling against my fate--I am ready "" she answered endeavouring to rouse her stupified faculties. ""Go on then "" whispered her lover to the priest ""be quick!"" ""_Co--co--conjungo vos_ "" began Father Larr as he joined their hands ""_in nom--nom_--(hic!)--_nomine P--p--patris_ (hic!) _et F--f--f--fil_--(hic!)""-- The rest of his articulation was effectually stopped by his receiving full in the face the contents of what he felt to be a basin of cold water conferred it appeared to him by the hands of the timid bride; while at the same time a voice that split the very room like thunder saluted the group with a blessing from the Virgin and St Patrick and Sally-the-tin stood beside them who however no sooner recognised Hewitt with whose grasp she had before now been familiar than she set up a shriek in which entreaty benediction curse complaint and consternation were so vociferously blended that it would have alarmed Erebus. The next instant the whole house above and around them was heard in commotion; bells rung and were instantly answered by the noise of heavy bodies jumping out of bed; windows raising; servant-women squalling; and grooms rushing madly down-stairs. Miss Tyrrel sank fainting on the spot; and Hewitt had but time to treat Sally-the-tin to a parting kick which conveyed her in a state of collapse to a small bower of pelargoniums at the further end of the green-house drag his reverend friend through the window and disappear when the whole effective force of the household burst into the apartment. CHAPTER V. We have long been persuaded not less by the impartial assurances of respected friends than by our own internal convictions that if we possess any one excellence beyond another--and our talents are varied and extraordinary--it is a tendency to dramatic perfection. And albeit the narrative Arimanes too often mars the beneficent desires of the dramatic Oromasdes; yet at all times we endeavour as much as in us lies to adhere to those venerable observances the Unities so long and no doubt so justly objects of respect and admiration. In the present tale although compelled to violate the unity of Time we have hitherto pretty closely adhered to that of Place our characters having for the course of some pages hovered within and around the precincts of the celebrated village where the scene opened which (although a hall or some spacious chamber might be a little nearer to those rules the classic stage so strictly enforces) we flatter ourselves will be found sufficiently limited for present exigencies. We are now however about to take a liberty with the second unity by transporting the reader (may we hope in more senses than one?) to a spot distant from our former scene some six or eight miles on the high and solitary summit of Kilworth mountain in that place where the great southern road from Dublin to Cork winds over the acclivity. The peculiar character of the landscape in question may best be conveyed in the words of a friend whom we once in an hour of juvenile arrogance and self-exaltation induced to accompany us thither in order to astonish him with what we conceived to be the boundless impressiveness and glory of the scene. It happened to be rather a breezy day towards the fall of the leaf and after a pretty sharp and tedious journey enlivened however by our friend's various and interesting converse--for he had been a marvellous traveller and had crossed the globe from Spitzbergen to Caffraria in one direction and circled it from Pekin to Peru _viâ_ Paris in another--we arrived at our _point d'appui_. Having allowed him time to recover from what we felt must be his stupendous wonder and delight we ventured to enquire ""what he thought of _that_?"" Whereupon sinking his arms to the elbows in the pockets of his Petersham and doubling himself in two as if seized with a cramp in the stomach he after a short altercation with himself replied in a tone that made our very teeth to chatter--""No I never--yes--now I think on't--there is--there is one slip of wilderness in Crim Tartary as _bad_ as to _howl_ at least but this beats it out in the _whinstone_."" Over this howling desert then we beg to present to our readers Mr Curly Cahill travelling slowly about dusk a month or two after the occurrence which took place in the preceding chapter. He was warmly muffled in his great-coat or _loody_ and mounted on a very high-boned horse whose hoofs with many interjections of stumble made the only noise that broke the dismal stillness around. The summit of the mountain passed the traveller began to descend the southern side when after proceeding a few hundred yards his steed _toed_ and tumbled the rider over its head as softly as if it were his favourite mode of alighting. Mr Cahill having taken a few minutes' time for reflection on his face and hands quietly arose threw the bridle over his arm and proceeded to walk the very short remnant of the journey. Turning aside to a miserable hovel on the road he unbolted the half-door fastened his rein to the latch and with a _Dhieu-a-uth_ or ""God save you "" entered the hut. It was in darkness save where around a large fire that was flickering half-smothered in its own ashes sat three men at a little table sharing between them a mug of poteen whisky the only vessel on the table or probably in the house. ""How long you wor entirely!"" said one of the men (who did not move) knocking the ashes out of his pipe as the traveller entered. ""The baste thravelled badly "" replied Curly; ""besides I waited for the fall of the evenin ' as I was loth to be seen comin' the road."" ""Well an' what's on?"" asked another. ""Be quick--we're not easy here so close to the road and it'll be pitch-dark with us across the bog."" ""Well then "" said Cahill ""the long an' the short of it is this--they're back from Dublin at the Glebe agin. The Capting has sure word from _her_ that she'll be ready to go away with him to-morrow night at twelve. Let ye get three more good boys an' watch an' soon as ever ye hear them gallop from the gap where they'll mount--make a dash for the house she'll be shure to leave the windy open an' then--ye have her murdherin' father--_I need say no more_."" ""I'm agin the _blood_ any how "" said one of the men; ""he forgiv' my brother Mick two years' 'rear of tithe--an' he giv' Jug Sheedy an' her two childher a cabin an' half an acre o' garden when Buck Rice turned her off the Clo'mel estate""---- ""Iss""----said another ""an' the wife when she was alive was good to the poor. As far as smashin' the place an' makin' a fire upon the stairs an' bringin' away the tithe-books goes I'm agreeable; but I vote agin blood unless we can't help it."" ""Then ye'll not get a rap from me "" said their tempter. ""Bloor-an-nagers! what do you mean?"" asked a third. ""Will you be satisfied if we giv' him a beaten'?"" ""No--I won't "" answered Cahill. ""Nothin' but blood? Well I'll tell you what we'll shplit the difference--we'll cut the ears ov' him--he was always hard on us--but h---- to the one ov us will go further; he never took a spade[26] ov ground over a man's head yet an' he don't desarve it. I won't say but he hurt many a poor boy by the processes--still _that's_ law--but the villyans that go to eject creathures out of house an' home""---- ""Well--I'm satisfied with the ears "" muttered Cahill. ""It'll be some satisfaction for my hundhred-an'-forty-sevin pounds eighteen-an'-tenpence including costs of the last arrear; besides he'll suffer in losin' the daughter. I'll meet you here again afther to-morrow night this hour an' we'll settle."" And Mr Cahill remounting his steed rode away. CHAPTER VI. He did not journey far. A mile further over the mountain he pulled up before a lonely public-house the only abode deserving the name of habitable that then existed for many miles on that desolate range of hills. It was of a very suspicious appearance and quite as questionable a character; but the Shopkeeper seemed to entertain no scruple on those heads for he alighted and entered with a pleasant air and met from numerous stragglers who were loitering in the kitchen a cheerful reception. Curly having cast a reconnoitring glance through the place wiped his mouth softly with his right palm and before he withdrew it managed to whisper from behind it to mine host-- ""Is he within jest now?"" ""You'll find him in the back room; he has been askin' for you this half hour "" was as gently responded. Curly carelessly or as he would say himself ""promiscuously "" wandered across the ample kitchen and stumbling heavily slipped as if by the merest accident through a door close beside him and closing it after him found himself alone with Major Hewitt late of the 2d Brigade of Republican Artillery. That gentleman was standing with his back to a good fire in a small apartment lighted by a single candle which stood on a rude mantelpiece. He exhibited some slight symptoms of impatience at Curly's entrance and like the desperado-gentlemen of the hut enquired peevishly what had delayed him. ""I'm proud to see you Capting "" said Cahill evasively; ""the job is near finished at last I hope?"" ""Yes to-morrow night I think. We go off after twelve provided you don't fail in having the horses ready."" ""Don't fear me in that. Well 'twill be great sport intirely--the ould man's tatteration when he finds his colleen gone."" And Curly was obliged to bend himself double with laughter. ""You'll find Ned Burke at the gap in the avenue-wall with two as good coults as there is in the barony. But Capting when it's all right an' you settled in life you'll not forget the friend that stood by you an' helped you to the fortun'?"" ""For the sake of his own revenge at being cast in a law-suit about ten shillings' worth of potato-tithe? Certainly not most upright Curly."" ""An' where'll you take the brideen--Miss Katey--the darlin'?"" said Cahill with a jocose wink. ""Curse you villain! you'll drive me to give you a token on that head of yours you'll remember until--you see me again at all events "" cried Hewitt passionately. ""Thank God I'm 'most done with you. Have you brought the money?"" ""Sorrow a sixpence jewel. I had the arrears an' costs to pay this mornin' a'n I'm run dhry teetotally; that's the thruth."" ""Then all my plan's gone for nothing!"" said Hewitt. ""In the fiend's name what brought you _here_ then?"" ""Jest a thrifle o' business up the road "" answered Curly ""an' a great wish intirely for _you_ Capting."" ""And _she_ prepared and all!"" continued Hewitt abstractedly. ""I thought I was done with it for ever.... Go back I implore you Cahill and raise me fifty pounds in any way. I am perfectly penniless."" ""I couldn't raise you fifty farthens--I could _not_ 'pon my word and honour to you Capting."" ""Then I give up the business "" replied Hewitt. ""An' the fair-haired girleen an' her goold an' what's betther I know to you her goodwill; an' the land an' the laugh at Lysaght""----and Cahill ran on rising towards his climax. ""I can't stand this; d--n you "" cried his hearer. ""Since you won't aid me I must try the old treasury once more."" ""An' you're the boy to have your dhrafts honoured never fear Capting."" ""Will you escort me to the bank?"" asked Hewitt with a savage sneer. ""He! he! he!"" laughed the worthy Cahill. ""My road home lies partly that way; an' if I don't lend you my note-o'-hand at all events I've no objection to witness the deed Capting."" ""Go out and get your horse then and I shall be ready in a few minutes "" said Hewitt with something like a sigh. CHAPTER VII. A post-chaise with two stout horses and as stout a man to drive them was standing before the door of Jackson's Inn in the then little village of Fermoy at the close of a dry and frosty February day. In the parlour of the inn two or three gentlemen stood watching or eagerly conversing with a couple of tall and powerful-looking men who were engaged with a beef-steak which it seemed--from a watch being placed before them on the table--they had but a limited time to discuss. ""Then you are really determined on it Mr Skelton?"" said one of the standers-by to the elder and busier of the banqueters. ""Quite "" answered the person addressed speaking as rapidly as he fed. ""What's to be done?--road stopp'd up--business checked--six months gone--mails cut off--guard killed--alarm increasing""---- ""If it continues much longer "" interrupted his slower companion ""all communication with the capital will be at an end unless a blow be struck "" he said looking round him loftily ""that will paralyze the enemy gentlemen."" ""Now for it Rudd "" said Skelton rising; ""our time's up--twenty-five minutes past five "" and he pocketed the watch by which he counted. ""I'm your man "" answered Rudd as he swallowed his last glass of sherry and jumped up: ""have you the blunderbuss?"" ""Ay have I."" ""I have the dirk and pistols then: so bolt at once. Good-by gentlemen;"" and without waiting for the ""good-bys"" and ""successes"" that were showered on them Messrs Skelton and Rudd hurried into the attendant post-chaise and giving some earnest directions in a whisper to the driver dashed rapidly over the bridge which crossed the Blackwater and took the road leading north over Kilworth mountain to Dublin. Half an hour's travelling brought them to the foot of the hill where the road began to ascend and from this spot the driver was instructed to proceed at a slow pace. The night had thoroughly set in both dark and foggy and an hour elapsed tediously in winding up and attaining the vast level of the Wild. As they had no lamps though desirous now to advance at a brisker rate they were compelled to keep in a slow and cautious trot the hearts of the travellers intrepid as they seemed to be a short time ago thumping violently every step they proceeded. After various short pauses to avoid deep ruts and several descents by the driver to free his horses' hoofs from the loose stones that lay plentifully along the wretched road--during one of which he seemed to hold colloquy with some benighted traveller--the carriage had nearly crossed the long summit of the desolate hills when its occupants perceived it to stop with a sudden and forcible impulse that betokened instant danger. Dropping the glasses at once they called loudly to the driver to enquire the cause. ""There's a gentleman here "" replied the man in a timid sullen voice ""houldin' the horses heads that says I must stop here a spell.""[27] ""How many of 'em?"" asked Skelton in a low tone. ""Two "" was the answer just as softly; ""one a-horseback t'other a-foot."" ""Here we are then!"" said Rudd to his companion in a feverish whisper. ""Yes; I wish 'twas over "" was the reply which was scarcely breathed when a man appeared at the right-hand carriage-window and presenting a pistol said in a strong loud voice-- ""I'm sorry gentlemen but I must have your money."" ""Or your lives "" added a man on horseback blocking up the opposite side of the chaise. ""This is very hard sir "" answered Rudd hesitatingly--""very--hard--indeed; however I suppose it must be so: perhaps you'll be good enough to come round to the other door of the chaise--my friend here is I fear seriously ill-- ""Certainly "" said the robber who was now heard walking round to the door already occupied by his mounted companion. ""Are you steady?"" whispered Rudd. ""As steel!"" answered Skelton. ""Then slip the muzzle of the blunderbuss across me and the moment the door is well opened when I raise my arm with the purse shoot him dead on the spot."" The click of a trigger was the sole reply:--the highwayman had come round to the door. He had his grasp on the handle when he was suddenly struck in the eyes with some icy liquid that caused him to swerve violently aside dragging open the door at the same moment. There was a terrific volley from the carriage and Curly Cahill receiving the greater portion of the contents of the blunderbuss intended for his friend dropped heavily from his horse. Rudd and Skelton instantly sprang out. They found Hewitt (for our readers no doubt have anticipated it was he) engaged with their stalwart driver who had already grappled with him having before he could recover from his shock as well as surprise by a well-directed blow knocked the pistol from his hand and closed with him. The man would have been no match for Hewitt; but before the latter could draw another pistol he was struck down by Rudd and with the powerful assistance of Skelton handcuffed and secured in the chaise. The travellers who had come determined and prepared for this expedition [28] now struck a light and proceeded to raise Cahill who continued to groan heavily where he had fallen. He seemed to bleed inwardly having been wounded chiefly in the chest and stomach and was lifted into the carriage beside his captured companion and where he almost instantly expired having squandered his last breath in a feeble laugh and the expression of his conviction that ""the Capting was cashiered at last."" The travellers now hurried rapidly onwards conveying with them Sally-the-tin whom having been benighted on her return from some country-fair the driver (an old acquaintance) had overtaken and given a lift to on the bar beside himself and whose elemental piety for once not ill-timed was the means of saving Hewitt's exit. Leaving Cahill's body at the very roadside-hut where he had so lately planned his villanous revenge they continued their course to Clogheen; and being informed that the nearest magistrate was the rector of the parish about nine o'clock at night they entered Mr Tyrrel's parlour where though still suffering under her father's suspicions Katey was presiding at the tea-table to Lysaght and his uncle and begged to introduce to the Reverend Justice's notice the person who accompanied them--the dreaded and notorious freebooter Roderick O'Hanlon who had been so many months the terror of all who travelled Kilworth mountains--and who on a previous occasion had been ushered in an imaginary way to his acquaintance as Major Fergus Hewitt commissioner to Mononia from the Provisional Government. * * * * * Hewitt (or O'Hanlon) was tried at the ensuing Tipperary Assizes and notwithstanding the extreme severity of the law at that period there were so many palliating circumstances pleaded in his favour at the trial--particularly a popular and we believe a not altogether unfounded eulogium (since grown into an apothegm in that country ) that ""He robbed the rich to give to the poor "" and so many persons of distinction who had known him at one time as a performer on the Dublin stage came forward to interest themselves in his behalf--that he escaped with transportation for life. He ultimately conducted himself with such propriety at Sydney that he obtained a free pardon--and lived to amass some property and settle in that colony. Previous to his quitting Ireland he conveyed to Miss Tyrrel by the hands of her father a few lines explanatory of portions of his conduct and career and which concluded with the assurance that next to _one_ nameless and bitter regret he most deeply lamented the injury he had were it only in _her_ estimation inflicted on the cause of brave and unfortunate men by passing himself as an adherent of Robert Emmett's and the affair of 1803--with neither of which he declared had he had any connexion. Katey Tyrrel recovered so rapidly from the shock and illness that succeeded the appearance of Hewitt as a prisoner in her father's parlour that it is more than probable her wounded pride and convicted folly annihilated at once that affection for a highwayman which she would have had no scruple of bestowing on a Major of the Republican Brigade. Her father grateful that before it was too late he was afforded an opportunity of atoning for past severity no less than former indulgence restored her speedily to favour. Katey profited largely by the lesson her giddiness and obstinacy had received. She became a steady and domestic character and in due time saved herself the trouble of looking out a wife for Lysaght Osborne among her neighbours by marrying him herself. They continued to reside with her father who survived to such an extreme old age as to see all feuds between himself and his parishioners extinguished by the Composition Act. Sally-the-tin as often as her vagrant disposition admitted of it had always a corner in Katey Osborne's kitchen; and it would be an injustice to woman's heart not to say that this protection was afforded her not a whit the less warmly and permanently for having been instrumental (however unconsciously) in saving the life of Hewitt. A GLANCE AT THE PENINSULA.[29] In England where politics are so generally and largely discussed where in fact they form the only subject upon which most men appear disposed or competent to converse it is not uncommon to meet with persons well informed concerning the social and political state of the principal European countries. But we have frequently observed that even amongst those who display the most varied knowledge of this kind there are very few who either possess or pretend to any thing like a thorough appreciation of the affairs of the Peninsula. Yet there are obvious reasons why Englishmen ought to be more conversant with Spanish affairs than with those of any other European state--our nearest neighbours perhaps excepted. Here is a country about which we have been fighting or diplomatizing almost without intermission since the commencement of the present century; a country to which by its intestine broils and frequent political changes the attention of the English public has been continually directed while that of the monied and commercial classes has been specially attracted to it by the frequent fluctuations and consequent speculation in what are facetiously termed Spanish _Securities_ and by the oft-revived but hitherto fallacious expectation of a commercial treaty. When these sources of interest are considered it does seem singular that so few persons should have thought it worth while to investigate the real state of Spain in all its various relations; and that of those who have gone thither with that view none should have produced a book fully elucidating Spanish affairs to the numerous classes in England which are more or less interested in them. The probable cause of this is that no country has been so difficult to follow and comprehend through all its countless changes; an indispensable key to which is a thorough knowledge of the national character. On the other hand that knowledge is doubly difficult to obtain at a period when as now the people and the institutions of Spain are in a state of transition. It is a truism which at first sight looks like a paradox that contemporary history is the most difficult to write. Time which in its more extended lapse destroys and obliterates--previously by successive operations purifies and enlightens; classes men and events; elevates the important and the true; and gives praise and obloquy to whom they are severally due. And in the Peninsula more than in any other country is this kind of classification requisite. Amidst the various parties and factions the strange contradictions of the national character the interminable web of intrigue and political manoeuvre how arduous the task to unravel the truth to throw a clear light upon the state and prospects of Spain and explain the hidden and complicated machinery by which many of the recent events in that country have been brought about! We have now lying before us a book in which this task has been attempted and we are disposed to think by no means without success. It is the work of a man who has evidently passed a considerable time in the Peninsula; and after becoming well acquainted with the language and habits of the people has studied the peculiarities of their manners feelings and institutions with a keen and observant eye. The result of his observations he has committed to paper pretty much as they were made; so at least we infer from the style of his book which without being on any regular plan touches upon every subject connected with Spain nearly as it would appear in the order in which they chanced to come uppermost in the writer's mood of the moment. The frequent c
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ange which this occasions from grave subjects to gay and _vice versâ_ serves perhaps as well as any more regularly preconceived plan could have done to carry the general reader pleasantly through two rather copious volumes; in which whatever nay be their deficiencies there is certainly no lack of variety; while the style in which they are written has about it a characteristic vigour and originality and at times a considerable degree of humour. We are not informed how long the author has lived in Spain; but we suspect that his residence there has been of considerable duration and that he has become in some degree _Españolisado_. We infer this from an occasional foreign idiom; from his intimate knowledge of the habits of various classes which only a long residence in the country could have brought in his way; and from a familiarity with Spanish proverbial language which now and then breaks out in an amusing and Sancho-like passage. In short the whole book is characteristic both of the man who has written it and of the people whom it describes. Commencing with the fall of Espartero the first twenty chapters of the first volume are chiefly political in their nature;--containing explanations of the various circumstances attending the above event; details of the state of parties of the intrigues against Olózaga and his final overthrow by the Camarilla of the day; the history of Camarillas generally and sketches of several of the most prominent actors upon the Spanish political stage. The figurative signification of the word _camarilla_ which in its literal sense means a little chamber is almost too well known even out of Spain for an explanation of it to be necessary. Since the fourteenth century the days of Alonzo the Eleventh and the beautiful Leonor de Gusman it has been the wont of Spanish monarchs with rare exceptions to rule and often to be ruled by cabals or coteries composed of an indeterminate number of courtiers. We find men of all ranks and classes of society taking in turn their share of this back-stairs influence; priests and soldiers jesuits nobles and lawyers and not unfrequently women composed the courtier-conclaves that governed the rulers of Spain sent their own foes to the scaffold or dungeon and raised their own friends to the highest dignities of the state. In conformity with this time-honoured tradition of the Spanish monarchy no sooner was Espartero expelled from Spain than Christina hastened to send creatures of her own to Maddrid to watch over her interests pending her own arrival and to intrigue against those who should appear disposed to thwart her designs and line of policy; to form in short a Camarilla. This was soon done. ""It was composed of Narvaez the Marchioness of Santa Cruz and Valverde the Duke of Ossuna Juan Donoso Cortes and a member of the Senate named Calvet--all faithful adherents of Christina Moderados in their politics and strongly tinged with absolutist principles although most hostile to the claims of Don Carlos."" These half-dozen intriguing spirits soon carved out for themselves abundant and mischievous employment. The then minister Lopez the same whose famous amnesty project caused the downfall of Espartero alike averse to encounter their opposition or to truckle to them in his government resigned his office although possessing a strong majority in the Cortes; and Olózaga took his place having been himself designated by Lopez as the most fitting man. The new premier trusted to his energies and talents to make head against the Camarilla; but he had underrated the ingenuity and cunning of the latter; and still more the hatred borne to him by Queen Christina. This hatred he had excited to a deadly extent when ambassador at Paris in the time of Espartero by demanding the expulsion of Ferdinand's widow from the French capital on the ground of her plottings and attempts to revolutionize Spain. As will be remembered no attention was paid to these demands by Louis Philippe who was far better affected to Christina than to Espartero; and the cunning dowager remained snug at the Hôtel de Courcelles hatching plots against the existing government of Spain--plots in the carrying out of which she was largely aided by French gold and French counsels. But she neither forgot nor forgave Olózaga's interference; and no sooner did he assume the reins of government than her adherents opened their batteries upon him with unusual vigour. So effectual was their fire that Olózaga who took office on the twenty-first of November was dismissed from it on the twenty-ninth;--one week's tenure. The absurd history of the violence employed by him to obtain the Queen's signature to a decree for the dissolution of the Cortes is well known as are also the efforts that were made to crush him even after his expulsion from the ministry had been obtained by this pitiful pretext--a pretext at once disgraceful to the artful and unprincipled framers and injurious in the highest degree to Queen Isabel one of whose first acts after her majority had been declared was thus made to be the attestation of a gross and shameless falsehood. In the long and stormy debate that ensued in the Cortes Olózaga amply confirmed all parties of the absurdity of the charge brought against him and utterly confounded his enemies. What they could not accomplish by public means the latter now attempted to bring about by underhand ones--namely Olózaga's destruction in a literal as well as a political sense; and after one or two narrow escapes from assassination the ex-premier was advised by his friends to withdraw from Spain. ""Portugal presented the readiest asylum; and following very nearly the course of the Tagus the exile escorted by twenty well-armed contrabandists came by way of Talavera and Coria on the back of a mule in the disguise of a trader with copious saddle-bags and crossing the little river Herjas into the Portuguese province of Beira was soon in Castello Branco."" Olózaga was used to this sort of thing having already had to fly for his life in the time of Ferdinand. On that occasion he drove out of Madrid in the disguise of a Calesero in company with his friend Garcia the then intendant of police who was also obliged to fly from the vengeance of the Camarilla of the day. They reached Corunna in safety and embarked for England; the facile versatility with which Olózaga had smoked joked and drunk his way adapting himself to the humours of all he met and supporting admirably his assumed character having in no small degree contributed to save them from detection. The account our author gives of Queen Isabel is any thing but a favourable one; although we have much reason to fear that it is substantially correct. Wilful and pettish at times obstinate deficient in intelligence as well as temper and above all _dissimulada_ a dissembler. Ugly words these; but if it be true that children inherit their parents' virtues and vices what better could be expected from the offspring of a Ferdinand and a Christina? Indeed it will be fortunate for herself and her people if at a later period of this child-queen's life there are not a few more failings to be added to the above list--already sufficiently long. At present artfulness and insincerity seem her chief faults--no trifling ones certainly; and to these may be added a want of heart very unusual in a girl of such tender age and which is perhaps the worst symptom in her character. It has been frequently and strongly exemplified in her conduct to those nearest her person. Previously to the anti-Christina revolution of 1840 the Marquesa de Santa Cruz was her governess and to her the young Queen appeared much attached. But when the Marchioness left Spain in the suite of the Queen-mother Isabel never made an enquiry after her receiving Madame Mina with just the same degree of apparent affection that she had shown to her preceding governess. Whilst Espartero was Regent she professed unbounded attachment to him insisted having the portrait of her ""_caro amigo_"" hung in her room and seemed proud of showing it to all her visitors. The wheel went round; Narvaez was at Madrid and the Duke of Victoria a refugee on board the Malabar. The Señora de Mina was dismissed and her royal pupil took leave of her with the same absence of feeling that she had shown when separated from the Marchioness of Santa Cruz:-- ""'Since you are leaving me ' she said 'I must make you a present.' And away she ran to take down the portrait of her very 'dear friend' Espartero which precious relic she handed over to her outgoing _Aya_ saying 'Keep this portrait señora; it will be better in your possession than mine!'"" Taken to a bull-fight her youthful majesty of Spain was delighted beyond measure enjoying the sufferings of maddened bulls and gored horses with as much zest as could have been shown by her illustrious and respectable father. Unfortunately _auto-da-fés_ are out of date or they might serve to vary her pastimes. As it is she is obliged to fill up her leisure by the consumption of confectionery of which she has a constant and abundant supply on hand. ""This pastry-cook museum which extends over every apartment of the palace contains some most interesting specimens--the _tortas_ or tarts of Moron the most celebrated in Spain; the _panes pintados_ or painted buns of Salamanca; the _Paschal ojalores_ or Carnival and Easter dainties; the hard _turrones_ of Alicant composed of almonds nut-kernels filberts and roasted chestnuts intermixed with honey and sugar; _dulces_ of cocoa-nut frosted with sugar; roasted almonds; _avellanas_ a peculiarly nice sort of filbert whole and in powder; _alfajor_ or spiced bread; the delicious cheese called _jijona_; pomegranate jelly; _blando de huévos_ or sweetened yolks of eggs "" &c. &c. &c. When in a good humour she makes presents of these delicacies to the persons about her; and the degree of favour in which her courtiers stand is to be estimated by the amount of cakes and sugar-sticks bestowed upon them. No place is secure from the invasion of these sweets; even in the council-chamber while dispatching business with the ministers she is surrounded by them ""and the confection of decrees and discussion of dainties proceed _pari passu_."" The abundance of the comfits and the badness of the counsellors by which the poor child is environed menace grievous injury both to mind and body heart and stomach. A puppet in the hands of factions living from her earliest childhood in an atmosphere of intrigue and falsehood --the usual atmosphere of Spanish courts and camarillas how was she to escape the contagion? Her education seems also to have been grievously neglected. When Arguelles was her governor she was indocile and refractory; under the care of Olózaga she only remained three months. Her female instructors with the exception of the Countess of Mina have been women of equivocal reputation seeking to advance themselves and their friends and teaching their pupil few lessons but those of dissimulation. To aggravate the evil during the three years of Christina's exile that princess was allowed to be in constant correspondence with her daughter and of course lost no opportunity of inspiring her with a dislike of her own political enemies the Progresistas. These latter however being in power and about the person of the young Queen she was obliged at least to _appear_ friendly with them and was thus ""taught to be false and artful by the force of circumstances and trained by events to deceit."" The chapter headed ""Narvaez"" is extremely interesting giving graphic sketches of one of the most remarkable of living Spaniards. In Narvaez we find the faults and the virtues of the soldier of fortune; prompt decision great energy and determination on the one hand--cruelty impolicy and violence on the other. His character has made him popular with a portion of the army and over the officers in particular he exercises great influence. His severities however especially his shooting eight men the autumn before last for demanding what had been solemnly promised them permission to quit the service have lost him many adherents and made him numerous enemies in the ranks. But his deadly foes and those from whom he has the most to fear are the Ex-National Guards of Madrid. Their hatred of him is unlimited and savage beyond conception founded upon various causes any one of which is with Spaniards sufficient to account for it. Their confidence betrayed their arms taken from them themselves recklessly sabred and bayoneted when assembled for the most peaceable purposes--these and many other injuries will never be forgotten or forgiven by the Madrileños. We in England are now so accustomed to hear of bloodshedding and outrage in the Peninsula that we have began to consider it almost as a matter of course and scarcely accord a moment's attention to the horrors of to-day which are no worse than those of yesterday and may probably be surpassed by those of to-morrow. Yet if we except a portion of the period of Espartero's rule there are no three months in the history of Spain for the last ten years which would not if transplanted into the annals of any other country form an era of bloodshed. Since the advent of Narvaez to power although the vigour of his government has prevented civil war and checked insurrection that has only been accomplished by a system of despotic cruelty worthy of the days of Ferdinand the Well-beloved. Countless instances may be adduced in support of this assertion. Executions like that of Zurbano and his family have been defended by the argument that the sufferers were rebels against the established government of the country and as such deserved the fate they met. Rather a flimsy argument it appears to us in a country in which revolution flourishes as an evergreen plant. How is it to be decided which is the rightful governor and which the usurper? who shall say whether those in power are there by right as well as might; or whether they are merely successful rebels banditti on a large scale who have seized upon place and power with as much justice and by the same violent means as highwaymen of inferior grade possess themselves of the purses of travellers? But even if we concede this point and admit that whoever holds the reins though but from yesterday and with a bloodstained hand is justified in slaughtering by wholesale all who show a disposition to drag him down again it will still be impossible to palliate the treacherous and tyrannical proceedings of Narvaez. The inhabitants of Madrid lured out of their houses by the bait of some joyous festival the streets hung with banners and strewed with flowers the fountains playing wine and milk--on all sides rejoicings and festivity; the _insouciant_ light-hearted Castilians forgetting for a while the misfortunes of their country and giving themselves up to the unrestrained enjoyment of the moment. But there are those amongst them who will soon trouble their pleasures; agents of their rulers tutored to excite them to some apparently rebellious demonstration. A shout or two interpreted as indicative of disaffection and caught up by an excitable mob; and immediately battalions appear upon the _plaza_ dragoons gallop out of the side streets bayonets are lowered and sabres bared and amidst the clatter of the charge the screams of women and the oaths of men the festal garlands are trodden under foot and blood reddens the pavement. ""On many a _fiesta_ or day of saints "" says our author ""which Spain regards as of special holiness plots and snares were thickly strewn around the people's footsteps; murder lurked beneath the wreath of festivity and the day which began in prayer concluded with mourning."" During the three days' rejoicings on occasion of the Queen's majority scenes of this sort occurred. ""They invited us to a ball "" said the people in the true Madrileño spirit--""they invited us to a ball and we had to assist at a funeral."" The object sought to be obtained by such barbarous means was the intimidation of the populace and the deterring of revolutionists and progresistas. The suppression of the national guard produced another _alboroto_ or disturbance. A crowd assembled and moved through the streets giving _vivas_ for the constitutional Queen and _mueras_ for the ministers and the traitors. Narvaez asked no better chance than this. Out turned the palace guard composed of strong bodies of infantry and cavalry and without a moment's delay charged the mob which although principally composed of national guardsmen was unarmed save with a few bayonets and knives. In all the adjacent streets people were running for their lives; and the congregations which were then just leaving mass--for this occurred on a Sabbath morning--recoiled for safety into the churches. As a politician Narvaez is unquestionably an obstinate and unscrupulous dunce who feels his incompetency to rule by any means but the sword and has substituted a tyrannical dictatorship supported by bayonets for the legal and constitutional government of Spain. In a military point of view he is more respectable although even as a general his exploits have been few and little heard of. In his brief campaign against the Esparterists he had no opportunity of showing more than activity and daring; since at the very moment when he was on the point of measuring strength and generalship with Seoane and Zurbano at Torrejon de Ardos the troops under those two leaders came over to him. During the War of Succession he gave proof of some skill as an organizer of armies of reserve and even fought a gallant and successful battle with Gomez at Majaceite in Andalusia in which if one might believe the lying Spanish bulletins he nearly swept the Carlists from the face of the earth. There is no doubt he mauled them a little; but neither that nor the various other decisive overthrows recorded by gazettes prevented Gomez from returning to the Basque provinces with a considerable force at his back and an immense amount of booty. It will be contrary to all precedent in modern Spanish history if Narvaez's career terminates otherwise than by a violent death met in all probability at the hands of the populace or at those of some disgusted adherents of his own. The deaths of Carlos de España slain by his own escort on his way to the French frontier; of Moreno--the butcher of Torrijos Lopez Pinto Florez Calderon and fifty other martyrs--himself murdered in the wood of Vera by the bandit followers of the savage priest Echeverria; these and fifty similar instances are events but of yesterday. It is still fresh in the memory of the Madrileños how they pursued the stern Quesada to his place of refuge--Quesada who alone and by his single energy had cleared the streets of an excited populace and stopped a revolution for one whole day; how they dragged him forth piecemeal it may almost be said and with his severed fingers stirred the bowl in which they toasted the downfall of tyrants. Between Quesada and Narvaez there is more than one point of resemblance. Their deaths also may be alike. The sketches of Spanish political men the various party leaders and conspicuous senators of the day are done with much spirit and cleverness and give an excellent idea of the fickle inconsistency the showy talent but want of steadiness of purpose that characterize most of the notable Peninsular politicians. One is much accustomed to receive information upon such subjects with doubt and mistrust it being so often tinctured with the violent party spirit which in Spain distorts men's views and opinions; and the book before us being published anonymously we are prevented from judging by circumstances of position or others to which side or men if to any the author is likely to incline. But we think we discern in him the wish to be impartial and are therefore disposed to place unusual confidence in his statements; the more so as he represents no character as entirely bad but while laying on the lash for their faults does not forget to give them credit for their good qualities. According to his account Lopez is the most brilliantly eloquent and at the same time one of the most incorrupt members of the Spanish Chambers; one of the very few Spaniards who have held office without advantage to themselves. ""It is a most creditable distinction in Spain where office is sought almost exclusively for its emoluments that Lopez has been at three different times a minister of the crown and retired thrice from that government of which he was always the most influential member without any permanent office or title or decoration; without even a cross or a riband to display upon his breast in a country where those favours are most extensively distributed. Even from the premiership of the provisional government by which high titles and orders were lavishly disseminated amongst the leading instruments of a successful national movement and from the side of a Queen whose majority had been just proclaimed he withdrew into private life in a strictly private capacity without a charge upon the pension list for himself or any of his connexions--without an inscription in the court list or a _real_ of the public money. Five hundred different lucrative and permanent offices were at his disposal but he preferred a practising lawyer's independence."" This would be rare praise in any country; in Spain it must be almost without parallel. In striking contrast stands the character of Don Luis Gonzalez Bravo or Brabo as he affects to write himself who succeeded Olózaga in the premiership for which post he united some of the most singular disqualifications ever possessed by a prime minister. Spain while imitating the fashions of England and France in dress and suchlike petty particulars has also thought proper to copy certain political peculiarities of those two countries. Thus while La Jeune France vapours in long-bearded and belligerent splendour under the special patronage of a Joinville and Young England peeps out gentlemanly and dignified from beneath the ægis of a less high-born but in other respects equally distinguished character La Joven España emulous of their bright example ranges itself under the patronage of the disreputable editor of a scurrilous journal. It is difficult for us in England to imagine the state of things existing in a country where such a person can head any party or section however insignificant in the legislative assembly and still more difficult to conceive any amount of satirical and vituperative talent placing within his grasp the portfolio of prime minister. Bravo's first introduction to public notice was as member of the ""_Trueno_ "" or Thunder Club--a society that amused itself of evenings by molesting peaceable citizens as they returned home to their families thrashing the _serenos_ or watchmen and suchlike intellectual and dignified diversion. He got seriously wounded by a pistol-shot on one of these occasions and we next find him editing the Guirigay or ""Slang "" a paper remarkable for its personal and unscrupulous tone. For some time its attacks were directed against Christina to whose expulsion from Spain it is said to have contributed so great is the influence of newspaper violence in the Peninsula. During the Queen-Dowager's three years' exile however Bravo wrote himself round from a violent _exaltado progresista_ or Radical into a very decided _moderado_ or Conservative in which latter character he entered office. Taxed with his renegade conduct his defence was a most impudent one highly characteristic of the man. ""_No es ridiculo_ "" said he ""_estar para siempre el mismo?_"" Is it not ridiculous to be always the same? But though he managed to get on while in opposition--and even by a certain amount of impassioned energy and satirical _verve_ to place himself at the head of a party of young members who although not exceeding fifty in number turned the scale in many parliamentary contests--his incapacity became glaringly apparent as soon as he took office. ""The prime minister when he should have been writing sage decrees was scribbling scurrilous paragraphs; from his portfolio peeped forth old numbers of 'The Slang' and his official robes could not hide his harlequin's jacket. '_Vistan me dijo Sancho como quisieren qui de cualquier manera que vaya vestido sere Sancho Panza._' Let them dress me up as they will quoth Sancho however I am dressed I shall still be Sancho Panza."" Bravo however did as well as another to be the tool of Narvaez and moreover he was found pliant which doubtless prevented his being kicked out of office as soon as he got into it. Of course he lost no time in taking care of himself and his friends. His father who had been dismissed from a government employment for malversation received the appointment of under-secretary to the Treasury; his wife's brother a hanger-on at one of the theatres was made state-groom to the Queen; while a number of other equivocal characters were appointed to the diplomatic corps and half the political chiefs and public employés in Spain were dismissed to make room for the new premier's friends including a considerable number of newspaper scribblers. The power of the newspaper press in Spain is enormous and nearly all the leading politicians in Madrid either are or have been editors or proprietors of some one of the principal journals. The manners and peculiarities of the lower orders in Spain offer a fertile theme differing as they do _in toto_ from those of the corresponding classes in any other country. They have furnished our author with materials for some amusing chapters. The description of a roadside _venta_ or inn and its frequenters is capital and reminds us of some of Lewis's admirable pencillings of Spanish life and interiors. The amalgamation of grades of society which in most countries would be kept carefully distinct but in the Peninsula hobnob together in perfect good fellowship the mixture of muleteers and alcaldes priests and banditti smugglers and custom-house officers all sitting in the same smoky room dipping in the same dish exchanging the latest intelligence local and political forms a strange but a characteristic and perfectly true picture. _Apropos_ of smugglers here is a small statement worthy the notice of that sensible party in Spain which opposes the introduction of foreign manufactures upon payment of a reasonable duty. ""Spain is of all European countries the most helplessly exposed to contrabandist operations. With an ill-paid and sometimes ragged army and with revenue officers directly exposed to temptation by inadequate salaries she has 500 miles of Portuguese frontier and nearly 300 of Pyrenean; and with a fleet crumbled into ruins and no longer of the slightest efficacy she has 400 miles of Cantabrian and 700 of Mediterranean coast. Four hundred thousand smugglers are constantly engaged in demolishing her absurd fiscal laws and some 1 600 000 pounds weight of cotton goods alone are every year illicitly imported."" But things in Spain are now rapidly approaching that happy state when it will become quite unnecessary for the gentlemen contrabandistas to expose their valuable health to the Pyrenean fogs or their lives in contests with _aduaneros_. The system is becoming each day more beautifully simple; and strange as it may seem the direct road for the importation of contraband goods is through the custom-house. ""Bribery is here reduced to the old electioneering simplicity; and the tariff of custom-house corruption is arranged with more uniform regularity and far more perfectly understood than the tariff of customs' duties--the difference being that the customs' revenues may not be paid but the customs' officers must."" The due amount of fee being insinuated into the ""itching palm"" of the revenue officers your goods pass with all imaginable facility. By the magic of a four eight or sixteen dollar bit as the case may be a mist settles over the vision of the complaisant official and either prevents his seeing at all or else transforms in the most remarkable manner the objects that pass before him. Bales of manufactured goods assume the appearance of sacks of potatoes and onions--nay those useful products of the soil are sometimes even supposed to be contained in wooden cases and casks carefully hooped and nailed; ""and huge canvass bales are likewise cleared and reported to be indubitably filled with the said potatoes the softness of the packages to the touch arising probably from the fact of their being boiled!"" At times however by a rare chance an incorruptible custom-house is discovered; and for that or some other reason it is deemed advisable to resort to the old and certainly more sporting plan of running the cargoes which is accomplished in a most systematic and comfortable manner. The smugglers are usually in sufficient number to deter the carabineros from meddling; and if by chance the latter _should_ interfere they almost invariably receive a sound thrashing. There are a large number of small Portuguese craft constantly employed in running contraband goods; and the quantity of merchandise introduced from Gibraltar is enormous. The latter town which by the census of 1835 had 15 000 inhabitants contains _only_ 3000 cigar manufacturers. As our author says what a frightful deal they must smoke in Gibraltar! It is all nonsense talking in mincing terms about English smuggling in Spain. However much our Government might discountenance it nothing could be done to prevent it not even if English guarda costas were stationed round the whole eleven hundred miles of Spanish coast. The smuggled goods would then go through Portugal as many of them do now; or any diminution in the amount of English merchandise imported would be made up by a corresponding increase in the quantity of French. Why even the Germans the respectable plodding Germans supply their quota of indifferent calicoes and dull cutlery to the Spanish consumer. The French who are fond of charging England with being the nation ""_egoiste par excellence_ "" who consults only her own interests and is equally ready to poison antipodean barbarians with opium or to violate the principles of fair dealing that ought to exist between friendly countries by introducing contraband goods in every possible manner--the French we say albeit so Pecksniffian in their condolences with Spain and other nations which they affect to consider victims to the practices of greedy and treacherous England are themselves most reckless and determined in their smuggling transactions with their southern neighbours; and the sole circumstance which ""rises their dander"" is to find English goods obtaining the preference in the Peninsula as every where else. The constant aim of the French is to irritate Spaniards against England; and the ground upon which they have hitherto gone is that of representing us in all our actions as thinking only of our own advantage. The activity and skill of French political agents were long exerted to bring about a reaction against the friendly feelings which only a very short time back were entertained in the Peninsula towards England; and these exertions were at last successful although we may now hope that Spaniards are again opening their eyes to the deceit that has been practised on them. The friendly offices of France are probably by this time beginning to be appreciated at their just value; and doubts must be arising in the minds of the rational portion of the Spanish people whether the ""_perfides insulaires_"" did not mean and act as honestly by them as the more smooth-tongued and insinuating allies who have reimposed upon them a Christina and a Narvaez. ""Exaggeration in all things "" says the English resident ""is the leading vice of Spain. There is not a city in the Peninsula that is not '_muy noble muy leal y muy heroica_;' not a corporate body that is not 'most excellent ' or 'most illustrious;' not a military corps that is not renowned and matchless for its valour; not a ragamuffin in Castile that does not esteem himself noble nor a brigand in Andalusia but calls himself a soldier; not a man but is a Don nor a woman but is a Doña; not a dunce of a doctor but is profoundly learned nor a scribbling poetaster but is a European celebrity. Where all are first-rate how shall there be improvement? Where there is no humility how shall there be acquisition of knowledge? Pangloss might here have found his perfect world."" It is we fear this Bobadil vein this unbounded self-approval and vain-gloriousness entailing an unwillingness to acknowledge obligations and an impatience of feeling
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hat they have received any which renders a large proportion of Spaniards less amicably disposed towards England than we might expect them to be when we look at the recent history of the two countries and recall all the friendly offices Spain has received at the hands of England. We have ourselves noticed amongst Spaniards--even amongst men of good average intelligence and education--a fretful sort of feeling whenever the support for which their country has been indebted to Great Britain was alluded to. Some of them go so far as to endeavour to persuade the world and more especially themselves that the parts played by English and Spaniards in the Peninsular War were the converse of what is usually supposed--that it was Spanish valour skill and generalship that swept Napoleon's armies before them and drove his best commanders across the Pyrenees. The English were there certainly; they were very useful but they played second fiddle to their allies on most occasions. In short to hear many of the present generation of Spaniards talk one might suppose that it was their ill-disciplined badly-officered troops which won the numerous hard-fought fields of the War of Independence. Another subject of difference and a far more serious one than these petty ranklings of offended pride and ill-borne obligation is the slave-trade and the right of search. Persuade Spaniards or Frenchmen or any nation in the world if you can that Great Britain added twenty millions to her debt impoverished her own colonial proprietors and still goes to a heavy annual expense for the suppression of the slave traffic with any other view than a very decided one to her own benefit. To Spain thanks to the wretched administration of her internal resources the revenue derived from her few remaining colonies is a great object; and in our hostility to the slave-trade she beholds a direct attack on that source of income. Again in the present depressed state of Spanish commerce a large portion of the commercial capital of the country is invested in the slave-trade; and a constant bitter feeling towards the English is consequently kept up amongst the class whose money is thus employed. If they bring one cargo out of three to the Havannah they have it is said a profit on the transaction; but at the same time it is not likely to put the slave-dealing Dons in particularly good humour to hear of the other two having been walked off by British cruisers. On the contrary they curse the meddling Ingleses who having they say cut off their own tail by emancipating their negroes now like the fox in the fable wish to persuade or if necessary to compel all their neighbours to follow their example. The English resident is enthusiastic on the subject of slave emancipation and gives us a lively account of some arguments he maintained on the subject with sundry Gaditano slave-dealers the result of which was of course that each party remained precisely of the same opinion as before. The abstract philanthropy of English legislation on that question cannot be doubted; and it is to be hoped that the course adopted may eventually prove beneficial to humanity although it seems very doubtful whether such has as yet been the case. Meanwhile there is small credit given to us for disinterestedness by foreigners who in our resolute opposition to the slave-traffic are determined to see nothing but a wish to harass their commerce injure their colonies and insure our dominion of the seas. Under the favouring auspices of that poor creature Leopold O'Donnel who distinguished himself during the War of Succession by the skill with which he managed to get beaten by the Carlists on nearly every possible occasion and who now occupies the important post of Governor of Cuba--under his auspices the slave-trade is flourishing with renewed vigour. Slaves we are told can now be legally imported into Cuba upon payment of the governor's fee of twenty-five dollars per head and ""_la traite_ has seldom of late years been more successful than under the rule of this governor."" One of the most striking chapters of the book before us is the one on colonial slavery in which some curious details are given concerning the recent conspiracy of Matanzas. This outbreak like all others that occur in the Spanish West Indies was most falsely laid at the door of the English by the whole Spanish press. ""It was directed "" said they ""by a committee of five members. Placido was president two of the other four were mulattoes _and two Englishmen_. This latter circumstance is worthy of note."" ""As being an utter falsehood "" observes our author. Placido the mulatto leader of the insurrection seems to have been a remarkable man of commanding appearance great energy of character and superior intelligence. One of the means he adopted to rouse the coloured population of Cuba against their oppressors was the writing of revolutionary songs and verses. During the whole of 1843 he was busy laying the foundations of his scheme and although his designs were known to thousands no one was found to betray them. The plot was finally discovered by the conversation of some of the conspirators being overheard. An obscure warning of it given by a young negress to her master with whom she was in love also led to enquiry. The project was for nothing less than the total extermination of the white race and the formation of a republic after the example of Hayti The leading posts and commands were assigned to the mulattoes as well during the revolt as in the organized government that was subsequently to be formed. The Thursday in Passion Week was the day fixed for the outbreak; the signal to be given by the simultaneous burning of the sugar-canes; the watchword ""_La Muerte y la Destruccion_."" The domestic servants were in the plot and were to aid in various ways. ""The cooks were to poison their masters and the caleseros with their coach-horses to form a corps of cavalry."" The alarm was not given till the morning of the day on which the conspiracy was to have broken out. Then the arrests began. Five hundred of the conspirators were thrown into the prison of Matanzas which town was the headquarters of the conspiracy and gave its name to it. But the negroes finding themselves discovered and expecting no mercy resolved at least to glut their vengeance as far as the time would allow them. Overseers were flung into their sugar-boilers two entire families at Matanzas were poisoned and other excesses took place. The reprisals exercised were most horrible; two hundred prisoners were immediately butchered and numerous straggling parties shot down like dogs; some wretched victims were flogged to death to induce them to betray their accomplices. Further outbreaks were the result of these severities. The planters who fell into the hands of the negroes were mercilessly massacred; numerous plantations were burned. The insurrectionary movements were however isolated and without organization; the Spaniards succeeded in repressing them and then furious and alarmed at the imminence of the peril they had so narrowly escaped inflicted the most terrible punishment on the unsuccessful mutineers. Eight hundred prisoners had been secured in the Matanzas Jail; of these two hundred were shot without trial the remainder for the most part strangled in their dungeons. The meaning of the Spanish word _Matanzas_ is ""a place of slaughter "" and such indeed the town became. Placido the chief of the conspiracy made a tremendous resistance before he was taken. ""He fired three pistols killing or wounding a man at each discharge and then hacked and hewed away with his sword speedily making for himself a ring of more than its span and clearing a space around him as rapidly as an Utreran bull when he rushes into the circus. But a soldier's musket soon brought him to the ground and bleeding and faint he was flung into the Matanzas carcel."" As the prisoners refused to a man to make disclosures torture was resorted to. The lash was applied till they confessed or fainted. Most of them yielded the plot was acknowledged to be of ancient date and to have Placido at its head. Placido bore with the resolution of a stoic the rude and unsparing stripes with which his broad shoulders and back were speedily covered. Not a groan nor a sigh escaped him; but he fainted away at last from loss of blood and with such little apparent change that the executioners continued to flog for some time after he was senseless. He was loosed from the triangles and tied to a neighbouring stake after the mummery of a five minutes' court-martial. He was still senseless when bound to the stake--lifeless for all that his _verdugos_ knew to the contrary. Ere he received the fusillade he recovered from his fainting fit sufficiently to exclaim in an audible tone. ""_Los dias de la esclavitud son contados!_"" ""The days of slavery are numbered."" A horrible account but doubtless a correct one. Our author seems to have been in the south of Spain at the time of the Matanzas insurrection and consequently in the right place to get at the true particulars of the affair. In the chapters on the Spanish Army &c. although amusing enough we do not consider the English resident to have been so successful as in most other parts of his work. We would caution him against believing or at any rate expecting others to believe the marvels recorded by Spanish gazettes of Spanish armies and generals--marvels which usually get repeated and magnified to most preposterous dimensions by the _embustero_ retailers of such intelligence. We would also warn him against indulging in such enthusiasm as he displays in speaking of General Léon--a very fine fellow undoubtedly a good soldier and dashing officer but yet a little overrated in these lines. ""In his unexaggerated feats of war he eclipsed the Homeric heroes and rivalled the incredible exploits of Charlemagne and his peers. His tremendous lance spread terror and dismay among the enemies of his queen and country and the glorious inequalities of Crécy and Azincour were revived in the deeds of Léon witnessed by living men."" Revived and considerably eclipsed we should say judging from the list of exploits that follows. If our friend the English resident be in any degree acquainted with military matters he must be aware that the dispersal of an army of eleven thousand infantry and one thousand horse by a hundred and fifty hussars a feat which he attributes to Léon is an absurdity; and that if such a thing or any thing like it did occur it must have been when the hundred and fifty dragoons were closely backed by some much more numerous force. The Spanish army as it existed at the close of the Carlist war was perhaps in a higher state of discipline and practical usefulness than it had been at any previous period of the present century. Rendered hardy and martial by six years' unremitting warfare; officered too for the most part by men who had something besides title or family interest to recommend them it only required greater regularity of pay and supplies to prove highly efficient. Gradually reduced by Espartero to about fifty thousand men its numbers were doubled by a decree of Narvaez who felt that so small a force was insufficient to support him in his tyrannical rule. At the same time an unprecedented system of conciliation or of adulation it should rather be said was adopted by the dictator towards his legions. Espartero had done all in his power and that the disordered state of Spanish finances allowed him to do for the comfort and well-being of his army; but he had not thought fit to sacrifice to it all or any other classes of the state. It had not been necessary for him to do so; _his_ government was not based upon fear nor dependent on bayonets. With Narvaez it was very different. His sole tenure of power was in the fidelity of the army and this he sought to ensure by every possible means. ""The priest may starve and the exclaustrado perish; the last rotten planks of the navy may go to pieces; public monuments may totter for want of conservation or repairs; the civil employé may be pinched and the very palace pine for its arrears; but money must be found to clothe and feed the army and maintain it like a prancing charger."" The extent to which this courting and propitiation of the soldiery is carried is almost incredible and often ridiculous. Allowances of cigars extra rations of wine upon holidays boxes and stalls at the theatre provided gratis for the officers upon the Queen's birth-day--these and similar indulgences are the sops thrown by Narvaez to his capricious cohorts. But with all his pains he obtains no feeling of security. He is well aware that no man in Spain has so many enemies not mere ill-wishers but deadly foes thirsting for his blood; he knows that the National Guards of Madrid have sworn his destruction; and he cannot even tell how soon he may be turned upon or betrayed by the very army which he takes such trouble to conciliate. They may sell Narvaez as they sold Espartero to the highest bidder. In a recent number of this Magazine we took occasion to animadvert on the conceit and presumption of certain tourists who imagine themselves qualified by a flying visit to write their opinions concerning a country and people thus doing grievous injustice to those they write about and sadly misleading any credulous portion of the public which may be beguiled into reading and placing confidence in their lucubrations. It has been seen that no such reproach can be addressed to the author of the book we are now noticing who has moreover performed his labour which was no light one in a conscientious and creditable manner without prejudice favour or affection. We scarcely think he does full justice to Espartero whom we must still persist in considering the most estimable and respectable of the Spanish public men of the day. He may not possess the glowing and fascinating eloquence of an Olózaga nor the fierce energy of a Narvaez; but neither has he the versatile insincerity of the former nor the unscrupulous and brutal recklessness of the latter. He has not like Olózaga according to the uncontradicted testimony of Roca de Togores in the Cortes ""broken faith with all parties;"" nor did he ever like Narvaez cause his dragoons to charge inoffensive crowds assembled by invitation of their rulers to celebrate saint-days or national festivals. Our author's general remarks on the state of Spain of its people and prospects are acute and sensible; and they also coincide in great measure with as much as has been said on those subjects by one or two recent and intelligent travellers in the Peninsula. In short setting aside a slight occasional tendency to high colouring more calculated however to amuse than mislead the principal fault we have to find with the book is its title. After the deluges of Mysteries and Revelations that has been poured upon the shoulders of the reading public during the last two or three years commencing with the rhapsodies of Sue and company and continued through countless varieties by writers of every degree on both sides the Channel we really cannot think that such a title as ""Revelations"" of any thing will tend to prepossess the public in favour of the work it designates. One frequently sees books of very small merit or of none at all ushered into the world under some highly enticing name conveying the idea that the author has expended at his bantling's christening the whole of his diminutive modicum of talent. Here however is an example of the opposite mode of proceeding; a title that we must decidedly condemn given to a book of much interest and utility--a book which from its liveliness and the amount of anecdote and light matter it contains will be read by many who would shrink from the perusal of a mere dry statistical work. ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS. NO. III. THE CUT OF A COAT AND THE GOOD OF A GOWN. So you have got a decent coat on your back gentle reader! Well we congratulate you upon this fortunate circumstance this honourable badge of æsthetic distinction; but do not be too proud of it--there are coats and coats--_non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius_ you know. Wait a bit till we turn you round and trot you out to see the cut of the thing ere we admit you to be a well-dressed or even a sensibly-dressed man. But before we enter into controversy on the superficial appearance of man in the nineteenth century let us hasten to recall attention to our definition of good taste in all matters of dress--utility first and ornament afterwards but ornament always subservient to utility--and let us also appease the indignation of the tailoring world by affirming that in one grand class of coats--we will specify which by and by--the public seem to have arrived at a tolerably reasonable result. There certainly are some men many men indeed in the world who may be said to be sensibly dressed. 'Tis a phenomenon when you come to think about it; but the fluctuations of taste in this matter have for the time being arrived at a normal state. After the variations of centuries the vagaries of taste in male attire (which may be measured for their ups and downs by curves with quite as much reason as the rise and fall in prices of corn and various other things that the members of statistical societies delight in portraying)--these variations in their endless wrigglings and windings have come back in more cases than one to their points of departure and there form _nodi_ points of reflection contrary flexure &c. At all these points the curve of taste may be assumed to be stationary. Pray excuse us good reader for being scientific--do not call it obscure--on so luminous a point. But is not the mystery of tailoring become a science? Is not the ninth part of a man now called an _artiste_? Have we not regular treatises published with no end of diagrams on the art of self-measurement? Just look at the advertisements at the back of your Sunday newspaper or in the fly-leaves of your last Maga. And after all where is the harm? ""The noblest study of mankind is man!"" However it is a learned point on which a world of talk may be got up; so we will waive it for the moment to be resumed in the due course of our ruminations. Now there is no man in his sober senses who will not admit that a European but especially a Briton requires one or more coats to protect him from the varying influences of climate. Whether we suppose him muffled up in the skins of the _urus_ and the wolf of the old Hercynian forest or sporting in the soft fabrics woven from the fleeces of Spain and Saxony no one but a sheer madman in any parallel north of the 40th ever thought of dispensing altogether with a stout upper garment. It has been a necessary thing rammed into every man's head by Jack Frost Dan Sol and other atmospheric genii that he should provide himself with suitable upper toggery; and hence we infer that public and private attention has been directed as much to coats and cloaks as to any other two things that can be mentioned next after meat and drink. No wonder then that men have differed in their tastes as to the manner in which they should best adorn their beloved persons. No wonder that caprice and dandyism have prevailed in all ages of the modern world. There is plenty of room and even of occasion for such fickleness. Man is an imitative animal and the clothing propensities of any one European people have always run the round of the rest of the family. On the whole we think that men have been more reasonable about their coats than they have about their hats. They have been absurd enough it is true but their are grades of absurdity; and we fancy the comfort of the wearer has been of more direct influence in keeping up some degree of good sense concerning the covering of his corporeal trunk than it has in protecting and adorning his head. Not that we intend going into a long history about coats--excuse the pun we are not fond of long _tales_--we will rather be quick in giving our opinion as to the best manner of settling the _vexata quæstio_ of the clothing system. Our modern coats those _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of Stulz and Co. are to be traced back by their pedigree to about the middle of the seventeenth century; while our paletots wrappers or whatever else you like to call them may lay claim to a higher antiquity by three hundred years. In the brilliant courts of Louis XIII. Philip IV. and Charles I. the costume had changed from the tight jacket or vest of the sixteenth century to the open and somewhat _négligé_ though picturesque jerkin so familiar to the lovers of Rubens and Vandyke. Over the linen integuments of his body a gentleman in those days wore only one upper permanent garment the jerkin or vest in question: the sleeves were loose and rather short; the waist was not pinched in; the cut was rather straight; the length extended only to the loins and abundance of fine linen and lace was displayed. Over this garment which was very plain was worn a small cloak more or less ornamented in the hall or the hunting field; but in the tented camp the cuirass was buckled on and the jerkin appeared below covering the tops of the cuissards or thigh-pieces. There is many a charming Vandyke portraying our ancestors in this elegant dress; and even the furious fanaticism of the Cromwellian times allowed the fashion to remain in England till the taste of the French court underwent a change and modified the habiliments of nearly all civilized Europe. To what cause we do not know but probably to some degree of additional comfort required by Louis XIV. and his courtiers in their earlier campaigns--is to be ascribed the lengthening of the skirts of the jerkin and the corresponding increase in the dimensions of the cloak which we find to have taken place soon after 1660. The portraits of Mignard and the battle-pieces of Vandermeulen all show us the change that was then going on at the court of Versailles: we find the form of the dress stiffening the sleeves lengthening pockets either yawning wide or covered under deep lapels the cuffs turned up halfway to the elbow and a glorious display of gold lace and ribands that must have made a fine gentleman of those palmy days glitter with the colours of the rainbow. To the easy and languid elegance of the Spanish costume had succeeded a certain degree of military stiffness and precision among the French beaux: all Europe was at that time lost in admiration of the Grand Monarque and his brilliant court; and their fashions were adopted as the universal rule of taste. It was this stiff coat of Louis XIV. that was the direct progenitor of two degenerate yet widely differing sons--the _habit_ or coat and the frock or _surtout_ of the present day. Degenerate descendants truly! Who that ever saw the rustling heavy and almost self-supporting coat of Charles II. could have imagined that the plain close-fitting and supple frock or the be-clipped and almost evanescent _habit paré_ of the nineteenth century were to spring from them as types? Scarcely less wide is the difference between the plate armour of an old English baron and the simple cuirass of a covenanter! Hitherto a man of fashion had worn only one coat; but towards the end of Louis XIV.'s reign was introduced the superfluous luxury of a second and thinner under-covering universally known in France as a _veste_ but in England corrupted into a waistcoat or rather from its general inutility a _waste_-coat. This kind of garment grew in importance throughout the eighteenth century; and like its neighbours the coats-proper indulged in enormous lapels and revelled in all the luxury of lace and brocade. The beaux of the First and Second George's times knew right well how to stiffen out the skirts of their coats; how to dispense with the comfort of a collar; how to have buttons more than they would ever be patient enough to fasten; and how to have button-holes or rather button-slits six inches long cut into the rich velvets and silks of their garments. They were grand solemn times those! There was no such thing as a man taking liberties with his toilet; it was a serious piece of business to dress properly; and it must have been a matter of no small difficulty to keep a coat clean and decent. We strongly suspect notwithstanding those flattering rogues the limners that our great-great-grandfathers had to put up with a vast lot of dirt and discomfort; and that their coats so expensive to purchase must have been in no very enviable condition by the time they were left off. Fine days those for a valet-de-chambre! An honest fellow had then some chance of getting a penny out of the Israelitish dealers; and my lord's gentleman might entertain a reasonable prospect of retiring upon his means long before reaching his grand climacteric. But events marched onwards. The coat originally intended to be buttoned all the way down--and Louis XIV. actually did wear it buttoned below the ventricular curve--was gradually allowed to flaunt away in an open dissolute manner and to display the radiant glories of the vest. Men then came to ask themselves that momentous question What is the use of such large skirts to our coats if we do not employ them? And so they took the liberty some of buttoning them back others of cutting off a good large corner. The tailors found their account in this. Coats kept up at a proportionally equivalent price; but the profits of the drapers were much diminished and by and by dwindled to a mere nothing. It was from that fatal period when the waistcoat wheedled itself into fashion that the glory of the coat began to set; and when once the skirt came to be retrenched the majesty of the coat was gone for ever. Dear old Sir Roger de Coverley! gentle Will Honeycombe! ye were the last that knew how to unite the graces and the dignity of these two discordant garments: from your times down to those of poor Beau Brummell coats and waistcoats have degenerated through all degrees of folly even to the verge of stark staring madness! The noble mantle and the solemn cloak its successor and the comfortable roquelaire its grandson and the old farmer-like great-coat its _arrière-petit-fils_ and the pilot-coat the great-coat's brother that ran away from home and went to sea and the paletot a foreign bastard that could not prove who its father was nor even tell how it came by its name and the wrapper the paletot's cousin a regular commercial gent--such is the genealogy of that other family of garments which we cherish as our household gods. But as we hinted above we can hunt up the descent of some of these articles to times far removed--(the mantle we know came to us from the Romans)--we allude to the upper coat or wrapper; for we find that a two-sleeved cloak with enormously long sleeves by the way and a most surprisingly scanty allowance of body was worn by the dandies in the days of the rival Roses; and to go still further back we have seen a contemporary portrait of that glorious old fellow Chaucer clad in a grey wrapper that might have been made in St James's Street A.D. 1845. If the paletot and the wrapper wish to prove any claims to gentle birth they cannot do better than refer their wearers to the father of English poets. He was a man of first-rate taste you may depend upon it. With all these changes--and we do not intend to blacken our fathers' memories for having made them--what have we arrived at in this point of dress? What are the conveniences of our present garments? in what are they useful? in what are they beautiful? in what do they need to be improved? To begin at the top of the tree--the modern _habit-de-cour_: coat for coat of the dress kind (military coats are for the present out of the question ) this is the most useful and the most becoming of any now worn. People are inclined to ridicule this coat not so much on its own account as for the foolish trappings with which it is commonly accompanied; but we assert that in its form its dimensions and in its suitableness of purpose it is far superior to what is vulgarly called a dress-coat. The curve of the fronts and the still somewhat ample sweep of the skirt the plainness of the collar and the absence of all pretension in its composition--above all the total absence of any useless unmeaning ornament such as sham pocket-flaps &c.--all these qualities give it a claim to superiority. If the opinions of the extremes of mankind be sometimes right as opposed to those of the majority then the form of that coat which is worn alike by the courtier and the Quaker must have some large share of innate merit. Nothing of this kind can be said of the common short or dress coat. This most silly and unmeaning habiliment possesses neither dignity nor beauty to entitle it to public favour. It is useless on the person of a youth and undignified when worn by a man--an elderly person looks absurd in it and to nobody is it in reality becoming. What is the good of the scanty skirts that barely admit of a pocket being made in their folds? They add no symmetry nor grace to the person--they furnish little accommodation to the wearer. What is the good of the rolling lapel in the front and of the collar never intended to be turned up? This coat is only a debased and withered skeleton of the original garment of the seventeenth century deprived of all the qualities that recommended its type for general adoption; it has neither warmth nor comfort on its side and it cannot stand the scrutiny of elegance for a moment. It may be a difficult thing for a tailor to make but that is all; and the sooner that men emancipate themselves from the thraldom of its sway the better. If an open coat is to be adhered to the old _habit-de-cour_ is the thing; utility and ornament there make a much nearer approach to each other and for comfort there is no doubt about the matter. We object however to the idea of an open coat on the score of ornament though we admit some of its claims to utility. Two surfaces of decoration on the human body are absurd; they distract the attention and often by the incongruous opposition of colour and substance produce a most disagreeable effect. Without wishing to hurt the feelings of Young England--or as some facetious wag or other has called him Little Britain--we declare our dissent _in toto_ from the dangerous heresy of the white waistcoat with the black coat. 'Tis a most unnatural conjunction. If the colour of the under-garment were only red instead of white we should suspect some secret connexion with the old woman in scarlet _où vous savez_; as it is we set it down to the account of her friend in black and we launch against it our æsthetic anathema. True it makes a man look clean; but cannot a gentleman enjoy the reputation of cleanliness without turning himself into a magpie? Carry the point out a little further--to its ultimate results in fact--and picture to yourself Albion junior in a black coat lined with white silk a white waistcoat white cravat black unmentionables and white silk stockings--each good and legitimate articles of dress in their way--what a figure! No! turn rather to one of those splendid old canvasses of Velasquez. Look at the great Duque de Olivarez the finest gentleman in Europe; behold him in black velvet and black silk from the chin to the toe--no white but his lace collar--all black except this and his face and hands! There is no effort at display in his person no attempt to attract attention by a glaring contrast; he knew that his looks proclaimed him a gentleman and there he stands in quiet dignity a model of good taste. Philip IV. the same; Charles I. of England at times the same. Even the Dutch burgomasters knew how to consult unity of dress and to harmonize the colours of their vestments. We are not speaking of state-robes but of the dress worn in society among men of fashion; and we would recommend any one sceptical on the point to compare the evening suits of the middle of the last century with those of the beginning still more with those of the close of the seventeenth. He will find an immense falling off in good taste. Lord Chesterfield was not half so well-dressed a man as Lord Warwick nor Lord Warwick as Lord Rochester. To return however to waistcoats. They constitute a class of garments that have fallen into vulgar hands and are applied to vulgar purposes. Your gents in the city and your Margate-steamer men know how to display a yard of velvet or silk to infinite advantage; see how ostentatiously they throw open their coats and show you half-a-mile of mosaic gold chain meandering over a _champ fleuri_. They are regular tailors' advertisements and disgust one by their abuse o
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cheap decoration. We never see a man in a smart waistcoat but we think of what lies at the back of it--a yard of silk or calico--all the glory of the front negatived and the garment so mean behind that he dares not show it. Not so the good old sailor who spent his prize-money with honesty of purpose and let us add with real good taste also; he decorated his shattered timbers stem and stern alike--there was no make-believe finery about him and he was not ashamed to take off his coat before any body! Away then with the petty vanity of a waistcoat; away with all false idea of its giving decoration to the _ensemble_ of the toilet. We know of nothing in its favour except one single claim on the score of some small utility. To any one living in a variable climate it is of value as enabling the wearer to modify the temperature of the body. Is the day unusually warm? he can throw open his coat and preserve that prim neatness of appearance which is required in the present age but is at variance with the display of fine linen of the Caroline epoch. Or is there a sudden blast of wind from the east searching his rheumatic limbs to the very bone? he may button his coat over his waistcoat and he has then a double protection for the tenderest chest. But if thus anxious for the chest why not for the back also? Why should there be two thicknesses of cloth or stuff over the one and only a single thickness with some flimsy calico over the other? In all this there is an inconsistency. Our ancestors who wore only one coat at a time had always a small mantle ready against any change of temperature; and they wore it either appended to the neck as in the days of James I. or more constantly on the shoulders as in the time of Cromwell. The main advantage of the waistcoat consists in its being light and permanently worn --but it should be made of the same stuff throughout and we think it might well be dispensed with altogether. If Kneller Lely Vandyke and Rubens could visit the earth again for a moment--and they were good judges of what was or what was not becoming--we have no doubt but they would be unanimous against waistcoats. We come therefore to our last remaining class of coats and here we halt with a hum of approbation: it would be hard indeed were we to pull the modern dandy to pieces and leave him no protection against the wintry blast. Yes! the frock or surtout is good! we have little or nothing to say against it --much in its favour. Utility and elegance are at once seen combined in this garment; it is warm easy to wear and comfortable it is of graceful and dignified appearance and it is becoming to man at all periods of his life. The frock-coat is nothing more than the ancient tunic opened in front and made to sit tight upon the upper part of the body: the superior half of it shows the form of the wearer to advantage and imparts to it a due degree of manly rigidity while the inferior half partakes of the flowing folds of drapery and gives warmth and covering down to the very knees. Of all garments that are to have any degree of freedom and looseness about them the frock-coat is the best: it is good for a man in almost any avocation and may be made suitable for the common business of life as well as for the refinements of society. But then it should not be worn open: it should be buttoned upon the breast. Place an officer in his plain closely-buttoned undress coat by the side of a civilian with his loose and open frock and the contrast is so decidedly in favour of the former that the point as a matter of taste and effect will not admit of a dispute. The one is a regular sloven compared with the other. If any thing can be said against this buttoning it is on the score of inconvenience in civil life:--is a man at his library-table or his office-desk always to be fastened up in buckram? where are we to stow away our watches our knives our toothpicks our loose cash (when we have any--_par parenthèse_)? There is some weight in these objections; for these little articles of comfort cannot be dispensed with; and we have no better answer than to propose small external pockets with lapels which would not spoil the symmetry of the figure; or else if you are obstinate good reader and are determined on throwing away your money upon waistcoats--then keep your frock-coat open; but have a waistcoat either of the same colour or of some respectable hue and have it made jacket-fashion as good behind as before. For ourselves however we confess we shall prefer ""That you my friend whatever wind should blow Might traverse England safely to and fro An honest man close-button'd to the chin -- Broad-cloth without and a warm heart within."" Any quantity of ornament that might be deemed requisite could easily be applied to this kind of coat--so as to make it a fit habiliment for occasions of ceremony: in its present state it retains the stiffness of its military origin (for it may be called an invention of the Great Duke's of him who wore it on the glorious fields of Salamanca and Waterloo and it came into fashion at the close of the Peninsular war:) but it may be embroidered as much as you please or its stuff may be varied _ad infinitum_ from Manchester fustian to the finest Genoa velvet. Not that embroidery is always consonant with good taste when applied to male attire. A plain dark close-buttoned coat whether of cloth or velvet fastened with a single row of diamond or steel buttons in front would be far more effective as an object of good taste than if its seams were all covered with gold lace. As for the colour of coats we do not intend to speak of this till we come to the subject of military costume. We leave it awhile to the taste of the nation --colours have always served as marks of national differences. We beg leave to subjoin a few words in behalf of a poor little garment that has hardly any grown-up friends to say any thing for it; and which when it left school either went into a manufactory or was sent to sea--we mean the jacket. In warm weather for a country walk for a ride for a game at billiards or cricket even for shooting (_experto crede_)--a jacket is a capital contrivance; while for a sail whether down the Thames or up the Mediterranean it is indispensable. We do not appreciate the jacket as we ought or rather we do not remember the good service it did us at Eton and Harrow--when the limbs were free and supple and when their full activity was called into constant play who would have thought of a coat? It was only when we began to fancy ourselves men and to think that our claims to virility lay in the skirts of our coats that we discarded the jacket. 'Twas an ungrateful proceeding:--school friendships ought not to be broken--and we recommend you courteous reader some day or other to lay your dignity aside for a while and indulge in the innocent freedom of a jacket: you will get through any work you have on hand twice as quickly. The beaux of Queen Elizabeth's and King Jamie's courts wore nothing else but jackets you know with their short mantles hanging in the most _dégagé_ manner from the shoulders:--and truly we do not see why a man in a well-cut jacket properly decorated should not be entitled to as much admiration in his civil capacity as when he has the honour to hold her Majesty's commission in the Tenth and avails himself of that privilege to disturb the equanimity of the beauty and fashion of England. Much may be said upon all sides in this matter: the jacket would now be deemed too familiar without a sword and sabretache; the frock might be considered as slovenly; about the _habit-de-cour_ there can be no dispute; as for the dress-coat it ought to be sent to Monmouth Street; waistcoats should be given to your valet. Speedily judge for yourself tasty reader; but let us have a garment calculated for real use and real ornament; no pretence no sham; a fine manly figure and a covering worthy of it _voilà la chose essentielle!_ To criticize a gown is always a more pleasing task than to waste one's patience upon a coat; and independently of this the æsthetician has to lay aside nearly all terms of reprobation in alluding to the habiliments of ladies of the present day. Women have never wandered into so many absurdities of form with regard to this main article of dress as men have; they have been volatile enough in the material and colour and ornament of their gowns; but in shape and cut they have kept much nearer to the golden rule of comfort and utility than the lords of the creation. The period of greatest aberration in this matter may be taken as extending from the latter quarter of the seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth. During those long years absurdity and inconvenience seemed to hold paramount sway in the wardrobes of the fair; and to apply the word ""taste "" in its good sense to any portion of the female dress at least in England is hardly allowable within the limits mentioned. Look at your grandmothers' pictures or turn over the leaves of any edition of Hogarth's works and the broadness of the caricature cannot fail to strike you. That women should ever have consented so greatly to travestie the beautiful proportions of their fair frames; that they should ever have so completely lost sight of the main principles of decoration and comeliness is inconceivable. The mischief all originated in France; and it must have come in the first instance from the deformity either of body or mind of some crabbed old dowager at Versailles; no young unsophisticated girl would ever of herself have invented the hoop or the _négligé_. But those times have happily gone by; and after passing through a transition state of minor absurdity--(look to the prints of the _Belle Assemblée_ from 1800 to 1815)--we have thrown away all unnatural short waists; we have discarded scanty skirts; stomachers have been sent nearly to the right about; and with the exception of a single opisthodomic folly--to which we do not care to allude more particularly--our better halves and our fair friends seem to have entered upon an age of good taste and good sense. The happy change has been brought about partly by some women of good sense consulting their own ideas of utility and simplicity--partly by a return of public taste to the dresses of the middle ages and also of the times of Charles the First. Ladies have at length become aware that novelty of form is not essential to beauty of effect--and they have opened their eyes to the truth that the less they disfigure the proportions of their persons the more becomingly and the more comfortably will they be clad. The main divisions of lady's gown--every milliner understands what we mean--are the _corsage_ or body and the _jupe_ or skirt. They are as independent of each other as the upper and lower divisions of a wasp--(indeed some giddy girls have carried the similitude too far and have been seen to approximate in their lacing contractions to that wonderfully small animal passage)--and these two divisions of the garment are to be formed and ornamented on totally different principles. By the common practice and consent of all womankind it appears that the lower portion should be loose and flowing; and that the upper should be so conformable to the contour of the body as to show that contour to the best advantage; these must be taken as the fundamental definitions upon which all laws of female dress are to be tried. And first of all of the skirt; if its form is to be loose and flowing it should be made to derive its beauty from the curves and breaks and folds which drapery partly suspended partly at rest on the ground will afford. It must be ample and symmetrically proportioned; and its material must have sufficient stiffness as well as pliability--drapery always requires a certain volume of material to be effective. The extreme limit of a scanty skirt and its poor effect as well as its great inconvenience may be judged of from the figures and pictures of the old Egyptian priestesses--they look very _statuesque_ and make capital _caryatides_ for temples--but they will not bear a comparison with those lovely Athenian virgins winding round the Parthenon in their sacred pilgrimage to the shrine of their tutelar goddess. Drapery then must be ample if it is to fall in graceful folds. But drapery only suspended will not produce the entire effect desired; it will hang in merely longitudinal lines whereas one of the most pleasing effects produced by it is caused by those abrupt breaks in a fold those sudden cuttings off of volutes which are only to be seen when part of the drapery is in horizontal repose or rests partially on the ground. Hence short gowns are not so graceful as long ones; they are beautiful at any time it is true and when the wearer is seated produce somewhat of the effect alluded to; but for a woman to be robed with all the combined influences of grace and dignity she must allow her dress to trail partially around her. Think upon the short garments of many classes of peasantry and think of the train of a lady when dressed for court--we speak of their form not of their substance--it will easily be seen how much dignity is conferred by length. The utility of long skirts is not so easy to be proved as their beauty; but this is only on the score of the difficulty in keeping them clean; as for warmth and comfort the advantage is quite on their side. Our fair contemporaries however seem to have arrived at a reasonable and happy medium upon that point; they never wore better-formed skirts than at the present day. A gown if properly made and without any stinting of stuff and if that stuff have any thing like substance needs no adventitious aids to give it sufficient amplitude of contour; let our gentle readers take the hint; they will otherwise militate against one of the main laws of good taste. Let them only look at the portraits of their ancestors in the middle of the last century but one--let them look at Hollar's prints and if they are open to conviction they will agree in what we say. If the skirt is to be ample the body should be confined to the natural shape of the human frame; and the more nearly it is so the more graceful and effective will it become. Do what we will distort the sleeves and waist as much as we may we shall never come up to the symmetry of Dame Nature; she is a better milliner than any in Regent Street; and if the ladies would have their corsages made after her pattern in all cases they would find their clothes fitting better pinching less and keeping them much warmer. Women assert--and we are not competent to dispute the point with them--that they need an enveloping support for the body; in fact that they must have corsets: be it so: there is no harm in the article itself provided the utility of it can be clearly proved; but there is much harm in it if by an abuse of its powers this same thing is made to distort the body and to injure the internal organization of the human frame. As far as beauty of form is concerned whatever intrenches on the proportion of natural shape is intrinsically contradictory to it: let no woman imagine that she has a fine figure if she can lace herself into a diameter of nine or ten inches; for by so doing she disturbs the harmony of all the curves--all the lines of beauty as Hogarth calls them--with which she has been so richly endowed; she fails of her effect and instead of beauty produces only absurdity. Still the corsage of her dress should fit close; and for this to be possible there must be a well-fitting corset beneath; but it need not pinch or squeeze the least in the world; let it fit close; that is enough. It is no doubt uncommonly convenient for a lusty alderman's wife of forty to reduce herself to the proportions of ""fair seventeen;"" but she ought to be able to reduce the whole frame in the same ratio; otherwise to pull in at the waist till the idea of suffocation is painfully evident to the most careless beholder and yet to leave the bust with the symmetry of Minerva Victrix is a gross and palpable absurdity. Far from being the [Greek: to chalon] this is the [Greek: to chachon] of all female decoration. And if the waist should not be metamorphosed into unnatural smallness so the sleeves should not be puffed out into preternatural enlargement. Those abominable gigot-sleeves so well named from our old familiar family-joint--they were utter abominations; and those bishop's sleeves--they were foolish caricatures. Ladies are doing much better now: either in the evening they trust to nature herself to set off their arms as she pleases or else in the morning they envelope them in a covering that hardly destroys the beauty of their form. This is as it should be: one of the principal characteristics of female grace consists as any sculptor can tell you in the narrowness of the shoulders--just as of male dignity in their breadth. What then could ever have made ladies suppose that they were ornamenting themselves by extending the upper portions of their sleeves until they measured full three feet in a direct transversal line? We are now witnesses of better ideas; the neck the shoulders and the arms are allowed to make a continuous series of curves. The corsage is simple in its form and the only attempt at enrichment is the pendant border of lace or other material that gives due relief without destroying the harmony of the outline. As for form then we congratulate the ladies on having attained and preserved so much excellence in their habiliments. We have only to recommend that they do not rashly try to innovate upon what they now delight in; or rather if new ideas are to be introduced that they control them by a perpetual reference to the form and framework of nature as their best indeed their only guide to what is true and beautiful. Thanks to the manufacturing skill of European nations in general and of our own more particularly there is no lack of material for women to choose their dresses from. The loom teems with all kinds of substances; and every requirement of climate every caprice of fancy can now be gratified at a reasonable rate. One of the best symptoms of taste amongst Englishwomen is the increasing use of the finer woollen fabrics. They are well suited to the climate and they are calculated to make graceful habiliments in whatever manner they are employed. But cotton is an immense boon for the mass of the population; and by contributing to the cleanliness of the lower orders has been of great value to the health of the community. The fact is that it is of little consequence what an elegant woman wears as far as her appearance is concerned. All clothes require as the French say to be _bien portés_. An awkward woman will never look well in any thing however fine. Let ladies consult their own comfort their own purposes and the material they hit upon will certainly become them. We have now too ample means of decoration: furs and lace and ribands and embroidery are gradually coming within the grasp of large classes of society; we have to fear rather a deluge of ornament than the opposite; and if caution is to be used in any direction it is in this. The true secret of female ornament is that it should be genuine: no sham flowers; no make-believe lapels; no collars only stitched on to the edge of the gown; no bows that do not untie; no ribands without some positive use; all false ornament should be avoided as the direct contrary to what is tasteful and becoming. If lace is worn let it be of thread or silk--not of cotton; if fur let it be from the real animal--not dyed or imitated; if jewels let them be few but good and set in real gold--no abominable sham decoration. And what are we to say about cloaks and pelisses and shawls and the other preservers of gowns that correspond to the outward comforters of man? They flutter about in shop windows thick as gnats in a summer sunbeam: many of them are elegant; not a few useful; some are quite loves!--witness the polka-pelisse--others are frumpy and old-fashioned; such as the cloak with a deep cape of ever-to-be-respected maternal memory. But there are two which we single out as simple and unspoiled and indeed unspoilable items of dress which ought to be in fashion as long as women love pretty things. One is the Spanish mantilla; that plain black scarf which forms the sweetest disguisement a woman can put on: by its simplicity and its obvious utility it claims our approbation at the first glance. The other is the Indian shawl; that marvellous product of the mountain loom fit for any climate for any temperature for any complexion and for any purpose; women may rack their inventions for ever but they never will invent a garment more generally useful more constantly becoming than this. NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. IV. DRYDEN ON CHAUCER. Nothing is gained by attempting to deny or to disguise a known and plain fact simply because it happens to be a distasteful one--Time has estranged us from Chaucer. Dryden and Pope we read with easy unearned pleasure. Their speech their manner of mind and their facile verse are of our age almost of our own day. The two excellent graceful and masterly poets belong both of them to THIS NEW WORLD. Go back a little step over an imperceptible line to the contemporary of Dryden Milton and you seem to have overleaped some great chronological boundary; you have transported yourself into THAT OLD WORLD. Whether the historical date or the gigantic soul or the learned art make the separation the fact is clear that the poet of the ""Paradise Lost"" stands decidedly further off; and more or less you must acquire the taste and intelligence of the poem. Why up to this hour probably there are three-fifths of the poem that you have not read; or if you have read all and go along with all you have yourself had experience of the progress and have felt your capacity of Milton grow and dilate. So has it been with your capacity for Shakspeare or you are a truant and an idler. To comprehend with delight Milton and Shakspeare as poets you need from the beginning a soul otherwise touched and gifted for poesy than Pope claims of you or Dryden. The great elder masters being original require of you springs of poesy welling in your own spirit; while the two latter imitative artists of luxury exact from you nothing more in the way of poetical endowment than the gusto of ease and luxurious enchantment. To prefer for some intellectual journey the smooth wafture of an air-gliding ear--to look with pleasure upon a dance of bright-hued images--to hear more sweetness in Philomela's descant than in a Turkish concert--to be ever so little sensible to the bliss of dreams--ever so little sick of reality and ever so little glad to be rid of it for an hour--is qualification enough to make you a willing and able reader of verse in the latter school. But if you are to prefer the style of the antecessors other conditions must come in. It is then not a question merely whether you see and love in Imogen the ideal of a wife in love with her husband or take to the surpassing and inimitable portraiture of the ""lost archangel"" in Satan; but whether you feel the sweetness of Imogen's soul in the music of her expressions--whether you hear the tones of the Will that not the thunder has quelled in that voice to which all ""the hollow deep of hell resounded."" If you do assuredly you will perceive in yourself that these are discernments of a higher cast and that place you upon a higher degree when critics on poetry come to be ranked than when you had nothing better to say for yourself than that your bosom bled at the Elegy on an Unfortunate Young Lady or that you varied with Alexander to the varying current of the Ode of St Cecilia's Day. We call Chaucer the Father of our Poetry or its Morning Star. The poetical memory of the country stretches up to him and not beyond. The commanding impression which he has made upon the minds of his people dates from his own day. The old poets of England and Scotland constantly and unanimously acknowledge him for their master. Greatest names Dunbar Douglas Spenser Milton carry on the tradition of his renown and his reign. In part he belongs to and in part he lifts himself out of his age. The vernacular poetry of reviving Europe took a strong stamp from one principal feature in the manners of the times. The wonderful political institution of Chivalry--turned into a romance in the minds of those in whose persons the thing itself subsisted--raised up a fanciful adoration of women into a law of courtly life; or at the least of courtly verse to which there was nothing answerable in the annals of the old world. For though the chief and most potent of human passions has never lacked its place at the side of war in the song that spoke of heroes--though two beautiful captives and a runaway wife bestowed by the Goddess of Beauty and herself the paragon of beauty to all tongues and ages have grounded the _Iliad_--though the Scæan gate from which Hector began to flee his inevitable foe and where that goddess-born foe himself stooped to destiny be also remembered for the last parting of a husband and a wife--though Circe and Calypso have hindered homebound Ulysses from the longing arms of Penelope--and Jason leading the flower of a prior and yet more heroic generation must first win the heart of Medea before he may attain the Golden Fleece--though the veritable nature of the human being have ever thus through its strongest passion imaged itself in its most exquisite mirror Poetry--yet there did in reawaking Europe a new love-poetry arise distinctively characterised by the omnipotence which it ascribed to the Love-god legitimating in him an usurped supremacy and exhibiting in artificial and wilful excess that passion which the older poets drew in its powerful but unexaggerated and natural proportions. Thenceforwards the verse of the South and of the North and alike the forgotten and the imperishable all attest the predominancy of the same star. Diamond eyes and ruby lips stir into sound the lute of the Troubadours and the Minnesingers. Famous bearers of either name were knights distinguished in the lists and in the field. And who is it that stole from heaven the immortal fire of genius for Petrarch? Laura. Who is the guide of Dante through Paradise? Beatrice. In our own language the spirit of love breathes more than in any other poet in Spenser. His great poem is one Lay of Love embodying and associating that idealized chivalrous and romantic union of ""fierce warres and faithful loves."" It hovers above the earth in some region exempt from mortal footing--wars such as never were loves such as never were--and all--Allegory! One ethereal extravagance! A motto may be taken from him to describe that ascendancy of the love-planet in the poetical sky of renewed Europe. It alludes to the love-freaks of the old Pagan deities upon earth in which the King of the Gods excelled as might be supposed all the others. ""While thus on earth great Jove these pageants play'd _The winged boy did thrust into his throne_; And scoffing thus unto his mother sayde '_Lo! now the heavens obey to me alone And take me for their Jove now Jove to earth is gone_.'"" The pure truth of the poetical inspiration which rests upon Spenser's poems when compared to the absolute departure from reality apparent in the manners of his heroes and heroines and in the physical world which they inhabit is a phenomenon which may well perplex the philosophical critic. You will hardly dare to refuse to any true poet the self-election of his materials. Grant therefore to Spenser knight-errantry--grant him dragons and enchanters and enchanted gardens satyrs and the goddess Night on her chariot--grant him love as the single purpose of human life--a faëry power leading with a faëry band his faëry world! But while you accept this Poem as the lawful consummation and ending of that fabulous intellectual system or dream which had subsisted with authority for centuries it is wonderful to see how in the very day of Spenser the STAGE recovers humanity and nature to poetry--recalls poetry to nature and humanity! Shakspeare and Spenser what contemporaries! The world that _is_ and the world that _is not_ twinned in time and in power! This exaggeration of an immense natural power Love--making one might almost say man's worship of woman the great religion of the universe and which was the ""amabilis insania"" of the new poetry--long exercised an unlimited monarchy in the poetical mind of the reasonable Chaucer. See the longest and most desperate of his Translations--which Tyrwhitt supposes him to have completed though we have only two fragments--seven thousand verses in place of twenty-two thousand--the ""ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE "" otherwise entitled the ""Art of Love "" ""wherein are shewed the helps and furtherances as also the lets and impediments that lovers have in their suits."" Then comes the work upon which Sir Philip Sydney seems to rest the right of Chaucer to the renown of an excellent poet having the insight of his art--the five long books which celebrate the type of all true lovers Troilus and of all false traitresses Creseide. Then there is ""The Legende of GOODE Women "" the loving heroines fabulous and historical of Lemprière's dictionary. The first name is decisive upon the signification of ""_goode_""--Cleopatras Queene of Egypt--Tisbe of Babylon--Dido Queene of Carthage--Hipsiphile and Medea betrayed both by the same ""root of false lovers Duk Jason""--Lucrece of Rome--Ariadne of Athens--Philomen--Phillis--Hypermnestra. The ""Assemblee of Foules"" is all for love and allegory. Chaucer has been reading Scipio's dream. Whereon he himself dreams that ""Affrican"" comes to him and carries him away into a sort of Love's Paradise. There were trees with leaves ""grene as emeraude "" a garden full of ""blossomed bowis "" running waters in which small fishes light with red fins and silver-bright scales dart to and fro flowers of all tinctures all manner of live creatures and a concert commingled of stringed instruments of leaves murmuring to the wind and of singing-birds. Under a tree beside a spring was ""Cupide our Lord"" forging and filing his arrows--his daughter (_who is she?_) assisting and tempering them to various effects. A host of allegorical persons are in attendance of course; and there too stands a Temple of Venus described from the Teseida of Boccaccio. But the principal personage whom Chaucer encounters and the most busily engaged is the great goddess NATURE. It is St Valentine's Day whereon all the birds choose their mates for the coming year. The particular business to which _this_ anniversary of the genial Saint is devoted was intelligible no doubt to the quick wits of Chaucer's age if to the dull ones of ours a little perplexing. Nature held in her hand ""a formell eagle of shape the gentillest "" benign goodly and so full of every virtue that ""Nature herself had blisse to looke on her and oft her beeke to kisse."" The question is who shall be her mate? Three ""tercell eagles"" offer themselves and eagerly plead their claims. The four orders of fowl those ""of ravine "" those that feed on insects the water-fowl and those that eat seed are by nature required to elect each a delegate that shall opine on the matter. The birds of prey depute ""the tercelet of the faucon."" He gives the somewhat startling if otherwise plausible advice that the worthiest of knighthood and that has the longest used it and that is of the greatest estate and of blood the gentlest shall be preferred leaving the decision of those merits to the lady eagle. The goose on the behalf of the water-fowl merely advises that he who is rejected shall console himself by choosing another love; which ignominious and anserine suggestion is received by the ""gentill foules"" with a general laugh. The ""turtle-dove "" for the seed-eating birds indignantly protests against this outrageous and impracticable proposal. The cuckoo for the worm-eaters provided that he may have his own ""make "" is willing that the three wooers shall live each solitary and sullen. The ""sperhawke "" the ""gentle tercelet "" and the ""ermelon "" severally reply in high scorn to the goose to the duck who seconds the goose and to the cuckoo. Dame Nature ends the plea by referring the choice to the ""formell eagle"" herself who begs a year's respite which is granted her. The rest for the day is now well spent choose their mates--an elect choir sing a roundel in honour of Nature; and at the ""shouting"" that when the song was done the fowls made in flying away the Poet awoke! Amongst the hard poin
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s of this enigmatical love-allegory are that when the first lover a ""royal tercell "" has ended his plea the ""formell eagle"" _blushes_! as does afterwards the turtle upon the proposal made of changing an old love for a new and that the duck swears by his _hat_. Be the specific intent what it may the general bearing speaks for itself namely the unmeasured lifting-up of Love's supremacy--though we cannot help feeling how much nearer Chaucer was to the riddling days of poetry than we are. Did the old Poet translate from plain English into the language of Birds and expect us to re-translate? Or are these blushes and this knighthood amongst birds merely regular adjuncts in any fable that attributes to the inferior creation human powers of reason and speech? It is curious that the _rapacious_ fowls are presented as excelling in high and delicate sentiment! They are the aristocracy of the birds plainly; yet an aristocracy described as of ""ravine"" seems to receive but an equivocal compliment. The HOUSE OF FAME is in Three Books. The title bespeaks Allegory; and the machinery which justifies the allegory as usual is a Dream. But the title does not bespeak what is nevertheless true that here too love steals in. During the entire First Book the poet dreams himself to be in the temple of Venus all graven over with Æneas's history taken point by point from the Mantuan. The history belongs properly to its place; not because Æneas is the son of Venus but because the course of events is conducted by Jupiter consonantly to the prayer of Venus. Why the House of Venus takes up a third part of the poem to be devoted to the House of Fame is less apparent. Is the poet crazed with love? and so driven against method to dream perforce of the divinity who rules over his destiny as she did over her son's? Or does the _fame_ conferred by Virgil upon Æneas make it reasonable that the dream should proceed by the House of one goddess to that of the other? Having surveyed the whole the poet goes out to look in what part of the world he is when Jupiter's eagle seizes upon him and carries him up to the city and palace of Fame seated above the region of tempests but apparently below the stars and there sets him down. The Second Book is spent in their conversation during their flight. Some singular inventions occur. Every word spoken on earth is carried up by natural reverberation to the House of Fame; but there arrived puts on the likeness of the wight in his habit as he lives that has uttered it. The palace itself stands upon a rock of ice inscribed with names. Those on the southern face are nearly melted away by the heat of the sun; those on the northern stand sharp and clear. Some of the minstrels--Orpheus of old and the later Breton Glaskirion he hears playing yet. The great Epopeists are less agreeably occupied. 'Omer ' and aiding him 'Dares ' 'Titus ' 'Lolius ' 'Guido' the Colempnis that is of Colonna and English Galfrida standing high upon a pillar of iron 'are busie to bear up Troy' upon their shoulders. Virgil upon a pillar 'of tinned iron clere ' supports 'the fame of pius Æneas.' Near upon a pillar of iron 'wrought full sternly ' the 'grete poete Dan Lucan' bears upon his shoulders the 'fame of Julius and Pompee.' An innumerable company kneel before the goddess herself beseeching her for renown. She deals out her favours capriciously--to one company of well-deservers utter silence and oblivion--to another like meritorious loud slanders and infamy--to another assembly with similar claims golden immortal praises. A fourth and a fifth company have done good for the pure sake of goodness and request of her to hide their deeds and their name. To the one set she readily grants their asking. To the other not--but bids her trumpet ""Eolus"" ring out their works so that all the world may hear which happens accordingly. Another throng have been sheer idlers on the earth doers of neither good nor ill. They desire to pass for worthy wise good rich and in particular for having been favourably regarded by the brightest eyes. The whole of this undeserved reputation is instantaneously granted them. Another troop follow with like desert and with like request. Eolus takes up as bidden his ""black clarioun "" and blazons their dishonour. A troop of evil-doers ask for good fame. The goddess is not in the humour and takes no notice of them. The last comers of all are delighters in wickedness for its own sake and request their due ill fame. Amongst them is ""that ilke shrewe that brente the temple of Isidis in Athenes."" This is no doubt the gentleman who burned the Temple of Diana at Ephesus for that laudable purpose. The goddess is complaisant and grants them exactly their desire. There stands by the first a second House of Fame of a strange sort. It is built cage-like of twigs is sixty miles in length whirls incessantly about and is full of all imaginable noises--the rumours of all events private and public that happen upon earth including murrains tempests and conflagrations. The eagle gets the dreamer in and he notes the humours of the place. This is most remarkable that as soon as any one of the innumerable persons in press there hears a tiding he forthwith whispers it with an addition to another and he with a further eking to a third until in a little while it is known every where and has attained immeasurable magnitude--as from a spark the fire is kindled that burns down a city. The tidings fly out at windows. A true and a false tiding jostled in their way out and after some jangling for precedency agreed to fly together. Since which time no lie is without some truth and no truth without some falsehood. An unknown person of great reverence and authority making his appearance the poet apparently disturbed with awe awakes wonders and falls to writing his dream. The criticism of so strange a composition is hardly to be attempted. It shows a bold and free spirit of invention and some great and poetical conceiving. The wilful now just now perverse dispensing of fame belongs to a mind that has meditated upon the human world. The poem is one of the smaller number which seems hitherto to stand free from the suspicion of having been taken from other poets. For Chaucer helped himself to every thing worth using that came to hand. The earlier writings of Chaucer have several marks that belong to the literature of the time. First an excessive and critical self-dedication of the writer to the service of LOVE this power being for the most part arrayed as a sovereign divinity now in the person of the classical goddess Venus and now of her son the god Cupid. Secondly an ungovernable propensity to allegorical fiction. The scheme of innumerable poems is merely allegorical. In others the allegorical vein breaks in from time to time. Thirdly a Dream was a vehicle much in use for effecting the transit of the fancy from the real to the poetical world. Chaucer has many dreams. Fourthly interminable delight in expatiating upon the simplest sights and sounds of the natural world. This overflows all Chaucer's earlier poems. In some he largely describes the scene of adventure--in some the desire of solace in field and wood leads him into the scene. Fifthly a truly magnanimous indifference to the flight of time and to the cost of parchment expressed in the dilatation of a slender matter through an infinite series of verses. You wonder at the facility of writing in the infancy of art. It seems to resemble the exuberant untiring activity of children prompted by a vital delight which overflows into the readiest utterance; and in proportion to its display achieving the less that is referable to any purpose of enduring use. Even the admired and elaborately-written _Troilus_ and _Creseide_ is a great specimen. The action is nearly null; the discoursing of the persons and of the poet endless. It is not then simply the facility of the eight-syllabled couplet as in that interminable _Chaucer's Dreme_ that betrays; there is a dogged purpose of going on for ever. Of the poems expressly of Love are ""The Romaunt of the Rose--Troilus and Creseide--The Legende of Goode Women--The Assemblee of Foules--Of Queen Annelida and False Arcita--The Complaint of the Blacke Knight--The Complaint of Mars and Venus--Of the Cuckou and the Nightingale--The Court of Love--Chaucer's Dreme--The Flour and the Leaf--The First Book of the House of Fame""--and if you choose the ""Boke of the Duchess "" which is John of Gaunt's mourning for his lost wife. There must be something like thirty thousand verses long short in couplets or stanzas which may be said to be dedicated to LOVE! And of them all only the four following Poems tread the plain ground--have their footing upon the same earth that we walk--Troilus and Creseide The Legende of Goode Women Queen Annelida and False Arcita the Complaint of the Blacke Knight. We grant them for human and real notwithstanding that most of the persons are of a very romantic and apocryphal stamp--because they are not presented in dreams or visions and are not allegorical creations of beings out of the air Impersonations of Ideas. They are offered as men and women downright flesh and blood and so are to be understood. Nevertheless even here when Chaucer is nearest home taking his subject in his own day and putting his own friend and patron in verse there is a trick of the riddling faculty since the Blacke Knight lodging during the love-month of May in the greenwood and bemoaning all day long his hard love-hap represents it is presumed old stout John of Gaunt in love who might utter his passion uncertain of requital ""In groans that thunder love in sighs of fire;"" but who most assuredly did not build himself a forest bower and annually retire from court and castle to spend there a lovesick May. Of absolutely fanciful creations are as we have seen the ""Assemblee of Foules "" and the ""Complaint of Mars and Venus "" which the poet overhears a fowl singing on St Valentine's Day ere sunrise. ""Of the Cuckou and Nightingale:"" the poet between _waking and sleeping_ hears the bird of hate and the bird of music dispute against and for love. When the nightingale takes leave of him he wakes. ""The Court of Love."" The poet at the age of eighteen is summoned by Mercury to do his obeisance at the Court of Love ""a lite before the Mount of Citheree "" called further on Citheron. He is on this occasion not asleep at all but dreams away like any other poet with his eyes open in broad daylight. In Chaucer thus we find every kind of possible allegory. There is the thoroughly _creative_ allegory when thoughts are turned into beings and impersonated abstract ideas appear as deities and as attendants on deities. This is the unsubstantial allegory which has it must be owned a different meaning to different climes and times. For example to the belief of the old Greeks Aphrodite and Eros albeit essentially thoughts had flesh that could be touched wounded even and veins in which for blood ran ichor. In the verses of our old poet and his contemporaries Venus and Cupid are as active as they were with Homer and Anacreon; only that now their substance has imperceptibly grown attenuate. So that in the ""Assemblee of Foules "" for example these two celestial potentates are upon an equal footing for subsistency and reality with the great goddess Dame Nature who seems to be more of modern than of ancient invention and with Plesaunce Arrai Beautee Courtesie Craft Delite Gentlenesse and others enow whom the poet found in attendance upon the Love-god and his mother. With or without belief this belongs to all the ages of poetry from the beginning to the consummation of the world. Then there is the _disguising_ allegory--for by no other appellation can it be described--which may be of a substantial kind. For example the Black Knight as we have seen forlorn in love builds himself a lodge in the wild-wood to which he resorts during the month of May and mourns the livelong day under the green boughs. If the conjecture which Tyrwhitt throws out but without much insisting upon it that John of Gaunt wooing his Duchess Blanche is here figured this is a _disguising_ allegory of the lowest ideal idealization. The conjecture of Tyrwhitt whether exact or not quite agrees to the art of poetical invention in that age. That old and deeply-rooted species of fable which ascribes to the inferior animals human mind and manners was another prevalent allegory. Usually the picture of humanity so conveyed is of a general nature. But if as has been guessed the first and noblest of the Three Tercels that woo the ""formell eagle "" in the Assemblee of Foules be the same John of Gaunt wooing the same Blanche here would be two varieties of allegory--the disguising of particular persons and events and the veiling of human actions and passions under the semblance of the inferior kinds--mixed in this part of the poem which in as much as it also introduces wholly ideal personages would if the key to the enigma has been truly found very fully exemplify the allegorizing genius of the old poetry. Certainly many of the old poems unless they are interpreted to allude in this manner to particular persons and occurrences appear to want due meaning such as this Complaint of the nameless Black Knight this Wooing of the Three Tercels and the faithless Hawk whom Canace hears. We may often feel ourselves justified in presuming an allusion although in regard to the true import of the allusion it may be that Time has first locked the door and then thrown the key over the wall. Of one Poem to which we have hitherto but alluded we feel ourselves now called on to give an analysis both for sake of its own exquisite beauty and surpassing loveliness and for sake of Dryden's immortal paraphrase--THE FLOURE AND THE LEAF. There is in the plan of ""The Floure and the Leaf "" a peculiarity which is not easily accounted for. In the other poems of Chaucer which are thrown into the form of an adventure or occurrence personal to the relater he relates in person his own experience. Here the parts of experiencing and of relating an adventure are both transferred to an unknown person of the other sex. It is also remarkable that this difference in the personality of the relater does not appear until the very close of the poem and then incidentally one of the imaginary persons addressing the relater as ""Daughter."" In the adventure which is simply the witnessing a Vision there is nothing that might not as well have happened to Chaucer himself as to dame or damsel. In a sweet season of spring a lady who for some cause unknown to herself cannot sleep rises at the peep of day and wanders out into a lofty and pleasant grove where a slender unworn path not easily seen leads her to a fair arbour of elaborate workmanship and so framed as that the sitter within sees unseen whatsoever passes without; adjoining which is a singularly beautiful medlar-tree in full blossom. A goldfinch leaps from bough to bough eating buds and blossoms his fill and then sings most 'passing sweetly ' and is answered by an unseen nightingale in a note 'so merry' that all the wood rang again. Whilst the lady adventuress sits upon the turfed seat listening a new burst as if of angelical voices is heard. The harmony proceeds from ""a world of ladies "" who march out from a neighbouring grove clad in richly-jewelled surcoats of white velvet each wearing on her head a chaplet of green leaves laurel or woodbine or Agnus Castus. They dance and sing soberly surrounding one who wears on her head a crown of gold has a branch of Agnus Castus in her hand excels them all in beauty appears to be their queen and sings a roundel having some allusion to the Green Leaf and advance dancing and singing into a meadow fronting the arbour. The song is not given--its name is in half unintelligible French. Now a thundering of trumpets is heard: and innumerable ""men of arms"" issue from the grove from which the ladies came. Trumpets kings-of-arms heralds and pursuivants clad in white and wearing chaplets of leaves ride foremost. Then follow Nine Knights magnificently armed excepting that on their unhelmed heads are set crowns of laurel. Upon each three henchmen attend clad in white with green chaplets and severally carrying the casque the shield and the lance of him they serve. Last issue a great rout of knights well-mounted wearing chaplets and bearing boughs of oak laurel hawthorn woodbine and other kinds. They joust gallantly for an hour or more: the laurel-wearers overbearing all opposition. At last the whole company dismount and move by two and two towards the ladies who at their approach break off song and dance and go to meet them. Every lady takes a knight by the hand and in this fashion they pace towards a fair laurel of such prodigious amplitude as that a hundred persons might rest at ease under the shadow of its diffused branches. All incline with obeisance to the tree; and then sing and dance around it; ever a lady and a knight going together. All these are (but as is only afterwards at the close made known to the spectatress of these occurrences ) as you may easily surmise the homagers of the Leaf. Now the homagers of the Flower enter upon the stage. From the depth of the wide champaign there come roaming in a great company ladies and knights and ever a knight and a lady hand in hand. They are all richly clad in green and wear chaplets of flowers; green-robed minstrels with instruments of all sorts and wearing variegated chaplets of flowers precede. They dance up to a great tuft of flowers in the midst of the mead; about which they incline reverently and one sings the praise of the ""Margarete"" or Daisy the others answering in chorus; meanwhile the hour grows to noon; the sun waxes hot; the unsheltered flowers wither; the ladies and the knights of the Flower are scorched with his rays; then the wind rises and furiously blows down all the flowers; then comes on a terrible storm of mixed hail and rain; wets the knights and ladies of the Flower to the skin and at last blows over. But the white-habited servants of the Leaf have stood under their laurel shaded from the fiery noon beams and shrouded from the tempest; and now moved with ruth and pity come forwards to tender their aid. The Queen of the Leaf greets with loving sisterly compassion the Queen of the Flower. The party of the Leaf proceed to more effectual relief than soothing words--hewing down boughs and trees to make ""stately fires"" for drying their wet clothes and searching the plain for virtuous herbs to make for the blistered and drouthy sufferers salves and salads. She of the Leaf now invites Her of the Flower to supper who accepts as courteously. The Leaf company at the bidding of their mistress provide horses for the Flower company. At this juncture the Nightingale who all day long sitting hidden in the laurel sang ""the service longing to May "" flies to the hand of the Leaf-queen and sings on as diligently as before--the Goldfinch whom the heat had forced from his blossom of ""medle-tree"" into the cool bushes betakes himself in like manner to his Flower-queen's hand and sings there; and fast by the arbour where our spectatress has remained all the while seeing and unseen ladies and knights ride along and away. Only one lady in white rides alone after the rest. To her she comes out and enquires what the wandering show means. The answer given with courteous explicitness imports in sum that those who wear chaplets of Agnus Castus are virgins; the laurel wearers knights who were never conquered; the Nine most distinguished knights being the Nine Worthies; with whom are the Twelve Peers of Charlemagne and many ""knightes olde"" of the Garter. Those who wear woodbine ""Be such as never were To love untrewe in word thoghte ne dede."" They wear the Leaf because the beauty of the Leaf lasts. But the followers of the Flower are ""those that loved idlenesse and not delite of no besinesse but for to hunte and hawke and pley in medes and many other such idle dedes."" They wear the perishable Flower accordingly. The informant ends with enquiring of her auditress whether she will for the years to come serve the Leaf or the Flower; who in answer vows her observance to the Leaf. The deep implication of the ancient mythology in the reviving poetry here again discovers itself. It appears the lady of the Leaf is the goddess Diana; the lady of the Flower Flora in person. The invention is remarkably well purposed and well carried through. The division of the world into those who follow virtue and those who pursue their own delight is a good general poetico-ethical view and the delicate emblems happily chosen for expressing the contrast. The heat and the tempest which overwhelm the dainty voluptuaries and are harmless to the deed-worthy express the true wisdom of virtue even for this world which moves not at our will; and the gentle healing kindness of the wiser to the less wise whom they equalize with themselves might almost seem profoundly to signify the recovery to the better wisdom of those who had set out with choosing amiss--a gracious hidden Christian lesson of charity and penitence. The contact of the simply human spectatress with beings brought from the world of imagination is boldly designed. Here is no Dream. She walks down from her own house into the wood and the vision comes and goes in all the strength of true flesh and blood. The solitariness of her stealing out from a sleepless bed ""about the springing of the day long or the brighte sonne uprisen was""--therefore whilst common mankind lie buried in sleep--is all the saving partition that the poet has deigned betwixt the coarse and harsh Real and the splendid Unreal. As for the poetical working-out--the descriptive narrative--it is elaborate and full of beauty. The natural scene is painted with exquisite sensibility to the influences of nature and with such determinate strokes as show a conversant eye. For example the mixed and illuminated spring-foliage the ----""levis new That sprongin out _agen the sonne shene_: Some _very rede_ and some a _glad light_ grene "" would seem fresh and vivid from the hand of Coleridge or Tennyson--and the ----""path of _litil brede_ ----that _gretly had not usid be_ For it _forgrowin was with gras and wede_ "" --which beguiles the foot of the vision-favoured away from the usual beat of men leading her into the unvisited sequestration due to the haunting of an embodied Allegory--might in its old simplicity pass for well invented by whichsoever Priest of Imagination in our day can the best read in the Sensible the symbolized Spiritual and Invisible. You wonder withal if Chaucer was the poet how the spectator was turned into a spectatress; and you are somewhat concerned at finding an unwilling word of the judicious Tyrwhitt's which owns to a doubt on the authorship of the most beautiful minor poem admitted into the volume of Chaucer. Dryden felt the effusion of beauty and has rendered and enhanced it. One may question the fitness of a material alteration which he has ventured upon. The allegory of the old Poem is pure. Dryden has changed the Knights and Ladies collectively into Fairies; for any thing that appears indeed of good human stature. The thought came to him apparently as making the beauty more beautiful and possibly as obtaining to an otherwise indefinite sort of imaginary beings a known character and a recognized hold upon poetical--succeeding to popular--belief. A contradiction is--that the company of the Leaf have in emphatic and chosen terms been described as INNUMERABLE. The laurel is of such enormous diffusion that A HUNDRED persons might repose under it. Yet IT SHELTERS THEM ALL FROM THE STORM. It is also singular to us that the Margarete or Daisy should suffer any slight from Chaucer seeing the reverence with which he elsewhere regards it. It is here too no doubt raised into reverence by the observance of the Flower party; but then it suffers disparagement inasmuch as they are disparaged. Truly does the amiable Godwin say--""In a word the Poem of Dryden regarded merely as the exhibition of a soothing and delicious luxuriance of fancy may be classed with the most successful productions of human genius. No man can read it without astonishment perhaps not without envy at the cheerful well-harmonized and vigorous state of mind in which the author must have been at the time he wrote it."" ""Now turning from the wintry signs the sun His course exalted through the Ram had run And whirling up the skies his chariot drove Through Taurus and the lightsome realms of love Where Venus from her orb descends in showers To glad the ground and paint the fields with flowers; When first the tender blades of grass appear And buds that yet the blast of Eurus fear Stand at the door of life and doubt to clothe the year; Till gentle heat and soft repeated rains Make the green blood to dance within their veins: Then at their call embolden'd out they come And swell the gems and burst the narrow room; Broader and broader yet their blooms display Salute the welcome sun and entertain the day. Then from their breathing souls the sweets repair To scent the skies and purge the unwholesome air. Joy spreads the heart and with a general song Spring issues out and leads the jolly months along. ""In that sweet season as in bed I lay And sought in sleep to pass the night away I turn'd my weary side but still in vain Though full of youthful health and void of pain. Cares I had none to keep me from my rest For love had never enter'd in my breast; I wanted nothing fortune could supply Nor did she slumber till that hour deny. I wonder'd then but after found it true Much joy had dried away the balmy dew: Seas would be pools without the brushing air To curl the waves and sure some little care Should weary nature so to make her want repair. ""When Chanticleer the second watch had sung Scorning the scorner sleep from bed I sprung; And dressing by the moon in loose array Pass'd out in open air preventing day And sought a goodly grove as fancy led my way. Straight as a line in beauteous order stood Of oaks unshorn a venerable wood; Fresh was the grass beneath and every tree At distance planted in a due degree Their branching arms in air with equal space Stretch'd to their neighbours with a long embrace; And the new leaves on every bough were seen Some ruddy-colour'd some of lighter green. The painted birds companions of the spring Hopping from spray to spray were heard to sing. Both eyes and ears received a like delight Enchanting music and a charming sight. On Philomel I fix'd my whole desire And listen'd for the queen of all the quire; Fain would I hear her heavenly voice to sing And wanted yet an omen to the spring. ""Attending long in vain I took the way Which through a path but scarcely printed lay; In narrow mazes oft it seem'd to meet And look'd as lightly press'd by fairy feet. Wand'ring I walk'd alone for still methought To some strange end so strange a path was wrought; At last it led me where an arbour stood The sacred receptacle of the wood; This place unmark'd though oft I walk'd the green In all my progress I had never seen; And seized at once with wonder and delight Gazed all around me new to the transporting sight. 'Twas bench'd with turf and goodly to be seen The thick young grass arose in fresher green: The mound was newly made no sight could pass Betwixt the nice partitions of the grass; The well-united sods so closely lay And all around the shades defended it from day; For sycamores with eglantine were spread A hedge about the sides a covering over head. And so the fragrant briar was wove between The sycamore and flowers were mix'd with green That nature seem'd to vary the delight And satisfied at once the smell and sight. The master workman of the bower was known Through fairylands and built for Oberon; Who twining leaves with such proportion drew They rose by measure and by rule they grew; No mortal tongue can half the beauty tell For none but hands divine could work so well. Both roof and sides were like a parlour made A soft recess and a cool summer shade. The hedge was set so thick no foreign eye The persons placed within it could espy; But all that pass'd without with ease was seen As if nor fence nor tree was placed between. 'Twas border'd with a field; and some was plain With grass and some was sow'd with rising grain That (now the dew with spangles deck'd the ground) A sweeter spot of earth was never found. I look'd and look'd and still with new delight Such joy my soul such pleasures fill'd my sight; And the fresh eglantine exhaled a breath Whose odours were of power to raise from death. Nor sullen discontent nor anxious care Even though brought thither could inhabit there; But thence they fled as from their mortal foe; For this sweet place could only pleasure know. Thus as I mused I cast aside my eye And saw a medlar-tree was planted nigh. The spreading branches made a goodly show And full of opening blooms was every bough: A goldfinch there I saw with gaudy pride Of painted plumes that hopp'd from side to side Still pecking as she pass'd; and still she drew The sweets from every flower and suck'd the dew. Sufficed at length she warbled in her throat And tuned her voice to many a merry note But indistinct and neither sweet nor clear Yet such as sooth'd my soul and pleased my ear. ""Her short performance was no sooner tried When she I sought the nightingale replied; So sweet so shrill so variously she sung That the grove echo'd and the valleys rung; And I so ravish'd with her heavenly note-- I stood entranced and had no room for thought But all o'erpower'd with ecstasy of bliss Was in a pleasing dream of Paradise; At length I waked and looking round the bower Search'd every tree and pry'd on every flower If any where by chance I might espy The rural poet of the melody; For still methought she sung not far away: At last I found her on a laurel spray Close by my side she sate and fair in sight Full in a line against her opposite; Where stood with eglantine the laurel twined And both their native sweets were well conjoin'd. ""On the green bank I sat and listen'd long; (Sitting was more convenient for the song:) Nor till her lay was ended could I move But wish'd to dwell for ever in the grove. Only methought the time too swiftly pass'd And every note I fear'd would be the last. My sight and smell and hearing were employ'd And all three senses in full gust enjoy'd. And what alone did all the rest surpass The sweet possession of the fairy place; Single and conscious to myself alone Of pleasures to the excluded world unknown; Pleasures which nowhere else were to be found And all Elysium in a spot of ground."" The Lake poets--Heaven bless them!--have one and all--Wordsworth Coleridge Southey--loudly and angrily denied to Dryden a poetical eye for nature quoting in proof some inflated passage or another from his rhyming plays. Pope too according to them was blind and had never seen the moon and stars. Where we ask in all the poetry of the Lakes and Tarns is there such a strain--so rich and so sustained--as that yet ringing in your ears? And ""the ancient woman seated on Helmcrag"" answers--""where?"" True the imagery is all in Chaucer. But had not Dryden's heart 'rejoiced in nature's joy ' not thus could he have caught the spirit of his master. Ay--the spirit; for there it is in spite of the difference of manner--transfused without evaporation or other loss from the 'rhime roial' in which Chaucer rejoiced into the couplet in which Dryden in his old age moved like a giant refreshed with gulps of the dewy morn. Again:-- ""The ladies left their measures at the sight To meet the chiefs returning from the fight And each with open arms embraced her chosen knight. Amid the plain a spreading laurel stood The grace and ornament of all the wood; That pleasing shade they sought a soft retreat From sudden April showers a shelter from the heat. Her leafy arms with such extent were spread So near the clouds was her aspiring head That hosts of birds that wing the liquid air Perch'd in the boughs had nightly lodging there: And flocks of sheep beneath the shade from far Might hear the rattling hail and wintry war; From heaven's inclemency here found retreat Enjoy'd the cool and shunn'd the scorching heat; A hundred knights might there at ease abide And every knight a lady by his side: The trunk itself such odours did bequeath That a Moluccan breeze to these was common breath. The lords and ladies here approaching paid Their homage with a low obeisance made And seem'd to venerate the sacred shade. These rite
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perform'd their pleasures they pursue With songs of love and mix with measures new: Around the holy tree their dance they frame And ev'ry champion leads his chosen dame. ""I cast my sight upon the farther field And a fresh object of delight beheld. For from the region of the west I heard New music sound and a new troop apppear'd Of knights and ladies mix'd a jolly band But all on foot they march'd and hand in hand ""The ladies dressed in rich symars were seen Of Florence satin flower'd with white and green And for a shade betwixt the bloomy gridelin. The borders of their petticoats below Were guarded thick with rubies in a row; And every damsel wore upon her head Of flowers a garland blended white and red. Attired in mantles all the knights were seen That gratified the view with cheerful green: Their chaplets of their ladies' colours were Composed of white and red to shade their shining hair. Before the merry troop the minstrels play'd All in their masters' liveries were array'd And clad in green and on their temples wore The chaplets white and red their ladies bore. Their instruments were various in their kind Some for the boy and some for breathing wind; The sawtry pipe and hautboy's noisy band And the soft lute trembling beneath the touching hand. A tuft of daisies on a flowery lea They saw and thitherward they bent their way; To this both knights and dames their homage made And due obeisance to the daisy paid. And then the band of flutes began to play To which a lady sang a virelay; And still at every close she would repeat The burden of the song _The daisy is so sweet_. _The daisy is so sweet_ when she begun The troop of knights and dames continued on. The concert and the voice so charm'd my ear And sooth'd my soul that it was heaven to hear."" O bardlings of Young England! withhold we beseech you from winsome _Maga_ your verse-offerings while thus the sons of song evoked from the visionary land coming and going like shadows smile to let drop at her feet the scrolls of their inspiration. Poetry indeed! ""You lisp in numbers for the numbers come."" But in big boobies a lisp is only less loathsome than a burr. Some of you have both and therefore deserve to die. Readers beloved! prefer you not such sweet strong strains as these sounded by Dryden when he had nearly counted threescore and ten? ""Yet was not his natural force abated""--while his sense of beauty instructed and refined by meditations that deepen amongst life's evening shades became holier within sight of the grave. You will thank us for another quotation; for much do we fear O lady fair! that thou hast no copy of Dryden in thy _boudoir_ and yet life is fast flowing on with thee for thou art--nay there's no denying--yea thou art--in thy twentieth year--and _if you continue to refuse our advice_--will soon be an old woman. ""The Lady of the Leaf ordain'd a feast And made the Lady of the Flower her guest: When lo! a bower ascended on the plain With sudden seats adorn'd and large for either train. This bower was near my pleasant arbour placed That I could hear and see whatever pass'd: The ladies sat with each a knight between Distinguish'd by their colours white and green; The vanquish'd party with the victors join'd Nor wanted sweet discourse the banquet of the mind. Meantime the minstrels play'd on either side Vain of their art and for the mastery vied. The sweet contention lasted for an hour And reach'd my secret arbour from the bower. The sun was set; and Vesper to supply His absent beams had lighted up the sky: When Philomel officious all the day To sing the service of th' ensuing May Fled from her laurel shade and wing'd her flight Directly to the queen array'd in white; And hopping sat familiar on her hand A new musician and increased the band. ""The goldfinch who to shun the scalding heat Had changed the medlar for a safer seat And hid in bushes 'scaped the bitter shower Now perch'd upon the Lady of the Flower; And either songster holding out their throats And folding up their wings renew'd their notes; As if all day preluding to the fight They only had rehearsed to sing by night. The banquet ended and the battle done They danced by starlight and the friendly moon: And when they were to part the laureat queen Supplied with steeds the lady of the green Her and her train conducting on the way The moon to follow and avoid the day."" Whatsoever merit of thought or of poetry may be found in the poems of which we have spoken the world has rightly considered the CANTERBURY TALES as the work by which Chaucer is to be judged. In truth common renown forgets all the rest; and it is by the Canterbury Tales only that he can properly be said to be known to his countrymen. Here it is that he appears as possessing the versatility of poetical power which ranges from the sublime through the romantic and the pathetic to the rudest mirth--choosing subjects the most various and treating all alike adequately. Here he discovers himself as the shrewd and curious observer and close painter of manners. Here he writes as one surveying the world of man with enlarged and philosophical intuition weighing good and evil in even scale. Here more than in any other he is master of his matter disposing it at his discretion and not carried away with or mastered by it. Here he is master too of his English thriftily culling the fit word not effusing a too exuberant stream of description. Here he has acquired his own art and his own style of versification which is here to be studied accordingly. Well therefore and wisely did Tyrwhitt judge when undertaking to rescue the ""mirrour of Rethoures alle"" from the dust and rust of injurious time he laid out his long and hard but not uncheerful labour upon the Canterbury Tales alone. Every soul alive knows something of them--but not very many more than Stothard in his celebrated Picture has informed their eye withal. Their plan ranks them among works which are numerous early and late but which rather belong to early literature. East and West such are to be found but they belong rather to the Oriental genius. A slender narrative the container of weightier ones--a technical contrivance which gave to a number of slighter compositions collectively taken the importance of a greater work--which prolonged to the tale-teller who had once gained the ear of his auditory his right of audience--and which in a world where the tongue was more active in the diffusion of literature than the quill afforded to each involved tale a memorial niche that might save it from dropping entirely away into oblivion. To Chaucer the scheme serves a higher purpose of art which of itself allies him to the higher poets. By it he is enabled to comprehend as if in one picture a more diversified and complete representation of humanity. The thought is genial and sprightly. A troop of riders who have been stirred severally from their firesides by the searching spirit of spring have casually fallen into company and who pace along breathing an air which ""sweet showers"" have embalmed--exhilarated by the brightening radiance of ""the young sun "" and made loquacious by the very power which pours out the song of the glad birds from the newly-leaved boughs by the long wayside. And who are the riders? And what is the charm that has drawn together a company of thirty to ride on the same road at the same hour of the same day? The suddenly-spun band of a union that will be as hastily dissolved squares happily with the large purpose of the poet by unforcedly bringing together persons of both sexes and of exceedingly diverse conditions high low learned unlearned military civil religious from city and from country land and sea of unlike occupations buoyant with youth grave with years. The momentary tie has poetical vitality from the fact that it is borrowed from the heart of the time and of England. They are Pilgrims from all quarters to the shrine of England's illustrious and favourite Saint the martyr of Canterbury. They have gradually mustered into cavalcade in coming up from the shires to the metropolis one excepted--the Poet. He falls into their party by the hap of sleeping the night preceding the journey out from the capital at the same inn in the suburb towards Canterbury--Southwark. The specific incitement of the Tale-telling is thus invented in a natural spirit and aptly to the vivacity of the whole conception. Mine host of the Tabard Henry Bailey a hearty fellow no doubt since Chaucer has thought his name worthy of his immortalizing contrives the proceeding and this half in good fellowship and half in the way of his trade. To shorten the tediousness of the road he proposes that each of them shall tell on the way to Canterbury one tale and on the way back another--or for here the poem a little disagrees with itself two tales going and two returning; and that he or she who tells the best tale shall have on their return a supper for which all the others shall pay and which of course he Henry Bailey shall provide. Upon these terms he will without fee perform the part of their conductor to Canterbury and back again. In assenting the Pilgrims constitute him the judge of the tales; and thus mine host with his joyous temper courtesy where courtesy needs worldly sense rough sharp and ready wit and unappealable dictatorship in all matters of the commonwealth becomes a dramatic person of the very first consequence the animating soul of the poetical action; and who continually stepping in between the finishing of one tale and the beginning of the next organically links together the otherwise disunited and incomposite Series. The General Prologue contains as was unavoidable besides the scheme of the poem the description of the several Pilgrims and constitutes in itself by the versatile feeling with which the portraits are seized by the strength precision peculiarity liveliness rapidity and number of the strokes with which each is individualized--a masterpiece of poetical painting. One lost generation of Old England moves before us in the warmth and hues of life. The Knight his son the Squire his servant the good Yeoman--a gallant three--the Clerke of Oxenford the ""poure Person of a toun "" and his brother the Ploughman are each in his estate of thorough worthiness and are all accordingly drawn in a spirit of full affection. The Prioress and the Franklin are laughed at a little--she for the pains she gives herself to display her _imitative_ high breeding and for--only think it!--A.D. 1489--her SENTIMENTALITY!--he for his love of a plenteously-spread board and for his ""poignant sauces!"" But the two are good at heart; and the satire of the poet leaves to them undisturbed their place in your good esteem. His other men of some condition--the Monk the Friar the ""Sergeant of the Lawe "" the Merchant the ""Doctour of Physike""--he lashes with a more vigorous wrist. But not like a farce-monger who to gain your laugh must utterly abase his characters and make them merely ridiculous. The hunting Monk wants nothing but his hood off to be a distinguished country squire. He is ""_a manly man_ to be an abbot able!"" and if he keeps greyhounds they are ""as swift as fowl of flight."" And look but at his horse's points and condition! The rascal of a ""Frere "" if by his perseverance and persuasiveness in begging he impoverishes the county is a noble post of his order and well beloved and familiar with franklins and with worthy women. The Merchant has an assumed air of importance--magnifies his gains--thinks the protection of the sea betwixt the ports from which his vessels run the first duty of civilized governments--and keeps his wit set upon the main chance. But that is the worst of him--""For sothe he was _a worthy man_ withalle."" The Lawyer is at the top of his profession--wise witty perfect in statutes and in precedents high in honours. What are his faults? You can hardly tell. There is a slight ostentation of wisdom. He has got a deal of money together--he is full of business--but he ""_seems_ yet busier than he is."" The Doctor too is an excellent physician. He calls the stars in to his aid. But that may be Chaucer's belief not his mirth. He knows the disease and has the remedy at command. To be sure he and his apothecaries understand one another. He is learned in a thousand books; but not in THE BOOK. Gold is of high esteem in medicine as a cordial. Therefore he loves gold. Why go on? Like Shakspeare Chaucer portrays men in a spirit of humanity. He paints his fellows; and if he is amused with our follies he prefers showing the fairer side of our nature. Even the merry warm-blooded Wife of Bath with her five wedded husbands earns some goodwill of us by her joyous and invincible spirit. Imagine the daring the vigour and the stirring wit of the west-country cloth-manufacturess who cannot rest easy till she has been three times in pilgrimage to Jerusalem! There is a visible purpose of keeping up the RESPECTABILITY of the company. If the MILLER the COKE the REVE and the SOMPNOUR stand on a somewhat low step of the social stair--the HABERDASHER the CARPENTER the WEBBE (Weaver)--the DYER and the TAPISER--who are lumped in the poet's description-- ""Were al yclothed in ye liveree _Of a solempne and gret fraternitee_. * * * * _Wel semed ech of hem a fayr burgeis_ _To sitten in a gild halle_ ON THE DEIS."" They are of wisdom qualifying them to stand for Aldermen of their wards. Their wives are 'ycleped Madame'--take precedency in going to vigils--and have ----""A mantel reallich (_i.e._ royally) yborne."" Even our honest friend the Southwark innkeeper Henry Bailey has an air of dignity thrown over him. He was ""A semely man-- For to have ben _a marshal in an halle_. _A large man_ he was with eyen stepe [30] _A fairer burgeis is ther non in Chepe_. Bold of his speche and wise and _wel ytaught_ And of manhood him lacked righte nought."" Moreover even that chief of poetical Taverns the TABARD is designated as ""This _gentil_ hostelrie."" No wonder! since ""The _chambres and the stables weren wide_ And _wel we weren esed_ ATTE BESTE."" The Tales are in some respect like an extension of the Prologue. They carry out the characters or the spirit of the characters there drawn. Thus if the chivalry of the time is impersonated in respect of its valour honour and courteous demeanour in the Knight in his Tale it mounts into poetical aspiration and shines out in regal splendour. The contrast due to the different years of the father and the son is in part disappointed by the cross destiny which has ----""left half-told The story of Cambuscan bold."" The youthful fancy dipped or drenched in romance of the twenty-year old Squire shows itself indeed in the two sections which we have of his chivalrous narrative. The Sword which with its edge hews through all armour and with its ""plat"" heals the else incurable wounds of its own inflicting--the Mirror which discloses the plotting of the kingdom's enemies the truth or disloyalty of a distant lover--the Ring which enables its wearer to understand the ""leden"" of all birds and to answer them in the same--and the marvellous Horse of Brass which with turning of a pin and with a whisper in the ear carries his rider whither he would through the air vanishes and comes with a wish and farthermore behaves and comports himself wholly after the best fashion of a horse;--these four gifts from the King of Arabie and Inde to the Tartar king and his daughter transport us as with a flight of the magical courser himself into the deep wild and mystical heart of that region unplaced by geographers explored by the host of dreamers Romance. So the love-story of the forsaken Bird with whom the Ring brings the Princess acquainted is Eastern is amorous is high-fantastical fit for the 'lover and lusty bacheler ' who ----""Coude songes make and well indite Juste and eke dance""-- and stands off in complete distinction from the love-debate with argumentation and with arms of Palamon and Arcite. What is it then that we would have more? Truly we fear that for once we are half unreasonable. The Tale with beginning middle and end to satisfy the heart of Aristotle in the Knight's mouth--and the finely-begun fragment in the Squire's--are by their temper allied and opposed quite up to the dramatic propriety of the two speakers. What would we have more? Simply this that Chaucer by carrying to an end the unfinished fiction in the tone in which he has begun it should have demonstrated himself the master of his art which by his project he seems to be. The Knight's is a love-tale as well; but there is in the love-story an involving of political interests which together with the known historical names or such as are so reputed tempers the romantic confers a gravity and mixes in a tone of the world's business that suits the sedate reason and the various observation of the veteran warrior tried in high services. It would have been a pleasant feat of poetical understanding and skill especially for that unpractised day if a second equally gallant recital of love and war--long and complex it would by the intimations thrown out have been--could have been pursued throughout its natural evolutions and vicissitudes as resolutely as thus far it is upon its own meet self-sustained wing. It would have been! Oh vex not the shade of the true Maker with saucy doubts and fears! ""Call up Him!"" Yes--were there evocations of such potency; but ""call Him"" in the simplicity of your soul because he has moved in you the lawful desire of hearing--because you long insatiably to know what was done found suffered enjoyed by Cambalo Algarsif Canace: which none other segger disour maker harper and carper that shall ever arise shall have wit to tell you--not because you would fain sit in the chair of criticism awarding or withholding the palm of dramatic skill claimed by Dan Geffrey. Ay! ""call up Him!"" But call up no substitute for Him. The Sergeant of Laws' Tale and the Clerke of Oxenford's have an affinity. Each describes a tried wife an exemplar for all her sex two perfectly pure-souled women. And nothing is more honourable to Chaucer than the love with which he has dwelt upon the story of both. Both suffer to extremity; but Custance the Sergeant's heroine under the hand of Providence who proves her with strange calamities and when she has well-endured the ordeal restores her to deserved happiness. For the loving wife whom the Clerke of Oxenford praises a loving husband is pleased to devise a course of sharp assaying which might have been conveniently spared. The manner of telling in the two stories is marked with a difference. In both it is somewhat of the copious kind; and it may be observed generally that the style of the narrative in the seven-lined stanza or ""rime roiall "" is more diffuse than in the couplets. There is a difference between the two which appears to belong to the characters of the speakers. The Man of Law has not a few passages of exclamatory and apostrophical moral and sentimental rhetoric. They compel you to recollect his portrait-- ""Discret he was and of gret reverence He _seemed_ swiche his _wordes were so wise_."" The Clerk has nothing of the kind. The largeness in his manner of relating is rather an explicit and lucid fulness in representing an interesting subject than what is properly called diffuseness. Chaucer has said of him-- ""Not a word spake he more than was nede;"" and you will see accordingly that although he _details_ his narrative every word in its place is pertinent and serviceable. He ends with a freak which carries him you are disposed to think out of his character. He has related after Petrarch the story of patient Griseldis with beautiful earnestness and simplicity. He has conducted her through all the trials which the high-born lord thought good to lay upon the low-born wife has displayed and rewarded her inimitable ""wifly pacience "" and then confesses that not being imitable neither is it intended that it should be imitated. In short he ""stints of ernestful matere;"" and to ""gladen"" his audience ends with ""saying them a song "" in six quaintly-rhymed stanzas in which he counsels the wives to stand upon the defensive against their husbands and take all natural care of themselves-- ""Be ay of chere as light as lefe on linde And let _him_ care and wepe and wringe and wail."" The ironical counsel does not belie the moral of the story; but it comes unexpectedly from him whom the Hoste has called upon for his tale with remarking that he ""rides as still and coy as a maid newly espoused sits at her bord."" The Franklin has at home a graceless cub and heir of his own. If good living were one and the same thing with holy living this should the less easily have happened. The Franklin is wonderfully captivated with our young Squire's breeding grace and eloquence. The contrast brings his own ""burdane"" painfully into his mind and wrings from him a mortified exclamation. The old man with his sanguine complexion and his beard ""White as is the dayesie "" has--notwithstanding the sharp censorship which he exercises over his cook--a heart in his bosom. The pleasure with which he has heard the Squire vouches as much; and more decisively so does the story which he himself tells from the old Breton lays; another story of a virtuous wife strangely tried of all the three the most strangely. Her husband a knight is on a voyage and she takes a horror of the perilous rocks that edge their own shore. Meanwhile a youthful squire pursues her with love. One day in a mockery she promises to grant him his suit if he will remove all the rocks in a morning. After some perplexity of thought he resorts to an able magician at Orleans; who for the consideration of a thousand pounds undertakes and accomplished the feat. Who is now hard bestead but the lady? She in her strait consults her husband who has returned; and the honourable husband says--you must keep your word. The squire comes for his guerdon. ""My husband says that I must keep my word."" ""Indeed!--and shall a squire not know how to do a 'gentil dede ' as well as a knight? I release you your promise.""--He carries £500--all of the agreed sum that he can muster to the conjurer and prays of him time for the rest. ""Have I performed my undertaking?"" ""Yes!""--""And the lady hers?""--The squire is obliged to relate the sequence of events.--""And is a clerk "" exclaims the master ""less able to do a gentil dede than squire and knight? Keep thy money Sir Squire!"" That is a creditable tale for a country gentleman-- ""Whose table dormant in the halle alway Stood redy covered alle the longe day."" There is much feeling in the detail of the story and the magical shows by which the enchanter before striking his bargain demonstrates his competency and by which he afterwards executes his engagement are dressed out with vivid imagination. But now it is really high time that you should hear Dryden on Chaucer. For is not this Number IV. of our Specimens of the British Critics? ""With Ovid ended the golden age of the Roman tongue; from Chaucer the purity of the English tongue began. The manners of the poets were not unlike: both of them were well bred well natured amorous and libertine at least in their writings; it may be also in their lives. Their studies were the same--philosophy and philology. Both of them were knowing in astronomy; of which Ovid's _Books of the Roman Feasts_ and Chaucer's _Treatise of the Astrolabe_ are sufficient witnesses. But Chaucer was likewise an astrologer as were Virgil Horace Persius and Manilius. Both writ with wonderful facility and clearness; neither were great inventors; for Ovid only copied the Grecian fables and most of Chaucer's stories were taken from his Italian contemporaries or their predecessors--Boccace his 'Decameron' was first published; and from thence our Englishman has borrowed many of his 'Canterbury Tales.' Yet that of _Palamon and Arcite_ was written in all probability by some Italian wit in a former age as I shall prove hereafter. The tale of _Grisilde_ was the invention of Petrarch; by him sent to Boccace from whom it came to Chaucer. _Troilus and Cressida_ was also written by a Lombard author but much amplified by our English translator as well as beautified; the genius of our countrymen in general being rather to improve an invention than to invent themselves as is evident not only in our poetry but in many of our manufactures. I find I have anticipated already and taken up from Boccace before I come to him; but there is so much less behind; and I am of the temper of most kings who love to be in debt are all for present money no matter how they pay it afterwards; besides the nature of a preface is rambling never wholly out of the way nor in it. This I have learned from the practice of honest Montaigne and return at my pleasure to Ovid and Chaucer of whom I have little more to say. Both of them built on the inventions of other men; yet since Chaucer had something of his own as _The Wife of Bath's Tale_ _The Cock and the Fox_ which I have translated and some others I may justly give our countryman the precedence in that part; since I can remember nothing of Ovid which was wholly his. Both of them understood the manners; under which name I comprehend the passions and in a larger sense the descriptions of persons and their very habits. For an example I see Baucis and Philemon as perfectly before me as if some ancient painter had drawn them; and all the pilgrims in the _Canterbury Tales_ their humours their features and their very dress as distinctly as if I had supped with them at the Tabard in Southwark. Yet even there too the figures of Chaucer are much more lively and set in a better light; which though I have not time to prove yet I appeal to the reader and am sure he will clear me from partiality. The thoughts and words remain to be considered in the comparison of the two poets and I have saved myself one-half of that labour by owning that Ovid lived when the Roman tongue was in its meridian; Chaucer in the dawning of our language; therefore that part of the comparison stands not on an equal foot any more than the diction of Ennius and Ovid or of Chaucer and our present English. The words are given up as a post not to be defended in our poet because he wanted the modern art of fortifying. The thoughts remain to be considered; and they are to be measured only by their propriety; that is as they flow more or less naturally from the persons described on such and such occasions. The vulgar judges which are nine parts in ten of all nations who call conceits and jingles wit who see Ovid full of them and Chaucer altogether without them will think me little less than mad for preferring the Englishman to the Roman. Yet with their leave I must presume to say that the things they admire are only glittering trifles and so far from being witty that in a serious poem they are nauseous because they are unnatural. Would any man who is ready to die for love describe his passions like Narcissus; would he think of _inopem me copia fecit_ and a dozen more of such expressions poured on the neck of one another and signifying all the same thing? This is just John Littlewit in 'Bartholomew Fair ' who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a miserable conceit. On these occasions the poet should endeavour to raise pity; but instead of this Ovid is tickling you to laugh. Virgil never made use of such machines when he was moving you to commiserate the death of Dido; he would not destroy what he was building. Chaucer makes Arcite violent in his love and unjust in the pursuit of it; yet when he came to die he made him think more reasonably: he repents not of his love for that had altered his character; but acknowledges the injustice of his proceedings and resigns Emilia to Palamon. What would Ovid have done on this occasion? He would certainly have made Arcite witty on his deathbed;--he had complained he was farther off from possession by being so near and a thousand such boyisms which Chaucer rejected as below the dignity of the subject. They who think otherwise would by the same reason prefer Lucan and Ovid to Homer and Virgil and Martial to all four of them. As for the turn of words in which Ovid particularly excels all poets they are sometimes a fault and sometimes a beauty as they are used properly or improperly; but in strong passions always to be shunned because passions are serious and will admit no playing. The French have a high value for them; and I confess they are often what they call delicate when they are introduced with judgment; but Chaucer writ with more simplicity and followed nature more closely than to use them. I have thus far to the best of my knowledge been an upright judge betwixt the parties in competition not meddling with the design nor the disposition of it; because the design was not their own; and in the disposing of it they were equal. It remains that I say something of Chaucer in particular. ""In the first place as he is the father of English poetry so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer or the Romans Virgil. He is a perpetual fountain of good sense; learned in all sciences and therefore speaks properly on all subjects. As he knew what to say so he knows also when to leave off a continence which is practised by few writers and scarcely by any of the ancients excepting Virgil and Horace. One of our late great poets is sunk in his reputation because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his way but swept like a drag-net great and small. There was plenty enough but the dishes were ill sorted; whole pyramids of sweetmeats for boys and women but little of solid meat for men. All this proceeded not from any want of knowledge but of judgment. Neither did he want that in discerning the beauties and faults of other poets but only indulged himself in the luxury of writing; and perhaps knew it was a fault but hoped the reader would not find it. For this reason though he must always be thought a great poet he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten impressions which his works have had in so many successive years yet at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth; for as my last Lord Rochester said though somewhat profanely 'Not being of God he could not stand.' ""Chaucer followed nature every where but was never so bold to go beyond her; and there is a great difference of being _poeta_ and _nimis poeta_ if we may believe Catullus as much as betwixt a modest behaviour and affectation. * * * ""He must have been a man of most wonderful comprehensive nature because as it has been truly observed of him he has taken into the compass of his _Canterbury Tales_ the various manners and humours (as we may now call them) of the whole English nation in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other; and not only in their inclinations but in their very physiognomies and persons. Baptista Porta could not have described their natures better than by the marks which the poet gives them. The matter and manner of their tales and of their telling are so suited to their different educations humours and callings that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity; their discourses are such as belong to their age their calling and their breeding; such as are becoming of them and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious and some virtuous; some are unlearned or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd and some are learned. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different; the Reeve the Miller and the Cook are several men and distinguished from each other as much as the mincing Lady Prioress and the broad-speaking gap-toothed Wife of Bath. But enough of this; there is such a variety of game springing up before me that I am distracted in my choice and know not which to follow. It is sufficient to say according to the proverb that here is God's plenty. We have our forefathers and great-granddames all before us as they were in Chaucer's days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind and even in England though they are called by other names than those of monks and friars and canons and lady-abbesses and nuns; for mankind is ever the same and nothing lost out of nature though every thing is altered. May I have leave to do myself the justice (since my enemies will do me none and are so far from granting me to be a good poet that they will not allow me so much as to be a Christian or a moral man ) may I ha
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e leave I say to inform my reader that I have confined my choice to such tales of Chaucer as savour nothing of immodesty. If I had desired more to please than to instruct the Reeve the Miller the Shipman the Merchant the Sumner and above all the Wife of Bath in the prologue to her tale would have procured me as many friends and readers as there are beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town. But I will no more offend against good manners. I am sensible as I ought to be of the scandal I have given by my loose writings; and make what reparation I am able by this public acknowledgment. If any thing of this nature or of profaneness be crept into these poems I am so far from defending it that I disown it _totum hoc indictum volo_. Chaucer makes another manner of apology for his broad speaking and Boccace makes the like; but I will follow neither of them."" An English reader is likely to have held his way through the Palamon and Arcite of Dryden ere arriving at the knight's Tale of Chaucer. It will not easily happen that he overleaps that Version so full of the fire and vigorous grace which he delights in and couched in the very choicest of that English on which his ears habitually feed to introduce himself all at once to the antique and to him obsolete Original. The pure impression therefore with which he would read the Tale in its proper place if he there first got acquainted with it is hardly to be obtained. No matter! Forget Dryden and plunge yourself into Chaucer. Be surprised if you can as you surely will be amused at encountering the inextricable commixture of manners usages tones thinkings and speakings which time and space have done their best at keeping asunder--the chivalry of modern Europe and of the middle ages transplanted into the heroic age of old Greece and to the Court of Theseus ""Duk of Athenes."" Be surprised and amused but do not therefore lay the book out of your hand or laugh the old master to scorn or do him other than reverent and honourable justice. Take rather the story to pieces convince yourself step by step how strangely at every turn the old world and the new the Christian and the Heathen are confounded together and feel at every step how the vitality which the good poet has infused into his work reconciles and atones discordancies and discrepancies; and in spite of the perplexing physiognomy how that must needs be one body which is informed and actuated through all its joints and members by one spirit. Take in pieces the story--untwist the intertwined classical and romantic threads. Make sure of the fault and then hasten to forgive it. The fault! Are you quite sure that it is one? Recollect that it is not Chaucer who relates the Knight's Tale. Chaucer is here a dramatic poet and his Knight relates his own tale. What!--Shall he who has ""full often time the bord begun ""-- ""Aboven allé natiouns in Pruce;"" who has ""reysed in Lettowe and in Ruce "" has been-- ""In Gernade at the siege Of Algesir and ridden in Belmarie;"" who was-- ""At Leyes and at Satalie When they were wonne; and in the Grete See At many a noble armee;""-- he who has been at-- ""Mortal battailes fiftene And foughten for our faith at Tramisene In listes thries and ay slain his fo""-- shall he upon the qualm of a queasy criticism not be allowed to transfer something of the ""Chevalrie Truth and honor fredom and courtesie "" which ""from the time that he first began to riden out "" he has loved--across a gap of a few hundred leagues and years? To what end else it may be asked has he approved himself ""full worthy in his lordes werre "" and ""ridden thereto no man ferre ""-- ""As well in Christendom as in Hethenesse And ever honor'd for his worthinesse?"" Why the Knight would have been no knight at all if he had been Richard Bentley or John Milton and not as there is every reason to hope he was _le noble et vaillant Chivaler_ MATHEU DE GOURNEY whose marble tells us that he had fought at Benamaryn and Algezire and been at abundance of battles and sieges named and unnamed in Christendom and Heathenesse--""_en les quex il gaigna noblement graunt los et honour_""--and who ""died in 1406 at the age of 96."" It is therefore Sir Matheu de Gourney who speaks like a knight of knighthood--and let him speak-- ""Who never yet no vilainie ne sayde In all his life unto no manere wight.""-- Let him speak justifying his eulogist and showing us as well as may be by his words what his deeds showed the world that-- ""He was a veray parfit gentil knight!"" The first transaction that is related with some full process is the chivalrous enterprise of Theseus against Creon; King of Thebes. This dispiteous and abominable tyrant prohibits the bodies of the warriors fallen in the celebrated siege of that city from burial. The widows of the slain princes and nobles move Theseus for vengeance and redress which he instantly undertakes and forthwith executes. And now mark the admixture of times and manners. In the first place the heinousness of the crime and even the imagination of such an impiety are purely antique as in truth the fact itself is on classical record in the ""Antigone"" of Sophocles. Again the suppliant bereaved and woebegone wives have awaited Theseus's coming ""in the temple of the goddess Clemency "" than which nothing can be more classical; and the manner in which at his return home from his victorious war upon the ""Amasones "" the sorrowful company receive him kneeling by two and two clothed in black along the highway might persuade you that Sir Matheu had read the OEdipus Tyrannus and successfully imitated OEdipus's dolorous and picturesque reception in the streets of Thebes by the kneeling plague-smitten population of the city. On the other hand the claim of redress at the hand of the warrior carries your imagination to the interesting volumes of St Palaye; and clearly refers to the obligation by which the knight at his investiture bound himself to redress all wrongs especially those of the ladies. And Theseus is nothing slack in acknowledging the obligation. He dismounts takes them each and all up in his arms ""And swore his oth _as he was trewe knight_ "" that he will do his endeavour that the world shall applaud the chastising of the ""false king.""--Again when the one day's demolishing fight has given Creon to death and his Land into Theseus's hand and the two right Heroes of the Tale the Theban cousins Palamon and Arcite are dragged out half-alive and half-dead from the heap of the slain the ""herauds"" know them by the ""cote-armoure "" to be of the blood-royal. Of course they are designated ""knights.""--Again: Theseus will take no ransom for them. That is perhaps indifferently ancient or modern; but it sounds to our ears rather modern that he shuts them up in a high tower which overlooks the Garden of his Palace. But now we plunge into the bosom of our own Heroic times. To do observance to the May is a rite that we find continually occurring in the poetry of the middle ages. It is on May morning that Emelie going into the garden to gather flowers and wreathe for herself a coronal is first seen by the two captive Theban kinsmen. Again when Arcite liberated by the intervention of Pirithous has returned and is living unrecognized in the service of Theseus it is precisely upon the same occasion of going into the wood to gather ""grenes"" for May morning that he falls in with Palamon who has the night before broken prison and hides himself during the day in the forest--which encounter leads to their set encounter in arms the next day and so to the interruption of their duel by Theseus himself and so to all the consequent course of events. Whatever the true rites of returning May may have been in classical antiquity the observance comes into this tale from the manners of mediæval Europe not of ancient Greece. With what glad and light ritual the Athenians in the first years after the war of the Seven Chiefs against Thebes did homage to their king and queen of the May we do not remember to have seen distinctly described. At this day the young folk of old Hellas parade the streets shouting the classical [Greek: chelidônisma] or song of the swallow on the 1st of March. The Romans held their Floralia from the 28th of April to the 1st of May danced and sang and had games and crowned themselves with garlands and with flowers. Nevertheless you instinctively feel that the singularly graceful picture of Emelie called up from slumber by the dawning May morning and proceeding to pluck in the royal garden the dew-fresh and bright materials of her own coronal owes nothing to the lore of books but is breathingly imaged from some gracious original of our own good fourteenth century. You remain assured that the trustworthy poet records his own proper love-experience in adjusting the occasion that is to vivify with a new passion the dolorous prison of the two Thebans and turn the sworn brothers-in-arms into rivals at deadly feud with each other. That rougher age of the world--rude the day was not that produced and cherished Chaucer--had this virtue that the grown-up men and women were still by a part of their heart children. The welcoming-in of the May is described by the old poets in different countries of Europe as a passion--seizing upon young and old high and low. All were for the hour children--children of nature. When therefore that love at first sight which immediately becomes a destiny to the two kinsmen governing their whole after-life is in this manner attached by our poet to the visit made upon this occasion by Emelie to the garden which their tower overlooks the reader is entitled to understand that the poet does for him the very best thing any poet can do that he infuses into his poetical dream his own pulsating life-blood. The immense joy and universal jubilee of nature called out by the annual renewing of warmth light life and beauty and the share and the sympathy of man in the diffusive and exuberant benediction fix themselves and take form in stated and ordered celebrations all the world over. It seems hard to deny to any nation the rejoicing on the return of summer. All have it. Yet certainly Chaucer paints from his own experience and not from erudition. The poem of ""The Cuckou and the Nightingale"" is a mere extolling of love and the May. The exordium is a sort of incidental hymn to the Love-god and runs into affirming and arguing at some length the peculiar energy of his dominion in this month. ""And most his might he shedeth ever in May."" The Complaint of the Black Knight--love is his complaint--falls in May. The unhappy lover has built himself a lodge or bower in the greenwood whether with returning May he withdraws himself from all feasts societies and throngs of men to dedicate himself to love-mourning and where under the trees whilst the month of love lasts he remains abandoned to his love-martyrdom. That 'Dreme of Chaucer ' which has been supposed although Tyrwhitt thinks fancifully to refer to the marriage of John of Gaunt with the Lady Blanche happens as he lay alone on a night of May thinking of his lady. The opening of the Flower and Leaf puts you in doubt whether you are not rather in April than in May; but by and by you find that the nightingale has been all the day long singing the service of May. All this amorous and poetical caressing of the May discovers in the twice resting the process of events in ""The Knight's Tale"" upon the observance of May-day a significancy otherwise perhaps less evident. Shakspeare in the verse-- ""As full of spirits as the month of May "" expresses the natural ground which ceremony and eulogy solemn or quaint have artificially displayed in the usages of old times and in the poetry of Chaucer. But to return to our two knights. They are _brothers-in-arms_--by the by rather a romantic than a classical institution--and so pledged to help one another in love; and the question arises as the ground of a long argument which is traitor to the other. Yet here too is intermixed the classical with the romantic. For Palamon who first sees Emelie takes her for the goddess Venus; on which Arcite ingeniously founds his own plea that _he_ first loved her as a woman and so is entitled to the help of the other. Their silent arming of one another for mortal duel in the forest each ""As frendly as he were his owen brother "" reminds you of chivalrous loyalty and faith; although it would be hard to deny that the antique warriors might have been as honest. But the truth is that in Homer every knight arms himself and the two Thebans must have worn modern armour to need this help. And yet here what a classical relief in the simile of the hunter! Of all transplantation from the modern to the ancient tempered nevertheless with antiquity their great listed Duel stands foremost. Take it with all the circumstances that introduce it. Whilst the kinsmen are fighting Theseus rides up ""pulled out a sword and cried Ho!"" This is the language of the 14th century and the western side of Europe. But he swears by ""mighty Mars "" that the first who strikes another stroke shall lose his head. Both are liable to death. Palamon for having broken prison and Arcite because his avoiding Athenian ground on pain of death was an original condition of his liberation. Theseus' challenge to them ""Tell me who ye are that are so bold as to fight here without judge or officer "" is the manner of the poet's day. In the time of Theseus fighting in a wood near Athens was free to all the world. What saves them? The interposition of the ladies! Queen princess court and all who think it a pity two gallant young ""gentil men"" of ""gret estat"" shall die and all for love. The duke is moved; for pity soon melts in a ""gentil herte."" And he appoints a regular Tournament--that at the year's end they shall meet each bringing a hundred knights and fight it out. He pledges himself 'upon his troth and as he is a knight ' that he who shall slay his adversary or 'out of listes him drive ' shall have Emelie to wife. The lists are--from the hint of antiquity--a regular Amphitheatre a mile about--walled and the seats in steps to the height of sixty paces. Art and wealth have been lavished in making the field worthy of the fight. Over the Eastern gate is an altar and an ""Oratorie"" to Venus--over the Western to Mars--on the North side is one to Diana. The description of the three Fanes is of surpassing power. Among the portraitures in that of Mars is the Suicide for whom the relater poet or knight forgets himself in his vivid conception and says that he _saw it_. The allies of the two knights are both classically and romantically chosen. With Palamon comes ""Licurge the grete king of Trace."" That is classical. With Arcite ""the grete Emetrius the king of Inde."" That is romantic. The persons of the two kings are described at large with great strength and fecundity of painting. And here again in the way of art the contrast is admirably sustained and effective. Licurge is the older more uncouth and giant-like. The youthful Emetrius is more splendid and knightly. Both are thoroughly regal and formidable. Licurge is black-bearded for the sake of more savage effect; wherefore the monarch of Inde contrariwise to the actual distribution of races over the earth or more properly speaking to the known influence of climate is fair. His crisp and ringed locks are yellow and glitter like the sun. His complexion may trouble the physiologists; but is not likely to discompose the poetical reader under the tuition of Christopher North. The ""foure white bolles"" that draw the 'char of gold' upon which the Thracian _stands_ are as antique as you can devise. The tamed eagle as any lily white which Emetrius carries ""for his deduit""--therefore in lieu of a hawk upon his hand is of manners that are almost our own. Each king brings his own hundred knights. They arrive ""on the Sonday abouten prime."" The tilting will be next day. The three persons principally interested in the issue of the impending combat perform in the interval their devotions at the three several shrines which have been aptly provided for them in the building of the lists. Each of them obtains an answer from the respective deity. Two hours ere the day Palamon visits the oratory of Venus. He prays that he may win Emelie although he should lose what comparatively he regards with indifference the palm of the conflict. The statue of the goddess renders after a long delay the signal of acceptance. Emelie at sunrise worships Diana. Her first prayer is that she may remain till death the virgin servant herself a huntress of the divine huntress; and if that may not be that he may win her who best loves her. Upon the altar she kindles two fires which burn ominously. One goes out and revives again. Then the other is wholly quenched--drops of blood falling out from the hissing and burning brands. All this the process of the combat and its consequences afterwards elucidate; as the appearing goddess forewarns her chaste worshipper. The 'nexte hour of Marte'--whereof anon--Arcite offers prayer and incense to the God of War. He is accepted and victory promised; but the oracular voice murmurs the words faintly and hollowly. All this intricate omination comes forcibly out in the sequence of events; and is in itself as you feel at all events right classical. The treatment of the Hours lies deeper. It is astrological. For the twelve now longer and now shorter hours into which the time from sunrise to sunset--and the twelve now shorter and now longer into which the time from sunset to sunrise was divided belonged to the Seven Planets in the order Saturn Jupiter Mars Sol Venus Mercury Luna--by following out which order you will discover that since the first hour of Sunday belongs to the Sun giving name to the day--the twenty-third hour or the second before sunrise of the following day will belong to Venus to whom Palamon then prays--and the hour of sunrise next day belongs to the Moon or Diana to whom Emelie then addresses herself. Following the circle you find that the fourth hour of Monday belongs to Mars. This is Arcite's hour. And if you wonder how such Chaldaic and Egyptian lore should come into your tale of chivalry you will be relieved by understanding that these dedications had in our poetical ages due popularity for infusing into them a poetical efficiency; forasmuch as an old French ""Shepherds' Calendar "" cited by Tyrwhitt alleges the very rule which we have given for the instruction of him ""who will weet how the Shepherds do wit which planet reigneth every hour of the day and of the night."" This timing therefore of sacrifice and orison to the planetary hours is pertinently and speakingly feigned by Chaucer. The Tournament follows which is mediæval enough. Arcite according to the promise of Mars is victorious. Palamon is taken and bound. But here is the difficulty. Venus has promised Emelie to Palamon. Saturn the [Greek: agchylomêtis] finds a remedy and gratifies his grand-daughter. As Arcite the victor having taken off his helmet rides along the lists to show himself to all and especially to Emelie Pluto at the request of Saturn sends an infernal fury who starts up out of the ground before him. The scared horse plunges and stumbles; Arcite is thrown upon his head and taken up for dead. He is not dead; but he dies and is burned after the fashion of Patroclus and Hector; and twelve months after his virgin widow is by Theseus given in marriage to Palamon. What is the real effect of all this commixture? The truth is that under such circumstances after a little resistance and struggling you give in and let the poet have his own way provided that he is a poet. There is but one condition--that the poet put into whatever manners true life. Then you willingly give up your own dull book-learning and accept his painting for the authentic record of reality. You are in fact gradually conducted to this pass that you look upon history as useful for ministering materials to poetry not upon poetry as bound to teach history. But Chaucer _has_ wonderfully put life into the classical part of the poem so that you can hardly say that he seems more at home in giving the manners which he had seen than in reviving the manners which he had only read. He has this in common with Shakspeare. In common with Shakspeare he has too the apology for the confusion of manners--of having lived before we were as critical in the costume of ages and nations as we now are. The 'Knight's Tale ' after the requisition usually laid upon an epic fable makes use and skilfully of preternatural machinery. And here we will venture a vindication against an illustrious critic. The first suggestion to the banished Arcite of returning to Athens comes to him in sleep. There is a slight invoking of the supernatural--at least of the fabulous. He dreams that Mercury appears and announces to him an end of his woe at Athens. On awaking he casts his eyes on a mirror and sees that he is so changed with love-pining that he no longer knows himself--goes in disguise to Athens offers himself to serve in the household of Emelie and is accepted. Sir W. Scott blames this introduction of Mercury as needless but let it be remembered:---- _First_ That this is introductory to far more important divine interpositions is in keeping with them and prepares the imagination for them. _Secondly_ That so managed it is the least violent intervention of a god; the apparition being ambiguous between a natural dream and a real divine manifestation: an ambiguity which by the by is quite after the antique. So Mercury appears to Æneas in a dream in the Fifth Book of the Æneid: and compare Hector's Ghost &c. _Thirdly_ That a psychological fact may be understood as here ""lively shadowed:""--namely that active purposes have often their birth during the mystery of sleep; and it would be a very felicitous poetical expression of this phenomenon to turn the oracular suggestion of the soul into a deity--_Sua cuique_ DEUS _fit dira cupido_. _Fourthly_ It is completely probable that the fancy of a believer in Mercury would actually shape his own dreaming thought into the suitable deity.--The vision is lightly touched by Chaucer and gracefully translated by Dryden. The classical inventions throughout appear to be very much from Boccaccio; but the poetry of the relation Chaucer's own. Do you wish to see Dryden in his majesty? Look here:-- ""But in the dome of mighty Mars the red With different figures all the sides were spread. This temple less in form with equal grace Was imitative of the first in Thrace: For that cold region was the loved abode And sovereign mansion of the warrior god. The landscape was a forest wide and bare Where neither beast nor human kind repair; The fowl that scent afar the borders fly And shun the bitter blast and wheel about the sky. A cake of scurf lies baking on the ground And prickly stubs instead of trees are found; Or woods with knots and knares deform'd and old Headless the most and hideous to behold; A rattling tempest through the branches went That stripp'd them bare and one sole way they bent. Heaven froze above severe the clouds congeal And through the crystal vault appear'd the standing hail. Such was the face without; a mountain stood Threat'ning from high and overlook'd the wood; Beneath the lowering brow and on a bent The temple stood of Mars armipotent; The frame of burning steel that cast a glare From far and seem'd to thaw the freezing air. A straight long entry to the temple led Blind with high walls and horror overhead; Thence issued such a blast and hollow roar As threaten'd from the hinge to heave the door; In through that door a northern light there shone; 'Twas all it had for windows there were none. The gate was adamant eternal frame! Which hew'd by Mars himself from Indian quarries came The labour of a God; and all along Tough iron plates were clench'd to make it strong. A ton about was every pillar there; A polish'd mirror shone not half so clear; There saw I how the secret felon wrought And treason labouring in the traitor's thought And midwife Time the ripen'd plot to murder brought. There the red Anger dared the pallid Fear; Next stood Hypocrisy with holy leer; Soft-smiling and demurely looking down But hid the dagger underneath the gown; The assassinating wife the household fiend; And far the blackest there the traitor-friend. On t'other side there stood Destruction bare Unpunish'd Rapine and a waste of war; Contest with sharpen'd knives in cloisters drawn And all with blood bespread the holy lawn. Loud menaces were heard and foul disgrace And bawling infamy in language base Till sense was lost in sound and silence fled the place. The slayer of himself yet saw I there The gore congeal'd was clotted in his hair With eyes half closed and gaping mouth he lay And grim as when he breathed his sullen soul away. In midst of all the dome Misfortune sate And gloomy Discontent and fell Debate And Madness laughing in his ireful mood; And arm'd complaint on theft and cries of blood. There was the murder'd corpse in covert laid And violent death in thousand shapes display'd The city to the soldiers' rage resign'd Successless wars and poverty behind: Ships burnt in fight or forced on rocky shores And the rash hunter strangled by the boars; The new-born babe by nurses overlaid; And the cook caught within the raging fire he made. All ills of Mars his nature flame and steel; The gasping charioteer beneath the wheel Of his own car; the ruin'd house that falls And intercepts her lord betwixt the walls. The whole division that to Mars pertains All trades of death that deal in steel for gains Were there; the butcher armourer and smith Who forges sharpen'd faulchions or the scythe. The scarlet conquest on a tower was placed With shouts and soldiers' acclamations graced; A pointed sword hung threat'ning o'er his head Sustain'd but by a slender twine of thread. There saw I Mars his Ides the Capitol The seer in vain foretelling Cæsar's fall; The last Triumvirs and the wars they move And Antony who lost the world for love: These and a thousand more the Fane adorn Their fates were painted ere the men were born; All copied from the heavens and ruling force Of the red star in his revolving course. The form of Mars high on a chariot stood All sheathed in arms and gruffly look'd the God: Two geomantic figures were display'd Above his head a warrior and a maid One when direct and one when retrograde."" ""The Knight's Tale the longest and most laboured of Chaucer's stories possesses a degree of regularity which might satisfy the most severe critic. It is true that the honour arising from thence must be assigned to the more ancient bard who had himself drawn his subject from an Italian model; but the high and decided preference which Dryden has given to this story although somewhat censured by Trapp enables us to judge how much the poet held an accurate combination of parts and coherence of narrative essentials of epic poetry."" This is in Sir Walter's happiest natural vein; not so the astounding passage that follows it. ""_That a classic scholar_ like Trapp should think the plan of the Knight's Tale equal to that of the Iliad _is a degree of candour not to be hoped for_; but surely to an unprejudiced reader a story which exhausts in its conclusion all the interest which it has excited in its progress; which when terminated leaves no question to be asked no personage undisposed of and no curiosity unsatisfied _is abstractedly considered more gratifying than the history of a few weeks of a ten years' war commenced long after the siege had begun and ending long before the city was taken_!"" Why is not this the true and magnificent praise of the Iliad that from the heart of the immense war it has taken out a story of individual interest which begins where your curiosity asks and where your sympathy finds repose? Achilles--his quarrel with Agamemnon--his loss of Patrocles--his vengeance on Hector--accomplished when he willingly relinquishes the body to burial? That is the integrity of an epic fable which employs the Ten Years' War not for its subject but for the illimitable field in which its gigantic subject moves. He was the greatest of the poets who knew how to make the storms rising and falling in the single breast of the goddess-born _more_ to you his hearer than the war which has encamped a hundred thousand Greeks in siege before the imperial city of Priam. From a great poet the most Homeric of modern poets--what a judgment on the Iliad! Trapp's words are--""Novimus judicium Drydeni de poemate quodam Chauceri pulchro sane illo et admodum laudando nimirum quod non modo vere epicum sit sed Iliada etiam atque Æneada æquet imo superet. Sed novimus eodem tempore viri illius maximi non semper accuratissimas esse censuras nec ad severississimam critices normam exactas: _illo judice id plerumque optimum est quod nunc præ manibus habet et in quo nunc occupatur_."" Perfectly true. What says Dryden? ""It is of the epic kind and perhaps not much inferior to the 'Ilias' or the 'Æneid.' The story is more pleasing than either of them the manners as perfect the diction as poetical the learning as deep and various and the disposition full as artful only it includes a greater length of time as taking up seven years at least."" Godwin says truly ""This eulogium must be acknowledged to be written in a spirit of ridiculous and impertinent exaggeration."" And he then says as truly that it is ""full of novelty and surprise is every where alive comprises the most powerful portrait of chivalry that was perhaps ever believed and possesses every thing in splendour and in action that can most conspicuously point out the scenes of the narrative to the eye of the reader."" Dryden's version is indeed what Warton has pronounced it to be--""the most animated and harmonious piece of versification in the English language."" If you ask what reconciles you to the prevalent confusion of manners in this noble poem it is the earnest simple spirit with which the Knight goes on relating as if he believed every word. It is as we said with Chaucer as with Shakspeare. Shakspeare mixes times of the world and we bear it. Iachimo a complete modern Italian--a more courtly Iago--serves under Lucius general to some emperor--we forget which if we ever knew--of old Rome; and beguiles to the death almost that Posthumus Leonatus--a Celt by the by with two Latin names--to whom Jupiter--not exactly the supreme deity of the Celto-British Pantheon--descends in actual presence. We the auditors or the readers meanwhile breathe no whisper of doubt or dissatisfaction. Why should we? We believe with eye and ear and imagination and heart; and are as fain of our wildly-compounded--_real-unreal_--dream as the birds are of the dawning. Hamlet born and bred in the court of our own Elizabeth and abruptly called up to Town on the point of graduating with honours at Oxford is shown to our credulous apprehension rooted upon a soil and in a century when and where there were no human shapes to be met with but bloodthirsty Vikings and invulnerable Berserkers. And we take all in excellent part. Why shall we not? We gain past all computation by the slight intellectual concession. Besides we cannot well help ourselves; for we are not the Masters. The enchanter is the Master:--who sets us down not after the saying of Horace now in Greece and now in Britain--but in Britain and in Greece at one and the same moment. Shakspeare commingles widely divided times; and why two hundred years before him shall not Chaucer? It requires practice to read Chaucer. Not only do you need familiarizing to a form of the language which is not your own but much more to a simplicity of style which at first appears to you like barenness and poverty. It seems meagre. You miss too much the rich and lavish colours of the later time. Your eye is used to gorgeousness and gaudiness. The severe plainness of the old manner wants zest for you. But when you are used to Chaucer can accept his expression and think and feel with him this hinderance wears off. You find a strong imagination--a gentle pathos--no lack of accumulation where needed--but the crowding is always of effective circumstances or images--a playfulness upon occasion even in serious writing--but the special characteristic of the style is that the word is always to the purpose. He amply possesses his language and his sparing expression is chosen and never inadequate--never indigent. His rule is that for every phrase there be matter; and narrative or argument is thus constantly progressive. He does not appear to be hurried out
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f himself by the heat of composition. His good understanding completely goes along with him and weighs every word. Dryden's rendering of Chaucer is a totally distinct operation from his Englishing of Virgil--Homer--Lucretius--Juvenal--Ovid. And you are satisfied that it should be so. He could not transfer these poets accomplished in art and using their language in an age of its perfection with _too_ close a likeness of themselves. He translates because the language is unknown to his presumed reader. This is but half his motive with Chaucer. The language would be more easily got over; but the mind is of another age and that is less accessible--more distant from us than the obsolete dialect. We are contented to have the style of that day translated into the style of our own. Is this a dereliction of poetical principle? Hardly. The spirited and splendid verse and language of Dryden have given us a new poem. Why should our literature have forborne from so enriching herself? Hear Dryden himself. ""But there are other judges who think I ought not to have translated Chaucer into English out of a quite contrary notion. They suppose there is a certain veneration due to his old language and that it is little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. They are farther of opinion that somewhat of his good sense will suffer in this transfusion and much of the beauty of his thoughts will infallibly be lost which appear with more grace in their old habit. Of this opinion as that excellent person whom I mentioned the late Earl of Leicester who valued Chaucer as much as Mr Cowley despised him. My lord dissuaded me from this attempt (for I was thinking of it some years before his death ) and his authority prevailed so far with me as to defer my undertaking while he lived in deference to him; yet my reason was not convinced with what he urged against it. If the first end of writer be to be understood then as his language grows obsolete his thoughts must grow obscure. '_Multa renascentur quæ jam cecidere; cadentque Quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula si volet usus Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi!_ ""When an ancient word for its sound and significancy deserves to be revived I have that reasonable veneration for antiquity to restore it. All beyond this is superstition. Words are not like landmarks so sacred as never to be removed. Customs are changed and even statutes are silently repealed when the reason ceases for which they were enacted. As for the other part of the argument--that his thoughts will lose of their original beauty by the innovation of words--in the first place not only their beauty but their being is lost where they are no longer understood which is the present case. I grant that something must be lost in all transfusion--that is in all translations; but the sense will remain which would otherwise be lost or at least be maimed when it is scarce intelligible and that but to a few. How few are there who can read Chaucer so as to understand him perfectly! And if imperfectly then with less profit and no pleasure. It is not for the use of some old Saxon friends that I have taken these pains with him--let them neglect my version because they have no need of it. I made it for their sakes who understand sense and poetry as well as they when that poetry and sense is put into words which they understand. I will go further and dare to add that what beauties I lose in some places I give to others which had them not originally. But in this I may be partial to myself; let the reader judge and I submit to his decision. Yet I think I have just occasion to complain of them who because they understand Chaucer would deprive the greater part of their countrymen of the same advantage and hoard him up as misers do their granddam gold only to look on it themselves and hinder others from making use of it. In sum I seriously protest that no man ever had or can have a greater veneration for Chaucer than myself. I have translated some part of his works only that I might perpetuate his memory or at least refresh it amongst my countrymen. If I have altered him any where for the better I must at the same time acknowledge that I could have done nothing without him. _Facile est inventis addere_ is no great commendation; and I am not so vain to think I have deserved a greater."" You are an Englishman and a scholar in your mother-tongue. Good! You have dabbled it may be in Anglo-Saxon Alfred's English. It is all very well. You read Chaucer easily. We congratulate you. You will we hope love the speech and the soul and the green grassy mould of old England all the better. We praise you for searching England near and far high and low. Do this heartily; do this understandingly; and you are excellently engaged. But do not grudge your next neighbour who is merely a modern Englishman--a thorough good-fellow of one however--_his_ Chaucer in a tongue and manner that he can read without stepping out of himself--his Chaucer for his possession of whom he thanks Dryden and from his grateful heart ejaculates ""glorious John!"" MAYNOOTH. It is due to the character of this Journal unflinching in its Conservative politics through one entire stormy generation that in any great crisis of public interest or in any fervent strife of public opinion it should utter its voice strongly; under the shape of a protest and a parting testimony to the truth where the case practically may be hopeless; under the shape of a hearty effort co-operating with other efforts where the case is _not_ hopeless. There is nothing more depressing to patriotic honour and loyalty than the cowardice of despondency even when a cause has touched the very brink of defeat; and we believe that no spectacle of firmness is more naturally congenial to the temper of our countrymen than the fidelity which still makes signal of its affection in circumstances desperate for resistance and which in mortal extremities will not relax its hold from a cause once conscientiously adopted. Do we insinuate by this that the anti-Maynooth cause looks desperate? Our trust is otherwise. But if it were what we say is that not the less the duty remains sacred of hoping after all light of encouragement seems to have departed. This in any case; whilst in the present that duty is trebly sacred because a whole succession of objects will remain upon which our future hopes must retreat even if this foremost intrenchment should be forced. Maynooth will be no _solitary_ aggression on the great cause of Protestanism: that carried others will rapidly follow: their ""aspiring heads"" are already above the horizon; and it is necessary to defend the first line in a spirit of gaiety and confidence were it only that the second line and the third may not be abandoned under the contagion of dismay. Of late this Journal has a good deal retired from the strife of politics. Our readers must not misunderstand this. It was not through any treachery to that duty of hope which we have been insisting on as sacred: it was through a change in the public rather than in ourselves. Ireland had for some time narrowed itself into Mr O'Connell; domestic feuds had dwindled into the corn question. Neither of these subjects it is true was so utterly exhausted that we could not have found something new to say. But by the intolerable persecution of much speaking and much writing upon two wearisome topics the public attention at last fell into a mere lethargy from which it could not be roused to vibrate or react under any amount of stimulation. The audience fell away to nothing as the garrulity of the speakers increased; the public patience languished as its abusers multiplied. Now however Ireland is again restored to us as a fountain of interest under a new and most agitating impulse. Never for many years has the public mind fermented with so uncontrollable a fervour. Ascendency upon one field at least for Popery is now felt to be making a forward rush; the balance of the constitutional forces for a government essentially Protestant is threatened with overthrow; and if this Maynooth endowment prospers Protestantism will receive a deadly wound in the empire which is and _has_ been and by Providence was appointed to be its main bulwark. In speaking to this question it is our purpose to array briefly before the reader its gravest aspects; to press upon his attention one or two which have been entirely neglected; to do this with the utmost rapidity that is consistent with distinct explanation of our meaning; but all along with no purpose of rousing angry prejudices or appealing to any one sentiment that a candid man of any one party could describe as bigotry. We disapprove entirely as a needless irritation to Roman Catholic feelings of going back to the Revolution of 1829. If that great event were now pending instead of being sixteen years in the rear it would be our duty at any cost of possible offence in any quarter to speak of it as our conscience might require us to speak. But as things are this would be to offer a wanton provocation utterly useless for any practical end and tending towards the continued alienation of many excellent fellow-subjects. Wrong or right the policy of ""Emancipation"" has triumphed; the thing is done and cannot be undone; we must now adapt ourselves to a system which has become the law of the land. It is in such a case as with the past errors of a man's life: if he is wise he will not suffer his energies to waste themselves upon unavailing regrets. To revoke the irrevocable being an effort so manifestly childish he will apply himself to an effort which is rational manly and full of hope--to the correcting or mitigating of those consequences from his errors which are most threatening for his future welfare. Social forms often show the same principle of vitality and reproduction; and after the deadliest convulsions put forward corresponding tendencies to restoration of their natural health and equilibrium. It is one indeed amongst the tests of excellence in any political constitution that it can stand very rude shocks and that it has internal resources for healing all injuries not organically destructive. Catholic emancipation whatever might be thought of it if viewed from a station of unlimited power to choose or to reject must now be reconciled to our minds for better and worse; and in peaceable times will gradually adjust itself to the working of our political system settling into the general economy of the machine. But this Maynooth endowment tends to other results. The steps are inevitable from this centre to the very outermost periphery that bounds the ambition of Irish Popery; viz. to absolute ascendancy for itself to absolute overthrow of Protestantism in Ireland and therefore to ultimate separation of that island from the British empire so far as the dreadful effort is concerned. For we must not overlook the modern symptoms of the case. Formerly as in 1782 for instance Ireland dreamed not of any further advantages than such as could be extorted from the occasional difficulties of England under foreign hostility and such as should be sanctioned by English parliamentary concession. But under the long agitation of Mr O'Connell a new party has grown up which regards Ireland--however inferior for aggressive war--as strong enough by means of its excessive population and the local advantages inherent in every _possessor_ of the soil for throwing off the connexion with England. Independence on the footing of a separate nation is seriously aimed at by the young blood of Ireland; not with a view to any imaginary advantages from development of native resources or alleviation of taxes but on the single excitement of nationality. And by this ultimate object as undoubtedly a favoured object working underground and extensively in the Ireland of 1845 we must measure the tendencies of an endowment conferred by Parliament upon the Popish religion. Rightly to judge of any favour or privilege whatever conceded to Popery we must consider the position of Popery with respect to the altered prospects of the world as it now is and the duties of Protestantism permanently as well as specially in relation to the changed and changing attitude of our own particular crisis. But these being the capital aspects of the case we will first of all notice those more manageable and rememberable topics which are flying abroad upon the popular breath amongst our antagonists. It is alleged that we the confederate opponents of the grant are not natural allies. Being heterogeneous our opposition cannot be cordial. Why not? If comprehensive unanimity and undistinguishing unanimity were an indispensable condition towards a legitimate confederacy then it would be an impossibility that any combined action of men (which is one main purpose of human society) should ever arise. Some of us think it a high duty of the state to endow and favour that form of Christianity which the predominant opinion (as collected from the _total_ empire) pronounces the true one. This is our own creed; and it is our further belief that this duty is strengthened where not only the general opinion has pronounced itself strongly for that particular religious system but where also the history and the institutions of the land have unfolded themselves for centuries and through memorable struggles under the inspiration of that system conforming to it and receiving its impress. On the other hand considerable masses of those who now pull together with ourselves are permanent protesters against all state endowments of any one particular church; and not only so but they object to any possible mode of connexion between the government and the functions of ecclesiastical bodies. What of that? Those are most thoughtless or else incapable of self-control who at such a moment of common peril remind us of differences utterly impertinent to the question. Can we not abstract? If we are in discord upon political points are we not agreed upon the great interests of our common Protestantism? Why must we be in harmony further than as to the one vast cause which we jointly defend? Upon this logic Whigs and Tories meeting upon the same deck must not unite to ""sink burn and destroy"" the enemies of their common country; or two households Radical and Conservative in the same village must not work the same engine for the extinction of a fire which threatens every hearth. As to the case of those who oppose the grant _exclusively_ on the principle of hostility to state endowments of religious bodies all of us see clearly that they travel on our road no inch further than it leads to a private purpose of their own and that they will violently wheel away from us at the point where our purposes begin to divide. But in the mean time our purposes at this moment and for the instant result do _not_ divide; and their support is good for so much of the struggle as they are conscientiously able to share with us. But surely say another class of objectors though it is a pity that the Irish are not Protestants it is better that they should have Popery for their form of religion than no religion at all. True. And if this were the alternative necessity viz. that Popery decaying all religion must decay in Ireland; then we also should cordially support any _safe_ mode (but not _this_ mode) of raising the standard of education for the priestly instructors of Ireland. But we are not called upon to legislate for that dilemma. If indeed the case were that of a Popish regiment it is clearly the duty of government to provide a Popish chaplain and to see that he is properly qualified for his office; because if you do not open a regular channel to Popish instructions you are sure that both conscience and worldly honour paramount principles for cherishing amongst soldiers will lead them to withdraw from all other instructions. Not being Papists the men will become practically infidels. But the case is far otherwise for the Irish people. Government is not summoned to provide any part of an improved equipage for an Irish religious establishment. That is done or done sufficiently. Whether as Protestant or Catholic every man has access to religious instructions and religious consolations. There is no call to improve the quality of the priestly ministrations; for considering the quality of the doctrines and usages which are essential to Popery we do not believe that the Irish priesthood is much open to improvement as a machinery for carrying out its own indefeasible purposes. To raise the standard of respectability at Maynooth would not alter the character of the creed which Maynooth teaches. And when it is said that with a higher education the Romish priesthood would be more likely to breed schism or incipient reformation within their own order we doubt greatly as to the interpretation of the facts upon which that speculation is grounded. The Reformation which shook the sixteenth century did not arise (as we see it alleged ) because Luther or Melanchthon was so much above the standard of monkish education. Men quite as extensively learned as they and even more highly endowed by nature had but the more passionately undertaken the cause of Papal Rome in consequence of those great advantages. Luther was strong in the strength of his forerunners. The men of Luther's age _inherited_ the zeal and the light kindled by three centuries of growing truth. And what put the crest and plumage upon the aspiring hopes of that period was the providential madness of Rome and the towering altitude of her corruptions which just then from mercenary causes soared aloft more audaciously than ever before. In the present state of the Papal church and under the new hopes which we shall point out further on as just now opening upon her it is more than ever improbable that any laxity of discipline at Maynooth or in the general government internally of the Irish church will be suffered to leave openings for heresies to arise. Essentially Rome is aware that for the next half century beyond all the churches of earth she will be a church militant. Escaping decay during that critical period from the immense diffusion of _general_ knowledge [but of knowledge not by any means concurrently connected with spiritual knowledge]--Rome is likely (as we shall soon argue) to take a prodigious bound forward. And if on the other hand any great fermentation of truth _should_ commence in the Popish church of Ireland and that a vacuum should thus be created into which the priests could no longer carry their minstrations acceptably that vacuum would be instantly filled by zealous Protestants. Such a change would be so far from leaving any part of the Irish poor denuded of spiritual aid or in any way exposed to the risk of infidelity (according to the objection ) that Protestant help would arise (we are well assured) in a ratio more than corresponding to a necessity that must naturally have been gradual in its development. And thus it would appear--that by strengthening Maynooth Government so far from protecting the people against the chances of infidelity would (in the case supposed) have been intercepting the fair chances of our own Protestant missions. Besides that (according to a constant reproach of our antagonists which they must not be allowed to forget exactly when it furnishes an argument inconvenient to themselves ) the _regular_ clergy of the Irish Protestant establishment having churches (as they insist) without congregations will always compose a staff large enough to intercept any possible expansion of infidelity that could attend the declension of Popery through one generation at the least. Fully agreeing therefore that Popery is a blessing to Ireland by comparison with any risk of no religion at all we deny firmly that she exposed to such a risk. And if unhappily she were a most Irish mode of averting that risk it would be--to fortify the claims of Maynooth that last asylum of unhallowed and fraudulent casuistry a casuistry which like the traditions of the Scribes and Pharisees makes void the pure law of God. But a more cogent objection at first sight to us the opposers of the Maynooth grant seems this: ""In 1796 your party it was that originally proposed and founded any grant at all. If it was right then it is right now. And as to the increase from nine thousand pounds _per annum_ to twenty-six thousand that is a consideration for accountants rather than for statesmen; the sum cannot affect the principle."" Here are our answers; for there are more points to answer than one. _First_ It is not true or near to being true that the sum at issue could not affect the principle concerned. Many are the cases in which the quantities of the objects concerned in acts entirely vary the qualities of the acts. The law itself which professedly neglects trifles [_de minimis nor curat lex_ ] and which in criminal cases will not entertain a charge where the injury is below a certain money amount shows how essential to the moral estimate of acts is the quantity of the value in issue. Money being power quite as much as ever knowledge was power and much less restrictedly so there arises with the variations of the sum the largest range of variations in the interpretation of the understanding between the parties as to the intention of giver and receiver. That sum is a bribe which divided by ten is a fair acknowledgment of services performed. That sum in other cases is an insult which being centupled would be an honourable expression of distinguished merit. Nine thousand pounds might have been given and (if we go back to the facts) really _was_ given as a donation to an abject pauper; whilst an addition of seventeen thousand more may be accepted--and (if we consult the facts) _will_ be accepted--in the haughty spirit of one who affects to regard as a testimony to his own merit what secretly he believes to be offered in trembling propitiation. It was Burke who suggested the first endowment of a Popish College; but how different are acts nominally the same! _His_ motives were the motives of a reflecting patriot; Sir Robert Peel's are the motives of a compromiser between adverse interests whose heart though honourable as regards intentions does not prompt him to give a preponderating weight to either side however opposed in principle. The _motives_ however belong to our next head. At present we are dealing with the money amount. It is alleged that seventeen thousand added to nine thousand can make no difference as to principle and that all we who reverence Burke and Pitt are bound by their precedent. Now to that point the distinct answer is--that the nine thousand of Burke and Pitt was given as an eleemosynary dole to a body too poor and at that time too abject in political consideration to move jealousy in any quarter. But the sum now asked is very nearly threefold of that fixed by Mr Pitt and (if we add the interest of the outfit for the new furniture appointments &c.) is _more_ than threefold. The small sum was given as charity; was given as an _annual_ vote; and the large one will be given (if it _is_ given) as an endowment in perpetuity to a haughty political interest to a corrival of Trinity college to a body that _has_ moved jealousy in every quarter and finally (which sickens us to recollect ) to a body that will have the audacity in concert with Mr O'Connell one year after every favour shall have been received to disown it as a subject for gratitude--acknowledging it only as the pledge and monument of English panic. _Secondly_ As to the motives these grew out of the perils diffused by the French Revolution. The year 1797 which followed the suggestion of this pecuniary aid to the Irish priests was the last year of Burke's life. In what light he viewed the contagion from the anti-social frenzy then spreading over Europe may be seen from the oracular works through which he spoke his mind both in 1796 and 1797. He was profoundly impressed with the disorganizing tendencies of the principles but still more of the licentious cravings for change which from the centre of Paris had crept like a mist over the whole face of Europe. France was in a less tumultuous state then than in 1792-3-4; but as respected Europe generally the aspect of things was worse; because naturally the explosion of frenzy in Paris during the Reign of Terror took a space of two or three years to reproduce and train the corresponding sympathies in other great capitals of the Continent. By 1797 the contagion was mature. Thence came the necessity for some _domestic_ establishment where Irish priests should be educated: it was no longer safe that they should resort to St Omers: both because the unsettled license of thinking upon all things established would form the very worst atmosphere for clerical sobriety; and more specifically because all the Jacobins of the time bore deadly hatred to England. The priests trained at St Omers would in fact have become a corps of spies decoys and conspirators in the service of France. The rebellion of '98 read a commentary on this text. And no policy therefore could have been wiser than to intercept such a result by a periodical grant to Maynooth; whilst the requisite dependency of the institution was secured by making the grant annual. Now however not only is it proposed to make it permanent which (together with the enlarged amount) totally changes its character but a greater change still is--that the original reason for any grant at all the _political_ reason has entirely passed away. The objection to a continental education may be strong as regards the convenience of the Irish; but the inconvenience has no longer any relation to ourselves. No air in Europe can be tainted with a fiercer animosity to England than the air of Ireland. In this respect the students of Maynooth _cannot_ be more perilously situated. Whilst we all know by the Repeal rent and the O'Connell yearly tribute that the Irish Papists could easily raise three times the money demanded for Maynooth if they were as willing to be just in a service of national duty as they are to be liberal in a service of conspiracy. _Thirdly_ Connected with this question of _motives_ arises another aspect of the case. A college it may be said cannot do much in the way of modifying the political temper of a country whether for the better or the worse. If disaffection to the government prevails in Ireland that may argue no participation in such a spirit by the rules of Maynooth. But in another direction Maynooth cannot plead innocence. The O'Connell agitation would at any rate with or without Maynooth have distempered all public loyalty amongst the lower classes. _They_ could present no resistance to influences operating too strongly upon their nationality. But the priestly order if originally by their training at all adorned with the graces proper to their profession would not have fallen under the influence of acts so entirely mobbish. Yet we know that by no other engine has Mr O'Connell so powerfully operated on the Irish mind as through the agency of the priests. Not O'Connell moulded _them_ for his service but they presented themselves ready moulded to _him_; and with exceptions so rare as to argue a more extensive secularisation of the priestly mind throughout Ireland than has ever been witnessed in the strongholds of Popery. This early preoccupation by a worldly taint of the clerical mind amongst the Irish Catholics could not possibly have reached an excess so entirely without parallel in Europe unless chiefly through profligate systems of training at Maynooth. In all Ireland there was found with difficulty any specimen of the simple rural pastor (so common in France) who withdrew himself from political strife. The priest who considered his spiritual character degraded by partisanship (no matter in what service ) was nowhere to be heard of. Wherever Mr O'Connell wanted an agent an intriguer an instrument for rousing the people he was sure of one in the parish priest. Now this fact is decisive upon the merits of Maynooth. It matters not what latitude may be allowed to variety of political views; no politics of _any_ sort can be regarded as becoming to a village pastor. But allow him to be a politician how could a priest become a tool without ruin to his spiritual character? Yet this is the Maynooth training its _alumni_ to two duties the special duty of living _in procinctu_ and in harness for every assault upon the Protestant establishment of their country and for the unlimited duty of taking orders in any direction from Mr O'Connell--this is the Maynooth to which for such merits we have been paying nine thousand pounds annually for exactly fifty years and are now required to pay three times as much for ever. But from these narrower questions directed to circumstantialities local and transitory we wish to draw the reader's attention upon certain other questions larger and more philosophic. And first of all let us say a word upon one point continually raised and not at all limited to Irish cases; viz. the latitude allowed by conscience to a Protestant in promoting the welfare of Papists where it happens that the personal service is associated unavoidably with some service to the Popish cause. As individuals or even as a collective body in the commonwealth every liberal man would wish to protect and to favour his Catholic fellow-citizens if he could do so without aiding them in their natural purpose of making proselytes. There are cases undoubtedly in which these mixed advantages for the person and for the creed would so blend as to offer a difficult problem in casuistry to a delicate conscience. Sir Robert Peel in the final debate on the second reading of the Maynooth bill attempted to throw dust in the eyes of the House upon the principle concerned in cases of this nature; and even if he had been right in his argument we believe that he would have gained little for the particular question concerned in the Maynooth grant. He argued by way of showing how untenable was the notion that we could not conscientiously support a religion which we believed erroneous that upon that hypothesis we should cut the ground from below our feet in the mode of supporting our own religion. The law of England insists upon the Dissenters paying church-rates and tithes to the English church; now argued Sir Robert the Dissenter might turn round and plead in bar of this claim the English churchman's demur to supporting Popery by supporting Maynooth. But the case accurately stated is--that no English churchman ever _did_ demur to paying his quota towards Maynooth; on the contrary he has paid it quietly for fifty years. What some few churchmen _have_ demurred to was--not paying after the law had said ""_pay_ "" but legislating for the payment; passing the annual vote for the payment. Now if a Dissenter happens to be in Parliament he is quite at liberty to make the same demur as to church-rates; but he makes his demur in the wrong quarter if he addresses it to the collector. So again as regards the increased grant and the permanent grant to Maynooth if it passes the two Houses we shall all of us pay our share without scruple; neither will our consciences be at all wounded for we pay under the coercion of a distress-warrant contingent upon our refusing to pay. It is the suffering the law to pass without opposing it in one way or other that _would_ wound our consciences. And again the English law does not require a Dissenter to concur in the propriety of paying church-rates it requires him only to pay them. But we Protestants in paying to Maynooth supposing that we made ourselves parties to the payment by consenting to the bill feel that we should be wilfully abetting the propagation of error. It is true that the Papist finds himself in the same necessity of contributing to what he regards as heresy by contributing to the support of the Protestant Establishment. But if a Protestant resorts to a country or acquiesces in a country where Popery is established he does not complain that he falls under the relation of a tributary to a system which did not seek _him_ but which _he_ sought. There are other casuistical points arising out of these practical relations to systems of religious belief which are often unskilfully mingled with cases like this of Maynooth; but they cannot disguise the broad distinction between the principle in that question and the principle in the question of Catholic emancipation. There the object was purely negative viz. to liberate a body of men from certain incapacities. Successive penal laws had stripped the Papist of particular immunities and liberties. Th
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se were restored by emancipation. A defect was made good. But no _positive_ powers were created by that measure. Now on the other hand when a large revenue is granted (as by the pending Maynooth grant ) this is in effect to furnish artillery for covering advances upon hostile ground. This gives positive powers to Popery for propagating its errors. That Sir Robert Peel should hold such a mode of collusion with falsehood to be lawful--would be astonishing were it not that he manifestly confounds the case of promoting a law by votes or any mode of active support which is a true and substantial assent with the case of paying under a demand of the law. Now this is no assent at all any more than the surrendering your person passively to the arrest of a police-officer is an assent to the justice of the accusation or to the reasonableness of the law under which you will be tried. To pay on the demand of the law is no assent at all but an abridged process of yielding to the physical coercion of the law. You are aware of the steps through which the compulsory action of the law will travel and it cannot make any difference as to the principle of your submission that for the sake of saving time you yield to the first step instead of waiting for the last. It is therefore no duty of a Protestant in any circumstances to abet Popery by any mode of support but only seems to be so by confounding cases essentially different. Next arises for notice the very interesting question on the prospects of Popery at this moment and its chances of a great restoration by means of combination with various forms of human power. One cause of error upon this subject lies in the notion that conspicuous obscurations of civil grandeur jurisdiction and wealth which Popery has suffered of late years in almost every state have therefore been absolute losses of spiritual power. On the contrary these losses are likely to strengthen Popery. Precisely in the most bigoted of Popish kingdoms--Austria Bavaria Spain and Portugal--the Popish religion has been shorn during the last fifty years of it most splendid temporalities. The suppression of the Inquisition in Spain &c. the extinction of religions houses on so vast a scale the limitation of the Papal rights in the disposal of Bishops' sees the confiscation or sale of church lands to an amount unsuspected in Protestant countries--these and other convulsions have shaken the Papacy in a memorable degree. But it is certain that the vigour and vitality of Popery in modes more appropriate to a spiritual power are reviving. Popery has benefited by the removal however harshly executed at the moment of enormous abuses connected sometimes with wealth sometimes only with the reputation of wealth but in either case with a weight of popular odium. The vessel has righted and become buoyant by the sacrifice of masts and rigging. A spirit of activity has again manifested itself in many directions. And with this has concurred a new body of hopes arising from social accidents in America. Throughout the great central valley of North America and along the line of the most recent inroads into the western forests a great opening has arisen of late years for throwing a network of spiritual power over a vast territory that is rapidly unfolding its power and wealth. Through this opening has poured for some years like a spring-tide a huge host of Catholic missionaries. Such was the extensive demand for spiritual ministration amongst a population multiplying to excess that _any_ order of Christian clergy would have been welcome. Here is a basis laid for future magnificent development of Popish power. Rome itself has been stirred and agitated with the prospect of seeing its energies revive and of reaping a malicious retribution by entering into combination with that Teutonic race from whom during the last three centuries she had received her deadliest wounds. But a doubt arises whether this very combination will not be more likely to impress a totally new character upon the Papal religion. The Saxon energy will be likely to strangle Popery rather than Popery in the long run to pervert that energy. In England itself through Oxford unexpected auguries have dawned upon Rome of a new birth for the pomps of Papal Rome. And exactly at this crisis of hope and unlimited anticipation the splendid endowment of Maynooth solemnly proposed and vigorously pressed forward by a cautious minister of England coinciding also with the spasmodic throes of the Irish people to establish an independent nationality have doubtless spread through the councils of the Vatican as much of what will probably be found visionary expectation as through the hearts of our own Protestant countrymen they have spread of what equally we trust will be converted by this national insurrection against Maynooth into visionary fear. Another point we are bound to notice as error generally diffused--though shocking to just logic. It is said by way of reproach to ourselves--the England of this day--that we took all the splendid endowments of Oxford Cambridge and so forth from Roman Catholics; which being so we are bound to make some restoration of the spoils to the Catholics of this day. Was there ever heard more complex absurdity? Mark its stages: 1st If you _had_ taken them from Catholics of the 16th century how would _that_ translate any interest of property in the institutions to people of the nineteenth century simply as professing the same faith? We took various spoils about 1780 from Hyder Ali the sultan of Mysore: in 1799 we took others more costly from his son Tippoo: will that entitle some prince of Turkestan or Bokhara in the year 2000 to claim these spoils on the plea that he is a Mahometan? An interest of inheritance would thus be vested in the emptiest of abstractions. 2d They were _not_ Catholics in a proper sense who founded the chief colleges at Oxford &c. The Roman Catholic faith was not developed fully at the period when many were founded: it could not be developed even as a _religious system_ until after the great polemic writers on the one side and the other had drawn out the differential points of doctrine. And when partly developed or showing a tendency to certain conclusions it was not fully _settled_ until the Council of Trent. Next as a _political interest_ it was not at all developed until between the beginning of Luther and the termination of Trent. Impossible it was that it should; for until a counter-pole existed until an antagonist interest had arisen the relations of Popery whether political or religious must have been indeterminate: as a kingdom surrounded by deserts and trackless forests cannot have its frontier line ascertained. 3dly If they had been Catholics in the _fullest_ sense who founded our Universities it was not _as_ Catholics that they founded them but as great families who had accumulated property under our system of laws; and secondly as natives of the land. They were _able_ to found universities because they had been protected by English laws; they were _willing_ to found universities because they were of English birth and loved their native land. The Countess of Richmond for instance or Henry VI. in his great foundations at Eton or Cambridge or Baliol at Oxford did not think of Popery under any relation to heresy. They thought of it so far as _at all_ they thought of it in its general abstraction of spiritual loveliness; and under that shape it differed not at all from the Protestantism of the English church. The temper in which they acted is a pledge that they thought of man and the children of man not in relation to those points in which they differed but to those above all in which they agreed. They were compatriots of the islanders--they loved knowledge--and in those characters not as Papists they founded colleges. 4thly Supposing that in the plenary and controversial sense they _had_ been Catholics who founded our great mediæval institutions; supposing next that they had founded them as Catholics and _because_ they were Catholics; supposing also that from them in that aërial character of ""_persons holding a creed_ "" any rights of inheritance could by leave of Thomas Aquinas be imagined metaphysically to descend; lastly and notwithstanding all this their establishments had passed into the hands of other trustees by due course of law--that is by legislation under the countersign of king lords and commons; that is by the same title under which any man whatever Papist or Protestant holds any property whatever. Are we obliged to settle an annuity upon A B because he can trace himself lineally to a man who held our lands under Edward the Confessor? Yet by the supposition A B _can_ prove a relation in blood to the ancient owner though none at all to the lands. But the Catholics can show no relation whatever either to the foundations at Oxford or to the blood of the founder. Upon this conceit if a man could trace his blood to an ancient Druid he would have a _lien_ in law upon all the oak-trees in the island! _Risum teneatis?_ Whilst this however is a mere vapour of the speculative brain there is a final absurdity less showy in its extravagance yet in practice more misleading. We cannot allow ourselves consistently with the rapid movement of our sketch to do justice to this fallacy; but we will indicate its outline. Look back to all the pro-Catholic journals for the last forty years and you will find it every where appealed to and relied on as a substantial argument--that in many states on the Continent Catholics and Protestants sit as assessors on the same bench of judgment; act harmoniously as officers commanders and commanded in the same regiment; meet daily as fellow-students in the same schools and colleges. The inference is--that mere partisanship deeper bigotry and no other cause whatever has made it difficult or dangerous for English Protestants and Catholics to effect the same coalition. Having no room left for a fuller exposure of this delusive representation we shall here content ourselves with an illustrative allusion or two. The Moors were expelled from Spain before any English Catholics became the objects (having wilfully _made_ themselves the objects) of something like proscription under English laws. The chasm between the Moors of this day and their ancestors stretches over more than three centuries. Has that rent closed? Have those wounds healed? Is the reader aware of the figurative language under the symbol of house-door keys still hanging over Moorish hearths &c. by which to this hour the Moors cherish for their children's ears deep vindictive remembrances of their ancient habitations in Spain and their haughty vision of a bloody re-entrance? Does the reader imagine that an invasion by Moors of Italy or France would move under the same burning impulses as an invasion of Spain? The return of the Moors to Spain would be like the _recoil_ of a catapulta. And allowing for higher civilization of the same deep memorial character would have been any re-entry of Roman Catholics upon _power_ in England had it been less gradual than the prudence of Parliaments made it. The deep outrages of Catholics upon English rights under the troubled movements amongst the thrones of Europe during the century of strife which made the temptations to treason irresistible for vassals of Rome forced from the Protestants such stern reactions as have left with both parties an abiding sense of profound injuries. Attainders to be blotted out judgments to be reversed burning records of shame for persons and for creed sculptured in our laws to trample under foot are likely to stimulate the malice (calling itself the retribution) of lineal descendants even if there were no _estates to reclaim_. And surely those fantastic persons who think that merely to bear the name or classification of ""_Catholic_"" must confer upon one pleading no shadow of a connexion with the founder of a college some claim to a dividend upon its funds are not entitled to hold cheap the very different sort of claims resting upon acknowledged heirship which are now lying amongst the muniments of thousands. It is a record of the political imbecility it is to the high _disgrace_ of the continental states that with most of them Catholics and Protestants _could_ meet in this insipid harmony: it was a harmony resembling the religious toleration of people--tolerant because careless of _all_ religion. Had they like ourselves possessed a constitution of slow growth a representative system a popular mind all stimulating to noble political feuds --in that case they would have had high principles like ourselves; they like ourselves would have faced the action and reaction of endless contest; and their political progress like ours would have been written on every page of their history and legislation. It was because they slept and snored for ages with no instincts of fiery political life that they were able in modern times--Catholics and Protestants--to fraternise in effeminate raptures of maudlin sentimentality. We apply this last topic specially to our conclusion:--In pointing to the yet unappreciated difference between our own feuds with popery and those of other nations--which foreign feuds at the very best (if they rose at all to the grandeur of civil strife ) moved through butchery and violence as in France not through laws and scaffolds--moved like the uproars of Afghans not like the grand tribunitial contests of ancient Rome--we could only indicate a feature or two of the inexhaustible case. And naturally it was to England that we pointed. But now--but by this Maynooth revolution it is not England that is primarily menaced. Ireland it is upon which that evil will descend which by the wisdom of Parliament backed by the protesting tumults of the people did _not_ descend on England. For England Parliament was cautious and retarding in all its steps. The ""return of the Heracleidæ"" was by graduated movements; and had it even been abrupt a thousandfold greater were the resources for combined resistance of Protestants against combined reaction of Papists. But in Ireland deeper are the vindictive remembrances more recent are the deductions of claims to property and louder the clamours for wide resumption; from massacre and counter massacre from Cromwell from Limerick from Londondery from Boyne from Aughrim the wounds are yet green and angry; and the hostile factions have never dissolved their array. This is the land into which a Moorish recoil is now threatened. The reader understands us to speak of a return--not for the physical men--but for the restored character of supremacy in which they will be able to act with power. _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ Footnotes: [1] _Etudes des Sciences Sociales._ Par J. C. SIMONDE DE SISMONDI. 3 vols. Paris 1837. [2] Viz.:-- In Ireland 2 300 000 ... England 1 500 000 ... Scotland 200 000 ---------- 4 000 000 just a seventh of the whole inhabitants who are now about 28 000 000. [3] Committals for serious crime in-- Population of Great England. Scotland. Ireland. Total. Britain and Ireland. 1805 4 605 89 3 600 8 284 15 800 000 1819 14 254 1 380 13 251 28 885 20 600 000 1842 31 369 3 884 21 352 56 605 27 300 000 --PORTER'S _Parl. Tables and Prog. of the Nation_ iii. 172 227. From this table it appears that from 1805 to 1842 the population of the empire has advanced from 158 to 273--that is increased about 70 _per cent_; while serious crime has increased from 8 to 56--that is 700 per cent. Crime therefore has augmented ten times as fast as the number of the people. [4] From [Greek: chrêma]--""money riches."" [5] NICOLAI _dell' Agro Romano_ iii. 167-171. SISMONDI'S _Etudes Sociales_ ii. 46. [6] _Ibid_ iii. 153. _Ib._ ii. 44. This part of Sismondi's work which will be found Vol. ii pp. 1-74 is highly interesting. We may perhaps at a future period give a detached account of it under the title of ""The Campagna of Rome."" [7] The canal by which the waters of the river Guautitlan are carried through the mountains into the valley of Tula. [8] The Mexican Ceres goddess of maize. [9] Tatli is an Aztec word signifying father. [10] Monkish legend. [11] The dry season. [12] The best pulque is that of Tacotitlan. Frijolos are a species of bean which grows in great perfection in the Chinampas or swimming gardens upon the lake of Chalco. [13] Tenochtitlan is the ancient name of the valley of Mexico. It is here used to designate the capital city. [14] The _pique_ or _nigua_ is a small but exceedingly noxious insect that abounds in some parts of Mexico especially in the low grounds of Vera Cruz and Acapulco. It bores holes in the skin and lays its eggs there causing a violent irritation and sometimes dangerous sores. [15] A term used in mining operations. A rich vein of silver or generally success in mining. [16] In Mexican houses of the more opulent class a woman-servant is kept for the sole purpose of preparing and baking the tortillas or maize cakes. She is called a tortillera. [17] _Que se tenga por blanco._ Let him consider himself white. The usual form of the emancipation certificates which the Mexican Audiencia was accustomed to sell at high prices to the coloured races. These certificates were originally confined to the quadroons and quinteroons and other castes that had only a small admixture of Indian blood. [18] To dine with St Antonio--on bread and water. [19] La Virgen de los Remedios was the especial patroness of the Spaniards in Mexico. Her picture was found by one of Cortes' soldiers and she proved herself on various occasions a warm partisan of the Spaniards. During the fight of Otumba she was seen to hover over the Spanish troops and scatter dust in the eyes of the Indians. In other battles she also fought against the Mexicans. The Spaniards out of gratitude built her a chapel. Suddenly however to their exceeding sorrow her portrait disappeared. Half a year elapsed and then an Indian in stripping an aloe plant found the picture between leaf and stem. It was carried in triumph and so grateful did the Virgin show herself for this attention that she sent an abundant rain which happened just then to be greatly needed. In consideration of the innumerable miracles she had wrought in their favour the Spaniards chose her for their patroness and gave her the command of their armies. She struggled valiantly against the Virgin of Guadalupe whom the Mexicans had elected to be their leader. The original and miraculously discovered picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe is preserved in her magnificent church two leagues from Mexico. It is on coarse bast canvass made up of the fibres of the agave but in a magnificent frame and was found soon after the conquest of Mexico on a barren hill by an Indian whom strains of heavenly music attracted thither. The Indian related the circumstance to the archbishop who refused to credit it; whereupon the discoverer repaired to the hill a second time and saw the harmonious picture lying amongst a heap of roses. It spoke to him and commanded him to return to the archbishop which he did and now found him as eager to believe as he had before been incredulous. The prelate greeted the picture with the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe; a chapel was built and this Virgin was finally promoted to be patroness of Mexico. Her complexion being of a brown colour she was considered to watch more particularly over the aborigines. When Hidalgo after raising the standard of revolt was excommunicated by the archbishop and in danger of being abandoned by his followers he had the fortunate idea of placing himself and his army under the guardianship of the Virgin of Guadalupe. An enormous banner was got ready with a painting of that Virgin upon it; she was declared field-marshal and general-in-chief pay allotted and obedience sworn to her. She held her appointment for fourteen years--till 1824. [20] White and blue were the colours of the ancient Mexicans and of the patriots. The Spaniards adopted them for the clothing of their executioners. [21] The blue cloak was worn by the nobility the brown by the lower and middling classes in Spain and Mexico. [22] _Curly_--diminutive of Cornelius. [23] The commencement of a common Irish benediction _God and Mary and St Patrick be with (or bless) you!_ [24] A man concealing himself on arrest for debt is in Ireland familiarly said to be _on his keeping_ probably from his keeping or confining himself to the house when there is danger of the writ being executed. [25] Abbrev. for Larry or Laurence. [26] The length of a spade's-handle of ground. _Over a man's head_--i.e.--out-bidding the tenant in possession by offering generally a larger rent for the land out of which he is about to be ejected. [27] _Spell_--very short space of time as long as it would take to spell a word. [28] An achievement similar to that here described actually took place about the same period nearly on the same spot. It was planned and executed by two persons living at a town mentioned in the tale and terminated in the instant death of the unlucky highwayman whose body they placed in their vehicle and brought back with them in an hour or two from the time they set out. In the present day such a deed (thus premeditated) would be deservedly termed a rash and cruel act--the lawless and unprotected state of that country however at the time led it to be considered--we believe--a laudable one. [29] _Revelations of Spain._ By an ENGLISH RESIDENT. [30] The Monk too has this characteristic which is of dubious exposition. Tyrwhitt thinks that the meaning _may be_--""Eyes sunk deep in the head."" Certainly a feature giving force and distinction to the physiognomy has been intended. Transcriber's Notes: Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. Punctuation has been corrected without note. The following misprints have been corrected: ""on"" corrected to ""or"" (page 537) ""und"" corrected to ""and"" (page 566) ""sevesal"" corrected to ""several"" (page 580) ""Tyrrell's"" standardized to ""Tyrrel's"" (page 587) ""Tyrrell"" standardized to ""Tyrrel"" (page 582) ""would'nt"" corrected to ""wouldn't"" (page 585) ""ununhonoured"" corrected to ""unhonoured"" (page 586) ""Tyrell"" standardized to ""Tyrrel"" (page 587) ""hir"" corrected to ""his"" (page 589) ""aparment"" corrected to ""apartment"" (page 590) ""O'Connel"" corrected to ""O'Connell"" (page 651) ""n"" corrected to ""in"" (page 654) Other than the corrections listed above inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained from the original text. "
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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. CCCLVI. JUNE 1845. VOL. LVII. Transcriber's note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes moved to the end of the article. The index for Volume 57 is included at the end of this issue. CONTENTS. PÚSHKIN THE RUSSIAN POET. No. I. 657 THE NOVEL AND THE DRAMA 679 MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XVII. 688 LEBRUN'S LAWSUIT 705 CENNINO CENNINI ON PAINTING 717 ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS. NO. IV. 731 SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER 739 HANNIBAL 752 STANZAS WRITTEN AFTER THE FUNERAL OF ADMIRAL SIR DAVID MILNE C.G.B. 766 STANZAS TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS HOOD 768 NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. V.--DRYDEN ON CHAUCER--CONCLUDED 771 INDEX 794 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. CCCLVI. JUNE 1845. VOL. LVII. PÚSHKIN THE RUSSIAN POET. NO. I. SKETCH OF PÚSHKIN'S LIFE AND WORKS BY THOMAS B. SHAW B.A. OF CAMBRIDGE ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL ALEXANDER LYCEUM TRANSLATOR OF "THE HERETIC " &C. &C. Among the many striking analogies which exist between the physical and intellectual creations and exhibit the uniform method adopted by Supreme Wisdom in the production of what is most immortal and most precious in the world of thought as well as of what is most useful and beautiful in the world of matter there is one which cannot fail to arise before the most actual and commonplace imagination. This is the great apparent care exhibited by nature in the preparation of the _nidus_--or matrix if we may so style it--in which the genius of the great man is to be perfected and elaborated. Nature creates nothing in sport; and as much foresight--possibly even more--is displayed in the often complicated and intricate machinery of concurrent causes which prepare the development of great literary genius as in the elaborate in-foldings which protect from injury the germ of the future oak or the deep-laid and mysterious bed and the unimaginable ages of growth and hardening necessary to the water of the diamond or to the purity of the gold. Púshkin is undoubtedly one of that small number of names which have become incorporated and identified with the literature of their country; at once the type and the expression of that country's nationality--one of that small but illustrious bard whose writings have become part of the very household language of their native land--whose lightest words may be incessantly heard from the lips of all classes; and whose expressions may be said like those of Shakspeare of Molière and of Cervantes to have become the natural forms embodying the ideas which they have expressed and in expressing consecrated. In a word Púshkin is undeniably and essentially the great national poet of Russia. In tracing therefore this author's double existence and in essaying to give some account of his external as well as his interior life--in sketching the poet and the man--we cannot fail to remark a striking exemplification of the principle to which we have alluded; and as we accompany in respectful admiration his short but brilliant career we shall have incessant occasion to remember the laws which regulated its march--laws ever-acting and eternal and no less apparent to the eye of enlightened criticism than are the mighty physical influences which guide the planets in their course to the abstract reason of the astronomer. Alexander Púshkin was born (as if destiny had intended in assigning his birth-place--the ancient capital of Russia and still the dwelling-place of all that is most intense in Russian nationality--to predict all the stuff and groundwork of his character) at Moscow on the 26th of May 1799. His family by the paternal side was one of the most ancient and distinguished in the empire and was descended from Rátcha a German--probably a Teutonic knight--who settled in Muscovy in the thirteenth century and took service under Alexander Névskii (1252-1262 ) and who is the parent root from which spring many of the most illustrious houses in Russia--those of Púshkin of Buturlín of Kaménskii and of Metelóff. Nor was the paternal line of Púshkin's house undistinguished for other triumphs than those recorded in the annals of war; his grandfather Vassílii Lvóvitch Púshkin was a poet of considerable reputation and was honoured no less than Alexander's father with the intimacy of the most illustrious literary men of his age--of Dmítrieff Karamzín and Jukóvskii. But perhaps the most remarkable circumstance connected with Púshkin's origin--a circumstance of peculiar significance to those who like ourselves are believers in the influence on human character of _race_ or _blood_ is the fact of his having been the grandson by the mother's side of an African. The cold blood of the north transmitted to his veins from the rude warrior of Germany was thus mingled with that liquid lightning which circles through the fervid bosom of the children of the desert; and this crossing of the race (to use the language of the course) produced an undeniable modification in our poet's character. His maternal grandfather was a negro brought to Russia when a child by Peter the Great and whose subsequent career was one of the most romantic that can be imagined. The wonderful Tsar gave his sable protégé whose name was Annibal a good education and admitted him into the marine service of the empire--a service in which he reached (in the reign of Catharine) the rank of admiral. He took part in the attack upon Navarin under Orlóff and died after a long and distinguished career of service having founded in his new country the family of Annibáloff of which Púshkin was the most distinguished ornament and of whose African origin the poet both in personal appearance and in mental physiognomy bore the most unequivocal marks. To the memory of this singular progenitor Púshkin has consecrated more than one of his smaller works and has frequently alluded to the African blood which he inherited from the admiral. In 1811 Púshkin obtained (through the interest of Turgénieff to whom Russia is thus in some sort indebted for her great poet) admission into the Imperial Lyceum of Tsárskoë Seló where he was to receive the education and to form the friendships which so strongly coloured not only the literary productions of his whole career but undoubtedly modified to a considerable extent the personal character of the poet. This institution then recently established by the Emperor Alexander and always honoured by the peculiar favour and protection of its illustrious founder was modelled on the plan of those _lycées_ which France owed to the genius of Napoleon; and was intended to confer upon its pupils the advantage of a complete encyclopedic education and not only embracing the preparatory or school course but also the academic _curriculum_ of a university was calculated to dismiss the students at the end of their course of training immediately into active life. The Lyceum must be undoubtedly considered as having nursed in its bosom a greater number of distinguished men than any other educational institution in the country; and our readers may judge of the peculiar privileges enjoyed by this establishment (the primary object of whose foundation was that of furnishing to the higher civil departments in the government and to the ministry of foreign affairs in particular a supply of able and accomplished _employés_ ) from the fact of its having been located by the emperor in a wing of the palace of Tsárskoë Seló--the favourite summer residence of the Tsars of Russia since the time of Catharine II. It is to the last-named sovereign as is well known to travellers that this celebrated spot is indebted for its splendid palace and magnificent gardens forming perhaps the most striking object which gratifies the stranger's curiosity in the environs of St Petersburg. The students of the Lyceum are almost always youths of the most distinguished families among the Russian nobility and are themselves selected from among the most promising in point of intellect. The system of education pursued within its walls is of the most complete nature partaking as may be concluded from what we have said of both a scientific and literary character; and a single glance at a list of the first course (of which Púshkin was a member) will suffice to show that it counted among its numbers many names destined to high distinction. Among the comrades and intimate friends of Púshkin at the Lyceum must be mentioned the elegant poet the Baron Délvig whose early death was so irreparable a loss to Russian literature and must be considered as the severest personal bereavement suffered by Púshkin--"his brother " as he affectionately calls him in the muse as in their fate. Nor must we forget Admiral Matiúshkin a distinguished seaman now living and commanding the Russian squadron in the Black Sea. We could specify a number of other names all of more or less note in their own country though the reputation of many of them has not succeeded for various reasons in passing the frontiers. From the system of study no less than from the peculiar social character if we may so express it which has always prevailed in the Lyceum of Tsárskoë Seló we must deduce the cause of the peculiar intensity and durability of the friendships contracted within its bosom--a circumstance which still continues to distinguish it to a higher degree than can be predicated of any other institution with which we are acquainted; and we allude to this more pointedly from the conviction that it would be absolutely impossible to form a true idea of Púshkin--not only as man but even as a poet--were we to leave out of our portrait the immense influence exerted on the whole of his career both in the world of reality and in the regions of art by the close and intimate friendships he formed in the Lyceum particularly that with Délvig. Few portions of poetical biography contain a purer or more touching interest than the chapter describing the school or college friendships of illustrious men; and the innumerable allusions to Lyceum comrades and Lyceum happiness scattered so profusely over the pages of Púshkin have an indescribable charm to the imagination not less delightful than the recital of Byron's almost feminine affection for "little Harness " or the oft-recalled image of the Noble Childe's boyish meditation in the elm-shadowed churchyard of Harrow. During the six years which Púshkin passed at the Lyceum (from 1811 to 1817 ) the intellect and the affections of the young poet were rapidly and steadily developing themselves. He could not it is true be considered as a diligent scholar by those who looked at the progress made by him in the regular and ostensible occupations of the institution; but it is undeniable that the activity of his powerful accurate and penetrating mind found solid and unremitting occupation in a wide circle of general reading. His own account of the acquirements he had made at this period and of the various branches of study which he had cultivated with more or less assiduity proves that however desultory may have been the nature of his reading and however unformed or incoherent were his literary projects he possessed in ample measure even at this period the great elements of future fame; viz. the habit of vigorous industry and the power of sustained abstraction and contemplation. His personal appearance at this time was a plain index of his character intellectual as well as moral. The closely-curled and wiry hair the mobile and irregular features the darkness of the complexion all betrayed his African descent; and served as an appropriate outside to a character which was early formed in all its individuality and which remained unchanged in its principal features during the whole of the poet's too short existence. Long will the youthful traditions of the Lyceum recall the outlines of Púshkin's character; long will the unbiassed judgment of boyhood do justice to the manliness the honour the straightforwardness of the great poet's nature and hand down from one young generation to another numberless traits exemplifying the passionate warmth of his heart the gaiety of his temper and the vastness of his memory. In all cases where circumstances come fairly under their observation the young are the best judges of internal character as well as the most unerring physiognomists of the outward lineaments of the face. Púshkin was extremely popular among his comrades--the generosity of his character had peculiar charms for the unsophisticated minds of the young; and the vigour of a body never enfeebled in infancy by luxurious indulgence enabled him to obtain by sharing in their sports no less consideration among them than he derived from the play of his penetrating and sarcastic humour. His poetical existence was now already begun: to the Lyceum period of Púshkin's life we must ascribe not only a considerable number of short pieces of verse--those first flutterings of the bird before it has strength to leave the nest--but even the conception of many poetical projects which time and study were hereafter to mature into masterpieces. The short and fugitive essays in poetry to which we have just alluded appeared in a literary journal at various periods and under anonymous signatures--a circumstance to be deplored as it has deprived us of the means of examining how far these slight attempts composed in the twelfth thirteenth and fourteenth years of his age gave promise of future excellence. In themselves they were probably so crude and _unlicked_ as to justify the poet in the indifference which prevented him from claiming these early compositions and allowing them to be incorporated in the collections of his writings. During his residence at the Lyceum however he undoubtedly meditated the plan of his charming romantic poem "Ruslán and Liudmíla " and probably even composed the opening of the work. To this period too are to be assigned some stanzas of great merit entitled "Recollections of Tsárskoë Seló " and an "Epistle to Licinius"--both works exhibiting considerable skill and mastery in versification but by far too much tinged (as might indeed be expected) with the light reflected from the youthful poet's reading to deserve a place among his original productions. For the amusement of his comrades also he wrote a number of ludicrous and humorous pieces which derived their chief merit from the circumstances which suggested them; and were calculated rather to excite a moment's laughter in the merry circle of schoolfellows than to be cited as specimens of the author's comic powers particularly when we reflect that the broadly humorous was never Púshkin's favourite or even successful manner of writing: in the delicate subdued Cervantes tone of humour however he was destined to become perhaps the most distinguished writer of his country--but let us not anticipate. One production connected with the Lyceum is however too important (not perhaps in itself so much as in the circumstances accompanying it) to be passed over in a biography of our poet. This is a didactic poem entitled "Infidelity " which Púshkin composed and read at the public examination at the Lyceum at the solemn _Act_ (a ceremony resembling that which bears the same name at Oxford and Cambridge and which takes place at the conferring of the academical degree.) It was on this occasion that Púshkin was publicly saluted _Poet_ in the presence of the Emperor by the aged Derjávin--the greatest Russian poet then living and whose glory was so soon to be eclipsed by the young student whom he prophetically applauded. It is impossible not to be affected by the sight of the sunset of that genius whose brightest splendour is worthily reflected in the sublime ode "God"--one of the noblest lyrics in the Russian or indeed in any language--thus heralding as it were the dawning of a more brilliant and enduring daybreak; even as in the northern summer the vapoury evening glow melts imperceptibly into the dawn and leaves no night between. This event so calculated to impress the vivid and ardent imagination of the young poet has been most exquisitely described by himself in the literary journal "Sovreménnik " (The Contemporary ) vol. viii. p. 241. On quitting the Lyceum in October 1817 Púshkin entered the civil service and was immediately attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Young noble cultivated possessed in the highest degree of those talents which are certain to enchant society he plunged as might naturally have been expected with all the ardour of his African blood into the pleasures and amusements of the capital. His success in society and the eagerness with which he was welcomed every where might easily have been foreseen particularly when we keep in mind the universal hospitality which distinguishes the higher classes of Russian society and the comparative rarity in this country of literary celebrity which tends to render merit of that nature certain of a respectful if not exaggerated appreciation. "The three years " to quote the words of one--himself a personal friend of the poet's--who has succeeded in seizing with admirable fidelity the principal features of Púshkin's intellectual physiognomy "the three years which he passed in St Petersburg after quitting the Lyceum were devoted to the amusements of the fashionable world and to the irresistible enchantments of society. From the splendid drawing-room of the great noble down to the most unceremonious supper-table of a party of young officers every where Púshkin was received with exultation and every where did he become the idol of the young who gratified both his vanity and their own by the glory which accompanied his every step." The eagerness with which the young poet plunged into the glittering stream of fashionable life must not be attributed only to the natural thirst for pleasure in a young man just released from the bonds of a school life and to the first vivid sense of liberty excited in the mind of a youth who had been passing six years of his life in a spot which however beautiful was still but a beautiful seclusion. We must keep in mind the different constitution of society in Russia and particularly the fact that the absence (at least for social purposes) of a middle class in that country renders the upper ranks the only section of the social system in which intellectual pleasure can be sought or intellectual supremacy appreciated. Púshkin himself always attached no inconsiderable importance to his success in the _beau monde_; and it is incontestably to his friction (if we may so style it) with that _beau monde_ that he owed some of the more attractive if not the more solid qualities of his genius and much of the refinement and good taste which distinguish his style. Like all men of the higher order of intellect--like Scott like Cervantes and Michael Angelo--Púshkin was endowed by nature with a vigorous and mighty organization bodily as well as mental: and though he may appear to have been losing much valuable time in the elegant frivolities of the drawing-room he was not less industrious at this period of his career in amassing a store of observation derived from a practical study of human character than successful in filling up--in the short intervals of ball and festival--the poetical outlines which he had roughly sketched at the Lyceum. He worked in the morning at his poem and passed the greater part of his nights in society; very short intervals of repose sufficing to repair in so vigorously constituted a being the loss of energetic vitality caused by the quick succession of intense intellectual labour and equally intense social enjoyment. It was at this period that the enchanting creations of Wieland and Ariosto were first presented to his young and glowing imagination. These poets are emphatically and essentially the poets of the young: the "_white soul_" of youth as yet untinged with the colouring reflected from its own peculiar fantasy or the results of reading mirrors faithfully the fairy splendour of their magic style even as the Alpine snow the rosy light of dawn: and Púshkin with the natural desire of imitating what he so well knew how to admire conceived the happy thought of transporting Armida and Oberon to a scenery admirably adapted for their reproduction--to the world of ancient Russia. The popular superstitions of the Sclavonic races though naturally possessing a tone and local colouring of their own and modified by the nature which they reflect are neither less graceful nor less fertile in poetry than the delicate mythology so exquisitely embodied by the great German or the yet greater Italian: and the poem of "Ruslán and Liudmíla"--the result of Púshkin's bold and happy experiment--may be said to have been the very first embodiment of Russian fancy at least the first such embodiment exhibited under a form sufficiently European to enable readers who were not Russians to appreciate and admire. The cantos which compose this charming work were read by Púshkin as fast as they were completed at the house of his friend and brother poet Jukóvskii where were assembled the most distinguished men of Russian literary society. In 1820 the poem of "Ruslán and Liudmíla" was completed and its appearance must be considered as giving the finishing blow to the worn-out classicism which characterizes all the poetical language of the eighteenth century. This revolution was begun by Jukóvskii himself to whom Russian literature owes so much; and he hailed with delight the new and beautiful production of the young poet--the "conquering scholar " as Jukóvskii affectionately calls Púshkin--which established for ever the new order of things originating in the good taste of the "conquered master " as he designates himself. The ever timid spirit of criticism was as usual exemplified in the judgments passed by the literary journals upon this elegant innovation. Some were alarmed at the novelty of the language others shocked at the irregularity of the versification and others again at the occasional comic passages introduced into the poem: but all forgot or all dared not confess that this was the first Russian poetry which had ever been greedily and universally _read_; and that until the appearance of "Ruslán and Liudmíla " poetry and tiresomeness had been in Russia convertible terms. Immediately on the publication of "Ruslán and Liudmíla " the poet becoming in all probability somewhat weary of a life of incessant and labouring pleasure left the capital and retired to Kishenév; he took service in the chancery (or office) of Lieutenant-General Inzóff substitute in the province of Bessarabia. From this epoch begins the wandering and unsettled period of the poet's life which occupies a space of five years and concludes with his return to his father's village of Mikháilovskoë in the government of Pskoff. The effect upon the character and genius of Púshkin of this pilgrim-like existence must be considered as in the highest degree favourable: he stored up in these wanderings we may be sure effects of scenery and traits of human nature--in fact the rough materials of future poetry. Fortunately for him the theatre of his travels was vast enough to enable him to lay in an ample stock not only of recollections of the external beauties in the physical world but also a rich supply of the various characteristics of national manners. He traversed the whole south of Russia--a district admirably calculated to strike and to impress the warm and vivid imagination of our poet; and "he took genial tribute from the wandering tribes of Bessarabia and from the merchant inhabitants of Odessa and from the classic ruins of the Tauride and from the dark-blue waves of the Euxine and from the wild peaks of the Caucasus." It was at this epoch of Púshkin's career that the mighty star of Byron first rose like some glittering but irregular comet above the literary horizon of Europe. The genius of the Russian poet had far too many points of resemblance in many of its most characteristic peculiarities with the Muse of the Noble Childe for us to be surprised at the circumstance that the new and brilliant productions of Byron should have a powerful influence on so congenial a mind as was that of Púshkin. When we allow therefore the existence of this influence nay more when we endeavour to appreciate and measure the extent of that influence; when we essay to express the degree of _aberration_ (to use the language of the astronomer) produced in the orbit of the great poetic planet of the North by the approach in the literary hemisphere of the yet greater luminary of England--we give the strongest possible denial to a fallacious opinion useless to the glory of one great man and injurious to the just fame of the other viz. that Púshkin can be called in any sense an _imitator_ of Lord Byron. In many respects it is true there was a strange and surprising analogy between the personal character the peculiar tone of thought nay even the nature of the subjects treated by the two poets: and to those who content themselves with a superficial examination of the question--those "who have not attayned " as Sir Thomas Browne quaintly phrases it "to the deuteroscophie or second sight of thinges"--these analogies may appear conclusive; but we trust to be able to show that between these two great men there exists a difference wide and marked enough to satisfy the most critical stickler for originality. The next production of Púshkin's pen was a brilliant "Epilogue" to the poem of "Ruslán and Liudmíla"--in which he replies to the strictures which had appeared in the various literary journals. This piece was immediately followed (in 1822) by his "Prisoner of the Caucasus " a romantic poem which breathes the very freshness of the mountain breeze and must be considered as the perfect embodiment in verse of the sublime region from whence it takes its title. So deep was the impression produced by this splendid and passionate poem that it was reprinted four times before it was incorporated into the edition of the author's collected works;--the impressions having been exhausted in 1822 24 28 and 35. The reader in order to appreciate the avidity with which the poem was read must bear in mind the small amount of literary activity in Russia as compared with England with Germany or with France. We shall not attempt to give in this place any analysis of this or the other works of Púshkin as it is our conviction that short and meagre fragments--all that our space would admit of--are very unsatisfactory and insufficient grounds on which to judge a work of fiction and particularly a work of poetry in a language absolutely unknown to almost all our readers many of the chief peculiarities depending too upon the nationality of which that language is the expression and vehicle. It is however our intention should the specimens of lyric poetry presented in the translations accompanying this notice be favourably received in England to extend the sphere of our humble labours and to endeavour to Daguerreotype by faithful versions portions of the longer poems (and in particular the narrative pieces) of the great writer whose portrait we are attempting to trace. We shall we trust by so doing succeed in giving our countrymen a more just idea of the merit and peculiar manner of our poet than we could hope to do by exhibiting to the reader the bare anatomy--the mere dry bones of his works to which would be wanting the lively play of versification the life-blood of fancy and the ever-varying graces of expression. Between the first of these two remarkable poems ("Ruslán and Liudmíla") and the second--"The Prisoner of the Caucasus " the mind of Púshkin had undergone a most remarkable transformation; "there is hardly any thing " to use the words of the elegant critic whom we have already quoted "common to the two poems except the beauty of the verses." There is not a greater difference between an early and a late picture of Raphael; and what is interesting and curious to remark is the circumstance that poet and painter (in their gradual advance towards consummate excellence in their respective arts) seemed to have passed through the same stages of development. In the earlier work all is studied elaborated carefully and scientifically _composed_; worked out from the quarry of memory chiselled by the imagination and polished by a studious and somewhat pedantic taste: while the imagery the passion and the characters of the later production are modelled immediately from Nature herself. The reader perceives that the young artist has now reached the first phase of his development and has thrown aside the rule and compass of precedents and books and feels himself sufficiently strong of hand and steady of eye to look face to face upon the unveiled goddess herself and with reverent skill to copy her sublime lineaments. We cannot better express our meaning than by allowing Púshkin himself to give his own opinion of this poem. In the latter part of his life he writes as follows--"At Lars I found a dirtied and dog's-eared copy of 'The Prisoner of the Caucasus ' and I confess that I read it through with much gratification. All this is weak boyish incomplete; but there is much happily guessed at and faithfully expressed." The indomitable activity which we have mentioned as forming a marked feature in Púshkin's intellect though exhibited most strikingly throughout his whole career was never more forcibly displayed than at the present period. Although the first fervour of his passions was now in sole degree moderated by indulgence and by that satiety which is the inevitable attendant on such indulgence it is not to be imagined that the poet in retiring from the capital intended by this to seclude himself from the gayer pleasures of society. We know too how absorbing of time is the wandering life which he led--and many have learned from experience how difficult it is for a traveller to find leisure for intellectual pursuits. Some idea therefore of Púshkin's activity may be formed from a knowledge of the circumstance that during this roving period he had not only been storing his memory with images of the beauties of nature taking tribute of grandeur and loveliness from every scene through which he wandered but found time to pursue what would appear even for an otherwise unoccupied student a very steady and incessant course of labour. During the whole of his life he made it his practice to read almost every remarkable work which appeared in the various languages he had acquired. That this was no easy task and that the quantity of intellectual food which he unceasingly consumed must have required a powerful and rapid digestion to assimilate it we may conclude from his own statement of his occupations and acquirements. On quitting the Lyceum he was acquainted with the English Latin German and French languages; to this list he managed to add during his wanderings a complete knowledge of the Italian and a competent proficiency in Spanish. But let us hear his own account of these studies extracted from a poem written in Bessarabia-- "In solitude my soul my wayward inspiration I've school'd to quiet toil to fervent meditation. I'm master of my days; order is reason's friend; On graver thoughts I've learn'd my spirit's powers to bend; I seek to compensate in freedom's calm embraces For the warm years of youth its joys and vanish'd graces; And to keep equal step with an enlighten'd age." We cannot refrain from quoting in this place a passage from another poem written at this period; our readers will be pleased we think with so graceful a tribute to the glory of the great exile-bard of Rome whose fate and character had so much in common with those of Púshkin himself-- "Sweet Ovid! Love's own bard! I dwell by that still shore Whither thine exiled gods thou broughtest--where of yore Thou pour'dst thy plaints in life and left thine ashes dying; With deathless fruitless tears these places glorifying. * * * * * * Here with a northern lyre the wilderness awaking I wander'd in those days when liberty was breaking-- Roused by the gallant Greek--he
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sleep by Danube's tide; And not one friend would stand a brother by my side; And the far hills alone and woods in silence dreaming And the calm muses then would list with kindly seeming."" The influence exerted upon our poet's mind and productions by the Byronian spirit to which we alluded a few pages back may be traced in very perceptible degree in the next poem which he gave to the public ""The Fountain of Bakhtchisarái "" a work in which is reflected as vividly as it is in the storied waters of the fount from which it takes its name all the wealth the profuse and abounding loveliness of the luxurious clime of the Tauric Chersonese. The scene of the poem is one of the most romantic spots in that divine land; and the ruined palace and ""gardens of delight"" which once made the joy and pride of the mighty khans--the rulers of the Golden Horde--is perhaps not inferior as a source of wild legend and picturesque fairy lore--certainly not inferior in the eyes of a Russian reader--to the painted halls and fretted colonnades of the Alhambra. The success instantly obtained and permanently enjoyed by this exquisite poem must be attributed to something more than the profusion and beauty of the descriptive passages so thickly and artfully interwoven with the action of the tale--a species of wealth and profusion it may be remarked which suits well with the oriental character of the story and with the abounding loveliness of the scenery amid which that action is supposed to take place. In this poem too we may remark the first decided essay made by the poet towards delineating and contrasting in an artistic manner the characters of human personages. The dramatic opposition between the two principal characters of the tale Maria and Zarema is well conceived and most skilfully executed. This poem first appeared in 1824 and was reprinted in 1827 1830 1835. The powers of dramatic delineation which may be seen as it were in embryo in this work were to be still further developed in Púshkin's next production which was begun in the same year (1824 ) and appeared in 1827. Those powers too were destined to be exhibited in their full splendour in a historical tragedy--perhaps the finest which the Russian literature can be said to possess. The work to which we have alluded as being the second trial of his wings in the arduous regions of dramatic creation was the short but exquisite tale entitled ""The Gipsies."" This tale which is esteemed by the Russians a masterpiece of grace and simplicity is a poem in dialogue; the persons being only four in number and the action a wild yet simple catastrophe of love jealousy and revenge. The _dramatis personæ_ are gipsies; and it is difficult to select what is most admirable in this exquisite little work--the completeness and distinctness of the descriptions of external nature--the artful introduction of various allusions (particularly in one most charming passage indicating Ovid's exile in the beautiful country which is the scene of the drama ) or the intense interest which the poet has known how to infuse into what would appear at first sight a subject simple even to meagreness. Poets of many nations have endeavoured with various qualifications and with no less various degrees of success to represent the picturesque and striking features of the nomad life and wild superstitions of the gipsy race: none however it may be safely asserted have ever produced a picture more true or more poetical than is to be found in the production of Púshkin. He had ample opportunities of studying their peculiar manners in the green oceans of the southern steppes. It is at this period that Púshkin began the composition of his poem entitled ""Evgénii Oniégin "" a production which has become it may be said part of the ordinary language of the poet's countrymen. The first canto appeared in 1825 1829. This work in its outline its plan in the general tone of thought pervading it and in certain other _external_ circumstances bears a kind of fallacious resemblance to the inimitable production of Lord Byron; a circumstance which leads superficial readers into the error (unjust in the highest degree to Púshkin's originality) of considering it as an imitation of the Don. It is a species of satire upon society (and Russian fashionable society in particular ) embodied in an easy wandering verse something like that of Byron; and so far perhaps the comparison between the two poems holds good. Púshkin's _plot_ has the advantage of being (though sufficiently slight in construction it must be confessed) considerably more compact and interesting than the irregular narration which serves Byron to string together the bitter beads of his satirical rosary; but at the same time the aim and scope of the English satirist is infinitely more vast and comprehensive. The Russian has also none of the terrible and deeply-thrilling pictures of passion and of war which so strangely and powerfully contrast with the bitter sneer and gay irony forming the basis of the Don; but on the other hand the interest of the reader (scattered in Byron's work upon the various unconnected and somewhat monotonous outlines of female characters in Julia Haidée Gulbeyas &c. ) is in ""Evgénii Oniégin"" most powerfully concentrated upon the heroine Tatiana--one of the most exquisite tributes that poetry has ever paid to the nobility of woman. To show the difficulty of judging of this work we need only mention that while many compare it to ""Don Juan "" others consider is as rather resembling ""Childe Harold;"" while the author himself professed that it was rather to be placed in the category of ""Beppo."" On leaving Odessa (in 1824 ) Púshkin who appears to have loved the sea with all the fervour of Shelley himself bade farewell to the waves with which he had communed so earnestly and whose deep voices his verse so nobly echoed in some grand stanzas ""To the Sea "" of which a translation will be given in a subsequent part. It is to this epoch that we must ascribe the first outline of the historical tragedy to which we have alluded; but which did not appear till a much later period. We shall recur to this work when we reach the date of its completion. As the composition of ""Evgénii Oniégin"" extended over a considerable space of time our readers may not be displeased at our reverting occasionally to the progress of this work and to the character of its merits. This production must be considered as the fullest and most complete embodiment that exists in Russian literature of the nationality of the country. It will be found to be the expression of those apparently discordant elements the union of which composes that hard riddle--the Russian character. A passage of Púshkin's dedication will not incorrectly exhibit the variety of its tone:-- ""Accept this heap of motley traits Half gay half sad half false half real Half every-day yet half ideal The careless fruit of idle days Of sleepless nights; slight inspirations Of unripe years of wasted art-- The reason's frigid observations And sad conclusions of the heart."" During the most tranquil and laborious portion of Púshkin's life which passed principally at Mikháilovskoë and which occupies the period from his leaving Odessa at the end of the year 1824 to 1826 he continued to labour upon his tragedy and to produce the second and third cantos of ""Evgénii Oniégin "" in addition to which our indefatigable poet found means to collect and publish a number of smaller poems some of which will be found among the translations which we are about to offer; and to aid his friend and brother-poet Délvig in an annual volume of prose and verse (illustrated after the manner of our Keepsakes &c.) entitled ""Northern Flowers."" This publication was commenced in 1826 and continued to appear always enriched with something by Púshkin till its existence closed at the early and lamented death of the projector and editor. Púshkin's life at this period was characterized by intense industry and an uniformity of exertion modified and compensated by variety of occupation. He has left a minute description of the manner in which his time was distributed between labour and repose; and even if we did not possess his letters it is described with sufficient accuracy in the fourth canto of ""Evgénii Oniégin "" to enable us to transcribe it here. He was in the habit of rising early and of devoting the morning and forenoon to those parts of his literary occupation which demanded the exercise of the intellectual or reasoning powers the memory &c. &c. Before dinner (whatever was the state of the weather) he took somewhat violent walking exercise; he then dined (it should be remarked that the dinner-hour is earlier in Russia than is usual in England ) and having passed the evening in society either at home or at some neighbouring country-house he returned to his poetical labours which he sometimes continued far into the night.[1] He has frequently repeated that he found himself more perfectly disposed to composition in the season of autumn; and that his poetical vein flowed most generously and abundantly on a dark and stormy night. To those who are acquainted with the climate of Russia (particularly of that part of the Empire where Púshkin now resided) this will not be surprising; and the abundance and splendour of the descriptions of the autumnal season introduced into his various works will show that his mind and imagination had something in harmony with that which is in our opinion the most poetical portion of the year. Like many persons of a highly nervous organization the brilliant sunshine of spring-tide produced in Púshkin's temperament an impression of melancholy which he explained by a natural tendency to consumption. In autumn 1826 Púshkin re-entered the government service in his original department viz. that of the foreign affairs; and in 1827 he printed besides the third canto of ""Evgénii Oniégin "" the ""Gypsies "" a new poem of inferior merit entitled the ""Robber-Brothers "" and a comic tale also in verse which though slight in construction is a masterpiece of graceful and elegant satire. It is entitled ""Count Nulin "" and describes the signal discomfiture of certain designs meditated by the count (a most delightful specimen of a young Russian coxcomb) against the virtue of his hostess a fair châtelaine at whose country-house the said count passes a night in consequence of a disabled travelling-carriage. To this period too must be assigned the composition of ""Poltáva "" a work the proper title of which would be ""Mazépa "" but which received its name in order that the public might not confound it with Byron's tale the hero of both being the same historical personage. It is almost unnecessary to state that there is no resemblance whatever between these two remarkable works. While the production of Byron is rather an admirable development of certain incidents either entirely invented by the poet or only slightly suggested by passages of the old Kazak Hetman's biography the _Mazépa_ of Púshkin is a most spirited and faithful version of the real history of the romantic life of the hero; the actual events adopted by the Russian poet as the groundwork of his tale being certainly not inferior in strangeness novelty and romantic incident to the short fiery tale dawning rosily in mutual love and finishing with the wild gallop on the desert steed which thrills us so deeply in the pages of Byron. In 1829 was given to the world an edition of Púshkin's collected works arranged in chronological order; and the author had another opportunity of visiting the East--those climes whence he had drawn and was to draw again so much of his inspiration. He once more crossed the Caucasus and leaving in his rear his beloved Georgia he followed the movements of the Russian army in its campaign and accompanied it as far as Arzerám receiving during this journey the most flattering attentions from Marshal Paskévitch the commander-in-chief of the expedition. We may judge of the delight with which he seized this opportunity of indulging his taste for travelling and of the vast store of recollections and images which he garnered up during this pilgrimage--so peculiarly attractive to a poet as combining the pleasure of travelling with the splendour and picturesque novelties of a military march--by the letters in which he has described his impressions during this interesting period. These letters are models of simplicity grace and interest and have become classical in the Russian language. In 1830 Baron Délvig commenced the publication of the _Literary Gazette_ an undertaking in which Púshkin took as active and zealous an interest as he had done in the _Northern Flowers_ edited by his friend and schoolfellow. He not only contributed many beautiful poems to this periodical but also several striking prose tales and other papers in which by the elegance and brilliancy of the style and the acuteness and originality of the thoughts the public found no difficulty in identifying Púshkin though they appeared anonymously. He now visited Moscow in order to superintend the printing of his _Bóris Godunóff_ the tragedy which he had been so long engaged in polishing and completing and respecting the success of which he appears to have been more anxious than usual as he determined to write himself the preface to this work. The subject of this tragedy is the well-known episode of Russian history which placed Boris upon the throne of the Tsar; and writers have taken various views of the character of the hero of this scene Púshkin representing Boris as the assassin of the son of Ivan IV. while the ancient chroniclers and the modern historians in general as Ustriáloff Pogódin Kraévskii &c. &c. concur in asserting that that prince was elected by the clergy and the people. Whatever may be the historical truth of the design Púshkin has given us in this tragedy a dramatic picture full of spirit of passion of character and of life; and some of the personages particularly those of the pretender Dimítri and the heroine Marina are sketched with a vigorous and flowing pencil. The _form_ of this play is ostensibly Shakspearian; but it appears to us to resemble less the works of Shakspeare himself than some of the more successful imitations of the great dramatist's manner--as for instance some parts of the Wallenstein. As to the language and versification it is in blank verse and the style is considered by Russians as admirable for ease and flexibility. At this time Púshkin's life was about to undergo a great change; he was engaged to a young lady whom he afterwards married and retired in the spring of this year to the village of Boldino in the province of Nijegorod in order to make preparations for his new existence as a married man and in this spot he remained in consequence of the cholera breaking out in Moscow until the winter. In spite of the engrossing nature of these occupations he seems never to have been more industriously employed than during this autumn. ""I must tell you "" he writes ""(but between you and me!) that I have been working at Boldino as I have not done for a long time. Listen then! I brought with me hither the two last cantos of 'Oniégin ' ready for the press a tale in octaves (the _Little House in the Kolomora_ ) number of dramatic scenes--'The Stingy Knight ' 'Mozart and Salieri ' 'The Feast in the Time of the Plague ' and 'Don Juan.' Besides this I have written about thirty small pieces of poetry. I have not done yet; I have written in prose (this is a great secret) five tales "" (Ivan Biélkin's Stories.) The year 1831 began afflictingly for Púshkin. On the 14th of January Baron Délvig died. All Púshkin's letters in which he makes any allusion to this loss breathe a sentiment of the most deep and permanent sorrow. The following is extracted from a letter to a friend dated the 31st of this month:--""I knew him (Délvig) at the Lyceum. I watched the first unnoted unfolding of his poetic mind--the early development of a talent which we then gave not its just value. We read together Deljávin and Jukóvskii; we talked of all _that swelleth the spirit that melteth the heart_. His life was rich and full--rich not in romantic adventures but in the most noble feelings the most brilliant and the purest intellect and the fairest hopes."" But the grief caused by this great and irreparable loss--a grief which threw its dark cold shadow over the whole of Púshkin's subsequent existence--was not unrelieved by feelings of a brighter tone: the void caused by friendship was filled up with love. In February of this year he was married at Moscow to the lady to whom (as we have mentioned above) he had been some time engaged. Mlle. Gontcháreff was of an ancient Russian family and a person of singular beauty. ""I am married "" (writes the poet to one of his friends in a letter dated February 24.) ""I have now but one desire in the world and that is that nothing in my present life be changed. This existence is so new to me that I feel as if I had been born again. The death of Délvig is the only shadow in my bright existence."" Púshkin was desirous of editing a volume of the ""Northern Flowers "" in the following year for the benefit of the family of his departed friend for which he now began assiduously to collect materials. This labour detained him until the month of May in Moscow; and before his migration to St Petersburg the tragedy of Bóris Godunóff was printed. Among all the works of Púshkin there is not one which exhibits so high a degree of artistic skill or so vigorous and powerful a genius as this drama in which every word every dialogue seems to unite the certainty of study and meditation with the fire and naturalness of a happy improvisation and in which there is not a character nor an allusion which destroys the truth and vigour of the composition viewed as a faithful mirror of Russian nationality Russian history and Russian character. The remainder of Púshkin's short alas! but laborious life however filled with the silent activity of intellectual occupation offers but few materials for the biographer: it was passed principally at St Petersburg varied by occasional journeys to Moscow and the usual _autumnal_ retirements which we have mentioned as having been so favourable for the execution of the poet's literary tasks. We shall content ourselves with giving a slight account of the principal works in which Púshkin employed his great powers--powers which had now reached their highest point of vigour retaining all the freshness and vivacity of youth while they had acquired the maturity and solidity of manhood. The subjects of these works however being for the most part historical are of a nature which renders them less susceptible of analysis in our pages--and indeed their local nature would cause such analysis to be devoid in a great measure of interest to the English reader. There is however one episode in the poet's life which must possess peculiar interest to those who delight to watch that fond fidelity with which genius returns to the scenes where it was first developed and which brought back Shakspeare loaded with glory to pass the calm evening of his life amid the native shades of Stratford. On quitting Moscow for St Petersburg Púshkin passed a winter at Tsárskoë Seló. ""This was a most blessed thought "" he says in a letter of 26th March; ""I can thus pass my summer and _autumn_ in a most enchanting and inspiring seclusion; close to the capital in the circle of my dearest recollections. I shall be able to see you every week and Jukóvskii also. Petersburg is within an hour's drive. Living is cheap here. I shall not want an equipage. What can be better?"" And in fact it is certain that he never was so perfectly happy in his society and his occupations and in himself as in these summer and autumn months which he passed as he says:-- ""In those bright days when yet all ignorant of fame And knowing neither care system nor art nor aim Thy tutelary shades O Tsárskoë! were flinging Gay echoes to _his_ voice the praise of Idlesse singing."" The beautiful retirement of Tsárskoë Seló was at this period dignified by the presence of two great poets each producing works worthy of the imperial groves under whose shade they were meditated. Púshkin and Jukóvskii were not only residing here together but they were engaged in a friendly rivalry and each writing so industriously as though determined never to meet without some new poetic novelty. The deep impression produced by Jukóvskii's patriotic stanzas written at this period entitled ""Russian Glory "" was worthily responded to by the noble poems written by Púshkin ""To the Slanderers of Russia!"" and ""The Anniversary of Borodino ""--all these works being spirited and majestic embodiments of national triumph and exultation. It is curious and delightful to remark too that the poets of Tsárskoë Seló were occupied at this period with the composition of two similar works of another and no less national character. These were ""tales"" or legends in the popular taste of the Russian people that of Jukóvskii was entitled ""The Lay of the Tsar Berendéi "" and Púshkin's ""The Lay of the Tsar Saltán."" In this year too was printed Púshkin's small collection of prose tales under the assumed name of Ivan Biélkin which appeared with a biographical preface describing the life and character of the supposed author. The tales are of extraordinary merit remarkable for the simplicity and natural grace of the style and the preface is a specimen of consummate excellence in point of quiet Addisonian humour. In the year 1831 Púshkin girded up his loins to enter upon the great historical task; which had so long attracted his imagination and which difficult and arduous as was the undertaking he was probably better calculated than any literary man whom Russia has yet seen to execute in a manner worthy of the sublime nature of its subject. This was the history of Peter the Great. He now began to set seriously about preparing himself for approaching this gigantic subject and passed the greater part of his time in the archives collecting the necessary materials for the work. In his hours of relaxation he produced the third volume of his smaller poems and superintended the publication of another volume of the ""Northern Flowers "" which appeared in 1832. But these must be considered as the results rather of his play-moments than as the serious occupation of his time. His mornings were generally passed among the records preserved in the various departments of the government from whence after the labours and researches of the day he usually returned on foot to his late dinner. He was an active and indefatigable walker prizing highly and endeavouring to preserve by constant exercise the vigorous frame of body with which he was blessed by nature. Even in summer he was accustomed to return on foot from his country residence to his labours in the city and was in the habit of taking violent corporeal exercise in gymnastics which he would continue with the patience and enduring vigour of an athlete. These walks (it should be remarked that a taste for walking is much more rare among the Russians than in England from the severity and extreme changes in the climate of the North the heat in summer rendering such exercise much more laborious than with us and the cold in winter necessitating the use of the heavy shubá of fur)--these walks were Púshkin's principal amusement if we except bathing an exercise which the poet would frequently continue far into autumn--a season when the weather in Russia is frequently very severe. In the prosecution of his great historical labour it was evidently difficult for the lively imagination of Púshkin to escape the temptation of being drawn aside from his chief aim by the attractive and romantic character of many episodes in Russian history--to wander for a moment from the somewhat formal and arid high-road of history into some of the ""shady spaces "" peopled with romantic adventure and picturesque incident. It was under the influence of some such attraction that he conceived the idea of working out in a separate production the detached epoch rendered so remarkable by the rebellion of Pugatchéff. Finding that he had already performed the most serious portion of the drudgery of collecting materials for his principal historical enterprise he drew with a wonderfully rapid and lively pencil the vigorous sketch of the events of that extraordinary conspiracy and has left us a work which whatever be its imperfections and slightness viewed as a work of history cannot be denied to be a most admirable and striking outline of the picturesque and singular events which form its subject. Convinced of the importance to an author of history of a personal knowledge of the scenes in which his events took place Púshkin when the history of Pugatchéff's rebellion was already on the verge of completion determined (before his work was published) to examine with his own eyes that eastern region of European Russia which had been the theatre of the strange drama of that singular pretender's life and to enable himself to infuse into a narration founded upon dry records the life and reality which was to be obtained from questioning the old inhabitants of that country many of whom might remember the wild adventures of which in their youth they had been witnesses or actors. In 1833 Púshkin was enabled to gratify this natural curiosity; and the result of his visit to the scene of the rebellion enabled him to communicate to his already plain vigorous and concise narration a tone of reality a warmth of colouring and a liveliness of language which renders it impossible to leave the book unfinished when once opened and which no elaborateness of research and no minuteness of detail could otherwise have communicated. During the first two years of its existence the periodical entitled ""The Reading Library"" was honoured by the appearance in its pages of that division of Púshkin's smaller poems afterwards published separately as the fourth volume of his collected works in the year 1835. In this journal too were printed his two prose tales ""The Queen of Spades"" and ""Kirdjáli "" the former of which has we believe appeared in English and of the latter a translation has been attempted together with several others of his smaller prose works by the author of the present notice. A journey which he made to Orenburg gave him the materials for fresh prose tales. The most remarkable of these the beautiful and well-known story ""The Captain's Daughter "" first appeared in the periodical entitled ""The Contemporary "" which is justly considered as the chief miscellaneous journal that appears in Russia and which partakes of the nature of what we in England call the review and magazine. In all his writing prose or verse Púshkin is most astonishingly unaffected rational and straightforward; but in the last-named story he has attained the highest degree of perfection--it is the simplicity of nature herself. This period must be considered as that in which Púshkin had arrived at the summit of his glory. He was now enjoying the universal respect and admiration of his countrymen a respect and admiration shared by the sovereign himself who distinguished the great poet by naming him ""gentilhomme de la chambre;"" he was in the very flower of health life and genius; he had completed the laborious part of his great task in collecting materials for the history of Peter the Great--all seemed to prophesy a future filled with bright certainties of happiness and glory. But the end was not far off; the dark and melancholy event which was to put a sudden and a fatal conclusion to this glorious and useful career was near at hand. The storm which was to quench this bright and shining light was already rising dimly above the horizon; and the poet's prophetic eye foresaw--like that of the seer in the Scripture--the ""little cloud like a man's hand "" that was rising heavily over the calm sky; he seems to have had an obscure presentiment of the near approach of death little suspecting perhaps that that death was to be one of violence of suffering and of blood. He had a few months before lost his mother and had himself accompanied her last remains to the monastery of Sviatogórsk and had fixed upon a spot where he wished to be buried by her side; leaving for this purpose a sum of money in the treasury of the monastery. It is we believe generally known even in England that Púshkin was mortally wounded in a duel on Wednesday 27th January and that he died after lingering in excruciating[2] torment during two days and nights at half-past two in the afternoon of the 29th of January 1837. Respecting the causes which led to this melancholy conclusion of a great man's life and the details which accompanied that sad and deplorable event it is not our intention to speak. Under any circumstances to dwell upon so lamentable an affair would serve no good purpose; and would rather minister to a morbid curiosity in our readers than in any respect illustrate the life and character of Púshkin; but the propriety of avoiding more than an allusion to this sad story will be evident when we reflect that the poet's dying wish was that the whole circumstance should if possible be buried in oblivion. Respect then to the last desire of a dying man! Respect to the prayer of great genius whose lips when quivering in the last agony murmured the generous words ""Pardon and Forget!"" The foregoing brief notice is presented to the English reader less in the character of a complete biography of Púshkin (a character to which it has evidently no pretensions ) than as a kind of necessary introduction to the translated specimens of his poetry which it is intended to accompany. For a perfect biography indeed of the poet the materials even in Russia are not yet assembled; nor perhaps has a sufficient period of time been suffered to elapse since his death to render it possible to attempt a life of Púshkin with any hope of preserving that _distance_ and _proportion_ which is necessary for the successful execution of a portrait whether traced with the pencil or the pen. The artist may be too near to his original in _time_ as well as in _space_. The general accuracy of the preceding pages may be depended on; the materials were obtained from various sources but principally from two persons who were both acquainted--one intimately so--with Púshkin. We should be indeed ungrateful were we to let pass the present opportunity afforded us of expressing our deep obligations to both those gentlemen for the assistance they have given us; and we cannot deny ourselves the gratification of publicly and particularly thanking M. Pletniéff rector of the Imperial University of St Petersburg not only for the kind manner in which he facilitated the composition of these pages by supplying us with a copy of his own elegant and spirited critical sketch of Púshkin's works and character (a short but masterly article reprinted from the ""Sovreménnik "" or Contemporary a literary journal of which M. Pletniéff is the editor ) but for the many delightful and intellectual hours which we have passed in his society. THOMAS B. SHAW. St Petersburg February 5th/17th 1845. THE LAST HOURS OF PÚSHKIN. LETTER FROM JUKÓVSKII TO SERGEI PÚSHKIN THE POET'S FATHER. _February 15th/27th 1837._ I have not till now succeeded in mustering up the courage to write to you my poor friend Sergei Lvóvitch. What could I say to you overwhelmed as I am by the national calamity which has just fallen upon us all like an avalanche and crushed us beneath its ruin? Our Púshkin is no more! This terrible fact is unhappily true but nevertheless it still appears almost incredible. The thought that he is gone cannot yet enter into the order of common evident every-day ideas; one still continues by mechanical habit as it were to seek him; it still seems so natural to expect to see him at certain hours; still amid our conversations seems to resound his voice still seems to ring his lively childlike laugh of gaiety; and there where he was wont to be seen in daily life there nothing is changed there are hardly even any marks of the melancholy loss we have undergone--all is in its common order every thing is in its place; but he is gone from us and for ever. It is hardly conceivable! In one moment has perished that strong and mighty life full of genius and glowing with hope. I will not speak of you his feeble and unhappy father; I will not speak o
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us his mourning friends. Russia has lost her beloved her national poet. She has lost him at the very moment when his powers had reached their maturity lost him when he had reached that climacteric--that point at which our intellect bidding farewell to the fervid and sometimes irregular force of youth agitated by genius devotes itself to more tranquil more orderly powers of riper manhood fresh as the first period and if less tempestuous yet certainly more creative. What Russian is there who does not feel as if the death of Púshkin had torn away one of his very heart-strings? The glory of the present reign has lost its poet--a poet who belonged to it as Derjávin belonged to the glory of Catharine or Karamzín to that of Alexander. The first terrible moments of agony and bereavement are over for you; you can now listen to me and weep. I will describe to you every detail of your son's last hours--details which I either saw myself or which were related to me by other eyewitnesses. On Wednesday the 27th January/8th February at ten o'clock in the evening I called at the house of the Prince Viázemskii where I was told that both he and the princess were at Púshkin's and Valúeff to whom I afterwards went addressed me on my entrance with the words:--""Have you not received the Princess's note? They have sent for you long ago; hurry off to Púshkin's: he is dying."" Thunderstruck with this news I rushed down-stairs. I galloped off to Púshkin's. In his antechamber before the door of his study I found Drs Arendt and Spásskii Prince Viázemskii and Prince Mestchérskii. To the question ""_How is he?_""--Arendt answered me ""He is very bad; he will infallibly die."" The following was the account they gave me of what had happened: At six o'clock after dinner Púshkin had been brought home in the same desperate condition by Lieutenant-Colonel Danzás his schoolfellow at the Lyceum. A footman had taken him out of the carriage and carried him in his arms up-stairs. ""_Does it hurt you to carry me?_"" asked Púshkin of the man. They carried him into his study; he himself told them to give him clean linen; he changed his dress and lay down on a sofa. At the moment when they were helping him to lie down his wife who knew nothing of what had happened was about to come into the room; but he cried out in a loud tone--""_N'entrez pas; il y a du monde chez moi._"" He was afraid of frightening her. His wife however had already entered by the time that he was laid down completely dressed. They sent for the doctors. Arendt was not at home but Scholtz and Zadler came. Púshkin ordered everybody to leave the room (at this moment Danzás and Pletniéff were with him.) ""_I am very bad_ "" he said as he shook hands with Scholtz. They examined his wound and Zadler went away to fetch the needful instruments. Left alone with Scholtz Púshkin enquired ""_What do you think of my state--speak plainly?_"" ""I cannot conceal from you the fact that you are in danger."" ""_Say rather I am dying._"" ""I hold it my duty not to conceal from you that such is the case. But we will hear the opinion of Arendt and Salomon who are sent for."" ""_Je vous remercie vous avez agi en honnête homme envers moi_ "" said Púshkin. Then after a moment's silence he rubbed his forehead with his hand and added ""_Il faut que j'arrange ma maison._"" ""Would you not like to see any of your relations?"" asked Scholtz. ""_Farewell my friends!_"" cried Púshkin turning his eyes towards his library. To whom he bade adieu in these words whether it was to his living or his dead friends I know not. After waiting a few moments he asked ""_Then do you think that I shall not live through the hour?_"" ""Oh no! I merely supposed that it might be agreeable to you to see some of your friends--M. Pletniéff is here."" ""_Yes but I should like to see Jukóvskii too. Give me some water I feel sick._"" Scholtz felt his pulse and found that the hand was cold and the pulse weak and quick; he left the room for some drink and they sent for me. I was not at home at this moment and I know not how it happened but none of their messengers ever reached me. In the meanwhile Zadler and Salomon arrived. Scholtz left the patient who affectionately shook hands with him but without speaking a single word. Soon after Arendt made his appearance. He was convinced at the first glance that there was not the slightest hope. They began to apply cold fomentations with ice to the patient's stomach and to give cooling drinks; a treatment which soon produced the desired effect; he grew more tranquil. Before Arendt's departure he said to him ""_Beg the Emperor to pardon me._"" Arendt now departed leaving him to the care of Spásskii the family physician who during that whole night never quitted the bedside. ""_I am very bad_ "" said Púshkin when Spásskii came into the room. Spásskii endeavoured to tranquillize him; but Púshkin waved his hand in a negative manner. From this moment he seemed to have ceased to entertain any anxiety about himself; and all his thoughts were now turned towards his wife. ""_Do not give my wife any useless hope_;"" he said to Spásskii; ""_do not conceal from her what is the matter she is no pretender to sentiment; you know her well. As for me do as you please with me; I consent to every thing and I am ready for every thing._"" At this moment were already assembled the Princess Viázemskii the Prince Turgénieff the Count Vielhórskii and myself. The princess was with the poor wife whose condition it is impossible to describe. She from time to time stole like a ghost into the room where lay her dying husband; he could not see her (he was lying on a sofa with his face turned from the window and the door;) but every time that she entered or even stopped at the door he felt her presence. ""_My wife is here--is she not?_"" he said. ""_Take her away._"" He was afraid to admit her because he did not wish her to perceive the sufferings which he overmastered with astonishing courage. ""_What is my wife doing?_"" he once enquired of Spásskii. ""_Poor thing! she suffers innocently. The world will tear her to pieces._"" In general from the beginning to the end of his sufferings (except during two or three hours of the first night when they exceeded all measure of human endurance ) he was astonishingly firm. ""I have been in thirty battles "" said Dr Arendt; ""I have seen numbers of dying men; but I have very seldom seen any thing like this."" And it is peculiarly remarkable that during these last hours of his life he seemed as it were to have become another person; the tempest which a few hours back had agitated his soul with uncontrollable passion was gone and left not a trace behind; not a word not a recollection of what had happened. On the previous day he had received an invitation to the funeral of Gretch's son. He remembered this amid his own sufferings. ""_If you see Gretch_ "" said he to Spásskii ""_give him my compliments and say that I feel a heartfelt sympathy in his loss._"" He was asked whether he did not desire to confess and take the sacrament. He willingly consented and it was determined that the priest should be sent for in the morning. At midnight Dr Arendt returned. Whatever was the subject of the conversation it was evident that what the dying man had heard from the physician tranquillized consoled and fortified him. Fulfilling a desire (of which he was already aware) on the part of those who had expressed a touching anxiety respecting his eternal welfare he confessed and took the holy sacrament. Down to five o'clock in the morning there had not taken place the slightest change in his condition. But about five o'clock the pain in the abdomen became intolerable and its force mastered the strength of his soul: he began to groan; they again sent for Arendt. At his arrival it was found necessary to administer a clyster; but it did no good and only seemed to increase the patient's sufferings which at length reached the highest pitch and continued till seven o'clock in the morning. What would have been the feelings of his unhappy wife if she had been able during the space of these two eternal hours to hear his groans? I am confident that her reason could not have borne this agonizing trial. But this is what happened: she was lying in a state of complete exhaustion in the drawing-room close to the doors which were all that separated her from her husband's bed. At the first dreadful cry he uttered the Princess Viázemskii who was in the drawing-room with her darted to her side dreading that something might happen. But she still lay immovable (although she had been speaking a moment before ) a heavy lethargic slumber had overcome her and this slumber as if purposely sent down in mercy from above lasted till the very minute when the last groan rang on the other side of the door. But in this moment of most cruel agony according to the account of Spásskii and Arendt the dying man's firmness of soul was shown in all its force: when on the point of screaming out he with violent effort merely groaned fearing as he said himself that his wife might hear it and that she might be frightened. At seven o'clock the pain grew milder. It is necessary to remark that during all this time and even to the end of his sufferings his thoughts were perfectly rational and his memory clear. Even at the beginning of the terrible attack of pain he had called Spásskii to his bedside ordered him to hand him a paper written with his own hand and made him burn it. He then called in Danzás and dictated to him a statement respecting a few debts which he had incurred. This task however only exhausted him and afterwards he was unable to make any other dispositions. When at the arrival of morning his intolerable suffering ceased he said to Spásskii ""_My wife! call my wife!_"" This farewell moment I dare not attempt to describe to you. He then asked for his children; they were asleep; but they went for them and brought them half asleep as they were. He bent his eyes in silence upon each of them laid his hand on their heads made a sign of the cross over them and then with a gesture of the hand sent them away. ""_Who is there?_"" he enquired of Spásskii and Danzás. They named me and Viázemskii. ""_Call them in!_"" said he in a feeble voice. I entered took the cold hand which he held out to me kissed it. I could not speak; he waved his hand I retired; but he called me back. ""_Tell the Emperor_ "" he said ""_that I am sorry to die; I would have been wholly his. Tell him that I wish him a long long reign; that I wish him happiness in his son happiness in his Russia._"" These words he spoke feebly interruptedly but distinctly. He then bade farewell to Viázemskii. At this moment arrived the Count Vielhórskii and went into his room; and he was thus the last person who pressed his hand in life. It was evident that he was hastening to his last earthly account and listening as it were for the footstep of approaching death. Feeling his own pulse he said to Spásskii ""_Death is coming._"" When Turgénieff went up to him he looked at him twice very earnestly squeezed his hand seemed as though he desired to say something but waved his hand and uttered the word ""_Karamzín!_"" Mademoiselle Karamzín was not in the house; but they instantly sent for her and she arrived almost immediately. Their interview only lasted a moment; but when Katerína Andréevna was about to leave the bedside he called her and said ""_Sign me with the cross_ "" and then kissed her hand. In the mean time a dose of opium which had been given eased him a little; and they began to apply to his stomach emollient fomentations instead of the cold effusions. This was a relief to the sufferer; and he began without a word of resistance to perform the prescriptions of the doctors which he had previously refused obstinately to do being terrified by the idea of prolonging his tortures and ardently desiring death to terminate them. But he now became as obedient as a child; he himself applied the compresses to his stomach and assisted those who were busied around him. In short he was now apparently a great deal better. In this state he was found by Dr Dahl who came to him at two o'clock. ""_I am in a bad way my dear fellow_ "" said Púshkin with a smile to Dahl. But Dahl who actually entertained more hopes than the other physicians answered him ""We all hope; so you must not despair either."" ""_No_ "" he cried; ""_I cannot live; I shall die. It seems that it must be so._"" At this moment his pulse was fuller and steadier. A slight general fever began to show itself. They put on some leeches: the pulse grew more even slower and considerably lighter. ""I caught "" says Dahl ""like a drowning man at a straw. With a firm voice I pronounced the word _hope_; and was about to deceive both myself and others."" Púshkin observing that Dahl was growing more sanguine took him by the hand and said--""_There is nobody there?_"" ""No one."" ""_Dahl tell me the truth shall I die soon?_"" ""We have hopes of you Púshkin--really we have hopes."" ""_Well thank you!_"" he replied. As far as it appears he had only once flattered himself with the consolation of hope: neither before nor after this moment did he feel any trust in it. Almost the whole night (that is of the 29th during the whole of which Dahl sate by the bedside and I Viázemskii and Vielhórskii in the next room ) he held Dahl's hand. He often would take a spoonful of water or little lump of ice into his mouth doing every thing himself: taking the tumbler from a shelf within reach rubbing his temples with ice applying himself the fomentations to his stomach changing them himself &c. He suffered less from pain than from an excessive feeling of depression. ""_Ah! what depression_!"" he several times exclaimed throwing his hands backward above his head; ""_it makes my heart die within me_!"" He then begged them to lift him up or to turn him on his side or to arrange his pillow; and without letting them finish to do so would stop them generally with the words--""_There! so so--very well; so it is very well; well enough; now it is quite right_;"" or ""_Stop--never mind--only pull my arm a little--so! now it is very well--excellent_!""--(these are all his exact expressions.) ""In general "" says Dahl ""with respect to my treatment he was as manageable and obedient as a child and did every thing I wished."" Once he inquired of Dahl ""_Who is with my wife?_"" Dahl answered ""Many good people feel a sympathy with you; the drawing-room and the antechamber are full from morning to night."" ""_Oh thank you_ "" he replied; ""_only go and tell my wife that all is going on well thank God! or else they will talk all sorts of nonsense to her there I suppose._"" Dahl did not deceive him. From the morning of the 28th when the news that Púshkin was dying had flown through the whole town his antechamber had been incessantly crowded with visitors; some enquiring after him by messengers others--and people of all conditions whether acquainted with him or not--coming themselves. The feeling of a national an universal affliction was never more touchingly expressed than by this proceeding. The number of visitors became at last so immense that the entrance-door (which was close to the study where the dying man lay) was incessantly opening and shutting; this disturbed the sufferer and we imagined the expedient of closing that door by placing against it a chest from the hall and instead of it opening another little door which led from the stair-case into the pantry and partitioning off with screens the dining-room from the drawing-room where his wife was. From this moment the pantry was unceasingly thronged with people; none but acquaintances were admitted into the dining-room. On the faces of all these visitors was expressed a most heartfelt sympathy; very many of them wept. So strong a testimony of general affliction touched me deeply. In Russians to whom is so dear their national glory it was not to be wondered at; but the sympathy of foreigners was to me as gratifying as it was unlooked for. We were losing something of our own; was it wonderful that _we_ should grieve? But what was it that could touch _them_ so sensibly? It is not difficult to answer this. Genius is the property of all. In bowing down before genius all nations are brethren; and when it vanishes untimely from the earth all will follow its departure with one brotherly lamentation. Púshkin with respect to his genius belonged not to Russia alone but to all Europe; and it was therefore that many foreigners approached his door with feelings of _personal_ sorrow and mourned for _our_ Púshkin as if he had been _their own_. But let me return to my recital. Though he sent Dahl to console his wife with hope Púshkin himself did not entertain the slightest. Once he enquired ""_What o'clock is it?_"" and on Dahl's informing him he continued in an interrupted voice ""_Have I ... long ... to ... be tortured thus?... Pray ... haste!_"" This he repeated several times afterwards ""_Will the end be soon?_"" and he always added ""_Pray ... make haste!_"" In general however (after the torments of the first night which lasted two hours ) he was astonishingly patient. When the pain and anguish overcame him he made movements with his hands or uttered at intervals a kind of stifled groan but so that it was hardly audible ""You must bear it my dear fellow; there is nothing to be done "" said Dahl to him; ""but don't be ashamed of your pain; groan it will ease you."" ""_No_ "" he replied interruptedly; ""_no ... it is of no ... use to ... groan;... my wife ... will ... hear;... 'tis absurd ... that such a trifle ... should ... master me ... I will not_.""--I left him at five o'clock in the morning and returned in a couple of hours. Having observed that the night had been tolerably quiet I went home with an impression almost of hope; but on my return I found I had deceived myself. Arendt assured me confidently that all was over and that he could not live out the day. As he predicted the pulse now grew weaker and began to sink perceptibly; the hands began to be cold. He was lying with his eyes closed; it was only from time to time he raised his hand to take a piece of ice and rub his forehead with it. It had struck two o'clock in the afternoon and Púshkin had only three quarters of an hour left to live. He opened his eyes and asked for some cloud-berry water. When they brought it he said in a distinct voice --""_Call my wife; let her feed me._"" She came sank down on her knees by the head of the bed and carried to his lips one and afterwards another spoonful of the cloud-berries and then pressed her cheek against his; Púshkin stroked her on the head and said ""_There there never mind; thank God all is well; go._"" The tranquil expression of his face and the firmness of his voice deceived the poor wife; she left the room almost radiant with joy. ""You see "" she said to Dr Spásskii ""he will live; he will not die."" But at this moment the last process of vitality had already begun. I stood together with Count Vielhórskii at the head of the bed; by the side stood Turgénieff. Dahl whispered to me ""He is going."" But his thoughts were clear. It was only at intervals that a half-dosing forgetfulness overshadowed them; once he gave his hand to Dahl and pressing it said: ""_Now lift me up--come--but higher higher ... now come along!_"" But awaking he said ""_I was dreaming and I fancied that I was climbing with you up along these books and shelves! so high ... and my head began to turn._"" After pausing a little he again without unclosing his eyes began to feel for Dahl's hand and pulling it said: ""_Now let us go then if you wish; but together._"" Dahl at his request took him under the arms and raised him higher; and suddenly as if awaking he quickly opened his eyes his face lighted up and he said ""_Life is finished!_"" Dahl who had not distinctly heard the words answered ""Yes it is finished; we have turned you round."" ""_Life is finished!_"" he repeated distinctly and positively. ""_I can't breathe I am stifling!_"" were his last words. I never once removed my eyes from him and I remarked at this moment that the movement of the breast hitherto calm became interrupted. It soon ceased altogether. I looked attentively; I waited for the last sigh but I could not remark it. The stillness which reigned over his whole appearance appeared to me to be tranquillity; but he was now no more. We all kept silence around him. In a couple of minutes I asked ""How is he?"" ""He is dead!"" answered Dahl. So calmly so tranquilly had his soul departed. We long stood around him in silence without stirring not daring to disturb the mysteries of death which were completed before us in all their touching holiness. When all had left the room I sate down before him and long alone I gazed upon his face. Never had I beheld upon that countenance any thing like that which was upon it in this first moment of death. His head was somewhat bent forward; the hands which a few moments ago had exhibited a kind of convulsive movement were calmly stretched as if they had just fallen into an attitude of repose after some heavy labour. But that which was expressed in the face I am not able to tell in words. It was to me something so new and at the same time so familiar. This was not either sleep or repose; it was not the expression of intellect which was before so peculiar to the face; nor was it the poetic expression; no! some mighty some wondrous thought was unfolded in it: something resembling vision some full complete deeply-satisfying knowledge. Gazing upon it I felt an irresistible desire to ask him ""What do you see my friend?"" And what would he have answered if he had been able for a moment to arise? There are moments in our life which fully deserve the epithet of great. At this moment I may say I beheld the face of death itself divinely-mysterious; the face of death without a veil between. And what a seal was that she had stamped upon him and how wondrously did she tell her secret and his own! I most solemnly assure you that I never beheld upon his face an expression of such deep majestic such triumphant _thought_. The expression had undoubtedly been latent in the face before; but it was only displayed in all its purity then when all earthly things had vanished from his sight at the approach of death. Such was the end of our Púshkin. I will describe in a few words what followed. Most fortunately I remembered before it was too late that it was necessary to take a cast of the mask; this was executed without loss of time. His features had not yet entirely changed. It cannot be denied that the first expression which death had given them was not preserved in them; but we now all possess an attractive portrait a fac-simile of the features and which images--not death but a deep majestic slumber. I will not relate to you the state in which was the poor wife--many good friends remained inseparably with her the Princess Viázemskii Elizabeth Zaguájskii the Count and Countess Stróganoff. The Count took upon himself all the arrangements for the funeral. After remaining some time longer in the house I went away to Vielhórskii's to dinner; there were assembled all the other persons who like myself had seen Púshkin's last moments; and he himself had been invited three days before to this dinner ... it was to celebrate my birth-day. On the following morning we his friends with our own hands laid Púshkin in the coffin; and on the evening of the succeeding day we transported him to the Koninshennaia (the Imperial Stables) Church. And during the whole of these two days the drawing-room where he lay in his coffin was incessantly full of people. It nay be safely asserted that more than ten thousand persons visited it in order to obtain one look at him: many were in tears others stood long immoveable and seemed as though they wished to behold his face; there was something inexpressibly striking in his immobility amid all this movement and something mysteriously touching in the prayer which was heard so gently and so uniformly murmured amid that confused murmur of whispered conversation. The funeral service was performed on the 1st of February. Many of our greatest nobles and many of the foreign ministers were in the church. We carried the coffin with our own hands to the vault where it was to remain until the moment of its being taken out of the city. On the 3d of February at ten o'clock in the evening we assembled for the last time around all that remained to us of Púshkin; the last requiem was sung; the case which contained the coffin was placed upon a sledge; at midnight the sledge set off; by the light of the moon I followed it for some moments with my eyes; it soon turned the corner of a house; and all that once was Púshkin was lost for ever from my sight. V. JUKÓVSKII. The body was accompanied by Turgénieff. Púshkin had more than once said to his wife that he desired to be buried in the monastery of the Assumption at Sviatogórsk where his mother had recently been interred. This monastery is situated in the government (province) of Pskoff; and in the riding of Opótchkoff at about four versts from the country-house and hamlet of _Mikháilovskoë_ where Púshkin passed several years of his poetic life. On the 4th at nine o'clock in the evening the corpse arrived at Pskoff from whence conformably to the excellent arrangements made by the provincial government it was forwarded on the same night and the morning of the 5th through the town of Ostroff to the Sviatogórsk monastery where it arrived as early as seven o'clock in the evening. The dead man glided to his last abode past his own deserted cottage past the three beloved firs which he had planted not long before. The body was placed upon the _holy hill_ (_sviatáia gorá_ from which the monastery takes its name ) in the cathedral church of the Assumption and a requiem was performed in the evening. All night long workmen were employed in digging a grave beside the spot where his mother reposes. On the following day as soon as it was light at the conclusion of divine service the last requiem was chanted and the coffin was lowered into the grave in the presence of Turgénieff and the peasants of Púshkin's estate who had come from the village of Mikháilovskoë to pay the last honour to their kind landlord. Very strangely to the ears of the bystanders sounded the words of the Bible accompanying the handful of earth as it was cast upon Púshkin--""_earth thou art!_"" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: His fondness for books was absolutely insatiable; he was supplied with all the new publications as fast as they appeared; and he would devote the last money in his purse to this purpose. His extravagance in this article of expense he excused by comparing himself to the glazier whose trade renders it necessary for him to purchase a diamond an article which a rich man will frequently abstain from buying.] [Footnote 2: The last hours of Púshkin have been minutely and eloquently described by the most distinguished of his friends and brother poets Jukóvskii in a letter addressed to Púshkin's father. As this letter contains one of the most touching and beautiful pictures of a great man's death-bed and as it does equal honour to the author and its subject we append a translation of it. It is undoubtedly one of the most singular documents in the whole range of literature.--T. B. S.] THE NOVEL AND THE DRAMA. (SOME ADVICE TO AN AUTHOR.) You tell me my dear Eugenius that you are hesitating between the novel and the drama: you know not which to attack; and you wish me to give you some suggestions on the subject. You are candid enough to say that it is not point-blank advice that you ask which you would probably heed just as much as good counsel is generally heeded by those who apply for it; but you would have me lay before you such ideas as may occur to me in order that you may have the picking and choosing amongst them with the chance of finding something to your mind--something which may assist you to a decision. Artists in arabesque get an idea by watching the shifting forms of the kaleidoscope; in the same manner you hope--if I will but turn my mind about a little--that some lucky adjustment of its fragments of observation may help you to a serviceable thought or two. At all events you shall not have to complain of too much method in what follows. If I could only my dear Eugenius persuade you to leave them both alone!--drama and novel both! But this is hopeless. The love one bears to a woman may be conquered--not indeed by good counsel but by speedy flight; but the passion that draws us to poetry and romance can only die out it cannot be expelled; for in this passion go where we will we carry our Helen with us. She steals upon us at each unguarded moment and renews in secret her kisses upon our lip. Well if I cannot persuade you to leave both alone my next advice is that you attack both; for if you endeavour to express in either of these forms of composition all that is probably fermenting in your mind the chance is that you spoil your work. And by all means lay your hands first upon the drama. True it is the higher aim of the two and I will not pretend to augur any very brilliant success. But still it is the more appropriate to the first ebullitions of genius and the spasmodic efforts of youth. The heart is at this time full of poetry which be its value what it may must be got rid of before the stream of prose will run clear. Besides the very effort of verse seems necessary to this age which disdains a facile task and seeks to expend its utmost vigour on its chosen labour. Moreover to write a good novel one should have passed through the spring-time and enthusiasm of youth--one should be able to survey life with some degree of tranquillity; neither wrapped in its illusions nor full of indignation at its discovered hollowness. At two-and-twenty even if the heart is not burning with fever heat of some kind--some enthusiastic passion or misanthropical disgust--the head at least is preoccupied with some engrossing idea which so besets the man that he can see nothing clearly in the world around him. At this age he has a philosophy a metaphysical system which he really believes in (a species of delusion the first to quit us ) and he persists in seeing his dogma reflected to him from all sides. This is supportable or may be disguised in poetry; it becomes intolerable in prose. Add to all which that the writer of a novel should have had some _experience_ in the realities of life a certain empirical knowledge of the manner in which the passions develop themselves in men and women. The high ideal forms of good and evil he may learn from his own heart; but there is in actual life so to speak a vulgar monstrosity which must be seen to be credited. I can figure to myself the writer of a drama musing out his subject in solitude whether the solitude of the seashore or of a garret in London; but the successful novelist must have mingled with the world and should know whatever the club the drawing-room and above all the boudoir can reveal to him. Of course it is understood between us that in speaking of the drama we make no reference to the stage. Indeed you can hardly contemplate writing for the stage as there is no stage to write for. We speak of the drama solely as a form of composition presented like any other to the reader. I have heard the opinion expressed that the drama viewed as a composition designed only to be read is destined to be entirely superseded by the novel which admits of so great a variety of material being worked into its structure and affords an unrivalled scope for the development both of story and of character. To me it seems that the drama especially in its more classic form apart from its application to the stage has a vitality of its own and will stand its ground in literature let the novel advance as it may. All the passions of man represent themselves in his speech the great prerogative of the human being; almost every thing he does is transacted through the medium of speech or accompanied by it; even in solitude his thoughts are thrown into words which are frequently uttered aloud and the soliloquy is wellnigh as natural as the dialogue. Give therefore a fair representation of the speech of men throughout every great transaction and you give the best and truest representations of their actions and their passions and this in the briefest form possible. You have all that is essential to the most faithf
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l portrait without the distraction of detail and circumstance. With a reader of the drama the eye is little exercised; he seems to be brought into immediate contact with the minds of those imaginary persons who are rather thinking and feeling than acting before him. To this select representation of humanity is added the charm of verse the strange power of harmonizing diction. If the drama rarely captivates the eye it takes possession of the ear. May it never lose its appropriate language of verse--that language which so well comports with its high ideal character being one which as a French poet has happily expressed it the world understands but does not speak-- ""Elle a cela pour elle-- Que le monde l'entend et ne la parle pas!"" The drama is peculiarly appropriate to the ideal; and it seems to me that the very fact that whatever appertains to the middle region of art or requires the aid of much circumstance and detail has found in the novel a far more perfect development ought to induce us to purify the drama and retain amongst us its most exalted type. It is in vain that it strives to compete with the novel in the intricacy of its plot in the number of its _dramatis personæ_ in the representation of the peculiarities or as they used to be called the _humours_ of men. These have now a better scene for their exhibition than the old five-act play or tragi-comedy could afford them; but the high passions of mankind whatever is most elevated or most tender whatever naturally leads the mind be it good or evil to profound contemplation--this will still find its most complete and powerful and graceful development in the poetic form of the drama. The novel and the drama have thus their several characteristics. Do you wish to hurry on your reader with a untiring curiosity? you will of course select the novel. Do you wish to hold him lingering meditative to your pages--pages which he shall turn backwards as well as forwards? you were wise to choose the drama. Both should have character and passion and incident; but in the first the interest of the _story_ should pervade the whole in the second the interest of the _passion_ should predominate. If you write a novel do not expect your readers very often to stand still and meditate profoundly; if you write a drama forego entirely the charm of curiosity. Do not hope by any contrivance of your plot to entrap or allure the attention of your readers who must come to you--there is no help for it--with something of the spirit and something of the unwillingness of the student. What some man of genius may one day perform or not perform it were presumptuous to assert; for it is the privilege of genius to prove to the critic what is possible; but speaking according to our _present lights_ we should say that the sustaining of the main characteristic interest of the novel is incompatible with the more intense efforts of reflection or of poetry. One cannot be dragged on and chained to the spot at the same time. Some one _may_ arise who shall combine the genius of Lord Byron and of Sir Walter Scott; but till the prodigy makes his appearance I shall continue to think that no intellectual chymistry could present to us in one compound the charms of _Ivanhoe_ and of _Sardanapalus_. I should be very ungrateful--I who have been an idle man--if I underrated the novel. It is hardly possible to imagine a form of composition more fit to display the varied powers of an author; for wit and pathos the tragic and the comic descriptions reflections dialogue narrative each takes its turn; but I cannot consent that it carry off all our regard from its elder sister the drama. In the novel every thing passes by in dizzy rapidity; we are whirled along over hill and valley through the grandeur and the filth of cities and a thousand noble and a thousand grotesque objects flit over our field of vision. In the drama it is true we often toil on slow as a tired pedestrian; but then how often do we sit down as at the foot of some mountain and fill our eyes and our hearts with the prospect before us? How gay is the first!--even when terrible she has still her own vivacity; but then she exhausts at once all the artillery of her charms. How severe is the second!--even when gayest she is still thoughtful still maintains her intricate movement and her habit of involved allusions; but then at each visit some fresh beauty discloses itself. It was once my good fortune--I who am now old may prattle of these things--to be something a favourite with a fair lady who with the world at large had little reputation for beauty. Her sparkling sister with her sunny locks and still more sunny countenance carried away all hearts; she pale and silent sat often unregarded. But oh Eugenius! when she turned upon you her eyes lit with the light of love and genius that pale and dark-browed girl grew suddenly more beautiful than I have any words to express. You must make the application yourself; for having once conjured up her image to my mind I cannot consent to compare her even to the most eloquent poetry that was ever penned. Undoubtedly the first dramatic writer amongst our contemporaries is Henry Taylor and the most admirable dramatic poem which these times have witnessed is _Philip van Artevelde_. How well he uses the language of the _old masters_! how completely has he made it his own! and how replete is the poem with that sagacious observation which penetrates the very core of human life and which is so appropriate to the drama! Yet the author of _Philip van Artevelde_ I shall be told has evidently taken a very different view of the powers and functions of the drama at this day than what I have been expressing. In his poem we have the whole lifetime of a man described and a considerable portion of the history of a people sketched out; we have a canvass so ample and so well filled that all the materials for a long novel might be found there. But the example of _Philip van Artevelde_ rather confirms than shakes my opinion. I am persuaded that that drama good as it is would have been fifty times better had it been framed on a more restricted plan. You of course have read and admired this poem. Now recall to mind those parts which you probably marked with your pencil as you proceeded and which you afterwards read a second and a third and a fourth time; bring them together and you will at once perceive how little the poem would have lost how much it would have gained if it had been curtailed or rather constructed on a simpler plan. What care we for his Sir Simon Bette and his Guisebert Grutt? And of what avail is it to attempt within the limits of a drama and under the trammels of verse what can be much better done in the freedom and amplitude of prose? Under what disadvantages does the historical play appear after the historical novels of the Author of Waverley! The author of _Philip van Artevelde_ and _Edwin the Fair_ seems to shrink from idealizing character lest he should depart from historic truth. But historic truth is not the sort of truth most essential to the drama. We are pleased when we meet with it; but its presence will never justify the author for neglecting the higher resources of his art. Do not think however that in making this observation I intend to impeach the character of Philip van Artevelde himself. Artevelde I admire without stint and without exception. Compare this character with the Wallenstein of Schiller and you will see at once its excellence. They are both leaders of armies and both men of reflection. But in Wallenstein the habit of self-examination has led to an irresolution which we feel at once in such a man to be a degrading weakness and altogether inconsistent with the part he is playing in life. It is an indecision which in spite of the philosophical tone it assumes pronounces him to be unfit for the command of men or to sway the destinies of a people. Artevelde too reflects examines himself pauses considers and his will is the servant of his thought; but reflection with him comes in aid of resolution matures it establishes it. He can discuss with himself whether he shall pursue a life of peaceful retirement or plunge into one of stormy action; but having once made his election he proceeds along his devoted path with perfect self-confidence and without a look that speaks of retreat. A world of thought is still around him; he carries with him at each step his old habit of reflection--for this no man who has once possessed can ever relinquish--but nothing of all this disturbs or impedes him. Do not you Eugenius be led by the cant of criticism to sacrifice the real interest of your _dramatis personæ_. Some dry censor will tell you that your Greeks are by no means Greek nor your Romans Roman. See you first that they are real men and be not afraid to throw your own heart into them. Little will it console either you or your readers if after you have repelled us by some frigid formal figure a complimentary critic of this school should propose to place it as a frontispiece to a new edition of Potter or of Adam--applauding you the while for having faithfully preserved the classic costume. I tell you that the classic costume must ruffle and stir with passions kindred to our own or it had better be left hanging against the wall. And what a deception it is that the scholastic imagination is perpetually imposing on itself in this matter! Accustomed to dwell on the points of difference between the men of one age and of another it revolts from admitting the many mere points of resemblance which must have existed between them; it hardly takes into account the great fund of humanity common to them both. The politics of Cicero it is true would be unintelligible to one unversed in the constitution and history of Rome; but the ambition of Cicero the embarrassment of the politician the meditated treachery the boasted independence the doubt the fear the hesitation --all this will be better studied in a living House of Commons than in all the manuscripts of the Vatican. Sacrifice nothing of what you know to be the substantial interest of your piece to what these critics call the _colour_ of the age which after all is nothing better than one guess amongst many at historic truth. Schiller fell a victim in one or two instances to this sort of criticism and in obedience to it contradicted the natural bias of his genius. In his _Wilhelm Tell_ instead of the hero of liberty and of Switzerland he has given us little more than a sturdy peasant who in destroying Gessler follows only a personal revenge and feels the remorse of a common assassin. If this were historic truth it was not the part of the poet to be the first to discover and proclaim it. Was he to degrade the character below the rank which ordinary historians assigned to it? We do not want a drama to frame the portrait of a Lincolnshire farmer; it is the place if place there is for the representation of the higher forms of humanity. After taking note of the distinctive qualities of the drama and the novel it were well--O author that will be!--to take note of thyself and observe what manner of talent is strongest within thee. There are two descriptions of men of genius. The one are men of genius in virtue of their own quick feelings and intense reflection; they have imagination but it is chiefly kindled by their own personal emotions: they write from the inspiration of their own hearts; they see the world in the height of their own joys and afflictions. These amiable egotists fill all nature with the voice of their own plaints and they have ever a tangled skein of their own peculiar thoughts to unravel and to ravel again. The second order of men of genius albeit they are not deficient in keen susceptibility or profound reflection see the world outstretched before them as it lies beneath the impartial light of heaven; they understand they master it; they turn the great globe round under the sun; they make their own mimic variations after its strange and varied pattern. Now you must take rank high or low amongst this second order of men of genius if you are to prosper in the land of fiction and romance. Pray do you--as I half suspect--do you when sitting down to sketch out some budding romance find that you have filled your paper with the analysis of a character or a sentiment and that you have risen from your desk without relating a single incident or advancing your story beyond the first attitude the first _pose_ of your hero? If so I doubt of your aptitude for the novel. I know that you have some noble ideas of elevating the standard of the romance and by retarding and subduing the interest of the narrative to make this combine with more elaborate beauties and more subtle thought that has been hitherto considered as legitimately appertaining to the novel. I like the idea--I should rejoice to see it executed; but pardon me if the very circumstance of you being possessed with this idea leads me to augur ill of you as a writer of fiction. You have not love enough for your story nor sufficient confidence in it. You are afraid of every sentence which has in it no peculiar beauty of diction or of sentiment. A novelist must be liberal of letter-press must feel no remorse at leading us down page after page destitute of all other merit than that of conducting us to his _dénouement_: he writes not by sentences; takes no account of paragraphs; he strides from chapter to chapter from volume to volume. ""Verily "" I think I hear you say ""you are the most consolatory of counsellors; you advise me to commence with the drama--but with no prospect of success--in order to prepare myself for a failure in the novel!"" My dear Eugenius you shall not fail. You shall write a very powerful exciting affecting romance. Pray do not be too severe upon our sensibilities do not put us on the rack more than is absolutely necessary. It has always seemed to me--and I am glad to have this opportunity of unburdening my heart upon the point--it has always seemed to me that there was something _barbarous_ in that torture of the sympathies in which the novelist delights and which his reader it must be supposed finds peculiarly grateful. It really reminds me of that pleasure which certain savages are said to take in cutting themselves with knives and inflicting other wounds upon themselves when in a state of great excitement. I have myself often flung away the work of fiction when it seemed bent upon raising my sympathies only to torture them. Pray spare us when you in your time shall have become a potent magician. Follow the example of the poets who when they bear the sword yet hide it in such a clustre of laurels that its sharpness is not seen. To take very common instance--All the world knows that the catastrophe of a romance must be inevitably postponed that suspense must be prolonged and that the two lovers whose fate we have become interested in cannot possibly be made happy in the first or even in the second volume. But the expedients employed to delay this term of felicity are sometimes such as the laws of a civilized society ought really to proscribe. I will mention the first example that occurs to me though your better memory will directly suggest many more striking and more flagrant. It is taken from the work of no mean artist; indeed none but a writer of more or less talent could inflict this gratuitous anguish upon us. In the novel of _Rienzi_ a young nobleman Adrian goes to Florence at that time visited by the plague to seek his betrothed Irene sister of the Tribune. Fatigue the extreme heat and his own dreadful anxiety have thrown him into a fever and he sinks down in the public thoroughfare. It is Irene herself who rushes to his assistance. Every one else avoids him thinking him struck by the plague. She and a benevolent friar convey him still in a state of unconsciousness into an empty and deserted palace which stood by and of which there were many at that time in Florence. She tends him nurses him day and night aided only by the same pious and charitable friar. In his delirium he raves of that Irene who is standing by his head and who thus learns that it is to seek her he has exposed himself to the horrors of the plague. At the end of this time the friar who had administered to the patient some healing draught tells her on leaving that Adrian will shortly fall into a sound slumber--that this will be the crisis of his fever--that he will either wake from this sleep restored to consciousness and health or will sink under his malady. Adrian falls accordingly into a sound sleep Irene watching by his side. Now we know that the patient is doing well and our hearts have been sedulously prepared for the happy interview that is promised us when on awaking he will see beside him the loved Irene whom he has been seeking and recognise in her the saviour of his life. But this sleep lasts longer than Irene had anticipated; she becomes alarmed and goes away to seek the friar. The moment she has left the room Adrian wakes!--finds himself well and alone--there is no one to tell him who it is that has preserved his life; nor has Irene it seems left any trace of her presence. He sallies forth again into the city of the plague to seek her and she is destined to return to the empty chamber! Taken to a hideous sort of charnel-house Adrian is shown the body of a female clad in a mantle that had once been Irene's and concludes that it is the corpse of her who for the last three days and nights has been tending on him. I recollect that when I came to this part of the novel I threw the book down and stalked for five minutes indignantly about the room exclaiming that it was cruel--barbarous--savage to be sporting thus with human sympathies. To be sure I ought to add in justice to the author that after exhaling my rage in this manner I again took up the novel and read on to the end. I do beseech you Eugenius do not give us a _philosophical_ novel. Every work of art of a high order will in one sense of the word be philosophical; there will be philosophy there for those who can penetrate it and sometimes the reader will gather a profounder and juster meaning than the author himself detected in his fiction. I mean of course those works where some theory or some dogma is expressly taught where a vein of scholastic or political or ethical matter alternates with a vein of narrative and fictitious matter. I dislike the whole genus. Either one is interested in your story and then your philosophy is a bore; or one is not interested in it and then your philosophy can gain no currency by being tacked to it. Suppose the narrative and didactic portions of such a book equally good it is still essentially two books in one and should be read once for the story and once without. We are repeatedly told that people are induced to peruse in the shape of a novel what they would have avoided as dry and uninteresting in the shape of an essay. Pray can you get people to take knowledge as you get children to take physic without knowing what it is they swallow? So that the powder was in the jelly and the jelly goes down the throat the business in the one case is done. But I rather think in gaining knowledge one must _taste the powder;_ there is no help for it. Really the manner in which these good nurses of the public talk of passing off their wisdom upon us reminds us of the old and approved fashion in which Paddy passes his bad shilling by slipping it between two sound penny pieces. To be sure it is but twopence after all and he gets neither more nor less than his twopenny-worth of intoxication but he has succeeded in putting his shilling into circulation. Just such a circulation of wisdom may we expect from novels which are to teach philosophy and politics and political economy and I know not what else. But such works have succeeded you will tell me. What shall I say to _Tremaine?_--what to _Coningsby?_ In _Tremaine_ so far as I remember the didactic portion had sunk like a sort of sediment and being collected into a dense mass in the third volume could easily be avoided. As to _Coningsby_ I deny that it any where calls upon the reader for much exercise of his reflective powers. The novel has some sparkling scenes written in the vivacious manner of our neighbours the French and these we read. Some Eton boys talk politics and as they talk just as boys should talk their prattle is easily tolerated. Besides I am not responsible for the caprice of fashion nor for those adventitious circumstances which give currency to books and which may sometimes compel us all to read what none of us heartily admires. Certainly if I were admitted to the counsels of a novelist I should never have finished with my list of grievances my entreaties and deprecations. I will not inflict it upon you. But there is one little request I cannot help making even to a novelist in embryo. I have been annoyed beyond measure at the habit our writers of fiction have fallen into of throwing their heroes perpetually into a sort of swoon or delirium or state of half consciousness. That a heroine should occasionally faint and so permit the author to carry her quietly off the stage--this is an old expedient natural and allowable. What I complain of is that whenever the passions of the hero himself rise to a certain pitch; or whenever the necessities of the plot require him to do one thing whilst both his reason and his feelings would plainly lead him to do another--he is immediately thrown into a state of half frenzy has a ""vague consciousness"" of something or other makes a complete nightmare of the business; is cast in short into a state of _coma_ in which the author can carry him hither and thither and communicate to him whatever impulse he pleases. In this sort of dream he raves and resolves he fights or he flies and then wakes to confused memory of just what the author thinks fit to call to his recollection. It is very interesting and edifying truly to watch the movements of an irrational puppet! I do beg of you when you take up the functions of the novelist not to distribute this species of intoxication amongst your _dramatis personæ_ more largely than is absolutely necessary. Keep them in a rational state as long as you can. Depend upon it they will not grow more interesting in proportion as they approximate to madmen or idiots. And so dear Eugenius you are resolved at all events in some form or other to be the author! This is decided. What was that desperate phrase I once heard you utter--you would strike one blow though you put your whole life into the stroke and died upon the broken sword! Ah! but one does not die upon the broken sword; one has to live on. Would that I could dissuade you from this inky pestilence! This poetizing spirit which gives all life so much significance _to the imagination_ strikes it with sterility in every thing which should beget or prosper a personal career. It opens the heart--true but keeps it open; it closes in on nothing--shuts in nothing for itself. It is an open heart and the sunshine enters there and the bird alights there; but nothing retains them and the light and the song depart as freely as they came. You lose the spring of action and forfeit the easy intercourse with the world; for believe me however you struggle against it so long as you live a poet will you feel yourself a stranger or a child amongst men. And all for what? I have that confidence in your talent that I am sure you will make no ridiculous failures. What you write for fame will be far superior to what others write for popularity. But these will attain their end and you with far more merit will be only known as having failed. And know you not that men revenge on mediocrity the praise extorted from them by indisputable celebrity? It is a crime to be above the vulgar and yet not overawe the vulgar. There are a few great names they cannot refuse to extol; men of genuine merit of a larger merit than they can measure who yet cannot confessedly approach to these select few they treat with derision and contempt. But suppose the most complete success that you can rationally expect--what have you done? You have added one work of art the more to a literature already so rich that the life of a man can hardly exhaust it; so rich that it is compelled to drop by the way as booty it cannot preserve what in another literature or at an earlier period of its own career would have been considered invaluable treasure. But the question of success or failure is not after all the first or most important to your happiness. Could the hope of literary fame could the passion for it could the esteem even of its possession keep a steady place in your mind there were but little danger in admitting this species of ambition as the ruling spirit of your house. But alas! whilst it is the most tenacious it is also the most fluctuating of passions. It rises all radiant with the morning and before the sun is in the zenith it forsakes you and the bright world at your feet is as a glittering desert. But if you should make good resolutions to reform and eject your tyrant it will not fail to return before the night descends to dash and confound them. I remember meeting somewhere with the complaint of a young poet who had made trial of his muse and failed; the style was perhaps somewhat quaint but it spoke the language of truth and I copied it out. I will transcribe it for your edification and so conclude this wandering epistle. You must not ask me for the title of the book for I am not sure that I could give it you correctly. Besides it would be of no use as the work I know is out of print. ""I could do better "" says the poet in reply to his friend who had been suggesting the usual consolations and lenitives applicable to the case ""but I could not so far excel what I have written as to make all the difference between obscurity and fame. It is not a brief and tolerated existence in the world of letters that can be a sanction and motive to my endeavours; and since a noble immortality is denied me I am willing to sink at once into oblivion. The sentence has been passed. I have not that obstinacy of hope which can make an appeal to the decision of posterity. My labours have been futile--my whole being has been an error--my life is without aim or meaning."" ""I sought it not "" continued the disappointed bard ""I sought not this gift of poesy--I despised not the ruder toils of existence--I strove to pursue them but I strove in vain. I could not walk along this earth with the busy forward tread of other men. The fair wonder detained and withheld me. Flowers on their slender stalks could prove an hindrance in my path; the light acacia would fling the barrier of its beauty across my way; the slow-thoughted stream would bend me to its winding current. Was it fault of mine that all nature was replete with feeling that compassed and enthralled me? On the surface of the lake at eventide there lay how sweet a sadness! Hope visited me from the blue hills. There was perpetual revelry of thought amidst the clouds and in the wide cope of heaven. This passion of the poet came to me not knowing what it was. It came the gift of tranquil skies and was breathed by playful zephyrs and fell on me with many a serene influence from the bright and silent stars. ""I saw others pursuing and enjoying the varied prosperity of life--I felt no envy at their success and no participation in their desires. I could not call in and limit my mind to the concerns of a personal welfare. I had leaned my ear unto the earth and heard the beating of her mighty heart and the murmur of her mysteries and my spirit lost its fitness for any selfish aim or narrow purpose. I stood forth to be the interpreter of his own word to man. Alas! I myself am but one--the poorest--of the restless and craving multitude. ""Gone! gone for ever! is the pleasant hope that danced before me on my path with feet that never wearied and timbrel that never paused! Oh gay illusion! whither hast thou led me? and to what desolation has the music of thy course conducted? I am laden as it were with the fruitage of cultivated affections but I myself am forlorn and disregarded. I kindle with innumerable sympathies but am shut out for ever from social endearments--from the sweet relationships that make happy the homes of other men. I am faint with love of the beautiful and my heart pants with an unclaimed devotion--but who may love the poet in his poverty?"" The disappointed bard who I should mention was an Italian resolves to quit Rome and books and meditations; he goes to a seaport town becomes a mariner and is soon advanced to the rank of captain of a small trading vessel. The same friend to whom he had poured out the lamentation I have already transcribed encounters him in this new character and he then gives the following account of himself:-- ""I worked hard with the men and studied diligently with the captain. One voyage to the Levant was speedily followed by a second; I gained experience; I have earned promotion--go to--I have earned money! Here I am master of this vessel which shall carry you to the mouth of the Tiber or the port of Genoa."" ""Then you have quite merged the poet in the sailor?"" said his companion. ""Quite! quite! These hands are hard "" replied the poet gaily exhibiting his swarthy palms; ""they have tugged at other than the cordage of a lyre. I who used to burden the passing clouds with many a pensive sentiment now ask of them what weather they predict. I who was wont to give a thousand utterances to the winds of heaven enquire from what point of the compass they are blowing. I who could never behold the ocean without lapsing into dreamy emotions or endless speculations now study its tides and sound its shallows and know it as the high-road I travel on. Yes "" he continued pacing the deck with animation ""I am no longer that commiserated mortal whose musing gait marks him out for the mingled ridicule and compassion of all observers; who burns with a passion for fame which renders him at once the most solitary and the most dependent of men. Me--I belong to the multitude--I am one of themselves. They cannot point the finger at me. I am released from that needless necessity to distinguish myself from others--from that pledge given unsought to a heedless world to leave behind an enduring memento of my existence. I can be filled with daily life as with daily bread. Life is indeed a freedom--I can give _all_ to death."" ""I think "" said his friend with a smile ""I trace something of the leaven of poetry even in this description of your unpoetized condition. Fear you not that the old fever will return?"" ""No; I resist--I fly from all temptation. If leaning perchance over the side of the vessel and looking down on the troubled water my mind grows troubled also with agitated thoughts I start from the insidious posture. I find something to tug--to haul. A rope is thrown to me and I am saved! Or I seize the rudder--I grasp its handle grown smooth by its frequent intercourse with the human palm--and believe me there is a magic in its touch that brings me back instantly to the actual world of man's wants and of man's energies. I feel my feet press firm upon the boarded deck; I look out and around me; and my eye surveys and my ear listens to the plain and serviceable realities of this our habitable globe."" This seems like a case of cure. But the symptoms were deceptive. The next time we meet the poet-sailor he has embarked all he possessed in an expedition of discovery in the new world which had recently been laid open by Columbus; and this not from love of gain nor love of science nor even the ardour of enterprise but purely from the restlessness of a spirit which ejected from its home in the world of thought could never find another amongst those ""serviceable realities"" of life which he knew so well how to applaud. He set sail from the port of Genoa and was never heard of afterwards. The moral of which is that you take timely warning Eugenius lest your poetic culture end in a voyage of discovery to New South Wales! MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART XVII. ""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. The speech of the Opposition leader decided the question. No man on his side would venture beyond the line which he had drawn; and the resolutions of Government were triumphantly carried after a brie
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appeal from me to the loyalty and manliness of the House. I placed before them the undeniable intention of the cabinet to promote the public prosperity the immeasurable value of unanimity in the parliament to produce confidence in the people and the magnitude of the stake for which England and Ireland were contending with the enemy of Europe. Those sentiments were received with loud approval--my language was continually echoed during the debate I was congratulated on all sides; and this night of expectancy and alarm closed in a success which relieved me from all future anxiety for the fate of the Government. The House broke up earlier than usual; and to cool the fever which the events of the night had produced in my veins I rambled into one of the spacious squares which add so much to the ornament of that fine city. The night was serene the air blew fresh and flower-breathing from the walks the stars shone in their lustre and I felt all the power of nature to soothe the troubled spirit. Some of the fashionable inhabitants of the surrounding houses had been induced by the fineness of the night to prolong their promenade; and the light laugh and the sound of pleasant voices added to the touching and simple charm of the scene. A group had stopped round a player on the guitar with which we made a tolerable accompaniment to some foreign songs. My ear was caught by a chorus which I had often heard among the French peasantry and I joined in the applause. The minstrel was ragged and pale and had evidently met with no small share of the buffets of fortune; but cheered by our approval he volunteered to sing the masterpiece of his collection--""The Rising of the Vendée""--the rallying-song of the insurrection a performance chanted by the Vendéan army in the field by the Vendéan peasant in his cottage and which he now gave us with all the enthusiasm of one who had fought and suffered in the cause. THE RISING OF THE VENDÉE. It was a Sabbath morning and sweet the summer air And brightly shone the summer sun upon the day of prayer; And silver-sweet the village bells o'er mount and valley toll'd And in the church of St Florènt were gather'd young and old. When rushing down the woodland hill in fiery haste was seen With panting steed and bloody spur a noble Angevin. And bounding on the sacred floor he gave his fearful cry -- ""Up up for France! the time is come for France to live or die. ""Your Queen is in the dungeon; your King is in his gore; On Paris waves the flag of death the fiery Tricolor; Your nobles in their ancient halls are hunted down and slain In convent cells and holy shrines the blood is pour'd like rain. The peasant's vine is rooted up his cottage given to flame His son is to the scaffold sent his daughter sent to shame; With torch in hand and hate in heart the rebel host is nigh. Up up for France! the time is come for France to live or die."" That livelong night the horn was heard from Orleans to Anjou And pour'd from all their quiet fields our shepherds bold and true; Along the pleasant banks of Loire shot up the beacon-fires And many a torch was blazing bright on Lucon's stately spires; The midnight cloud was flush'd with flame that hung o'er Parthenaye The blaze that shone o'er proud Brissac was like the breaking day; Till east and west and north and south the loyal beacons shone Like shooting-stars from haughty Nantz to sea-begirt Olonne. And through the night on foot and horse the sleepless summons flew And morning saw the Lily-flag wide waving o'er Poitou; And many an ancient musketoon was taken from the wall And many a jovial hunter's steed was harness'd in the stall; And many a noble's armoury gave up the sword and spear And many a bride and many a babe was left with kiss and tear; And many a homely peasant bade ""farewell"" to his old ""dame;"" As in the days when France's king unfurl'd the Oriflame. There leading his bold marksmen rode the eagle-eyed Lescure And dark Stofflet who flies to fight as falcon to the lure; And fearless as the lion roused but gentle as the lamb Came marching at his people's head the brave and good Bonchamps. Charette where honour was the prize the hero sure to win; And there with Henri Quatre's plume the young Rochejaquelin. And there in peasant speech and garb--the terror of the foe A noble made by Heaven's own hand the great Cathelineau. We march'd by tens of thousands we march'd through day and night The Lily standard in our front like Israel's holy light. Around us rush'd the rebels as the wolf upon the sheep We burst upon their columns as the lion roused from sleep; We tore the bayonets from their hands we slew them at their guns Their boasted horsemen flew like chaff before our forest-sons; That eve we heap'd their baggage high their lines of dead between And in the centre blazed to heaven their blood-dyed Guillotine! In vain they hid their heads in walls; we rush'd on stout Thouar -- What cared we for its shot or shell for battlement or bar? We burst its gates; then like the wind we rush'd on Fontenaye-- We saw its flag at morning's light 'twas ours by setting day. We crush'd like ripen'd grapes Montreuil we tore down old Vetier-- We charged them with our naked breasts and took them with a cheer. We'll hunt the robbers through the land from Seine to sparkling Rhone. Now ""Here's a health to all we love. Our King shall have his own."" This song had an interest for me independent of the spirit of the performer. It revived recollections of the noblest scene of popular attachment and faithful fortitude since the days of chivalry. I heard in it the names of all the great leaders of the Royalist army--names which nothing but the deepest national ingratitude will ever suffer France to forget; and it gave a glance at the succession of those gallant exploits by which the heroic peasantry and gentlemen of Anjou and Poitou had gained their imperishable distinction. But the streets of a capital itself almost in a state of siege were not the scene for indulging in romance by starlight; and one of the patrols of soldiery then going its rounds suddenly ordered the group to disperse. The Frenchman unluckily attempted to apologise for his own appearance on the spot; and the attempt perplexed the matter still more. The times were suspicious and a foreigner and of all foreigners a Gaul caught under cover of night singing songs of which the sergeant could not comprehend a syllable was a personage in every way formed for the guard-house. The startled Frenchman's exclamations and wrath at discovering this purpose only made the sergeant more positive; and he was marched off as a traitor convicted of guitar-playing and other traitorous qualities. I interposed but my interposition was in vain. My person was unknown to the man in authority; and I was evidently from the frown of the sergeant regarded as little better than an accomplice. My only resource was to follow the party to the guard-house and see the officer of the night. But he was absent; and half-laughing at the singular effect of the report in the morning that I had been arrested as the fellow-conspirator of a French mendicant I called for pen ink and paper to explain my position by a message to the next magistrate. But this request only thickened the perplexity. As I approached the desk to write the prisoner bounded towards me with a wild outcry flung his arms round my neck and plunging his hand into the deepest recesses of his very wayworn costume at length drew out a large letter which he held forth to me with a gesture of triumph. The sergeant looked graver still; his responsibility was more heavily involved by the despatch which he intercepted on the spot and proceeded to examine at least so far as the envelope was concerned. He and his guard pored over it in succession. Still it was unintelligible. It was a mysterious affair altogether. The Frenchman and I begged equally in vain to be allowed to interpret. Impossible. At length the subaltern on duty was found; and on his arrival I was released with all due apologies and carried off the captive and his despatch together. The letter was addressed to me in French and in a hand with which I was unacquainted. To obtain any knowledge of its contents on my way home and from its bearer was out of the question until with a hundred circumlocutions I had heard the full and entire hair-breadth 'scapes of Monsieur Hannibal Auguste Dindon. He had been the domestic of Madame la Maréchale de Tourville and had attended her and the countess to England in the emigration; in England he had seen me. On the reduction of the Maréchale's household he had returned to his own country and taken service with the Royalist army in the Vendée. There too he had suffered that ""fortune de la guerre"" which is ill-luck with every body but the elastic Frenchman. He had been taken prisoner and was on the point of being shot when he saw the countess a prisoner also in the Republican hands who interceded for his safety and gave him this letter to be delivered to me if he should escape. After following the march of the armies a defeat scattered the Republican division along with which they were carried; he procured a conveyance to the coast of Britanny and they embarked in one of the fishing vessels for England. Again ill-luck came; a storm caught them in the Channel swept them the crew knew not where and finally threw them on the iron-bound shore of the west of Ireland. Clotilde was now actually in the capital on her way to England! If ever there was wild joy in the heart of man it was in mine at that intelligence. It was a flash bright bewildering overwhelming! I longed to be alone to hear no sound of the human tongue to indulge in the deep and silent delight of the overladen heart. But M. Hannibal was not a personage to be disappointed of his share of interest; and to avoid throwing the honest prattler into absolute despair I was forced to listen to his adventures until the blaze of the lamps in the vice-royal residence and the challenge of the sentries reminded him and me too that there were other things in the world than a Frenchman's wanderings. The substance of his tale however was--that his resources having fallen short on the road and resolving not to burden the finances of the countess which he believed to be scarcely less exhausted than his own he had made use of his voice and guitar to recruit his purse--a chance which he now designated as a miracle devised by the saint who presided over his birthday to finish his perils in all imaginable felicity. Giving him into the care of my servants I was at length alone. The letter was in my hand. Yet still I dreaded to break the seal. What might not be the painful sentiments and sorrowful remonstrances within that seal? But Clotilde was living; was near me; was still the same confiding generous and high-souled being.--Sorrow and terror were now passed away. I opened the letter. It was a detail of her thoughts written in the moments which she could snatch from the insulting surveillance round her; and was evidently intended less as a letter than a legacy of her last feelings written to relieve an overburdened heart with but slight hope of its ever reaching my hand. It was written on various fragments of paper and often blotted with tears. It began abruptly. I shuddered at the misery which spoke in every word. ""I am at this hour in the lowest depth of wretchedness. I have but one consolation that no life can endure this agony long. After being carried from garrison to garrison with my eyes shocked and my feelings tortured by the sights and sufferings of war I am at last consigned to the hands of the being whom on earth I most dread and abhor. Montrecour has arrived to take the command of Saumur. I have not yet seen him; but he has had the cruelty to announce that I am his prisoner and shall be his wife. But the wife of Montrecour I never will be; rather a thousand times would I wed the grave!---- ""This letter may never reach your hands or if it does it may only be when the great barrier is raised between us and this heart shall be dust. Marston shall I then be remembered? Shall my faith my feelings and my sufferings ever come across your mind?--Let not Clotilde be forgotten. I revered honoured loved you. I feel my heart beat and my cheek burn at the words--but I shall not recall them. On the verge of the future world I speak with the truth of a spirit and oh with the sincerity of a woman!---- ""From that eventful day when I first met your glance I determined that no power on earth should ever make me the wife of another. To me you remained almost a total stranger. Yet the die was cast. I finally resolved to abandon the world to hide my unhappy head in a convent and there in loneliness and silence endure for I never could hope to extinguish those struggles of heart which forced me to leave all the charms of existence behind for ever. ""The loss of my beloved parent gave me the power of putting my resolution into effect. I returned to France though in the midst of its distractions and took refuge under the protection of my venerable relative the superior of the convent at Valenciennes. My narrative is now brief but most melancholy. On the evening of the day when I heard your love--a day which I shall remember with pride and gratitude to the closing hour of my existence--we were suffered to pass the gates and take the route for Italy. But on the third day of our journey we were stopped by a division of the Republican forces on their march to the Vendée. We were arrested as aristocrats and moved from garrison to garrison until we reached the Republican headquarters at Saumur; where to my infinite terror I found Montrecour governor of the fortress. He was a traitor to his unhappy king. The republic had offered him higher distinctions than he could hope to obtain from the emigrant princes and he had embraced the offer. Betrothed to him in my childhood according to the foolish and fatal custom of our country I was still in some degree pledged to him. But now no human bond shall ever unite me to one whom I doubly disdain as a traitor. Still I am in his power. What is there now to save me? I am at this moment in a prison! ""I hear the sounds of music and dancing on every side. The town is illuminated for a victory which is said to have been gained this morning over the troops of Poitou advancing to the Loire. The stars are glittering through my casement with all the brilliancy of a summer sky; the breath of the fields flows sweetly in; laughing crowds are passing through the streets; and here am I alone friendless broken-hearted and dreading the dawn.---- ""I spent the livelong night on my knees. Tears and prayers were my sole comfort during those melancholy hours. But time rolls on. Montrecour has just sent to tell me that my choice must be made by noon--the altar or the guillotine. An escort is now preparing to convey prisoners to Nantes where the horrible Revolutionary Tribunal holds a perpetual sitting; and I must follow them or be his bride!--Never! I have given my answer and gladly I welcome my fate. I have solemnly bade farewell to this world.---- ""No! My tyrant is not so merciful. He has this moment sent to 'command' (that is the word)--to command my presence in the church; as he is about to march against the enemy and he must be master of my hand before he takes the field. The troops are already preparing for the march. I hear the drums beating. But one short hour is given me to prepare. Would I were dead! ""There are times when the soul longs to quit her tenement; when the brain sees visions; when the heart feels bursting; when a thousand weapons seem ready for the hand and a voice of temptation urges to acts of woe.--Marston Marston where are you at this hour?"" The letter fell from my hands. I had the whole scene before my eyes. And where was I while the one to whom every affection of my nature was indissolubly bound this creature of beauty fondness and magnanimity was wasting her life in sorrow in captivity in the bitterness of the broken heart? If I could not reproach myself with having increased her calamities yet had I assuaged them; had I flown to her rescue; had I protected her against the cruelties of fortune; had I defied sword in hand the heartless and arrogant villain who had brought her into such hopeless peril? Those thoughts rushed through my brain in torture and it was some time before I could resume the reading of the blotted lines upon my table. I dreaded their next announcement. I shrank from the pang of certainty. The next sentence might announce to me that Clotilde had been compelled by force to a detested marriage;--I dared not hazard the knowledge. Yet the recollection that I was blameless in her trials at length calmed me. I felt that to protect her had been wholly out of my power from the day when she left Valenciennes; and while I honoured the decision and loftiness of spirit which had led to that self-denying step I could lay nothing to my charge but the misfortune of being unable to convince her mind of the wisdom of disdaining the opinion of the world. I took up the letter again. ""Another day has passed of terror and anguish unspeakable. Yet it has closed in thanksgiving. I have been respited.--I was forced from my chamber. I was forced to the altar. I was forced to endure the sight of Montrecour at my side. A revolutionary priest stood prepared to perform the hateful ceremony. I resisted I protested I wept in vain. The chapel was thronged with revolutionary soldiers who regarding me as an aristocrat were probably incapable of feeling any sympathy with my sufferings. I was hopeless. But during the delay produced by my determination to die rather than yield I could see confusion growing among the spectators. I heard the hurried trampling of cavalry through the streets. Drums and trumpets began to sound in all quarters. The tumult evidently increased. I could perceive even in the stony features of Montrecour his perplexity at being detained from showing himself at the head of the troops; and with senses wound to their utmost pitch by the anxiety of the moment I thought that I could perceive the distant shouts of an immense multitude advancing to the walls. Aide-de-camp after aide-de-camp now came hurrying in--each with a fresh summons to the general. He alternately threatened insulted and implored me. But no measure or entreaty on earth could make me consent. At length I heard a heavy fire of cannon followed by the shattering of houses and the outcries of the people. The batteries of the town soon returned the fire and all was uproar. Montrecour gnashing his teeth and with the look and fury of a fiend now rushed towards me and bore me to the feet of the priest. I felt the light leaving my eyes and hoped that I was dying. At that moment a cannon-shot struck the roof and dashed down a large portion of its fragments on the floor. The priest and his attendants thinking that the whole fabric was falling made their escape. Montrecour with an exclamation full of the bitterness of his soul flung me from him and swearing that my respite should be brief darted from the chapel followed by the soldiers. What words ever uttered by human lips can tell the gratitude with which I saw myself left alone and knelt before the altar covered with ruins!---- ""I am now on my way once more I know not whither. The battle continued during the day; and the sights and sounds were almost too much for the human senses to bear. At night the Royalists stormed the outworks of the fortress; and to prevent our release on the capitulation the prisoners were sent away in the darkness. As our carriage passed the gates I saw Montrecour borne in wounded. The spirit of the insulter was in him still. He ordered the soldiers to bring his litter near me and in a voice faint through pain but bitter with baffled revenge he murmured--'Countess you shall not have long to indulge in your caprices. My hurts are trifling. You are still in my power.' ""What a hideous desolation is war! We have just passed through one of the forest villages which but a few days since must have been loveliness itself.--Vineyards gardens a bright stream a rustic chapel on a hill--every thing shaped for the delight of the eye! But a desperate skirmish had occurred there between the retreating Republicans and their pursuers and all that man could ruin was ruined. The cottages were all in ashes the gardens trampled the vineyards cut down for the fires of the bivouac the chapel was even smouldering still and the river exhibited some frightful remnants of what were once human beings. Not a living soul was to be seen. A dog was stretched upon the ground tearing up with his paws what was probably the grave of his master. At the sight of the escort he howled and showed his teeth in evident fury at their approach; a dragoon fired his pistol at him--fortunately missed him; and the dog bounded into the thicket. But when I looked back I saw him creep out again and stretch himself howling upon the grave. ""I write these lines at long intervals in fear and only when the escort are sleeping on their horses' necks or eating their hurried meals upon the grass. ""Last night the Royalist army crossed the Loire; and the firing was continued until morning. The heights all seemed crowned with flame. The forest in which we had stopped for the night was set on fire in the conflict and a large body of the Royalist cavalry skirmished with the retreating Republicans till morning. It was a night of indescribable terror; but my personal fears were forgotten in the sorrow for my honoured and aged companion. She often fainted in my arms; and in this wilderness where every cottage is deserted and where all is flight and consternation even among the soldiery what is to become of her? I gazed upon her feeble frame and sinking countenance with the certainty that in a few hours all would be over. How rejoicingly would I share the quiet of her tomb!"" My eyes filled and my heart heaved at a reality of wretchedness so deep that I could scarcely conceive it to have passed away. The paper fell from my hands. My mind was in the forest. I saw the pursuit. The firing rang in my ears; and in the midst of this shock of flying and fighting men I saw Clotilde wiping the dews of death from the brow of her helpless relative. The illusion was almost strengthened at this moment by the flashing of a strong and sudden light across the ceiling of the chamber and the trampling of a body of troops by torchlight entering the Castle gates. A squadron of dragoons had arrived escorting a carriage. Even my glance at the buildings of the Castle-square could scarcely recall me to the truth of the locality; until an aide-de-camp knocked at my door with a request from the viceroy that I should see him as soon as possible. Safely locking up my precious record I followed him. There was a ball on that night in the Castle and our way to the private apartments of his excellency leading through the state saloon the whole brilliant display struck upon my eyes at once. By what strange love of contrast is it that the human mind is never more open to the dazzling effects of beauty splendour and gaiety than when it has been wrapt in the profoundest sorrow? Are the confines of joy and anguish so close? Is there but a hair's-breadth intervention of some invisible nerve some slender web of imagination between mirth and melancholy? The Irish are a handsome race and none more enjoy or are more fitted by nature or temper for all the ornamental displays of society; a Castle ball was always a glittering exhilaration of lustre and beauty. But I had seen all this before. To-night they mingled with the tenderness which the perusal of Clotilde's letter had shed over all my feelings. As the dance moved before my eye as the music echoed round me as I glanced on the walls filled with the memories of all the gallant and the great whose names lived in the native history of hundreds of years I imagined the woman with whom I had now connected all my hopes of happiness moving in the midst of that charmed circle brilliant in all the distinctions of her birth admired for her accomplished loveliness and yet giving me the whole tribute of a noble heart grateful for the devotion of all its thoughts to her happiness. I involuntarily paused and leaning against one of the gilded pillars of that stately hall gave unrestrained way to this waking dream. My conference with the viceroy was soon concluded. The prisoner had commanded a body of insurgents who after some partial successes had been broken and dispersed. The leader in his desperate attempts to rally them had been severely wounded and taken on the field. From the papers found on his person an important clue to the principal personages and objects of the revolt was promised; and I proceeded to the place of temporary detention to examine the prisoner. What an utter breaking up of the vision which had so lately absorbed all my faculties! What a contrast; was now before me to the pomps and pleasures of the fête! On a table in the guard-house lay a human form scarcely visible by the single dim light which flickered over it from the roof. Some of the dragoons covered with the marks of long travel and weary were lounging on the benches or gazing on the unhappy countenance which lay as if in sleep or death before them. A sabre wound had covered his forehead with gore which almost concealing all his features rendered him a hideous spectacle. Even the troopers though sufficiently indignant at the very name of rebel either respected the singular boldness of his defence or stood silenced by the appalling nature of the sight. All hope of obtaining any information from him was given up; he was evidently insensible and all that I could do was done in placing him in the care of the medical practitioner in attendance on the Household and ordering that he should have every accommodation consistent with his safe-keeping for the time. I returned to my chamber and was again lost in the outpourings of a pen which had all the candour of a dying confession. Clotilde was again murmuring in my ear those solemn thoughts which she believed that she was writing only to be trampled in the mazes of a French forest. Her last words were-- ""Marston Marston we shall never meet again! In my days of wretchedness I have sometimes wept over the resolution by which I tore myself away from you. But every calmer thought has strengthened me in the consciousness that I could give no higher proof of the honour the homage the fond and fervent affection of my soul. I dared not be a burden on your tenderness or an obstacle to your natural distinction. What could I helpless houseless fortuneless be but a weight upon that buoyancy and ambition of eminence which marks superior natures for the superior honours of life. I relinquished the first object of my heart and in that act I still take a melancholy pride. I showed you of what sacrifices I am capable for your sake. But what sacrifice is too vast for the heart of woman? Farewell! you will never see me more. ""CLOTILDE DE TOURVILLE."" During that night I found it impossible to rest; I continued alternately reading those fragments walking up and down my chamber and gazing on the skies. The cavalry torches still illumined the Castle-square; the blaze from the windows of the ball-room still poured its steady radiance on the gardens; and the pure serenity of a rising moon shone over all. Captivity luxury and the calm glory of the heavens were at once before me. Feverish with pain and pleasure pressed with the anxieties of state and filled with solemn and spiritualized contemplation I continued gazing from my casement until the torches and the lights of the fête had decayed and the moonbeams had grown pale before the first flush of dawn. The sounds of life now came upon the cool air and I was again in the world. The eventful day was come--the day which I had longed for with such ceaseless impatience through years of trial--the day of which among scenes the most disturbing the most perilous and the most glittering I had never lost sight for a moment--the day which I had followed with a fond and fixed eye as the pilgrim gazes on the remote horizon where stands the shrine he loves--it was come at last; and yet such are the strange varieties and trembling sensibilities of human feelings I now felt awed uncertain and almost alarmed at its arrival. Before its close I was to see the being in whom my existence was involved. When I had met Clotilde last her sentiments for me were as devoted as were those expressed in her letter; yet she had repelled my declarations sacrificed my happiness to a high-toned enthusiasm and rejected all the supplications of an honourable heart under the promptings of a spirit too noble to be called pride yet with all the effect of the haughtiest disdain. Still the hour advanced and I sent a note by her attendant soliciting an interview. Her hotel was within a short distance; yet no answer came. I grew more and more reluctant to approach her without her direct permission. There are thousands who will not comprehend this nervousness but they are still ignorant of the power of real passion. True affection is the most timid thing in the world. At length unable to endure this fever of the soul I determined to make the trial at once enter her presence make a final declaration of all my hopes and fears and hear my fate once for all. I was on the point of leaving my chamber for the purpose when a message from the viceroy stopped me. The prisoner whom I had seen brought in during the night was to be examined before the privy council and my presence was essential. Fate or fortune seemed always to thwart me and I followed the messenger. The prisoner was led into the council-room just as I entered; and at the first glance I recognised him as the unhappy being whom I had so strangely met in the North and whose romance of rebellion had so deeply excited my interest. His features which in the night disfigured with dust and blood I had been unable to distinguish now exhibited their original aspect that cast of mingled melancholy and daring which marked him at once as conscious of the perils of his career and resolved to encounter them to the uttermost. His tribunal was formed of the first men of the country and they treated him with the dignity of justice. His conduct was suitable to this treatment--calm decided and with more the manner of a philosopher delivering deliberate opinions on the theory of government than of a desperate contemner of authority and the head of a stern and fierce conspiracy against the settled state of things. He cast his deep and powerful glance round the council-board; as if to measure the capacities of the men with whom he had once prepared himself to contend for national supremacy; but I could not discover that he had any recollection of me. I knew him well; and if ever painter or sculptor had desired to fix in canvass or marble the ideal grandeur of magnificent conspiracy there stood its model. He spoke without the slightest appearance of alarm and spoke long and ably in explanation of his views; for he disdained all justification of them. He acknowledged their total failure but still contended for their original probability of success and for their natural necessity as the restoratives of Ireland. He was listened to with the forbearance alike arising from compassion for the fate he had thus chosen and respect for the singular talent which he displayed in this crisis of his fate. Man honours fortitude in all its shapes. The criminal was almost forgotten in the eloquent enthusiast; and while with his deep and touching voice and eager but most expressive gesture he poured out his glowing dreams revelled in brilliant impossibilities and created scenes of national regeneration as high-coloured as the glories of a tropical sunset; they suffered him to take his full range and develop the whole force of that vivid imagination whose flame alike lured him into the most dangerous paths of political casualty and blinded him to their palpable dangers. He concluded by declaring a total contempt for life; pronouncing that with the loss of his political hopes it had lost its value and making but one request to the council that ""since fortune had flung him into the hands of their law its vengeance might be done upon him with the least possible delay."" He was now removed; and a feeling of regret and admiration followed his removal. But his crime was undeniable the disturbance of the public mind was too serious to allow of any relaxatio
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in the rigour of justice; and I gave my unwilling signature to his final consignment to the state prison. I was now once again disengaged from the fetters of office; and resolved not to spend another day of suspense I drove to the hotel. I found it crowded with families which had fled from their houses in the country in the first alarm of the insurrection; and in the midst of the good-humoured but unmanageable tumults of a great household of Irish strangers was forced to make my own way at last. In passing along the gallery my eye was caught by a valise laid outside one of the parlours and corded as for an immediate departure. It was marked with ""La Comtesse de Tourville."" I knocked gently at the door. I was unanswered. I touched it--it gave way and I stood on the threshold. Before me at a table sat a female figure writing with her face turned from me and apparently so deeply engaged as not to have heard my entrance. But I should have known her among a million. I pronounced her name. She started up in evident alarm at the intrusion. But in the next moment her pale countenance was flushed by nature's loveliest rose and she held forth her hand to me. All my fears vanished with that look and the touch of that hand. All the language of earth would not have told me half what they told at that moment. Of this I say no more. It was the golden moment of my life; I make no attempt to describe our interview to describe the indescribable. I returned to the Castle a new being. The burden which had weighed so long upon my spirits was removed. The root of bitterness which continually sent up its noxious vegetation in the midst of the most flattering hopes of my public existence was now extirpated; I was secure in the full confidence of one of the loveliest and the noblest-hearted of human beings. And yet how narrowly had I escaped the loss of all? Clotilde hopeless of ever hearing of me more had formed the determination to leave Ireland on that day; and weary of disappointed affections and alienated from the world to change her name abjure her rank and take the veil in one of the Italian convents connected with her family. I should thus have lost her for ever. She had waited on this eventful day only for the return of her domestic. His arrest on the night before had deranged her plans; and when he had returned his mixture of French verbiage and Irish raptures his guard-house terrors and his Castle feasting formed a mélange so unintelligible that she was compelled to believe him under the influence of a spell--that spell which is supposed to inspire so much of the wit and wisdom of one of the cleverest and most _bizarre_ regions of a moonstruck world. Even my note only added to her perplexity. It was given by Monsieur Hannibal with such a magniloquent description of the palace in which he found me and which he fully believed to be my own--of the royal retinue surrounding my steps--of my staff of glittering officers and the battalions and brigades of my body-guard; that while she smiled at his narrative she was perfectly convinced of his derangement. But all this had luckily produced delay; and the hour came when her past anxieties were to be exchanged for the faith and fondness of one who knew her infinite value and was determined to devote his life to embellishing and cheering every hour of her existence. We were married; and I had the delight and honour of introducing Clotilde into a circle of rank and lustre equal to the highest of her native country. The monarchy of France was long since in the tomb; its nobility were wanderers over the face of the earth. The fortunes the hopes the honours all but the name of her distinguished family had gone down in the general wreck. But now was given to me the joyous duty of replacing by the purest and fondest of all rights all that the chances of the world had taken away. I thought her countenance lovelier than ever. It exhibited some slight evidence of the deep and exhausting trials which she had so long endured; it was pale yet the paleness reminded me of the exquisite hue of some of those fine sculptures which the Italian chisel has given for the admiration of mankind. Its expression too had assumed a loftier character than even when its first glance struck my young imagination. It had shared something of the elevation of a mind noble by nature but rendered still loftier and more intellectual by being thrown on its own resources. Yet all this was for society. Her courtly air inherited from an ancestry of princes; her manners which retained the piquant animation of her own country combined with the graver elegance of high life in ours; that incomparable taste in dress which seems the inheritance of French beauty; and the sparkling happiness of language scarcely less the gift of her native soil made her conspicuous from the first moment of her introduction to the circle of the Castle. But it was in our quiet and lonely hours that I saw the still more captivating aspects of her nature; when neither the splendid Countess de Tourville nor the woman of brilliant conversation was before me but an innocent and loving girl--no Armida no dazzling mistress of the spells which intoxicate the heart by bewildering the mind; but a sweet and guileless creature in the first bloom of being full of nature full of simplicity full of truth. How often in those days of calm delight have I seen her fine eyes suddenly fill with tears of thankful joy her cheek glow with fond gratitude her heart labour with the unutterable language of secure and sacred love! What hours can be placed in comparison with such hours of wedded confidence! It was then that I first became acquainted with the nature of the female heart. I then first knew the treasures which the spirit of woman may contain--the hope against hope the generous faith the unfailing constancy the deep affection. How often when glancing round our superb apartments crowded with all the glittering and costly equipment of almost royal life she would clasp my hand and touchingly contrast them with the solitude of the cell or the anxieties of the life of trial ""from which I alone had rescued her!"" How often when we sat together uninterrupted by the world at our sumptuous table would she half sportively and half in melancholy contrast it with the life of flight and fear which she had so lately led with the rude repast snatched in forests and swamps in the midst of civil war with desolation round her and despair in prospect imprisoned in the power of a tyrant and at every step approaching nearer to the place of a cruel death! Then a look would thank me more than all the eloquence in the world. Then I saw her eyes brighten and her cheek bloom with new lustre and beauty unknown before until I could have almost fallen at her feet and worshipped. I felt the whole supremacy of woman with the whole homage of the heart of man. A change in the British cabinet by the death of one of its leading members now produced a change in the viceroyalty; and the charge of the government during the interregnum necessarily devolved on the secretary. I never felt business more irksome than at this juncture and I had more than once grave thoughts of casting aside the staff of office in spite of all its gilding withdrawing from the disturbances of public life and with Clotilde at my side finding some quiet corner of England or the earth where we might sit under our own vine and our own fig-tree and forget revolutions and court-days for the rest of our lives. But against this my young and lovely partner protested with all the spirit of her ancestry; declaring that though nothing would give her more unfeigned delight than to quit courts and cities and fashion and fêtes for ever if I quitted them along with her--she could not endure the thought of my allowing ""the talents which nature had given to me and the opportunities which had been so liberally offered by fortune "" to perish useless to the world. I had no answer to offer but that I had made her the arbitress of my fate and she was welcome to do with me as was her sovereign will. Accordingly I left her looking like Hebe in her bower to plunge into a chaos of undecipherable papers to be deafened with a thousand impossible applications to marshal lazy departments to reform antiquated abuses and after spending twelve hours a-day in the dust and gloom of official duty to spend nearly as many hours of the night battling with arrogant and angry faction in the House of Commons. But this toil like most other toils had its fruits; it gave me an extraordinary increase of public influence and that influence produced in the natural course of such things an extraordinary crop of adherents. If I could have drunk adulation no man was in more imminent hazard of mystifying his own brains. I began to be spoken of as one equal to the highest affairs of the state and to whom the viceroyalty itself lay naturally open. But I still longed for a return to England. Delighted as I was with the grace of the higher ranks amused with the perpetual whim and eccentricity of the lower and feeling that general attachment to Ireland which every man not disqualified by loss of character must feel my proper position was in that country where my connexions my companionships and my habits had been formed. A new viceroy was announced; and I solicited my recall. But I had still one remarkable duty to undergo. The northern insurrection had sunk and sunk with a rapidity still more unexpected than the suddenness of its rise. The capture of its leader was a blow at the heart and it lost all power at the instant. In the Castle all was self-congratulation and the officials talked of the revolt with as much scorn as if there existed no elements of discord in the land. But I was not quite so easily inclined to regard all things through the skirts of the rainbow which had succeeded the storm; however unwilling to check the national exultation among a people who are as fond of painting the world _couleur de rose_ as the French; laugh as much and enjoy their laugh much more--my communications with England constantly warned ministers of the hazard of new insurrections on a broader deeper and more desolating scale. Even my brief tour of the island had shown me that there were materials of wilder inflammability in the bosom of the south than in the north. The northern revolt was like the burning of a house--the whole was before the eye the danger might be measured at a glance the means of extinction might operate upon it in their full power and when the materials of the house were in ashes the conflagration died. But the southern insurrection was the burning of a coalmine--a fire ravaging where human skill could scarcely gain access kindled among stores of combustion scarcely to be calculated by human experience growing fiercer the deeper it descended and at every new burst undermining the land and threatening to carry down into its gulfs all that was stately or venerable on the surface of the soil. I continued to represent that the north had revolted only on theories of government metaphysical reveries pamphleteering abstractions--food too thin to nurture the fierce firmness by which conspiracy is to be carried forward into triumph; while the south pondered on real or fancied injuries which wounded the pride of every peasant within its borders.--That the one took up arms for republicanism the feeblest of all temptations to national resistance; while the other brooded over a sense of wrong in visions of revenge for hereditary rights and the hopes of restoring the fallen supremacy of its religion--motives in every age the most absorbing among the wild impulses of man. I repeatedly warned the Irish cabinet against an outbreak which if it succeeded must convulse the empire; and which even if it failed must cost the heaviest sacrifices to the country. My advice was answered by professions of perfect security and magnanimous declarations of the wisdom of extinguishing peril by exhibiting the absence of fear! My part was now done and I was thenceforth to be only a spectator. But the course of things was not to be controlled by the confidence of cabinets. The sun went down notwithstanding the government conviction that it would shine through the whole twenty-four hours; the political night came as regularly as the night of nature and with it came the march of tens of thousands of political lunatics as brave as lions though as incapable of discipline. My prediction was formidably fulfilled: the firebrand and the pike ravaged the land; blood flowed in torrents; and when the country returned to its senses and the light of common sense once more dawned ministers and people alike had only the melancholy office of burying the common offences in that great resting-place where the faults of the past generation are marked by tombs and where the wisdom of the future is to be learned only from inscriptions recording the frailty of all that lived before. The conspiracy which it had fallen to my lot to extinguish had been brief and local. The half-Scottish population among whom it broke out were among the most sharp-witted and well-informed subjects of the empire; and they had no sooner made the discovery that government was awake than they felt the folly of attempting to encounter the gigantic strength of the monarchy and postponed their republican dreams to a ""fitter season."" The time now approached when the leader of the Northern insurrection was to be brought to trial; and hostile as I was to the effects of his enthusiasm I took no trivial interest in the individual. Still to set him at liberty was palpably impossible; and my only resource was to give him such aid in this extremity of his career as could be given by lightening the severities of his prison and providing him with the means of securing able counsel. I had now an opportunity of seeing for the first time the genius of this singular people displayed under a new and brilliant form--the eloquence of the bar. In England the Bar holds a high rank; from its essential value to the maintenance of public right in a country where every possession property and principle of man comes continually in the shape of a question of right and where the true supremacy is in the law. But in Ireland the spirit of the nation compensated for the deficiency of power in the law; and the bar was _par excellence_ the profession of the gentleman. This gave it the highest tone of personal manners. But it had another incentive still more characteristic. The House of Commons was in the closest connexion with the bar. It was scarcely more than a higher bar. All the principal men of that House had either been educated for the profession or were actually practising barristers; and as the distinctions of the senate were more dazzling as well as more rapidly attainable than those of the law the force of the profession was thrown into parliamentary life. The result was a reflected influence on both; the learning of the bar invigorating the logic of the debates the eloquence of the debates enriching and elevating the eloquence of the courts of law. At this period the Courts abounded with eloquent men who would have been distinguished at any tribunal on earth; but while some might exhibit keener argument and others more profound learning the palm of forensic eloquence was universally conceded to one. Need I pronounce the name of Curran? Take him for all in all he was the most extraordinary example of natural faculties that I have ever known. All the chief orators of that proud day of oratory had owed much to study much to circumstances and much to the stimulus of great topics a great cause and a great theatre for their display. When Burke spoke he had the world for his hearers.--He stood balancing the fates of empires; his voice reached to the bosom of all the cabinets of civilized nations; and with the office of a prophet he almost inevitably adopted the majestic language and seized the awful and magnificent views of the prophet. This is no depreciation of the powers of that immortal mind; for what can be a higher praise than that with the largest sphere of duty before him perhaps ever opened to man he was found equal to the fullness of his glorious task? Sheridan too was awakened to a consciousness of his own powers by the national voice raised against Indian delinquencies. He had a subject teeming with the loftiest materials of oratory--the sufferings of princes the mysteries of Oriental superstition the wild horrors of barbaric tyranny the fall of thrones once dazzling the eye and the mind with all the splendours of Oriental empire; himself the chosen pleader for India in the presence of the assembled rank dignity and authority of England. There can be no question of the genius which showed itself competent to so illustrious a labour. But the materials were boundless; the occasion was a summons to all the energies of the human intellect; never was the draught of human praise the spell of that enchantress which holds the spirit of men in most undisputed sway presented to the lip in a more jewelled goblet. But Curran spoke almost wholly deprived of those resistless stimulants; his topics were comparatively trivial--the guilt of provincial conspiracy incurred by men chiefly in the humbler ranks of life and in all instances obscure. No great principles of national right were to live or die upon the success of his pleading; no distressed nation held him as its advocate; no impregnable barrier against oppression in Europe or Asia was to be inscribed with his name. He was simply the advocate in the narrow courts of a dependent kingdom--humiliated by the hopeless effort to rescue a succession of unfortunate beings whose lives were in the grasp of justice--compressed on every side by localities of time habit and opinion; and thwarted alike by the clamour of prejudice and the frowns of authority. Yet his speeches at the bar are matchless to this hour. His creative powers seemed to rejoice in the very emptiness of the space which they were to fill with life lustre and beauty. Of all the great speakers his images arose from the simplest conceptions; while they rapidly wrought themselves into magnitude and splendour. They reminded me of the vapours rising from the morning field--thin vague and colourless but suddenly seized by the wind swelling into volume and ascending till they caught the sunbeams and shone with the purple and gold of the summer cloud. This trial of the unfortunate rebel leader gave him a signal opportunity for the exertion of his extraordinary faculties. It had excited the deepest interest throughout the country. Thousands had flocked from all parts of the land to be present at a crisis which involved the national feelings in the highest degree; which involved the personal safety of individuals perhaps of a much superior rank to the accused; and above all which seemed to fix the stamp of public justice on the guilt or impunity of opinions long cherished by the mind of Ireland. As the day of the trial approached physiognomies were seen in the streets which showed that individuals were brought together by the event who had never been seen in the metropolis before. The stern hard but sagacious countenances of the north contrasted with the broad open and bold features of the south; and those again contrasted with the long dark and expressive visages of the west which still give indelible evidence of their Spanish origin. Many of those men who now filled the busy thoroughfares of the capital had come from the remotest corners of Ireland as if to stand their own trial. The prisoner at the bar was their representative; his cause was their cause; his judgment the decision of the tribunal on their principles; his fate an anticipation of their own. As I pressed on to the noble building where the trial was to take place--one of the stateliest examples of architectural grace and dignity in a city distinguished for the beauty of its public buildings--it was impossible to avoid being struck with the general look of popular restlessness. The precaution of government had called in a large military force to protect the general tranquillity and the patrols of cavalry and the frequent passing of troops to their posts created a perpetual movement in the streets. The populace gathered in groups which rapidly dissolving at the approach of the soldiery as rapidly assembled again when they had passed by; street minstrels of the most humble description were plying their trade with a remorseless exertion of lungs; I heard the names of the Parliamentary leaders and the government frequently transpiring in those rough specimens of the popular taste; and from the alternate roars of fierce laughter and bursts of wild indignation which arose from the groups it was evident that ""men and measures"" were not spared. The aspect of the multitude in the vicinity of the Law Courts was still more disturbed. Rebellion has a physiognomy of its own and I had by this time learned to read it with tolerable fidelity to nature. It always struck me as of a wholly different character from that of the vice or the violence of the people. It wears a thoughtful air; the lips seem to have a secret enclosed the eye is lowering the step unsteady the man exhibits a consciousness of danger from the glance or tread of every passer-by. His visage is sullen stern and meditative--I can scarcely allow this conception to be a work of fancy for I have never been deceived in my readings of that most expressive of all betrayers of the inner man. And on this day I could have predicted the preparation for some general and reckless rising against government on the first opportunity when it should be found slumbering on its post: and my prediction would have been true. The court was crowded and it was with no small difficulty that I was enabled to reach the seat beside the judge which had been provided for me. The arraignment and preparatory routine of the trial gave time for the court to subside into order; and the address of the principal law-officer for the prosecution though exciting the deepest anxiety was listened to in the most respectful silence. The case was strong and was ably dealt with by the attorney-general. The evidence was clear and complete and the hope of an acquittal seemed to be gradually abandoned in the expressive gloom of the spectators. The prisoner at the bar too seemed more dejected than I had presumed from his former intrepidity; and the few glances which I could suffer myself to give to a being in his calamitous condition showed me a frequent writhing of the lip a clenching of the teeth and a nervous contraction of the features which looked like despair. At length the counsel for the defence rose. It was the first instance of my seeing the memorable Curran engaged in his profession. I had met him from time to time in general society and felt the delight which all experienced in his unfailing spirits and brilliant pleasantry. I had hitherto enjoyed him as the wit. I was now to be dazzled delighted and overwhelmed by him as the orator. Curran was the last man to be judged of by appearances. Nature had been singularly unkind to his exterior as if the more to astonish us by the powers of the man within. His figure was undersized his visage brown hard and peasantlike his gesture was a gesticulation and his voice was alternately feeble and shrill. His whole effect was to be derived from means with which that little meagre frame and sharp treble had nothing to do. But he had a singularly vivid eye. It was of the deepest black and such was the intensity of its expression in his more impassioned moments that it was scarcely an exaggeration to say that it shot fire. Still a stranger would have regarded him chiefly as a humorist from the glances of sly sarcasm and even of open ridicule which he cast round the court during the pleadings of some of his ""learned brethren."" But in that court his true faculties were known; and the moment of his rising careless as was his attitude and listless the look which he gave as he turned from his brief to the jury was the signal for universal silence and the fixing of every eye upon the great pleader. He began by sweeping away the heap of useless facts and forensic prolixities with which his predecessors had encumbered the case; and nothing could be more admirable than the dexterity with which he seized on the most casual circumstances tending to clear the character of the accused. But it was when he arrived at higher topics that he displayed his genius. ""_Nunc in ovilia mox in reluctantes dracones._"" It was when from developing the ignorance and contradictions of the informer by whom the charge of conspiracy was sustained he rushed to the attack on the general system of the Irish government that I saw him in full vigour. He denounced it as the source of all the tumults which had of late years shaken the ""isle from its propriety."" ""Here was the fount "" said he ""from which flowed the waters of bitterness not the less bitter that I can trace its wanderings through centuries of national desolation through fields of blood through the graves of generations."" After giving the most daring outline of what he termed the evils of the local sovereignty of Ireland he surprised me into sudden acquiescence and involuntary admiration by a panegyric on the principles of British government in the more favoured island--on ""the majestic supremacy of the law extending over all things sustaining all things administering life and health and purity to all; a moral atmosphere and though invisible like the physical yet irresistible in its strength penetrating through the whole national existence and carrying on undisturbed and perpetual in the day and night of empire all the great processes of national animation and prosperity."" Then suddenly darting away from this lofty and solemn view he indulged in some wild story of native humour which convulsed the whole audience with laughter. Yet before the burst had subsided he touched another string of that harp which so magically responded to the master's hand. He described the long career of calamity through which an individual born with a glowing heart brilliant faculties and an aspiring spirit must struggle in a country filled with the pride of independence and yet for ages in the condition of a province. Some part of his pathos in this sketch was probably borrowed from his own early difficulties; and I heard poured out with the touching vehemence of painful reality probably the very meditations which had preyed upon the heart of the student in his chamber or darkened his melancholy walks in the cloisters of the Temple. But he suddenly started on a new train of thought; and reprobated with the loftiest rebuke that state of the law which while it required two witnesses for the proof of treason in England was content with one in Ireland. This he branded with every name of indignant vituperation frequently adopted according to his habit from the most familiar conceptions; yet by their familiarity striking the mind with astonishing force. He called it ""playing at pushpin with the lives of men""--""the reading-made-easy of judicial murder""--""the 'rule of three' of forensic assassination;--given a villain multiplied by a false oath the product an execution!"" He now revelled in the boldest extravagances of imagery and language expressions which written might resemble the burlesque of a public jester or the wildness of a disturbed mind but which were followed by the audience whom he had heated up to the point of passion with all but acclamation. Still he revelled on. His contrasts and comparisons continued to roll out upon each other. Some noble some grotesque but all effective. After one dazzling excursion into the native history in which he contrasted the aboriginal hospitality and rude magnificence of the old Irish chieftain the Tir-Owen or O'Nial with the chilling halls of the modern absentee; he suddenly changed his tone and wandered away into a round of fantastic and almost frolicsome pleasantries which shook even the gravity of the bench. Then suddenly checking himself and drawing his hand across his brow to wipe away a tear--for even the hard-headed lawyer was not always on his guard against the feeling of the moment--he upbraided himself and the bystanders for the weakness of being attracted by any lighter conception while the calamities of Ireland were demanding all their sympathies. And even this he did in his characteristic manner. ""Alas!"" said he in a voice which seemed sinking with a sense of misfortune ""why do _I_ jest? and why do _you_ smile? Or are we for ever to be the victims of our national propensity to be led away by trivialties? We tickle ourselves with straws when we should be arming for the great contests of national minds. We are ready to be amused with the twang of the Jew's harp when we should be yearning for the blast of the trumpet. You remind me and I remind myself of the scene at one of our country-wakes. It is the true portrait of our fruitless mixture of levity and sorrow. We come to mourn and we are turned to merriment by the first jest. We sit under the roof of death yet we are as ready to laugh as ever. The corpse of Ireland is before our eyes: we fling a few flowers over its shroud and then we eat drink and are merry. Must it be for ever pronounced--that we are a frivolous and fickle race--that the Irishman remains a voluntary beggar with all the bounties of nature round him; unknown to fame with genius flashing from his eyes; humiliated with all the armoury of law and liberty open to his hands; and laughing laughing on when the only echo is from the chambers of the grave?"" The orator dropped his head on his clasped hands as he spoke the words; and there was an universal silence for a while. It was interrupted by a groan of agony from the prisoner. All eyes were instantly turned to the dock and the spectacle there was startling. He seemed writhing under intolerable torture. His hands clung eagerly to the front of the dock as if to sustain him; his lips were as colourless clay but his features and forehead were of the most feverish crimson. At first the general impression was that he had been overcome by a sense of his perilous state; but it was soon evident that his pangs were more physical than moral. Curran now flung his brief upon the table and hurried to his side. A few words passed between them inaudible to the court; but they had the unexpected effect of apparently restoring the sufferer to complete tranquillity. He again stood erect; his brow and it was a noble one resumed its marble smoothness; his features grew calm and his whole aspect returned to the stern and moveless melancholy of an antique statue. The advocate went back to his place and commenced a singularly dexterous attempt to avert the sentence by an appeal to the national feelings. ""If "" said he ""my client had been charged with any of those crimes which effect their object by individual injury I should disdain to offer a defence which could be accomplished only by confounding the principles of right and wrong. But here is an instance in which the noblest mind might err in which the highest sagacity might be perplexed in which the most self-denying virtue might discover nothing but a voluntary sacrifice."" The problem before his client was ""the proudest that had ever occupied the mind of ancient or modern times. It was by what means a patriot might raise his country to the highest possible elevation. What are the essentials for such a purpose? Intrepidity independence of heart the steadiest perseverance the manliest fortitude; all the great qualities of the head and the heart. Those are the tributes which he must bring to the altar of his country. But the priest must be prepared himself to be the sacrifice. Is it the hands of his countrymen that are to bind him to the horns of the altar?"" A sense of this hazardous line of observations however soon struck the keen understanding of the great pleader; and he admitted in all its fulness the necessity of respecting public tranquillity of relinquishing doubtful projects of good and of studying the prosperity of a nation rather through the ""microscope of experience"" than by ""vague though splendid telescopic glances"" at times and things beyond our power. ""The man "" said he ""who discovers the cause of blight in an ear of corn is a greater benefactor to the world than the man who discovers a new fixed star."" From the glow on his countenance and the sudden brightness of his eye I could see that he
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was about to throw himself loose on some new current of rich and rapid illustration when he was suddenly stopped by a shriek from the dock; the prisoner had fallen with his head over its front and seemed gasping in the last pangs. The drops of torture stood thick on his brow his eye was glazed and his lips continued to quiver without the power of utterance. The advocate approached him; the dying man caught him by the hand; and as if the touch had restored his faculties at the instant said with a faint smile and in a low tone yet so clear as to be audible to the whole assembly in the words of Pierre--""We have deceived the senate!"" In the utterance he fell back and died. To escape the ignominy of the scaffold the unhappy man before he came into court had swallowed poison! I speak of Curran only as I see him through the lapse of years. Time has had no other effect on my recollection than raising my estimate of his genius. I admit too that in judging of an extraordinary man time may exalt the image as well as confuse the likeness. The haze of years may magnify all the nobler outlines while it conceals all that would enfeeble their dignity. To me his eloquence now resembles those midsummer night dreams in which all is contrast and all is magical. Shapes diminutive and grotesque for a moment and then suddenly expanding into majesty and beauty; solitudes startling the eye with hopeless dreariness and at a glance converted into the luxury of landscape and filled with bowers of perpetual spring. The power of his contrasts still haunts me; Aladdin's palace starting from the sands was not more sudden fantastic or glittering. Where all seemed barren and where a thousand other minds would have traversed the waste a thousand times and left it as wild and unpeopled as ever; no sooner had he spoken the spell than up sprang the brilliant fabric of fancy the field was bright with fairy pomp and the air was filled with genii on the wing. Next morning I was on my road to London. LEBRUN'S LAWSUIT. In France even before the Revolution less regard was paid to the decisions of a court of law than to public opinion. That tyrant of our modern days had already seized the throne and his legitimate authority and divine right were never doubted by the most anti-monarchical of the sons of liberty. The only check on the insolence of the noblesse and the only compensation for the venality of the judges was found in a recourse to the printer. A marquis was made to imitate the manners of a gentleman by fear of an epigram; a defeated party in a lawsuit consoled himself by satirizing the court; and from Voltaire down to Palissot all the people who could write and could borrow ink and paper had pen in hand ready to appeal from prejudiced juries overbearing nobles or even _lettres de cachet_ and the Bastile itself to the reading talking gossiping laughing quick-witted cold-hearted citizens of Paris. The consequence was that the whole city was overrun with pamphlets. Ministers of state marshals and princes of the blood were as busy as any Grub-street garretteer. Literary squabbles employed the lifetime of all the literary men--and some of them indeed are only known by their squibs and lampoons on their more popular brethren. But so great at last seems to have been the rage for calling in the public that it was not even expelled from the consulting chambers of counsel learned in the law. If a case came before an advocate that gave any scope for his talents as a pamphleteer his opinion immediately took the shape of a little _historiette_ and in a few days was in print. The attorney was no less literary in getting up his brief; and innumerable were the sage labours of _avocats_ and _procureurs_ which rushed into type before the trial was over and did duty very much to the reader's satisfaction as a tale of fashionable life. In fact a very amusing collection might be made of the memorials of counsel which appeared in Paris about the middle of last century. The writings for instance which secured the fame of witty Beaumarchais among the gossips of the capital were not the _Barber of Seville_ or his comedies but the briefs which he composed in his lawsuit with the Goezmans and the Sieur Bertrand. All the laughers were on his side; and though he was beat in the trial his triumph was complete; for it was not in the nature of Parisian public opinion to believe a man guilty who was so prodigal of bon-mots; or that the opposite party had right or justice on their side whose pleadings were as uninteresting as a sermon. But Beaumarchais was not the only author who owed his notoriety to his legal proceedings. One of the great lyric poets of France who is placed by his countrymen upon the same level as Pindar--Denis Leonchard Lebrun--was the town-talk for several years during his action against his wife for the restitution of conjugal rights. And as his _Mémoire_ or pleading gives a view of French life at the period (1774 ) of a grade in society omitted in the _Mémoires_ and _Souvenirs_ of dukes and princesses we propose to give some account of it and also of the hero of the process whose strange eventful history was not drawn to a close till 1807. He was born in 1729 in the house of the Prince de Conti in whose service his father was. His talents soon recommended him to the notice of the prince; and before he was thirty he had established his reputation as a poet of the first order by an ode on the earthquake at Lisbon. Acknowledged as a man of genius and feared as a man of wit--for his epigrams were even more celebrated than his lyrics--and placed in easy circumstances by the kindness of his master who bestowed on him the title and salary of his ""Secrétaire des Commandemens "" nothing seemed wanting to his felicity but a wife to share his glory; and accordingly in the year 1760 he married. If we believe his own account he was the happiest of Benedicts for fourteen years; but all of a sudden without warning without reason and (though she was a poetess) without even rhyme his household gods were broken and all his happiness engulfed. It was a second edition of the Lisbon earthquake. The opposite party denied the fourteen years' felicity and talked wonderful things about cuffs and kicks bestowed on the spouse--and maledictions of more force than elegance; but both sides agree that the matter came to a crisis when a certain Sieur Grimod--a sort of Cicisbeo--Platonic of course--was requested to leave the house and discontinue his visits to Madame Lebrun. This simple proceeding let loose all the winds of heaven; poor Lebrun was pounced upon by the whole female sex. Even his old mother turned against him; even his sister a sour vestal of thirty-seven sided with her injured sister-in-law; and what had the wretched poet to say for himself? He suspected nothing improper--a good easy man--he adored his ""Fanny""--he wanted her to come back--but that horrid fellow Grimod!--he would not have Grimod within his door. So Fanny would not go within it either; and off to the _avocat_ rushed Lebrun to force her to come back by legal process; and off went Madame accompanied of course by the Sieur Grimod to _her avocat_ to resist the demand; and then followed paper upon paper--love regrets promisings courtings on one side; hatred defiance and foul names _ad libitum_ on the other. And finally the whole case was put into a _Mémoire_ with the help of Monsieur Hardoin de la Regnerie _avocat_; and every tea-table--but there was no tea in those days--every card-table in Paris was as well able to decide the cause as the Parliament itself. The _Mémoire_ commences with some general reflections on the advantages possessed by a pretty woman in all cases of a quarrel with a man. And when in addition to her prettiness she has the art to appear ill-used there is no resisting her attacks. A halo of sympathy gathers round her while a cloud envelopes the unfortunate antagonist; and people at last think that they are performing an act of pure and disinterested justice when they kick him into the Seine. Impressed with this disagreeable conviction (from which we gather that Madame Lebrun was a handsome woman while the husband was nothing to boast of--at all events compared to the Sieur Grimod ) he hurries on to the facts--and they rather alter the appearance of affairs. It was in the year 1760 as we have said that the Sieur Lebrun married the Demoiselle de Surcourt. Interest and ambition had nothing to do with the match. Love was the only fastener of the bond. The Sieur Lebrun and the Demoiselle de Surcourt had been acquainted--had been lovers--for three years. And that passion born of a sympathy of tastes and sentiments had grown in mystery--a secret correspondence was its aliment and interpreter--a delicious correspondence--where the Demoiselle de Surcourt knew how to combine the sallies of imagination with the soft outpourings of the soul or the burning expressions of her love! Pardon the Sieur Lebrun if he transcribes a few passages from her letters; Madame Lebrun above all ought to excuse him. It is not betraying her secrets; it is recalling her to herself and to a sentiment she would never have forsworn if she had been allowed to follow the dictates of her heart:-- ""From my bed this Tuesday evening. ""If it is flattering to be loved by those we love it is still more so when the loved object is you my dear Misis. 'Twould make me vain to think I pleased you really as much as you say I do; but I feel my happiness too truly to give way to pride on account of it. Is it true then that you think of me and prefer my remembrance to the gaieties of society? Ah! why am I not in the room where you remain for my sake? You make me wish more--I wish I could be with you wherever you think of me. You are right in saying our hearts are made for one another; they have the same sentiments they burn with the same fires. That charming harmony is the work of love; but nature had created a sympathy between them that seems to tell us they were made to love and to be united. Yes my dear Misis they must love for ever; but in the mean time will you consent to languish in absence and constraint? I would not remind you of your unhappiness since you have interdicted me from the subject if you did not complain yourself; and your complaints make me wretched. They reveal to me your sufferings and awaken all my affection. Do you think if I had an opportunity of seeing you that I would not seize it? Ah! you ought to feel assured of all I would do for you if I had it in my power. But we can't help hoping what we desire so much. Reproach me therefore no more; tell me rather again that you are convinced of my affection and promise to love me all your life. I ought to be sure of it already; but every time you reproach me I make you repeat the promise by way of expiating your fault. Good-night my dear Misis; I hope you will think of me in your dreams. Why must I say good-night so far from you?"" Of the same period is the following:-- ""From my bed this Wednesday night. ""What! you scold me in sober truth! You write me a scrap of a letter--in the coldest gravest style. Yes--you were sad--I see you were. Do you fancy that the lecture you gave me makes up for my grief at losing you? Ah! if I had not recalled your eyes glowing with love and all our mutual endearments I should have been angry with you. How strange that your very recollection pleads your excuse! Whatever may be your fault you have but to show yourself to be forgiven. But do not presume upon this confession to add to your faults. Alas! if ever you deserve a punishment its bitterness will all belong to me. Fortune befriended us when last we met; but don't you find time pass too quickly when we are together? I have always a thousand things to say to you; it is not perhaps the shortness of the time--it is that the more I say to you the more I wish to say. In the same way the more kisses I give you the more I wish to give; all the feelings you inspire are in extremes. How you ought to love me if you wish your tenderness to equal mine! And since it is always on the increase how cruel that we can never give way to the sentiments we feel and express them to each other! What pleasure we are deprived of dear Misis! why are you not beside the couch where I am now writing? Our silence alone would be more eloquent than all our letters. The kisses I would give you would no longer be in dreams though my happiness would perhaps make me think it one. Adieu! the more I think of it the more I feel the misery of being separated from you. It is near one o'clock. Are you in bed yet? Think of me!"" This secret correspondence lasted for three years; but at last a letter was opened by a servant and the secret was discovered by the Sieur de la Motte who passed for the Demoiselle de Surcourt's uncle and with whom she lived. The Sieur Lebrun had but to whisper marriage and all would have been arranged. Under other circumstances the word would have been easy--but there was a bar between them: the Demoiselle de Surcourt was of illegitimate birth. Love however laughed at the obstruction. The Sieur Lebrun hurried to the house of De la Motte; demanded the hand of the lady he loved; and the Demoiselle de Surcourt became his wife. The marriage contract will prove his disinterestedness. The portion he obtained was small; consisting but of eighteen hundred francs a-year. The Sieur Lebrun secretary of the domains of the Prince de Conti with two thousand livres a-year might have looked higher--at all events he might have bargained for a settlement in his favour; but so far from that he made no claim upon her fortune but settled all he had upon her. Is this the man whom Madame Lebrun accuses of having married her from interested motives? Alas sometimes for the marriages which have been preceded by too violent a love!--illusion gives place to sad reality. The boy and girl love without having learned to know each other; and cease to love when that knowledge comes! But the attachment of the Sieur and Madame Lebrun experienced no revolution of the kind. Fourteen years passed away in uninterrupted union. Though converted into a husband the Sieur Lebrun did not cease to be Misis; the wedded De Surcourt continued to be ""Fanny""--charming names--ingenious disguises--chosen by two lovers to perpetuate the memory of the times of courtship! More than three hundred letters written by Madame Lebrun during that time were in the hands of her husband--irrefragable proofs of their mutual affection; but she has found means to get away the greater part of them; enough however remain to make his justification complete. Never was a union more harmonious--a wife more petted and indulged. It seemed that felicity resting on such foundations could never be disturbed; but one single moment was sufficient to overturn the work of seventeen years! The Sieur and Madame Lebrun had been intimate for some years with a certain Sieur Grimod who held an appointment from the king and lived as if his office was of great value. The Sieur Lebrun is not astonished that his wife was pleased with the acquaintance for he prized it very highly himself; but a time came when he thought it better for all parties that it should cease. The Sieur Lebrun believes in his wife's virtue as in his own existence. What! if he had _not_ that belief would he be here to reclaim her by course of law? But it is not enough for a woman to have the reality of virtue--she must have the appearance also; and every man has a right to be in that respect a Cæsar. Already some indiscretions of Madame Lebrun which the openness and purity of her mind could alone render excusable--her portrait drawn without her husband's knowledge for the Sieur Grimod--a letter from that individual to the lady written in a style such as no one would use towards a lady he respected--had begun to inspire the Sieur Lebrun with a certain coolness. The whisperings at last unjust as they were no doubt of a malicious public--the advice of his friends--his own susceptibility made it imperative on him to come to a rupture in which Madame Lebrun should have been glad to join. And here is the letter he wrote to the Sieur Grimod:-- _This 15th January 1774._ ""There are a thousand circumstances Sir which every day make it a man's duty no longer to see the persons who have previously been most highly prized. I experience this myself in declining an acquaintance with you which in other respects I greatly valued. You know better than any one else how much I lose by this step. Madame Lebrun unites her regrets to mine and begs me to assure you and also Madame Grimod of her affectionate thanks ('de ses plus tendres remercîmens.') I have the honour to be with perfect truth and for the last time "" &c. And the Sieur Grimod immediately replied-- ""Your letter Sir did indeed surprise Madame Grimod and me who believed ourselves among the number of your friends after the many years we have had the honour to know you. We do not know the motives for so sudden a quarrel; if you were pleased with our society we were no less so with yours. The number of true friends we retain does not hinder us from regretting those we lose in you and Madame Lebrun to whom we beg you will express our regret. We have the honour "" &c. After two such polite epistles the reader would naturally expect that the Sieur Lebrun and the Sieur Grimod with their respective wives would toss their heads at each other when they met in the street and give the cut direct with the utmost unanimity. But another glance into the _Mémoire_ will soon convince him of his mistake. The Sieur Lebrun may probably look vastly majestic and pass the Sieur Grimod with a contemptuous jerk; but sorry are we to say that Madame Lebrun joins in no such dignified proceeding. She cuts the magnanimous Lebrun instead; she stirs up against him the wrath and indignation of all his friends and relations; she continues her intimacy with the Sieur Grimod; and as a finish to her connubial obedience she goes one morning with three hackney coaches and carries off every article of furniture the unhappy little man possesses. A pleasant specimen of a wife of the middle class in the year 1774! A duchess could scarcely be more sublime. Now who was this Sieur Grimod and what manner of rank was his considered? He had nothing to do with the noblesse; he kept no shop; he had no private fortune; but he was one of the true causers of the French Revolution the rascally collectors of taxes the underlings of the atrocious _fermiers généraux_ who wrung the last farthing from the already oppressed peasant and made the whole realm of France as sterile hopeless and wretched as a nation must inevitably become if it is allowed to be the prey of an O'Connell in every parish. His nominal salary was under a hundred a-year; but we shall see the style he lives in as we get on in the account--his country-houses--his carriages and even his politenesses to Madame Lebrun; and we shall hear in every one of these luxurious enjoyments the sharpening of the guillotine axe. Madame Lebrun the wife Madame Lebrun the mother and Mademoiselle the sister are all in the same story. The old lady whose virtuous indignation towers above her sex has no patience for the insufferable tyrant who won't let his wife see her best friends (""qui vouloit l'empêcher de voir ses bons amis."") They trump up all manner of stories against him; and even maintain in their first paper of accusation that he threshed and kicked his tender-hearted spouse and put her in bodily fear. But when the magistrate looked at our diminutive friend and compared his powers of threshing and kicking with the tall majestic figure and full chest of the complainant he dismissed the charge ""avec une sorte d'indignation "" as the Sieur Lebrun triumphantly declares; and we think the magistrate was quite justified in so doing. No no--the Sieur Lebrun was bad enough as you shall hear in the sequel; but he never had the cruelty not to mention the courage to attack so stately a woman as his wife. But alas! from the magistrate's decision there lay a power of appeal. The three ladies--with the help no doubt of the irresistible Sieur Grimod--carried the cause into a higher court. They brought it before the bailliage of the Temple; but the Sieur Lebrun had some misgivings as to the impartiality of the court and he carried it before the judges at the Châtelet. In this court Grimod and his party knew they had no chance suffered the case to go against them by default and finally appealed to the Grande Chambre. And the Sieur Lebrun did all this to get back a woman that had robbed and pillaged and slandered him and preferred her _bon ami_ the Sieur Grimod and her _bonne amie_ the Dame Grimod to her Misis in spite of his ode on the earthquake at Lisbon and his being ranked by the Parisian critics as a little above Pindar. Well to it they go reply replication rejoinder--till at last we are verily persuaded the little man tried to get her into his power again for the express purpose of murdering her at his leisure. And what our verdict in such a case if we had been upon the jury would have been we are not prepared to say. The lady in the course of her accusations proved too much. She brought witnesses to state that for the whole fourteen years of her wedded life she had been thumped and bullied worse than Cinderella; accused of trying to poison her lord and master; and in short had led a life of perfect misery. Oho! cries the Pindar of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth you are a pretty woman to talk of misery and ill-treatment for fourteen years! Why never was such a merry happy careless being in France. For fourteen years you did nothing but amuse yourself and worship me as a good wife ought. I buried myself in my books and wrote astonishing odes and epigrams corresponded with Voltaire and discovered grand-daughters of Corneille and got up subscriptions for their benefit; and all the while you attended every party went to all the theatres and never missed a single masquerade. No 'twas when I forbade the visits of Grimod----But at that name his eloquence leaves him and he descends to facts. There is one fact he says against which the whole plot of this separation will fall to pieces. It is the harmony which always reigned between man and wife till about six weeks before she went away. The witnesses of the Sieur Lebrun to this fact are indubitable. They are her own letters--those be it understood which she left behind or rather which she was not able to carry away with her. By the perusal of some of her notes before marriage we have seen the vivacity of sentiment which united the Demoiselle de Surcourt to the Sieur Lebrun. That vivacity is traceable in all its force in a letter she wrote to him after the marriage when he had left her for a short time in the August of 1760. ""I heard yesterday from my dear Misis. I have not heard to-day. It brings back all my uneasiness. Has he slept well to-night? is he not fatigued? I hope he has nothing else to complain of but ennui. My dear Misis I do not doubt that you think of your dear Fanny of her grief her love her impatience. Tell me the day then the day I so long for that is to bring you back to me again. All my thoughts turn only to you. Nothing has any interest for me that is not in some way or other connected with you. I rejoice in seeing the fine weather for I think you can now enjoy a walk. I hate the heat for it keeps you from exercise and may make you ill. The moment I feel the slightest zephyr I long to send it to you. I wish there was even a tempest for your sake. I would make the very elements do your bidding. I wish that every thing in nature may only serve to make you happy my dear Misis. How much does she not owe him since he has painted her so well? He makes her still more beautiful by the light of his own soul--that soul fired at once by genius and by love. You write such beautiful things and I can't see them! I have no pleasure in life. I have no consolation left but the hope of our meeting soon. To-day I passed the morning with your mother. She pities me. We spoke of nothing but you. She told me some anecdotes of your childhood that amused me much. You must have been interesting even then. At four years old I really believe I should have fallen in love with you. I like every thing that belongs to you; I feel as if they brought me nearer to yourself. She and your sister send you a thousand loves and your brother also who supped here this evening. They talked a great deal of Homer Greek Latin &c. My dear aunt and uncle were delighted with him and think him very clever. It is now midnight. I am in my couch--my solitary couch--far from thee. Alas! nothing which you see where you now are can remind you of love. Love dwells not in palaces. I have nothing but your heart to rely on to recall me to your mind. Adieu my dear Misis--adieu my little man! I send you a thousand kisses. Ah! Why am I not in your arms? ""This morning when I was just going to seal my letter Murgi brought me yours. Ah how sorry I am! I feel more than ever that my heart is not made for these lengthened separations. No I can't exist absent from what I adore. I tried to reason myself into submission for five days; but how am I to endure the fifteen that it will be now? Pity me dear Misis. It is delightful to me to see that your regret is equal to mine; but the more you make me love you the greater is my grief. If any thing could lessen the sorrow caused me by your letter it is to hear that you are well. The assurance of that gives me one grief less. Take care of yourself for my sake. I can't understand how the letter I wrote you on Sunday has not reached you yet. Write to me often if 'tis but one word. I embrace you again--Your Fanny."" Thanks to the wise precaution of Madame Lebrun there is a blank of seven years in her correspondence with her husband. But if we lose the pleasure of reading a multitude of letters worthy of those we have transcribed the cause of the Sieur Lebrun is no loser by the omission; for we find at the end of those seven years the Dame Lebrun still unchanged--a clear proof that no change has in the interval taken place in the Sieur Lebrun. _Voici_ continues the _Mémoire_--behold the letter she wrote to him on the 17th September 1767 from the country-house of--who do you think?--the Sieur Grimod. ""I flatter myself my dear little man that I shall have a good report of your health. I am told you started in first-rate condition; no doubt the open air and the pleasures of such agreeable society will keep you in good case. I need not wish you any new enjoyments. I have only to congratulate you on those you possess. Let me enter into them for the description of yours will make me more fully appreciate my own. I hope at the same time you will perceive that there is a something wanting and that you will have the same feelings on the subject as I have. The country agrees with me admirably and I am in wonderful health. We walk a great deal and musicate ('musiquons') a great deal more. We lay all the elements under contribution for our amusement. We have a gondola for our water parties a swing for the air and we only want Torræus and his Acheron to take a trip through fire. We have made parties to go fishing and we intend making one to go fowling with nets and looking-glasses as it is so beautifully described by a poet of my acquaintance (the Sieur Lebrun himself.) I hope the same accident won't happen to us that befell the bird-catcher in the fable. It is for you to be on your guard if you enter into such amusements; for love keeps constantly prowling in the scenes frequented by the Graces. We are therefore in safety here in spite of his wings. We expect the family of M. and Madame Grimod at the beginning of next month. They have charged me to invite you to come and take your place on the famous jonquil sofa. They send you a thousand compliments and expect you early next month. We have half made up our minds to go and see the king hunt at St Hubert. Adieu my dear little man! I embrace you with all my heart. Write me immediately. My respects to the ladies and a thousand remembrances to M. le Comte de Turpin and M. le Comte de Brancas. Tell him that I was highly flattered by his indignation though it was altogether unjust. We return you your brilliant 'epistle.' We have answered it with a song; don't lose it. The invalid (Julia) sends you a lot of messages."" Poetry itself was employed by the Dame Lebrun to paint the feelings with which her husband had the happiness to inspire her. The proofs brought of this latter assertion are very convincing; but before we give extracts from the poetical declarations of her connubial bliss let us see what a curious insight this gives us into the style of life among French poetasters and their wives in the middle of last century. We have seen that the irate Lebrun had a settled income of about a hundred and eighty pounds a-year equal with little pickings and stealings to perhaps three hundred pounds at the present time. His wife evidently a clever brisk coquette sends friendly messages to two of the first nobles in France the Count de Turpin and the Count de Brancas and in the house of the latter nobleman the Sieur Lebrun is domiciled at the time she writes. In the meanwhile she is spending months at a time in the country mansion of the too fascinating Grimod whom we have presented to the reader as a sub-collector of taxes. A sub-collector of taxes! Wait till the next payments are due for the income-tax and watch the countenance of the respectable individual who will give you his receipt. Is that a man to awake jealousy in the soul of Pindar or get up private theatricals or even take a prominent part in an acted charade? His soul is set upon a hot beefsteak and he thinks strong ale. He wouldn't give twopence for all the poets in England and still less for their wives. But the Sieur Grimod is made of different metal. Less lead but a great deal more brass--more polished but less useful--a pinchbeck imitation of the lords and ladies who were waltzing flirting acting proverbs and writing pasquinades at the very moment when the first great throes of the ""portentous doom"" were beginning to shake France to her foundations and the cloud was gathering that was to fall down in the blood and horror of the Revolution. A sub-collector of taxes! in his country-house--with his friends' wives about him in addition to his own--giving parties of the most gorgeous magnificence--splendid masques in honour of a birthday like _Comus_ at Ludlow Castle--bird-huntings where ladies with attendant squires sallied forth in fanciful array armed with silken nets to catch the prey after having wiled them from the trees by blinding them with polished mirrors--horns sounding and music stationed in woody dells--and all carried on with a grandeur like the cavalcades of the duke and duchess in _Don Quixote_. A sub-collector of taxes we say doing all this shows very clearly that some change or other was needed; and we will only say that the moment we see similar proceedings going on in the same rank of life in England we shall emigrate to some happy island--not Tahiti--where poets and poetesses and sub-collectors of taxes are utterly unknown. We shall extract from the _mémoire_--which we again remind the reader is a strictly legal document though rather different from the dull concerns our Solons in Lincoln's Inn are the authors of--at some length; for we shall gain a very tolerable idea of the interior arrangements of a _maison de campagne_ on a fête-day in 1768. The day of St Denis was usually chosen by the Dame Lebrun for a charming party to which she lent all the charms of her muse. In that which she gave on the eve of St Denis at the house of the Sieur Grimod she had introduced all the deities of Olympus to pay compliments to her husband. First appeared Love and the Graces; then Flora then Diana--who all sang songs in character. Apollo followed who presented his lyre to the Sieur Lebrun and said-- ""The suffrages of all you claim The gods themselves your talents prize; Through endless ages may your name Partake their immortalities! Take from Apollo's hand this lyre To sound upon the sacred hill; And while your finger wakes its fire They'll say 'it is Apollo's still.'""[3] After Apollo Pomona immediately came; it was the character which the Dame Lebrun had reserved for herself; and her couplet would have been out of place in any person's mouth but her own-- ""Let gods their crowns bestow-- An orchard is my all: Yet poor gifts richer grow When from the hea
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t they fall. If of Pomona's store To taste you kindly deign Trust me I'll give you as much more When autumn comes again.""[4] The divertisement ended with a dance of Bacchus and Bacchantes. The Sieur Grimod enacted the part of Bacchus in full costume with his head ornamented with a cap and bells! We suspect the head of the counsel assisting in getting up this memorial had been so long surmounted with a wig that he did not remark upon the absurdity of the masquerade of the Sieur Grimod. A cap and bells on the head of wild Bacchus! It is evident even from the couplet chanted by the fascinating sub-collector of taxes that he appeared in a very different character from the youthful conqueror of India; though we confess that heads of which a cap and bells would be the fittest covering are not altogether unknown among the heroes and conquerors of the gorgeous East. It is clear from the verses that the great Grimod appeared ""for this night only "" in the character of Folly. ""To set every thing right 'Tis on that I am bound; To put sorrow to flight The true secret I've found! All these poor silly gods With their bouquets held so With their songs and their odes Without me are no go! Folly flings From its wings A new light on each day. It incites It invites To be happy and gay."" Well may the learned barrister close his account of this festival with the remark--that the life of the Dame Lebrun was a continued series of amusements; and this cruel husband when he was not the object or the cause of her pleasures was at least made the confidant of them all. As a proof of this confidence a history is given of certain proceedings in the ninth year of their marriage in which it will be seen that the Bacchus of the divertisement is not kept entirely in the background. In the month of February in 1769 she paid a visit to Havre to see the sea. To show the terms they were on it would be necessary to quote the letters of the Dame Lebrun at full length. It will be seen how unreservedly she entered into the pleasures of the place and how minutely she recorded them all to a man whom she well knew that her descriptions would enable to share them as if he had been at her side. But in the absence of the entire correspondence which it would be tedious to transcribe we content ourselves with copying out the passages where the friendship and intimacy that then united the husband and wife are most strongly marked. ""We arrived in perfect health my dear friend on Tuesday at two o'clock. I trust you also are flourishing. Take care of yourself and write me how you are. M. and Madame Grimod as also M. Sieuve charge me with a thousand messages. M. Grimod insists on your coming as soon as possible that you may see the sea. I also wish you could see it. In looking at it I have often thought on the effect it would have on you; and I should be delighted if you could enjoy the prospect along with me. I tell you I now eat fish as you do. This very day I have eaten a dozen oysters a bit of skate some smelts and some fresh cod--I think I shall finish by devouring all the fish in the sea. I wish I could send you some of the oysters of this place: they are as large as your hat. Adieu my dear friend; I embrace you from my heart. I have told you all I have seen and I will tell you all that may occur worth talking of when I arrive. _Friendly regards to Julia. I hope to find her in good health and that she has taken care of yours._"" With a wonderful knowledge of the effects of small type the poetical Lebrun and his counsellor have printed the ""Advice to Julia"" in italics. What! the Dame Lebrun send friendly regards (""bien des amitiés"") to Julia! Why isn't this the woman they trump up a story about as having been a perpetual source of jealousy to the neglected wife and monopolizing all the tenderness and pretty speeches of the once faithful and still too conquering Misis? For our own part we think it is a shocking instance of female audacity for the devourer of such boat-loads of fish and the visiter of M. and Madame Grimod to affect jealousy of Julia or any one else. Let her be contented with her Grimods and oysters and leave Julia to listen to the harpings of Apollo in peace. We have another letter dated a few days after the first and still from Havre. ""I received your letter my dear friend when I was on board a ship and read it on deck. We laughed amazingly at your epigrammatic witticisms; your reputation is already established here. You are known as a man of genius; so you may judge if they listened to your letter. M. Grimod from the first has been the trumpeter of your talents and wit; and the best of the joke is that on the strength of his descriptions of you they insist on believing that I am a person of infinite cleverness as well. I am delighted to hear such good accounts of your health. I was anxious to hear how you were. M. Grimod insists that I travel merely for curiosity and not for the sake of health; and this moment let me tell you in a parenthesis he interrupts me to say he is sure I am writing my best I look so pleased in writing to you. To-morrow we are going to breakfast in a ship where the captain gives us a collation of all fine things among others chocolate; then we prepare to go to Rouen where we shall stop two or three days to see the lions. We do nothing but go out change the scene dress ourselves and pack up our trunks. It is a delightful life; we have scarcely time to breathe. But in spite of that I am grown very fat. I eat like four and can't do without oysters. I wished to bring you some present from this part of the country but there is nothing remarkable except the fish. Adieu my dear friend! I shall be delighted in relating all my experiences when we meet. I hope some day you will visit these beautiful scenes or others as beautiful; and that the house-dove will take its flight to see all the beauties of nature which he knows so well how to paint. You will see that there is no danger and that I shall come back to you without any accident to my wings."" Now be it known that the last sentence is an allusion to an incident in Lebrun's poem _De la Nature_ of which some specimens had been published before this time but which the grief brought on him by his wife's behaviour prevented his finishing--a great loss says the disinterested author to the world for it was a transcendant work! In the month of April of the same year the house-dove also took its flight. The Sieur Lebrun took a journey to Marseilles and the tender solicitudes of his wife accompanied him. After a few of her usual enquiries about his health and recommendations to enjoy himself as much as he could among ""les habitans aimables de cette ville "" she pays him a few compliments. ""I beg you to say in rhymed prose to M. Menier a thousand things for me which will become beautiful spoken by your lips and heard by his ears. I am as much astonished as pleased with your punctuality in writing. Every post-day we are all on the look-out. Madame Grimod begs her compliments--and so do all the family whom I delight with the reading of your letters. They are so witty and clever! If you employ much of your time in writing them we spend a great deal of ours in reading them."" But the trips of the year 1769 are not over yet. Scarcely says the _Mémoire_ had the Sieur Lebrun returned from Marseilles when the Dame Lebrun set off in company with M. Grimod to visit it. She spent six weeks there during which she wrote several letters to her husband and cherished his answers as before. But we shall not follow the example of the _Mémoire_ in repeating all these tit-for-tat endearments but pursue our own object which is to trace the style of occupation of people of their rank. And here we must observe that as far as we see in this process the whole occupation of the Grimods and others was to make tours for their pleasure and get up fêtes for their amusement. Wherever they are there is always something or other going on--a breakfast a dance or a masquerade; and in spite of the protestations of the Dame Lebrun of her sorrow at being separated from her little man it is evident she never allows her grief to have any effect upon her appetite. It rather seems as if in all her distresses she applied to the cook and measured the extent of her sufferings by the quantity she could dispatch at a meal. ""How delighted I should be with but one quarter of an hour of your charming conversations with Madame la Comtesse de Brancas! But from intellectual feasts like that I am doomed here to the most rigorous abstinence; and to make up for it I am forced to throw myself on the mullets sardines sprats and tunnies with the wines of Cyprus and Syracuse; so that I have always the body full and the mind empty. You sent me an admirable piece of wit. I laughed at it amazingly and wished to read it to some of the people here; but I soon perceived that their appreciation of letters is limited to letters of exchange. In spite of that they are never tired of praising you and holding forth about your talents."" In a letter of the 25th October after a very spirited description of a marriage-feast and a dance to the sound of tambourines she says:-- ""We have been oppressed with the innumerable kindnesses of all this amiable family. One after another every body was full of regrets that you were not of the party declaring that a man of such wit and genius as you was exactly made for society. If ever you return to this country you will be splendidly received.... ""Amuse yourself as much as you can. Go and dine often with your friends. I should be sorry if I thought you were alone. Don't be surprised at my scrawl. I danced all last night and had got to bed very late. It is now eleven o'clock and I am obliged to be dressed by one so you see I have not much time to spare."" And her letter of the 22d November brings us to the end of the year '69 and also of her residence at Marseilles. Even the _Mémoire_ grows tired of the gaieties of the Dame Lebrun and passes over a long detail of dinners suppers balls and fêtes to tell us that ""fatiguée de bonne chère "" and ""lassée de plaisirs "" she wrote to her husband who was contenting himself with a Welsh rabbit and Julia at home--""One would need four stomachs in this county. I envy your frugality and long for the little quiet suppers we used to have at the fireside."" Now this regret for the domestic broiled bones--though evidently caused by a momentary surfeit--is dwelt upon by the enraptured Lebrun as a triumphant disproof of the accusations of cruelty and violence brought against him by the Grimods and his charming wife. ""She regrets their quiet suppers! And yet we are told by the Dame Lebrun and some of her witnesses that these quiet suppers never passed off without the most horrible altercations or nearly being stained with blood from murderous blows!"" From all we can make out this accusation of the ""petit homme"" attempting to pummel the lady with four stomachs and capacity for oyster-eating that must have thrown the late Mr Dando into despair is nothing more than an attempt to make the whole affair ridiculous and allow the conduct of the defendant to escape the obloquy it deserved under cover of the laughter excited by so ludicrous an image. If there were any ""coups meurtriers"" in the case we will venture the long odds that the mark of them was left in the ogles or other undefended portions of the countenance of the Sieur Lebrun. She is constantly complaining of delicate health; and yet undergoes more fatigue than a washerwoman. We have now traced her for nearly ten years. She must by this time be two or three-and-thirty; and yet we will venture to say no girl of eighteen ever panted so earnestly for her first ball as the Dame Lebrun did for six or seven of those entertainments every week. We can imagine no greater misery to her than one of the quiet suppers she talks of; and if in the agony of her disgust she occasionally gave the Sieur Lebrun a slap in the face we have not the slightest doubt he deserved it and that she enjoyed the rest of the evening with the soothing conviction in her own mind that she was a much-injured woman and had vindicated the honour of her sex. We have seen from one of her letters that it took her two hours to dress--that she thought nearly as much of eating and drinking as even of Monsieur Grimod; and we shall shortly perceive that clothes and love and gluttony don't interfere with the powers of poetical compliment and that her husband--perhaps on the principle of poetry succeeding best in fiction--is still the object of them. The St Denis's Day of 1770 says the _Mémoire_ was celebrated like the former ones by a fête designed and composed by the Dame Lebrun. The room represented a lawn with a grove fountains &c. Naiads hidden in the reeds chanted these lines in honour of her husband:-- ""Ye naiads smiling round Sing Nature's poet in your lays! Let echoes till they're tired resound With his harmonious praise! Oh let your fountains flow On the greensward below; And with their notes prolong The birds' full-throated song! ""Thou Flora! spread thy mantle round All this enchanted ground! Pour blessings on these happy happy hours! Laurels and you ye myrtles amorous flowers! With loving hand I pluck you now Stripping your leaves adown To be a glorious crown Of a new god to decorate the brow!"" In the next year another fête owed its _éclat_ to the talents of the Dame Lebrun; but the object of it was no longer the Pindaric poet but the sub-collector of taxes. But as it was impossible to keep the Sieur Lebrun entirely away from any of the haunts of the Muses he was enlisted in the corps of subject personages and performed the Co-too to the Sieur Grimod in the character of a satyr! And this was the more in keeping as the scene was a wood and the hero of the entertainment enacted the part of a sort of Orson under the name of Sylvanus. In 1772 the gaieties of the Dame Lebrun suffered no abatement except from an attack of illness; and for the recovery of her health she spent the greater portion of the year at the country-house of the Sieur Grimod--sometimes with her husband says the _Mémoire_ and sometimes without. The following spring was passed as usual in balls and masquerades. The house of the Sieur Grimod was again the scene of a splendid entertainment; but on this occasion the object of the fête was neither the Sieur Bacchus nor the Sieur Sylvain but Madame Lebrun herself. The indefatigable Bacchus however if not the principal personage of the day was the chief performer. There was a procession in boats. The Sieur Lebrun did the honours of the enchanted island to his wife. Dressed as a sailor he conducted her disguised as Flora in an ornamented barge all festooned with garlands and illuminated with coloured lamps. It was a truly fairy scene and the Dame Lebrun did not at that time look on the composer of the spectacle as a malignant cobold the enemy of her repose. In January 1774 she wrote letters to her husband as full of gaiety and as expressive of affection as any of the others; and on the 5th of March she sued for a separate maintenance! Such is the history contained in a lawyer's brief of fourteen years of the wedded life of a French family of the middle rank or rather below it. And from incidents contained in the account we perceive that this actual labour of enjoyment these balls and fêtes and entertainments of all kinds were the usual mode of life of most of the people they associated with. Imagine the same scenes going on in England;--women after thirteen or fourteen years of marriage going dressed up as heathen goddesses in boats and being attended round enchanted isles by Bacchuses and Orsons dressed in shaggy skins and chanting doggerel till echo was dead beat! Bacchus a secretary at a salary of a hundred a-year--Orson a sub-collector of taxes! But more than all--let us think that the fault of the Sieur Lebrun does not seem to have consisted in the eyes of his mother and sister in allowing the intimacy between his wife and the friends but in putting a stop to it. When such things are the fashion in England let us prepare for the National Convention. The demand of the Sieur Lebrun for restitution of conjugal rights was rejected; he appealed against the decision wrote bitter epigrams on the judges and celebrated his wife in some elegies worthy of Tibullas under the name of Fanny. From court to court he carried his cause his epigrams and his elegies; till finally in 1781 the Parliament decided against him and the Dame Lebrun was freed for ever from the matrimonial claim and the little suppers beside the garret fire. But not for ever was Grimod free from the vengeance of the virtuous Lebrun. And not for the last time was heard the shrill voice of the complaining husband by the fastidious ears of Fanny. A few years passed on--Louis the Sixteenth was hurried to the scaffold--the golden locks of Marie Antoinette were defiled with the blood and sawdust which Young France regarded as the most acceptable offering to the goddess of liberty; and who is that sharp-featured little man sitting in the front row of the spectators of those heaven-darkening murders with a red cap on his head and a many-stringed harp in his hand chanting the praises of the murderers and exciting the drunken populace to greater horrors? Lebrun. Yes the French Pindar is appointed poet-laureate to the guillotine and has apartments assigned him at the national cost in the Louvre. Whenever an atrocity is to be committed an ode is published ""by order of authority "" to raise the passions of the people to the proper pitch. When the atrocity is over another ode is ordered to celebrate the performers and congratulate the people on their triumph. When Grimod was brought before the Convention as one of the oppressors of the people and parasites of the aristocracy--a woman old and trembling was leaning on his arm--his personal crimes if any were so little known that he was on the point of being dismissed from the bar for want of an accuser. Pindar in his red cap with his many-stringed harp in his hand was there; and all Helicon glowed like molten lead in his vindictive heart when he looked at the miserable pair. ""What sentence shall we pass on the person called Grimod ci-devant sub-collector of taxes and the woman beside him who has aided and abetted him in several attempts to escape from the censorship of the Committee of Public Safety?"" The accused looked timidly round in hopes that no answer would be returned to this routine enquiry in which case their safety would have been assured; but red-capped Pindar struck his hand hurriedly over the chords and cried in the shrill sharp tones that both the prisoners remembered too well ""A la mort! à la mort!"" and in ten minutes their bodies were lying headless side by side amidst the hootings and howlings of ten thousand demons exemplifying to astonished Europe the perfection of civilization and philanthropy. Little more needs to be said of the Sieur Lebrun. He lived through the dangers of the Revolution; wrote odes and satires indiscriminately on friend and foe; worshipped power to the last and was the sycophant and would have been the murderer of Napoleon as he had been of Louis and Robespierre; and died at last in receipt of a pension from the state member (like Lord Brougham) of the National Institute of France; and had his panegyric pronounced on him by his successor as if he had united the virtues of Aristides to the genius of Homer. Whereas we take him to have been the true type of the Frenchman of his time--a monkey till he got the taste of blood and then a tiger. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: In case we should have done injustice to the poetical inspiration of the Dame Lebrun we give the originals-- ""Tu captives tous les suffrages Tes talens sont chéris des dieux; Puisse ton nom dans tous les ages S'immortaliser avec eux! D'Apollon reçois cette lyre Pour chanter au sacré vallon; Dans tes mains même on pourra dire C'est toujours cette d'Apollon!""] [Footnote 4: ""Que les dieux te courronnent; Moi je n'ai qu'un verger; Mais le coeur assaisonne Les presens des bergers. Si des fruits de Pomone Tu devenais friand Je te promets à chaque automne De t'en offrir autant.""] CENNINO CENNINI ON PAINTING. TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN BY MRS MERRIFIELD. So long ago as 1839 in the June number of this Magazine we noticed M. Merimée's posthumous work on oil-painting. It was ushered into the world with no little parade under the sanction and strong recommendation of a committee of the Royal Institute of France; and in this country with the somewhat authoritative and permitted dedication to the President of our Royal Academy by the editor and translator Mr Sarsfield Taylor. We should have cared little about reviewing such a work had we not felt persuaded that the public and more especially artists required some caution under the high influence of the mode of its publication how they should receive a work whose direct tendency was to misguide them--to mislead them from the path towards the practice of the old masters and to confirm artists in the evil practice of mixing varnish with the oils with which their pigments are ground. The work was the more insidious as it professed to take the excellence of the old masters as the attainable object. We believe that we satisfactorily showed that M. Merimée was so predisposed in favour of copal varnish that in his researches he would make every thing bend even the most stubborn facts and most opposing sense of passages quoted by him to that prejudice. We exposed the numerous we had almost said wilful mistranslations from the Latin and Italian--especially the former--with which the volume abounded. We showed how entirely and frequently original passages had been distorted from their plain meaning as if with a systematic purpose to uphold a fanciful theory. We offer a specimen:--The monk Theophilus who wrote in the tenth century ""De Arte Pingendi "" mentions a ""Gummi Fornis."" This though M. Merimée confesses it does not resemble it in consistence he still will have to be copal. Theophilus says ""Hoc glutine omnis pictura _superlinita_ lucida fit et decora ac omnino durabilis.""--""Every picture _smeared over_ with this gluten becomes lucid and beautiful and altogether durable."" It might be thought almost impossible to mistranslate this. But the varnishing over or smearing over being a direct contradiction to the mixing with the pigments with the view of rendering it according to the writer's prejudice the passage is thus translated--""Pictures _prepared_ with this _varnish_ are brilliant and remain without any alteration."" Again M. Merimée speaking of M. Tingry the able professor of chemistry of Geneva affects to regret that he did not apply his scientific knowledge to the practice of the art in painting pictures. But the fact is that the professor does give his attention to the subject not only by his experiments on oils and varnishes--the vehicles of picture painting; but as one who was well acquainted with the nature of varnishes he very distinctly warns artists against the practice which it is M. Merimée's object to establish. The passage is so important (and the authority of Tingry so undeniable) that we are here tempted once more to quote it:-- ""Some of the English painters too anxious to receive the fruits of their composition neglect these precautions. Several artists even paint in varnish _and apply it with their colours_. This precipitate method gives brilliancy to their compositions at the very moment of their being finished; but their lustre is temporary and of short duration. It renders it impossible for them to clean their paintings which are besides liable to crack and to lose their colour. In a word it is not uncommon to see an artist survive his works and to have nothing to expect from posterity."" But lest it should be said as M. Merimée did say that Tingry the author of the above passage wrote _only_ to house painters he adds thus--""Nothing that relates to the house painter is foreign to the artist of a higher order who paints compositions; in like manner the precepts admitted by the celebrated painters deserve the attention of the varnisher to whom the painter entrusts his greatest interests. The observations contained in this note are the brief result of some instructive conversations I had with Saintours a celebrated painter my friend and relation.""[5] We revert to our review of M. Merimée's work as preliminary to our notice of the beautiful volume of Mrs Merrifield's translation on Tambroni's edition of _Cennino Cennini_ because the subject of vehicles is here again brought before the public; and we know of no subject more important as it regards the interests of art for the consideration of this and of every other country. For it appears incontestable that there was a period when the art of painting through the discovery of a vehicle broke forth into uncommon splendour and beauty which splendour and beauty remain in works fresh and perfect to this day; and that there was a subsequent period at which this particular vehicle was lost. We therefore thank the authoress (for her notes are important and demand that we should give her this title in addition to that of translator) for again bringing this subject before the public in so attractive a manner by the elegance of the type illustration and binding of this volume so agreeable to the eye; and for the addition of many of her own judicious remarks. So that through this feminine grace and good sense an interest and attention are awakened which the bare recipes of Cennino Cennini would hardly have commanded. Cennino Cennini has frequently been partially quoted from Vasari downwards; partially quoted but little read. He finished writing his book on the arts the 31st day of July 1437; was born soon after 1350; had been twelve years the disciple of Agnolo Gaddi who died 1387; son of Taddeo Gaddi the disciple and godson of Giotto the ""father of modern art."" The precepts which he delivers are therefore those acquired in immediate succession from that great first master and as the secrets of his art. We grieve to add that the work was written in prison dated from the Stinche in Florence at eighty years of age and in extreme poverty; a proof among many that the patronage of the arts in those days was not a mantle of charity of adequate dimensions to cover the wants of the numerous professors of the art; while it tells somewhat unfavourably for the gratitude of the contemporary world to know that the one work alone of this deserted old man the Virgin in the Hospital of Bonifacio Lupi (so well coloured says Vasari that it is to this day in good preservation ) would produce a sum that would probably not only be sufficient to have paid his debts but to have equalled the wants of no small portion of his prolonged life. The work itself seems to bear testimony to an earnest amiable and religious mind; there would appear therefore no moral fault to which to attribute his unfortunate condition. We must suppose that struggles with the world's difficulties incompatible though they seem with art are necessary; and that the cradle of genius must be first rocked by Want--that necessity is the great ""Magister Artium;"" for we find it has ever been so even to the present enlightened age. A few favourites occupy the Goshen of patronage who at their death are not remembered and whose works _do_ ""follow them;"" and then the works of those who have lived neglected lived worked and died in penury are eagerly sought after at any price. Such men whilst they lived were yet teaching a lesson in taste which the world were _slow to learn_; for it is in the nature of genius to be before the age and in some respects to teach a novelty which the world in not prepared to receive. Genius works on by the compulsion of its own nature and the world is improved by it when it can no longer reward it but by a too late admiration that reaches not as far as we know the dead. The complaint of Horace has been ever justified and is still in the eager search after works of our Wilson and Gainsborough-- ""Virtutem incolumem odimus Sublatam ex oculis quærimus invidi."" This edition of Tambroni is not from an original MS. or printed copy but from a transcript about a century old discovered by Angelo Mai among the Ottobonican manuscripts. Two other copies of Cennino Cennini are known to exist; we are curious for their examination the present rescript _may_ in some respects be deficient. As Cennino Cennini completed his work 1437 and the discovery of Van Eyck is said to have been 1410 it might have been expected that we should find some notice of Van Eyck's vehicle. We rather lament than are surprised that we find none. Those were the days for secrecies. Cennino himself speaks of many of his recipes as great secrets; and we are told that Van Eyck only in his old age taught his secret to Antonello--and the whole story goes to show the profound secrecy with which this vehicle was retained; nor is there any reason to doubt that it occasioned the murder of Domenico said to have been perpetrated in 1470 thirty-three years after the writing of Cennino Cennini. Vasari says positively that ""John Van Eyck would not let any one see him work nor would he teach the secret to any one--but being old "" &c. This is certainly an argument against those who would affirm if Van Eyck had discovered a vehicle it would have been universally known. Such secrets are slow in progress independent of the caution to keep them so. Artists did not formerly spring up self-taught; they were bound to masters and learned their art from the beginning and slowly and learned not many of their secrets till after years of servitude for such we must call it. They had then to make as well as to grind their own colours to make their own brushes tablets and cloths. Mrs Merrifield and Tambroni certainly do not agree in their opinions respecting this discovery of a vehicle by Van Eyck. The Italian is rather foolishly sensitive for the honour of his country and his sensitiveness seems to bias his judgment. He would not that a foreigner should have the merit. Tambroni believes and probably truly that Vasari never thoroughly read Cennino; but he bears testimony to the _noble_-mindedness of Vasari--""Whence "" says he ""we are constrained to believe that he merely glanced lightly over the titles to the chapters of part of the manuscript; and that thinking it useless he did not care to examine and investigate the whole work. For this reason it cannot be supposed that this noble-minded man so zealous for the honour of his country and whose every effort had been directed to make it pre-eminent would withhold from one of his fellow-countrymen the just fame which he deserved by so valuable a work. Nor do I intend here to reprove him or to lessen his glory. I shall only say that he committed a great error in not having examined the work of this old master: for then perhaps he would not so easily have given the credit of those things to strangers which certainly were known in his own beautiful Tuscany and in all Italy as I shall hereafter study to prove."" Yet he does not hesitate after this to charge ""this noble-minded man"" with fabricating ""a romance or tale of the imagination."" But he misquotes Vasari. As Mrs Merrifield justly observes ""he takes only part of Vasari's account into consideration instead of stating the whole and reasoning on it as Lanzi has done. Vasari does not limit Van Eyck's discovery to the simple fact that he had discovered that linseed and nut oils were more drying than any he had tried; but he adds ""these then _boiled with his other mixtures_ made the varnish which he as well as all the other painters of the world had so long desired."" It is very singular that this most important passage should have been entirely omitted by the editor (Tambroni.) It is in _these mixtures_ that the secret consisted not in using the oils; and we may certainly conclude that the process of Van Eyck was very different from that of Theophilus and Cennino both of whom used linseed oil without the mixture of any other substance. ""It will be observed that lake even was used by Cennino without any addition to increase its drying qualities. The only dryer he mentions (as such) is verdigris which he used for mordants only. The difference in the texture of pictures painted in the Flemish (that is Van Eyck's manner) and those painted with oil alone or with the modern megilp (oil and mastic varnish ) is so well known that i
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is scarcely necessary to allude to it. ""Picture-cleaners are perfectly aware of this circumstance having been instructed by observing the manner in which different solvents act upon such pictures (spirit-of-wine for instance will dissolve old pictures but it has no effect on pictures painted with oil only.--See _Lanzi._) Vasari gives no clue by which we can discover of what those _mixtures_ consisted; but we know that what Vasari calls _vernice liquida_ did not form part of them because _that_ had been tried and disapproved of.--See Vasari's _Lives of Antonello da Messina and Alesso Baldovinetti_. It is probable that the ingredients were common and cheap or they would not have been accessible to the greater part of Europe; and they appear to have been equally successful in the sunny clime of Italy as in the fogs of Holland."" The translator here entirely agrees with the learned and indefatigable Lanzi who aware of discrepancies of dates ascribes the ""_perfect_"" method to Van Eyck. He gives full credit to _the facts_ as stated by Vasari and speaks of the difficulties he lay under in obtaining any certain dates particularly with regard to Venetian matters. That painting in oil was known long prior to Van Eyck no one who has read the documents upon the subject can for a moment doubt; but it was in the common way so inferior in brilliancy and probably in facility of use to other methods that it ceased to be in use. It seems pretty clear that this ""perfect method"" came from Flanders first to Naples then to Venice; and probably by means of Antonello da Messina (however some dates may disagree or it may be possible there were two of that name to have given some confusion to the dates.) In fact no dates but the strictly historical can be depended upon. There are pictures at Venice with the name of Antonello and dated 1474--years after his supposed death. We can scarcely suppose that the ""noble-minded"" Vasari would have fabricated an epitaph for Antonello if none had ever existed; we know how easily not only epitaphs but the very monuments that bear them are removed to give place to others. Vasari does not say in quoting this inscription that Antonello was the first who painted in oil but the first who gave splendour &c. ""Sed et quod coloribus oleo miscendis splendorem et perpetuitatem Italiæ contulit."" And Hackert says that this Antonello lived some years in Venice receiving payment from the state. ""Ob mirum hic ingenium Venctiis aliquot annos publice condutus vixit."" His celebrity arose from the introduction of the Flemish manner into Italy. The murder of Domenico at Florence to whom it is said Antonello had imparted the secret cannot be denied; it was notorious and must be confirmed by public documents; nor can we imagine so ""noble-minded"" a writer as Vasari would have mentioned the disclosure of the murder by Castagno himself if the fact had not been notorious. We set aside the labyrinth of dates which with regard to the same persons' lives and deaths are inconsistent and irreconcilable; still there remains a continuous story not only probable as to its facts but confirmed by works that exist at this day; for whatever may have been the oil-painting of an earlier age (and it must be observed as Lanzi remarks that there is no certainty that many of the works said to have been in oil were of that vehicle for chemists have doubted and some have been of contrary opinion ) the oil-painting of that precise period when it is said by Vasari to have been introduced into Italy and as it continued subsequently is quite a different thing--and exactly agrees with the description of it given by Vasari and as it was practised in his time. Vasari was but a little more than a century after the supposed discovery of Van Eyck and was born soon after the death of Raffaelle and must have known that he was speaking of a vehicle that was not oil alone. It may be here worth while to put down what Vasari does say with respect to Van Eyck's vehicle--that John of Bruges having cracked a picture by exposing it to the sun to dry being ""filosofo e filologo a sufficienza "" made many experiments and ""trovò che l'olio de lino e quello de noce erano i più seccativi. Questi dunque bolliti con altre sue misture gli fecero la vernice ch' egli e tutti pittori del mondo aveano lungamente desiderata""--""found that linseed and nut oil were the most siccative. These then boiled together with his other mixtures made the varnish (vehicle ) which he and all the painters of the world had long desired."" Lanzi here well observes that the expression ""long desired "" shows that there must have been many attempts to make oils properly subservient to the painter's use and that there was none successful until Van Eyck's ""solo quella perfetta;"" which as Vasari says ""secca non teme acqua che accende i colori e gli fa lucidi e gli unisce mirabilmente""--""which when dry does not fear water heightens the colours and makes them lucid and unites them in a wonderful manner."" We have a picture by this Van Eyck in our National Gallery; he must have no eyes who will believe that it was painted with oil alone. We have the Correggios--we say the same of them--we have the proof from the experience of picture-cleaners the hardness of the old paint and the test of spirits-of-wine which as Mrs Merrifield states solves the paint of old pictures and leaves the modern untouched. In a former paper in which we dwelt much on this subject we mentioned that we had the report of a very scientific friend who had spent nearly a life of leisure and competence in experiments on pictures that the paint of the old masters _fused_ not only where white lead had been used but in every part; and we ourselves saw him try the experiment upon the background of an old picture by means of the blow-pipe and the result was a fused substance--a glass. We here leave the question of the discovery of a vehicle by Van Eyck or by any other person satisfied that there was a discovery by some one at some time of a vehicle different from the first painting with oil and from any of modern use. To dispute this fact appears to us as absurd as if any one should deny the discovery of America because there may be disputes as to dates and persons of the first discoverers. We are only surprised that Tambroni and others do not take any notice of the chemical differences in the substances of old and new paint--we mean subsequent to the supposed discovery; and we confess we are surprised at the unworthy unsatisfactory and ambiguous manner in which Tambroni settles the matter. ""Now being willing to act with generosity towards this noble writer and to believe that his religion was not overcome by deception we should perhaps be able to admit that we were indebted to John of Bruges for the practice of tempering colours with both nut and linseed oils and to Antonello for having used and made common through all Italy a method which in beauty greatly exceeds distemper-painting which until his time had always been preferred."" Does he really mean or believe that this new method consisted only in the use of linseed and nut oils? Is he acquainted with the works of John of Bruges or with that picture of Andrea del Castagno the supposed murderer of Domenico which is called by Guarienti ""the wonder of painting;"" and which by the description of its finish _particularly of the room in which the action is represented_ is supposed to have been an imitation of the style of the Flemish master? If it be asked how could any good practice in any art be lost? we have only to answer that we are not bound to _account_ for a notorious fact with regard to arts in general. Many have been totally lost; but the troubles the plague and dispersion of artists in Italy and the charm of novelty may be sufficient to account for these changes. Lanzi every where laments them and tells us that Nicolo Franchini became famous for detaching pieces of paint from old pictures of inferior value to match deficiencies in more valuable. Although we would here willingly end the discussion as to the discovery we feel ourselves irresistibly led by the importance of the subject to make a few observations and perhaps throw out a few hints presuming that they are nothing more than hints which suggest themselves upon paying some little attention to the actual words of Vasari; and this we do solely with regard to vehicles. Why we should ask did Van Eyck dry his picture in the sun and which seems to have been the practice? As far as we know the nature of gums there is no difficulty in their drying without the necessity of resorting to any injurious practice. Were these gums in any degree mixed with undrying substances? Why does Vasari say ""che secca non teme acqua""--""which dry does not fear water?"" Why does he mention water at all? for supposing that he knew of oil-painting without these ""altre sue misture "" there would appear to be no occasion that he should mention as a distinct property of this new vehicle that which was common with that and the older practice. Here a suggestion seems to let in a glimmer of light. Did he convert these oils into a soap which when dry was no longer soluble in water? Will this be the case with saponaceous oils? Unquestionably. One of the objections made by Lanzi to the changes from the good old method was as when he speaks of Maria Crespi that the paint was common and _oily_ and elsewhere complains of ""oily appearances."" The ""colori oleosi"" is perfectly descriptive too of our modern paint notwithstanding that our painters try in vain to disguise the ""oily"" appearance by the admixture of varnishes and that not a new practice as we find from Cennino but one rejected. But can oil be deprived of this appearance? We presume it was deprived of this quality by that process by which when dry it did not ""fear water""--""secca non teme acqua."" Oils are rendered saponaceous by alkalis. We mentioned in former papers experiments of our scientific friend P. Rainier M.D. of the Albany and his use of borax with the oil. The borax he vitrified; and it was because the paint mixed with this oil and borax vitrified also after the manner of the paint of the old masters he so used it; but nothing occurred to him about water. We suggested that if this his medium resembled the old it was probably miscible with water as water would seem to have been introduced into the Venetian practice. Upon this we tried it and found we could at pleasure dip the brush in this medium or in water and then into the paint and work with great facility the greater use of the water giving that _crumbly_ appearance so often perceptible in the Venetian school; and this effect we found might be increased or omitted at pleasure. And this medium made by mixing water with the oil through the agency of borax when dry might be washed even with warm water with perfect impunity. _When dry it did not fear water_; though a saponaceous medium it was not again soluble in water. What does Vasari mean by ""che accende i colori""--""which heightens the colours?"" Borax is an alkali. Alkalis are known to heighten colours ""e gli fa lucidi;"" now linseed and nut oil _alone_ particularly the former takes away the _lucid_ character from paint. Had Vasari been describing the working of this vehicle of P. Rainier he could not have better described it than in the very words ""gli unisce mirabilmente;"" for it is astonishing how nicely to the hand and to the degrees desired these repugnant liquids unite the colours. It is singular enough that soda which is a form of borax is the actual constituent part of some of our most permanent colours--we need but mention ultramarine; and here we are tempted to transcribe a passage from the translator's preface which exactly falls in with this our view.--""The use made by the early Italian artists of lyes (lisciva) is deserving of our notice and consideration. Cennino does not inform us how this lye was prepared; but it has been ascertained that lyes produced from pouring water on wood-ashes from solutions of borax and also of soda in water were then used. We find from Cennino's book that ultramarine (of which soda is a constituent part) was prepared with it; that it was also used in preparing _azzuro della magna_ (an ore of cobalt ) and _zafferano_. It has been likewise ascertained that soda has a preserving influence on red yellow and black pigments; and the result of experiments on these colours has been so satisfactory that a certain quantity of soda--or to speak more correctly of _soap_ which is a compound of soda with fat or oil (but not drying oil)--is now used in preparing pigments for painting sails for the British navy. It is also used in the manufacture of printing-ink; and we have now Cennino's authority for using it with _blue_ pigments. Sir Humphrey Davy informs us that the Vestorian or Egyptian azure the excellence of which is proved by its duration of 1700 years may be easily imitated by carbonate of soda opaque flint and copper filings. The translator has made many experiments on the effect of the alkalis and neutral salts when mixed with colours and has every reason to be satisfied with the addition of soda when properly used."" We have not ourselves tried sufficiently soda with oil and have suspected it would not have the effect of rendering the paint hard; but that borax does render the paint very hard we have abundant proof. We have subjected a picture painted with it to the razor to scrape it down and could with difficulty succeed though the picture had not been long painted; and we have rolled together masses of paint so mixed and they have been thought by persons into whose hands we have put them stone. We have heard artists who have tried this mixture of borax and oil declare it had the contrary effect; but on enquiry found that they procured the vehicle from colour-makers who sold them we have good grounds for believing a mixture of their own in which if borax formed any part mastic varnish formed a much larger. Among our papers we found one sent us by Dr Rainier; we were not chemists enough to make it intelligible and for that recipe which we give in a note [6] we are indebted to our friend Mr C. T. Coathupe of Bristol on whose chemical and general scientific knowledge we have great reliance and who much confirmed our view or rather Rainier's of the advantage of rendering the oils saponaceous by the means of borax. In consequence of our communication with him Mr Coathupe published in the _Art Union_ one or two very valuable papers in 1842. In speaking of this vehicle we do so the more boldly as it is not our own nor do we claim the least merit on account of it; it is solely the discovery or re-discovery be it which it may of our ever valued friend Rainier now no more. Without saying that it is or is not _the_ old one ""che tutti i pittori del mondo aveano lungamente desiderata "" we do not hesitate to say that it is a good one and does obviate those ""oily appearances so disagreeable to the eye""; and we are the more confirmed in our belief in its beneficial quality by the authorities Mr Coathupe and Mr Field the well-known scientific author of ""chromatography;"" and we are much gratified to be able to offer an extract from a letter from Mr Field upon the subject:--""I am accordingly ready to admit all the uses of Mr Rainier's medium and go with him in believing the old painters may have employed it--the Venetians in particular who were at that time the medium between Europe and India in the latter of which countries borax had been employed in painting time immemorial."" It should here be remarked that Mr Field in one of his valuable publications mentions a mixture of lac and oil by means of borax in certain proportions. They do not however readily mix especially in cold weather. The translator does not seem to be aware that borax is the solvent for lac; she mentions ""sulphuric or muriatic acid "" but water with borax alone will dissolve lac before it boils.[7] We would venture to recommend some experiments with lac dissolved in borax to water-colour painters. It is by no means improbable that some of the old Greek paintings are in gum lac; the hardness ascribed to them and their brilliancy too and that they rather chip off than crack seem to answer the properties of lac; and it is curious that lac so dissolved is durable and not again soluble in water. It _may_ therefore be worth while to try experiments with it both for solid painting with white lead as likewise as an addition of power partially used for water-colours. We know not if the ancients had any means of discharging the colour (though a weak solution in cases of solid painting may not be very objectional ) but shell-lac can now be rendered perfectly white. The reader will be disappointed if he expects to find in ""Cennino Cennini"" a treatise on art. It is nothing more than a book of receipts--very minute and circumstantial as to most particulars while here and there is a provoking omission; as for instance he speaks of a varnish but omits to say of what materials composed. However curious much of the matter may be the modern painter who has to send to the nearest colour-maker for his tube colours and French brushes will think the greater part superfluous and will smile to be told--""Take the tails of the minèver (for no other are good ) and these tails must be baked and not raw."" Nor will he trouble himself with Cennino's list of colours though it would perhaps be better for him if he did enter a little into their chemical properties. Cennino mentions twenty-four pigments; but the best he considers to be but twelve. It is curious that among them are no browns. We have always been of the opinion that the old masters for the most part made their browns with blacks and reds and yellows and gave them depth by glazing over with the same; and we are pretty much of Wilson's mind who when told of a new brown said ""I am sorry for it."" Very many of our modern pictures are ruined by the violent contrasts of the asphaltum and similar browns with less obtrusive pigments. The very transparency is in our eyes an objection. Asphaltum for instance besides that it is a changeable and never thoroughly drying pigment _is too transparent_ for depth. It was a mistake of Gainsborough when he said that with asphaltum he would make a Tartarus; the depth would be but a little way from the surface; depth is not always intensity of darkness and never of colour. There is a style of flashy painting which entirely depends on these transparent browns; but it is nevertheless not a good style; it is flimsy and the _depth_ aimed at is missed. The more simple the palette the better will be the picture. We are taught by the practice as well as words of Titian who said that ""whoever would be a painter should be well acquainted with three colours and have a perfect command over them."" There are some excellent observations on this subject in the translator's preface who quotes from Sir Humphrey Davy on colours. ""If red and yellow ochres blacks and whites were the colours most employed by Protogenes and Apelles so are they likewise the colours most employed by Raffaelle and Titian in their best style. The St John and Venus in the tribune of the gallery at Florence offer striking examples of pictures in which all the deeper tints are evidently produced by red and yellow ochres and carbonaceous substances."" Cennino's argument for the use of fine gold and good colours will be read with more attention by the modern Germans who have it is said for the purposes of their art joined the Catholic Church than by our English artists with whom it will but raise a smile that the artist should be liberal in both for that if his patron pays him not our Lady will reward him for it in soul and body. If the practice of poor Cennino was in accordance with this recommendation he must have been very pious in his resignation for his reward was a prison in his old age. Cennino acquaints us how to make and prepare pannels cloth-grounds cements and glues; and doubtless some of his recipes will be found practically useful. For temperas (vehicles) many recipes are given. There are two kinds of egg tempera deserving attention mentioned and the practice of painting in the egg tempera and afterwards glazing in oil-colour. The translator particularly recommends in a note this mode of painting and quotes from Mr Field's Chromatography the following passage:--""Mr Clover has successfully employed the yolk of egg for sketching in body colours in the manner and with the entire effect of oil which sketches being varnished have retained their original purity of hue more especially in the whites and flexibility of texture without a crack after many years in a London atmosphere."" The translator recommends it from her own practice and experience. We have ourselves in this Magazine on a former occasion spoken of a sort of distemper painting--though to give it that name is not very highly to recommend it. We have nevertheless found it very good and admirably adapted for getting in a subject as affording means of great rapidity of execution. We allude to the admixture of starch and oil--the less oil the more like distemper will it be; or we should rather say fresco which it much more resembles; but oil may be used with it in any proportion. The starch should be made as for domestic use with water saturated with borax and the oil added by degrees and the whole stirred up together while warm; and in this medium the colours should be ground as well as worked. It is curious that here too the borax is of use; for it not only enables the oil to mix with the water of the starch but it gives the starch a consistence and toughness which without it it never possesses. We have found colours retain their hue and purity remarkably well with this vehicle. The whole bears out equally but without shining. The second painting may produce any desired richness. It is not unpleasant to paint upon a wet ground made with this vehicle when the picture and ground will dry and harden together. There is no colour concerning which we are more at a loss in looking at old pictures than the blues. Three are mentioned by Cennino--indigo a cobalt and ultramarine. With regard to the sparing use of the latter as the most expensive some practical hints may be met with. We have often wondered with what blue their deep-toned cool greens were made as in the landscapes of Gaspar Poussin. It was probably Cennino's _azzuro della magna_ (German blue or cobalt.) Prussian blue is of recent invention. We believe Mr Field considers it a good colour. It is made of so many hues that it is difficult to procure good and it is said to be affected by iron. We have heard indigo complained of as a fugitive colour; Cennino mentions it for skies with a tempera of glue. He mentions likewise a green cobalt or _azzuro della magna_. White lead according to him may be used with all temperas. He says it is the only white that can be used in pictures; the whites in the old pictures are very pure so that we may be satisfied of its durability. Many artists have doubted if the white of the best painters was white lead and many substitutes have been proposed. We may rest assured by the authority of Cennino that the fault is not in the lead but in the vehicle whenever it changes. There is a letter of Titian's in which he laments the death of the maker of his white; it was made therefore we are to suppose with particular care as the principal pigment for light. Orpiment which was so much in use in Sir Joshua's time the ill effects of which is visible in the President's ""Holy Family"" in our National Gallery was no great favourite in the olden time. In the note upon this pigment the translator takes occasion to speak of powdered glass in reference to a remark of Dr Ure that powdered glass is mixed with it which renders it lighter. Mrs Merrifield infers from this that it powdered glass is opaque. Undoubtedly it is so in its dry state and probably with the glue tempera which alone according to Cennino is its proper vehicle--but mixed with oil it is transparent--and mixed in much body with pigments will give them great richness and that degree of transparency even to pigments rather opaque which we observe in the substance of the pigments of the best time. China clay and magnesia too are opaque in their powdered and dry state but mixed with the pigments vary their power _ad libitum_ precisely by the transparency they afford. These two latter substances have likewise a corrective quality upon oils and we are assured by Mr Coathupe and have certainly found it to be so that magnesia is a dryer. We have boiled magnesia and oil together very thick and jelly-like and leaving the pipkin exposed have been surprised to find no skin upon the surface. Mrs Merrifield certainly errs in thinking glass when mixed with oils opaque. The blacks of Cennino are from a stone and opaque; from vine tendrils (""very black and transparent;"") from skins of almonds and kernels of peaches (""a perfect and fine black;"") and lamp black from the smoke of linseed oil. Mr Field observes that all carbonaceous blacks mixed with white have a preserving influence upon colours owing chemically to the bleaching power of carbon and chromatically to the neutralizing and contrasting power of black with white. Leonardo da Vinci in his palette the account of which is so unfortunately broken off for lack of paper mentions the mixing every colour with black. Yet we have met with many painters who totally reject it and fancy it makes their pictures black. This is very absurd for black mixed with any other pigment ceases to be black; and an artist may paint very black pictures without the use of that pigment. What Titian recommends one who would be a colourist need not reject. It seems there was of old much caution that iron should not touch the colours. Yet there is we believe much iron in ochres. Mr Coathupe has clearly shown that even Naples yellow does not suffer from contact with iron otherwise than by abrasion by which the steel of the knife becomes itself a pigment as on the hone. Modern science has much enlarged the colour list. There is thus the greater temptation offered to make endless varieties. It has been remarked in language that the best writers have the most brief vocabulary--so it may be that the best colourists will have the fewest colours. The rule has been verified in the old masters of the best time. Cennino Cennini who always begins from the beginning recommends drawing with the pen--his pen for that also he tells you how to make had no slit. O days of Perryian innovation! It was very well a vast improvement almost equal to that of adding the shirt to the ruffles to invent one slit--we have them now with two and with three. Very strict studies in anatomy were not much in vogue among the early painters. Our author recommends drawing from nature and lays down his canon of proportions of the human body which will be little heeded by our academies. The old Italian is not very complimentary to the sex. Mr Etty will open his eyes with alarm to find he has been practising all his life in a wrong direction when he reads ""leave that of woman for there are none perfectly proportioned."" We are not quite certain if some of Mr Etty's stay-spoiled figures are taken for examples but that the opinion of the old Italian may be in some credit. We spoke in the commencement of this paper of the ""Gummi Fornis "" which M. Merimée concluded to be copal. The translator in a note offers a conjecture not without its probability that it may have been sandarac the ""Vernice da Scrivere"" of Cennino and quotes Raffaello Borghini in his ""Reposo."" If you would have your varnish brilliant use much sandarac--it makes certainly a very hard varnish--it is difficult to combine it with oil. We suppose it to have been one of the condemned novelties as a vehicle for painting from its being included in the condemned list of trash as only fit to polish boots that moved the satirical pen of Boschini:-- ""O de che strazze se fa cavedal! D'ogio d'avezzo mastice e sandraca E trementina (per no dir triaca) Robe che ilusterave ogni stival."" MARCO BOSCHINI. Much has been said of late of ""Encaustic Painting."" It must have been discontinued before the time of Giotto as shown by the experiments of Lanzi--no wax has been found in pictures painted after the year 1360. We know that Sir Joshua Reynolds frequently used it as have some painters since his day. We cannot suppose that mixed with oil it would ever give pigments their proper hardness. Dryers are not mentioned by Cennino excepting _verderame_ (verdigris ) and that as a mordant. How were the oils made to dry? Will the sun be sufficient? In the summers in Italy their mixed oils readily dry. But in Holland as in England for at least a great part of the year they will not dry of themselves; and it is certain that the longer the pigments are subjected to the action of the oil the greater is the change. White lead is by no means the best drying colour; and if lead as a dryer is so injurious as some will have it to be to colours in general why do we not find it so in white lead? Cennino recommends garlic pounded to a juice and cleared as a mordant. It is supposed that it gives a drying quality to oil. The practice of the old masters in drying their pictures in the sun--was it only to effect the drying? We believe exposure to the atmosphere is most beneficial to newly painted pictures. We have now a picture before us which was disagreeably oily and yet did not well bear out. We laid it on the grass face uppermost where it lay for about ten days during heat and cold day and night dry weather and wet and in some few burning days exposed to the sun; during these hot days we had it frequently plentifully washed with water left on for the sun to take up. We have this day removed the picture to the easel. The ""oily appearance"" was gone it was very dry but pure and clean and bore out equally but rather like distemper. It is a question worth considering whether the atmosphere did not take up the impurities of the oil which always come to the surface. There is proof enough of this. A picture unless it be painted with very little oil indeed will become in a few days after being painted greasy--it will not take water on the surface--in fact ""secca teme acqua"" will not bear water. If in this state the surface be lightly rubbed over with common sand and water this greasiness will be removed and the surface will not only be clean but beautiful; this greasiness will however in a day or two come again. If the process of sanding be repeated _until the greasiness does not_ come again we conjecture that we have done for the picture what time but a long time might do--we have removed _all_ the impurity of the oil. We believe that pictures after that do not undergo further change and if the paint be tolerably hard may be varnished--and that they will become much sooner hard; for it is more than probable that this greasiness in the oil is the main cause of retarding the drying. We have followed this practice many years and always with the same results. It is surprising how soon after painting you may sand--even coarse red sand will not remove paint that is yet tacky--it much remedies the ""colori olcesi."" The translator lays much stress in the preface upon the importance of white grounds. In the olden time it appears that when they were not of gold they were white; and Leonardo da Vinci thus lays down _his_ precept--""Sempre a quelli colori che vuoi che habino belleza preparerai primo il campo _candidissimo_ e questo dico de' colori che sono transparenti perche a quelli che non sono transparenti non giova campo chiaro."" And yet Leonardo is said to have painted occasionally on the canvass without any other priming than a coat of glue. His pictures so painted are said to be durable and worthy his great name. We should have doubted if Titian did always paint on a white ground--and should fix upon the ""Peter Martyr"" as the subject of doubt. It is said to have been the practice of Correggio; if so he did not always derive the benefit from the ground which white grounds are said to confer for his painting is so generally solid and the transparency so much the effect of his glazing that there seems to be no reason why he should have given the preference. It is said the Flemish School used white grounds--probably Rubens did so generally not all other painters. Teniers used a light drab and if we were to judge from some of his skies painted upon
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it when that thinly coloured ground was wet. Unless a great body of colour be used even in the most transparent painting white grounds are apt to give a weakness and flimsiness. Gaspar Poussin and perhaps generally Nicolo painted on red grounds; the former probably often upon a vermilion ground though most commonly on one of a deeper tone; the advantage of this in landscapes such as his is evident. There is no colour so good as red to set off greens; and in fact to make tints appear green that on another ground would not so be; and moreover a red ground from its warmth makes those greens appear cool deep and refreshing which is so strong a characteristic in the colouring of that great Italian landscape painter Gaspar Poussin. The most important recipes of Cennino Cennini may be those which relate to fresco-painting; and as that is now likely to be nationally revived this publication is well-timed. So much has been said and written of late upon this subject that we think it best simply to refer to the text and notes. To those who mean to practise fresco they may be important. Besides the value of the recipes of Cennino there are incidentally some curious things not unworthy of notice. All persons must have been surprised in pictures of grave subjects and we might especially mention those of Paul Veronese that dogs are introduced as attendants on feasts and we find them gnawing bones on very fine floors. But we find in Cennino Cennini that it was the practice to throw their bones under the table. Cennino recommends them to be gathered and selected for black pigments. We have heard it said that Murillo was partial to the pigments made from beef bones taken after dinner. There is a practice or we should say happily there was in the days of these old painters which did not tend very much to raise the profession. ""Sometimes in the course of your practice "" says Cennino ""you will be obliged to paint flesh especially faces of men and women."" He recommends the painting them with egg tempera with oil and with _oil and liquid varnish_ ""which is the most powerful of temperas."" He proceeds to tell how the paint is to be removed. Chapter 162 is entirely devoted to the ladies and offers a caution now happily unnecessary but it is so quaintly given that we quote it:-- ""It sometimes happens that young ladies especially those of Florence endeavour to heighten their beauty by the application of colours and medicated waters to the skin. But as women who fear God do not make use of these things and as I do not wish to render myself obnoxious to them or to incur the displeasure of God and our Lady I shall say no more on this subject. But I advise you that if you desire to preserve your complexion for a long period to wash yourself with water from the fountains rivers or wells; and I warn you that if you use cosmetics your face will soon become withered your teeth black and you will become old before the natural course of time and be the ugliest object possible. This is quite sufficient to say on this subject."" A modern painter with whom we are acquainted declares that he has _very often_ been called upon to paint ""under the eyes"" of certain ""young men about town""--we presume of the Titmouse grade--that they might appear the more decently before the public and their employers. If poor Cennino had entertained no other fears but the displeasure of the fair sex he would have passed a happier old age. We know not that he condescended to paint faces however in his most abject condition. There was ever from the beginning a complaint of the little favour bestowed upon artists in general. Was the art considered a slavish practice? Grecia Capta taught it to the Romans with whom notwithstanding the force of some few high names as of Fabius Pictor it was at no time in very high repute. The indefatigable Gaye says of the fluctuations incidental to the profession of arts--""While on one hand painters sculptors and military engineers flourish as ambassadors magistrates and correspondents with princes others live overwhelmed with debt and pleading for subsistence."" A tax return of Jacopo de Domenico painter gives this sad account of himself--""Ever since 1400 have I gone on struggling and eating the bread of others until 1421; after which I returned to Florence where I found myself plundered and in debt and totally destitute."" The reader will be surprised at his remedy and the modern Poor-law Commissioners those ""Indociles pauperiem pati "" will deny the test of destitution and feel a separating impulse; for he continues--""I took a wife and went to Pisa where I mended the roads about the gates and staid four years."" The tax returns afford curious documents. We have that of Massaccio:--""Declaration of the means of Tommaso di Giovanni called Massaccio and of his brother Giovanni to the officers of the fisc detailing their miserable means inability and liability--We live in the house of Andrea Macigni for which we pay ten florins a-year."" ""The son of this Andrea bound himself apprentice in the studio of Nendi Bicci for two years in 1458 aged seventeen to have fifteen florins and a pair of shoes yearly.""[8] It was the custom of writers in the time of Cennino to neglect the precept of Horace. They did not rush ""in medias res""--Cennino in particular. He not only begins with the beginning of every particular thing or invention or practice; but thinks it necessary to commence his work on the arts with a much earlier fact than the production of Leda's egg--even with the creation of the world--and immediately deduces the art of painting from the fall of Adam who was from that event compelled to labor; hence invention--hence the art. His book is however written in a pious spirit; nor have we now-a-days any right in good taste to ridicule his mixing up with his reverence for the Creator and the Virgin Mary and all saints in general and St Eustachius and St Francis St John the Baptist St Anthony of Padua ""the reverence of Giotto of Taddeo and of Agnolo the master of Cennino;"" nor do we in the least doubt nay admire his happy zeal when he says that he begins his book ""for the utility and good and advantage of those who would attain perfection in the arts."" We said that this is a beautiful volume; the few plates and illustrations are not the least of its charms: they are drawn on stone by the translator. We hail the republication of every old work on the arts; and although as yet we have not been so fortunate as to discover the vehicle of Titian or Correggio we do not despair. In a former paper if we mistake not we mentioned a treatise of Rubens--""De Lumine et Colore""--said to have been somewhat more than half a century ago in the possession of a canon of Antwerp a descendant of Rubens: surely it may be worth enquiring after. It is said to be in Latin which not being a living and moveable language is the best form from which we could have a translation upon any subject relating to the arts. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: See TINGRY'S _Painter's and Varnisher's Guide_. 1803.] [Footnote 6: Take two pounds two ounces and a half of borax and one pound of acetate of lead dissolve each in at least a pint of hot water mix together the two solutions and allow the precipitate to subside. Pour off the supernatant liquor as soon as it is clear add some fresh water (rain water is preferable) to the precipitate and agitate. Then pour the precipitate whilst it is distributed throughout this last addition of water upon a filter of white blotting paper and when the water has passed through the filter add more water. These fresh additions of water must be repeated three or four times merely for the purpose of washing away all traces of the liquor which was retained by the first precipitate and which was formed by the first admixture of the two solutions. The precipitate when well washed is to be placed in a Hessian crucible and exposed to a red heat for half an hour. A clear glass will be formed; which must be reduced to a very fine powder.] [Footnote 7: ""As the very peculiar property which a saturated solution of borax possesses of uniting so readily with oil in any proportions has never yet been noticed by chemical writers I experimented with its constituents boracic acid and soda separately with a view to determine whether the results were to be attributed to the acid to the alkaline base or to the particular salt formed by their union. ""One hundred parts of borax may be said to consist of:-- Parts Boracic Acid 35.80 Soda 16.85 Water 47.35 Consequently 24 fluid ounces of water holding in solution 1 ounce (avoirdupois) of borax will contain about 4.16 per cent of borax or 0.702 per cent of soda only. ""I first tried the effect of a saturated aqueous solution of boracic acid with linseed oil. They would not unite. I then prepared some caustic soda by boiling a solution of carbonate of soda with quicklime decanting the clear caustic liquor evaporating in a silver crucible re-dissolving in alcohol and then distilling the spirit and heating the residual pure soda to redness. Even in this state soda contains 23 per cent of water and only 77 per cent of _pure anhydrous soda_. ""Ten grains of this soda were dissolved in 1000 grains of distilled water. But as 10 grains of this soda contained only 7.7 grains of _anhydrous soda_ the 1000 grains of water would contain just 0.770 per cent of soda--a quantity that differs very little from that contained in the saturated aqueous solution of borax. ""Seven measures of the soda solution were added to four measures of linseed oil. This mixture differed so little in appearance that it might have been mistaken by any casual observer as identical with that produced by a similar proportion of the solution of borax. It had however a more soapy odour; and a considerable separation of its constituent parts occurred almost immediately after agitation. This separation increased for many days. The lower liquid was of a foxy brown colour and after a week's repose it amounted to 38 parts out of 59. The upper 21 parts were white and saponaceous. I tried other proportions of soda solutions with oil but none resembled the results obtained from solutions of borax with oil. ""Fancying that solutions of the bi-carbonate of soda might be more analogous to those of the bi-borate of soda in their effects upon oil than solutions of caustic soda I tried many mixtures of solutions of the bi-carbonate with oil; but they were all dissimilar in appearance odour and properties from like mixtures prepared with the bi-borate of soda.""--_Letter from C. Thornton Coathupe Esq. on Vehicles for Pigments. Published in the Art Union of February_ 1832.] [Footnote 8: We are greatly multiplying artists by ""the promise to the ear "" and by our Art-Unions; whether we are like to have such returns to the Commissioners of the Income-tax as those we have quoted as a consequence of our forced and hot-bed encouragement remains to be seen. Lord Brougham objects to the railroad mania on account of the beggary to be induced when the employment they give rise to is over. When the ferment of patronage shall again have settled down to a selection of a few favourites may we not entertain somewhat similar fears?] ÆSTHETICS OF DRESS. No. IV. MINOR MATTERS. It is not to be supposed that a man is to be styled ""dressed"" when he has only got a proper coat on his back; something more than this is necessary ere he can claim a place in the _beau monde_ or can decently figure in a _bal paré_. There is no one indeed but your mere Hottentot who considers himself the pink of fashion solely from the fact of throwing something more or less becoming over his shoulders; though by the way we once heard of a negro chief who in a state of unclad majesty clapped a gold-laced cocked-hat on his head and then strutted about with an air of intense satisfaction at the result of his habilimentary effort. He was not a well-dressed man this chief any more than our friend the Frenchman in the diligence; but we will tell you this æsthetic story gentle reader. It was our destiny once--as it has been too of many a son of perfidious Albion--to be journeying across the monotonous plains of Upper Burgundy _en route_ for the gay capital. 'Twas a summer morn and the breezy call of the incense-breathing lady as Gray the poet calls her came delightfully upon our heated forehead as we pushed down the four-paned rattling window of that clumsy typefication of slowness misnamed a diligence to escape from the stifling atmosphere of the _rotonde_. Our fellow-travellers consisted of a couple of greasy black-haired sallow-faced curés two farmers' wives with a puking child each our own portly self and the sixth passenger. Now this sixth individual who was in reality the eighth Christian immured in this quasi Black-hole was one of those nondescript Parisian existences to define whom is almost impossible to those who have never witnessed the animal. He might have been a _commis-voyageur_ or a clerk in the passport-office or the keeper of a small café or an _épicier_ but he did not look stupid enough for the last. Be this as it may he was short rather than tall lean rather than fat --in a shabby brown surtout--smoked and took snuff--had been in Dauphiné--thought the Germans a set of European Chinese--considered a national guard as the model of a good soldier--kept spitting out of the window from time to time--stretched his legs most inconveniently against ours--tied his head up at dark in a dirty bird's-eye blue cotton _mouchoir-de-poche_ and snored throughout the night. He told us that he had not washed or shaved himself since leaving Lyons two days before; and in the morning just as we were opening the window Monsieur yawned stretched rubbed his eyes spat and spoke--""Sacré nom de cochon! Conducteur! conducteur! vous m'avez donc oublié! il fallait me faire descendre là bas!--là bas! là! là! nom de Dieu!""--""Plait-il?"" said the _conducteur_ as he came round to the door taking his pipe out of his mouth ""qu'est ce que vous voulez M'sieur?""--""Je vous avais dit qu'il fallait me faire descendre chez M. Dubois et maintenant nous voilà à----où sommes-nous par exemple?"" ""Imbécile! il y a encore trois bonnes lieues à la Pissotte!"" and the angry _conducteur_ who had been roused from his sleep and climbed over and round the lumbering vehicle to the back-door now climbed round and over again to the _banquette_. The sixth passenger squeezed himself back into the corner and resumed:--""M. Dubois ne m'attend pas: d'ailleurs je ne le connais pas: c'est égal; je me nicherai chez lui pour une huitaine de jours: j'y ferai de bonnes affaires."" All this was of course as unintelligible to the other passengers as it would have been uninteresting if we had cared to listen to him:--""Puisqu'il peut y avoir des dames "" he went on ""il faut faire ma toilette."" So saying he took off his pocket-handkerchief from his head and wiped his face well with it yawned a good deal and spat incontinently; opened his coat spread back and jerked down the lapels; shoved his fingers comb-fashion and comb-colour through his matted hair till it stood up _a là_ Bugaboo; and then looked round for admiration. ""Ah! je l'avais oublié!"" he exclaimed. Upon this he pulled out a large shabby green pocket-book from his coat; took off a greasy black stock displaying a collarless shirt and neck upon the tinge of which it would be needless to descant and then extracting from the pocket-book two curvilinear pieces of dirty white paper which had been folded more than once and had an ink spot or two on their surface applied them to his chin holding their corners in his mouth buckled on his stock again over them adjusted these pseudo collars by aid of his watch-back grinned a mile of approbation and exclaimed ""Me voilà propre!"" It is not enough to be _propre_ in one article of dress only: you must preserve a certain æsthetical _tournure_ or else set yourself down among the frampy multitude for ever. This must be our apology dear reader for thus detaining your attention and for setting before you ""things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme "" which may tend if properly applied to the inappreciable beautification of your own valuable person. Descend we therefore from the head and trunk of man--a curious bathos--to his understandings and unmentionables; you know what we mean. And herein as in duty bound draw we a distinction. ""We know how to call all the drawers by name "" (if we may so take a liberty with friend William's prose;) and let us therefore premise that we shall notice the unmentionable trews _femoralia_ or _periscelemata_--as the Greeks would probably have called them only they wore them not but like Highland laddies preferred their own hides--of the virile portion of the community only. As for those tantalizing appendages of the better portion of her Majesty's subjects we leave them in their proper concealment. We could easily write a volume or two to show that the custom came on Ormus or Ind or Araby the Blest; but criticism would not be tolerated and besides-- ----""Levius fit patientia Quidquid corrigere est nefas."" ""On s accoutume à tout!"" Go therefore æsthetic reader to Trajan's column at Rome and amid the barbaric costumes which adorn it you will find the prototype of the modern trouser. Or you need not travel so much out of your way. In the Townley Gallery there is the figure of Mithras with a fashionable pantaloon on his legs; and in the Louvre there are two or three disconsolate-looking barbaric captives with their trousers flapping about their shins and tied round their ankles: these are the originals of our modern what-d'ye-call'ems. As for the good old buckskins of our venerated grandsires and governors they arose in Roman times. Field-marshal Julius Cæsar wore something very near of kin to them under his military kilt in that pretty little skirmish wherein he first had the honour of exchanging stones and darts with our British ancestors; and from those days down to the present time has this garment maintained its ground and proved its utility with undying pertinacity. Now we do not approve of the barbaric trews: that tying of them round the ankles though it kept out the cold was decidedly a Sawney practice: it militated against the curves of the leg and destroyed all firmness and dignity of gait. Far better was the fashion of the middle ages when the trouser became a real pantaloon--_a pantalon_ collant as modern artists call it and when the full symmetry of the limb was displayed to the utmost advantage. This was no doubt the acme of perfection that the garment in question was capable of; and it is to be lamented that the mode has not kept its position in society more universally. For all purposes of ceremonial or ornamental dress this form should still be rigidly adhered to. Utility and ornament here go hand in hand or rather inside each other. No disguisement of natural form is attempted; and a man's appearance is judged of at its true value. The tight pantaloon is at once simple useful and beautiful. So far for its form. But there is an immense difficulty in the choice of its substance. If too elastic the knee will soon make for itself one of those provoking pudding-bags that have tended more than any thing else to bring the fashion into disfavour. If too rigid and too frail you know the catastrophe! We still remember the case of a fat friend of ours at a fancy-ball! British manufacturing ingenuity should bestir itself to invent a stuff fit for satisfactorily solving this vestimental problem of the greatest strain; and the pantaloon might then once more resume its paramount sway. To revert to the old buckskin: it is a perfectly respectable useful and satisfactory affair for the purposes to which it is now applied and worn with a stout top-boot and thrown over the side of a gallant horse has no superior in the world. It is also a very good thing to put on if you are going to a new tailor's in town especially if you can write Harkaway Hall as your address. The man will set you down for a real country-squire and will give you tick for the next twenty years. But if you want to avoid having your pocket picked don't wear buckskins as you go along Piccadilly; buckskins and tops on foot are so truly Arcadian in their appearance that the swell mob cannot resist the temptation and you are pretty sure to be victimized. As for the unmeaning black things worn with white silk stockings on court-days and gloried in by all the beaux of the eighteenth century they ought to be sent to the right-about as neither useful nor becoming. It may be all very well for Spanish matadors and Castilian dancers to wear them; but they were originally intended to have boots beneath them--so Charles I. wore them until he borrowed a foolish fashion from France--and from the very cut and nature of them they should be worn so still or abandoned altogether. We quarrel with them not on the score of form so much as on that of inutility and undue contrast of colour. If the thing be dark and the stocking light an effect of cleanliness is attained; but the magpie appearance immediately prevails. The case is the same as that of a white waistcoat and a black coat; too glaring _trop prononcé_. If they are both of the same colour then the tight and continuous pantaloon is far more reasonable and becoming and for use any thing else is better--_experto crede_. The only exception in its favour that we can make is for the sportsman and the farmer; for him who joins on a stout legging or a gaiter whether of cloth or leather; or if you wish to do a bit of Jerry Hawthorn to some friend's Tom or Logic here is your garment _de rigueur_;--put on your leggings your green coats and your white hat and you are complete; but unless you wish to be mistaken for your friend's butler or a waiter from your club do not venture on the black _culotte_. The trouser then--the modern trouser--what are we to say of this? Why that it is the most useful the most comfortable the most economical and one of the least ugly garments ever invented by man. We almost remember the day dear reader when as yet trousers were among the great unborn; it was only the Duke and those dashing fellows at his heels who imported the idea we believe from Germany originally though _they_ used it in the Peninsula. After the battle of Waterloo no man of any spirit at all ever wore any thing else for common use. It existed certainly among our honest tars long previously to this epoch; but the _fashion_ did not come from them; the rage originated with the Peninsular troops and was confirmed by the examples of the brilliant staffs that accompanied the Allied sovereigns to this country in 1814. It is true that the trouser did not assume its definite and rational form such as it now has all at once; it went through a round of vagaries indicative of a most diseased state of public taste. At one time it was all _à la Cosaque_ and you might have made a greatcoat out of a pair; at another it was half up the leg and more than two feet in circumference; by degrees it got strapped down and cut away into a sensible kind of shape; and now it has attained the _juste milieu_ making a happy compromise between the tight symmetry of the pantaloon and the flaunting of the sailor's ducks. An immense step in the improvement of this garment has been made by the introduction of all that beautiful variety of plaids and checked patterns which are so commonly used; those in wool for winter wear are truly delightful; while for summer use the trouser recommends itself to our untiring favour by the multiplicity of soft light substances which are every where employed. The trouser is to the pantaloon as the foraging cap is to the hat--good for all kinds of use and likely to remain so for an indefinite period; good for all ranks and for all ages. One canon however should be laid down as to the cut:--no pockets should be tolerated on any account whatever: they make a man look like a Yankee. 'Tis the most slovenly custom on earth to keep your hands in your pockets--you deserve to have them sewed in if you indulge in it. And therefore to avoid this disagreeable penalty have your pockets sewed up. The next step downwards in the scale of dress brings us to the basis foundation and understanding of mankind--we mean boots and shoes; and here being approvers of both ""men and women's concise recti "" as old Joe used to say we must give a word of advice to both sexes; and ye who groan under the torments of corns (""bunions"" is a nasty word we always think of onions when we hear it ) attend to our dictum. If any thing imperatively demands that utility should be consulted before ornament in its construction it is the covering of the foot; whoever goes hunting in a dancing-pump is a fool and whoever dances in a shooting-shoe is a clodhopper. There can be no doubt that the human mind speedily adopted normal rules of design when first the idea of protecting the foot was started in the world--and on the whole less absurdity has been evidenced in the pedal integuments than in most other matters of dress. The old tragic buskin and the comic sock the military sandal _caliga_ and boot all did their duty excellently in ancient times: we have not a word of reproach for them--and their successors in the middle ages acquitted themselves of their duties in a tolerably satisfactory manner though not without some curious flights of fancy. Thus the cross gartering of the Saxon buskin boots or gaiter or whatever else it might have been looks to us truly absurd and uncomfortable judging from the caricatured figures of ancient MSS.; but the peaked and tied-up points of the 14th century when the toe was fastened to the knee strikes us as the _ne plus ultra_ of human folly. How Richard II.'s courtiers must have gone slopping and spirting about in the mud that befouled their streets as well as ours! What queer figures they must have cut on horseback in a rainy day with the water running off from the pendulous tips of their shoes! Nevertheless there was something good in the arrangement of the upper part of the shoe or half-boot of those times and even of earlier days as any one who reads the _Art-Union_ or who knows the history of British costume can tell. It formed an appropriate termination to the tightly-dressed limb; and when not too much pointed prolonged the natural shape of the foot into a gracefully-curving support. Shoes in the present sense of the term were not then worn: every thing was limited to the elastic half-boots: but for the huntsman or the horseman not armed for the tented field a sort of brown leather boot coming up to the knee was in common use. This had no falling tops and was far removed from the ridiculous Spanish boot of after days. It was a plain and useful servant to the cavalier and became him much better than the ponderous jack-boot of later times. It is to the Spaniards that we are indebted if ""indebted"" be a suitable term for the wide-topped falling boot of the sixteenth century; that inconvenient no-service thing--good for the stage-players fancy-ball men and fellows like old Hudibras who crammed a portable larder and wardrobe into its unfathomable recesses; but for the rough-riding horseman or the active hunter a nuisance beyond all description. Boots such as these may look admirably well in pictures; for when delineated by a Vandyke any thing would become graceful; but for actual practice they would serve only to catch the rain and to gall the legs of the wearer. Their descendant the top-boot has reformed itself wonderfully and nearly all the inconvenience has been got rid of. Still the brown colour of the top which is no longer the inside of the boot turned down as it was once is an anomaly and the boot itself ought to be merged in the plain single-coloured boot which is now much used on the Continent though in England patronized only by the Meltonians. For positive use the boot ought to come up fully to or above the knee in order to stand the wear and pressure of the saddle; but for ornament it may well be allowed to rise only partially up the leg and to be in short the beautiful Hessian or Hungarian boot--far the most graceful covering ever put on the leg of a modern European. That such a truly elegant boot so gentlemanlike so dressy and yet so thoroughly serviceable should ever have gone out of fashion is to us a melancholy though not a needed proof of the sheer caprice by which men's fancies are commonly swayed. We suspect however that if any cause more ostensible than mere accident can be alleged for this change it is to be traced to some knock-knee'd or spindle-shanked fellow who was ashamed to show his mis-shapen legs and therefore concealed them in loose trousers. These boots it is true were not so well calculated for campaigning as the smaller ones which still bear the great man's name; and this may have had something to do with their disuse; nevertheless the change is to be lamented æsthetically for the perfect union of utility and ornament was never so well exemplified as in the Hessian boot. With all due respect to the dancing world or to the world of dancing-masters we beg leave to anathematize the light shoe or pump; it is an ugly inconvenient unsuitable thing fit for a man with a white waistcoat gold chain knee-breeches &c. but not for a gentleman. The true æsthetical article is either the elastic half-boot of the middle ages; fitting on to the pantaloon or else the thin Wellington boot of the present day under the trousers. We do not care to see your ribbed and open-worked silk stockings; such display is not for the sterner sex; even in his highest moments of ornament a man should always bear about him a trace of the useful. To illustrate what we mean--a man is not born to be a dancing-master nor a tavern-waiter; a gentleman more especially is intended from the moment he can run alone to be ready for feats of gallantry and hardihood. He should dress accordingly; and as a fundamental rule the reason for which lies deeper than most people think a gentleman should always be so attired as that if occasion demands he should be able to mount a horse on the instant and ride for his life. Now your modern exquisite in pumps or your old beau of the last century in high red-heeled shoes could do nothing of the kind without much previous preparation; and we take it to be a sign of their degenerating manhood. Nine-tenths of the men who take pleasure in shoes and pumps are but tailors on horseback; and the old fox-hunter or the old dragoon (good types both in their way of what a man should be ) love their boots next to their bottle. A slipper and a dressing-gown are excellent companions agree well together and never give their master a moment's uneasiness; hence their value; similarly a stout high-low and a good leathern legging buttoned well over the ankle beneath and the knee above will carry a man through heather or gorse on foot or on horseback and will prove ""marvellous good wear;"" they ought to be as indeed they commonly are dear friends to ""whoever loves his country."" As for the ladies truly we have little to say; they have always done pretty well in the matter of their feet. For them shoes are indispensably necessary and indeed highly appropriate and becoming--so too are half-boots--and fixed between these limits the fair sex never have gone nor perhaps can go far astray. The nearer they keep to the form of nature in the clothing of their feet the better--it is a rule as true as the day that a woman can seldom if ever artificially _improve_ her form. But there is one curious circumstance connected with ladies' shoes which it appears our fair countrywomen are not competent judges of--at least we appeal to every man in England not beyond his grand climacteric and with two eyes in his head for the correctness of our views in what we are going to assert:--a lady's shoe worn with crossing sandals gently curving over the instep and round the ankle is immeasurably superior to the plain quaker-like old-maid affair worn with the old-fashioned tie or button. Did women but know how much these slender lines of riband add to their appearance how well the contrast sets off the anatomical beauties of their feet they would never put on a shoe without such an appendage. In the same way the nicely fitted boot displaying the exact form of the arching foot and deliciously-contrasted in colour with the robe or stocking gives a prestige to a lady's foot which can only be compared to the effect produced by the Hessian boot upon their lords and masters. W
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have nothing to say against the prevailing fashion of ladies' _chaussures_ worn--even down to the clog and pattern every thing is elegant every thing is proportionably useful. One hint let us give to all. The secret of a well-fitting shoe or rather of a good-looking shoe--and it is upon this principle that all French shoemakers proceed but all English cobblers do not--is that it should be much longer than the foot itself--at least an inch or an inch and a half longer. And for these two reasons: first that since a squat broad dumpy foot is much uglier than a long thin one therefore you may always diminish the _appearance_ of breadth by adding to the _reality_ of length; and next that when the shoe is long the toes have plenty of room and commonly 'tis here that ""the shoe pinches."" No one has corns on his heels or the sides of his feet let his shoes or boots be as narrow as he can well bear them: it is upon those poor pent up imprisoned distorted joints of the toes that the rubs of the world come and that the corning process goes on. If you would cure yourself reader of the most obdurate corn or if you would guarantee your children from ever having any let them and do you yourself wear French _chaussures_; or else have the boots &c. made fitting well to the foot at the side and with exactly one inch at the least to spare in length when standing in them. We'll bet you a hundred to one on the result: and you may ask any _cordonnier_ in the Rue de Richelieu. English shoemakers be it observed are nearly a century behind their Gallic brethren in the craft; they work more clumsily--with less art less means and less desire to please; they have no invention in the higher parts of their science and they are abominably dear. We do not wish to disparage any thing in our native country--far from it; but take the hint gentle reader; whatever your friends may say about it always buy a French shoe or boot in preference to an English one; if of equal quality the cut of the French is sure to be better; if not quite so strong yet the goodness of the fit makes the thing wear longer. Above all whenever you go to Paris lay in as large a stock of these things as your purse will allow; they never get worse for age and they are cheaper and better there than in any other part of the world. The next time you meet us in the Park we'll show you a pair of boots made for us by Legrand in 1841 which we have ridden in and walked in now three winters; there is not a crack in them; they like their master have never lost their _soles_ (we can't say so much for our _hearts_ ) they fit us like our own skin and they cost less than a pound sterling. _Dear_ old Hoby may go and hang himself! From the regions of mud dust leather and blacking we will now reascend to the higher localities of the human person and will fasten ourselves round the reader's neck. Do not be alarmed we only want to _catch_ your attention; we will not extend the word to any thing else. Here too ladies are exemplified by their especial privilege from our impudent scrutiny; their necks when unadorned are adorned the most; if they are cold let them put on their boas or a _fichu_ or muffle up with their shawls; let them eschew all false collars let them delight in good lace and the matter is settled. But for a man with a bad tie! we could take him by the throat and throttle him! Here it is our duty freely to declare our candid opinion that Beau Brummell and George IV. were not benefactors to the human race by introducing stiff cravattes and endless swathes of linen round the region of jugular veins and carotid arteries; if a man wishes to be comfortable any where it is surely in his neck; let old gentlemen with scrofulous chins muffle themselves up to suffocation if they please but why should we who have nothing the matter with us and wish to turn our heads _ad libitum_ be thus girt about and half stifled? Our climate no doubt requires some protection for the neck and while beards are not worn a cravat of some kind or other may be said to be necessary; but if comfort and use can be combined with elegance and good taste and yet the old starched thing got rid of so much the better. Let us remark therefore that we have done wrong in quitting the fashion of the seventeenth century as to cravats; we have adopted a stiff and a common material and we have lost all opportunity of enjoyment as well as of ornament. If you ever indulge in a white choker good reader only reflect for a minute on what you have round your neck--a yard and a half of stuff the intrinsic value of which may be a couple of shillings _plus_ a pennyworth of starch _plus_ a neck as thick as an elephant's leg and as stiff as a door-post _minus_ all grace _minus_ all comfort. But go and look at the Second Charles at Hampton Court--see how the merry monarch managed his neck on gala-days. You will observe that he had half a yard of the finest cambric as soft as a zephyr and as warm as swan's-down tied once round; and ending before in long deep borders of the most precious Mechlin lace worth a guinea or two a-yard falling gracefully on his breast or placed for convenience into a fold of his coat. How much more sensible how much more ornamental how much more noble such a scarf or cravat as this which no shopman's boy could emulate than the cheap and ugly thing in which many a man still seems to delight! How admirably did these bands of rich lace contrast with the silken coats or the polished cuirasses of their wearers! how truly aristocratic was their appearance! how entirely without effort without pretension and yet how very distinctive of the type of their wearer! But you will say if we fail in the matter of white cravats surely we excel in that of black-silk ones and brocaded stocks! We _might_ excel we allow; but we do not know how to wear these things. We ought either to limit ourselves to the smallest possible bow in front or else we ought to let the square ends of the scarf be pendant and unconfined. Instead of this we either put on a stock with a sham tie (now all _sham_ things of what kind soever militate against good taste ) or else to make the most of our scarf we fill up the aperture of the waistcoat with an ambitious quantity of drapery and we stick therein an enormous and obtrusively ostentatious pin. This is both vulgar and foolish. If we want a stock it should be _perfectly plain--à la militaire_ for it is in truth an article of military attire worn for the express purpose of giving stiffness and smartness to the figure. If we want a scarf do not let us misconceive the nature of its form the law of its curves and huddle it up into an untidy unmeaning mass fit for nothing but to serve as a field of display for what is commonly cheap and bad jewellery. We may be wrong but we strongly suspect that the tie-stock and the large silk scarf were brought into use by some dirty fellow whose linens would not stand the test of public examination; and indeed whenever we see a man more than usually adorned in this way about the neck we conjecture that all is not right beneath. A small black or judiciously coloured cravat with a very small bow and just sufficient stiffness to give dignity to the head--this should be the morning wear of the real gentleman; in the evening let him put on the finest fabric of the flax-loom and the most expensive lace he can afford to purchase--they will be very becoming and will be duly appreciated by the ladies who know the cost of such things; all silks and stocks let him leave to men-milliners. Which side are we to take in the collar question--ups or downs or none at all? We confess ourselves to be practically in a dilemma; although æsthetically speaking--and indeed from motives of comfort--we have no hesitation in saying turn down your collars; they never were meant to be turned up. But it is now become so much of a French and English affair that we shall be suspected of want of patriotism if we do not say keep up your collars and uphold the national dignity! As for the no-collar view of the subject much may be said for and against it: it depends a good deal on your complexion reader and also on the colour of your cravat. If you have got on your cambric and your lace you need no further contrast for your physiognomical tint; but if you are wearing a black kerchief and you are of a bilious brown and yellow hue pray let us see half an inch at least of white beneath the lower jawbone. This point of contrast is the real reason why the collar should as a matter of taste be allowed to lie down on the cravat. It produces greater effect--it looks cleaner--it is certainly more comfortable. If the majority of freeborn Englishmen shall ever so far surmount their prejudices as to take a hint from France (for 'tis an invention of _la jeune France_ ) we will walk over from our side of the house and in face of the nation and our constituents will join them. Collars are connected with wristbands just as the two ends of the electric telegraph are by the communicating wires and the satisfactory intelligence disclosed by the one that the wearer is a good friend to his laundress is or should be simultaneously repeated by the other. Believe us reader there is no more distinctive mark of a correct man than a snowy-white wristband _always_ to be visible. Here again we must establish another æsthetical rule of proportion viz. collars are to wristbands as laced cravats are to ruffles; and therefore if you decide upon taking our advice and indulging in Brussels lace while you sip your claret you must also buy lace enough to adorn your wrists and you will not repent of the expense or the effect. It is in truth a pretty and a graceful fashion which for evening dress should entirely be re-introduced and we anticipate that the ladies would be unanimous in their approbation. A few more words on odds and ends of dress and we have done with civil costume. Always keep yourself well supplied with gloves; wear them neither of a blue nor yet of a green nor even of a red colour: any other kind of tint you may under various circumstances indulge in. Always use white and the finest cambric pocket-handkerchiefs: you can thus neither take snuff nor avoid using a considerable number; do not regret the expense--the ladies will reward you with their approbation and you cannot be mistaken for an American. Whether you be male or female gentle reader do not wear much jewellery--beware of being taken for one of the swell-mob and the doubtfuls; but if you are a lady and wish for jewellery in the evening choose between pearls and diamonds; better have a few of these and good than whole caskets of topazes and amethysts. If you are a gentleman wear only two rings--one for your lady-love the other for your armorial bearings--if you have a gold chain to your watch keep it but the less you show of it the better. Avoid a foolish custom now springing up of fastening the coat with a couple of supplementary buttons attached by a metallic link. This is the trick of some scoundrel tailor who sent home a coat too small for the wearer and thus persuaded him (he must have been an ass) to tie two buttons together and so make both ends meet. It will do very well for a commercial gent but not for a gentleman. We need hardly say be not fine on a Sunday: dress plainer then than usual if you would maintain your dignity; and be not ashamed of an old coat--only let it be clean _portez-le bien soyez bien chaussé bien ganté bien coiffé et vous n'aurez jamais l'air d'un bourgeois_. Above all things whether you be man woman or child remember that the more you approximate to uniformity of colour for the whole of your dress the better. Whether you prefer white to black blue to green or brown to red no matter. Stick to the law of æsthetic unity--retain natural and undisguised contour breadth and mellowness of colour ease and dignity of movement and you will approximate to perfection. SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. PART I. CONCLUDED. THE PALIMPSEST. You know perhaps masculine reader better than I can tell you what is a _Palimpsest_. Possibly you have one in your own library. But yet for the sake of others who may _not_ know or may have forgotten suffer me to explain it here: lest any female reader who honours these papers with her notice should tax me with explaining it once too seldom; which would be worse to bear than a simultaneous complaint from twelve proud men that I had explained it three times too often. You therefore fair reader understand that for _your_ accommodation exclusively I explain the meaning of this word. It is Greek; and our sex enjoys the office and privilege of standing counsel to yours in all questions of Greek. We are under favour perpetual and hereditary dragomans to you. So that if by accident you know the meaning of a Greek word yet by courtesy to us your counsel learned in that matter you will always seem _not_ to know it. A palimpsest then is a membrane or roll cleansed of its manuscript by reiterated successions. What was the reason that the Greeks and the Romans had not the advantage of printed books? The answer will be on ninety-nine persons in a hundred--Because the mystery of printing was not then discovered. But this is altogether a mistake. The secret of printing must have been discovered many thousands of times before it was used or _could_ be used. The inventive powers of man are divine; and also his stupidity is divine--as Cowper so playfully illustrates in the slow development of the _sofa_ through successive generations of immortal dulness. It took centuries of blockheads to raise a joint stool into a chair; and it required something like a miracle of genius in the estimate of elder generations to reveal the possibility of lengthening a chair into a _chaise-longue_ or a sofa. Yes these were inventions that cost mighty throes of intellectual power. But still as respects printing and admirable as is the stupidity of man it was really not quite equal to the task of evading an object which stared him in the face with so broad a gaze. It did not require an Athenian intellect to read the main secret of printing in many scores of processes which the ordinary uses of life were _daily_ repeating. To say nothing of analogous artifices amongst various mechanic artisans all that is essential in printing must have been known to every nation that struck coins and medals. Not therefore any want of a printing art--that is of an art for multiplying impressions--but the want of a cheap material for _receiving_ such impressions was the obstacle to an introduction of printed books even as early as Pisistratus. The ancients _did_ apply printing to records of silver and gold; to marble and many other substances cheaper than gold and silver they did _not_ since each monument required a _separate_ effort of inscription. Simply this defect it was of a cheap material for receiving impresses which froze in its very fountains the early resources of printing. Some twenty years ago this view of the case was luminously expounded by Dr Whately the present archbishop of Dublin and with the merit I believe of having first suggested it. Since then this theory has received indirect confirmation. Now out of that original scarcity affecting all materials proper for durable books which continued up to times comparatively modern grew the opening for palimpsests. Naturally when once a roll of parchment or of vellum had done its office by propagating through a series of generations what once had possessed an interest for _them_ but which under changes of opinion or of taste had faded to their feelings or had become obsolete for their understandings the whole _membrana_ or vellum skin the twofold product of human skill costly material and costly freight of thought which it carried drooped in value concurrently--supposing that each were inalienably associated to the other. Once it had been the impress of a human mind which stamped its value upon the vellum; the vellum though costly had contributed but a secondary element of value to the total result. At length however this relation between the vehicle and its freight has gradually been undermined. The vellum from having been the setting of the jewel has risen at length to be the jewel itself; and the burden of thought from having given the chief value to the vellum has now become the chief obstacle to its value; nay has totally extinguished its value unless it can be dissociated from the connexion. Yet if this unlinking _can_ be effected then--fast as the inscription upon the membrane is sinking into rubbish--the membrane itself is reviving in its separate importance; and from bearing a ministerial value the vellum has come at last to absorb the whole value. Hence the importance for our ancestors that the separation _should_ be effected. Hence it arose in the middle ages as a considerable object for chemistry to discharge the writing from the roll and thus to make it available for a new succession of thoughts. The soil if cleansed from what once had been hot-house plants but now were held to be weeds would be ready to receive a fresh and more appropriate crop. In that object the monkish chemists succeeded; but after fashion which seems almost incredible; incredible not as regards the extent of their success but as regards the delicacy of restraints under which it moved; so equally adjusted was their success to the immediate interests of that period and to the reversionary interests of our own. They did the thing; but not so radically as to prevent us their posterity from _un_doing it. They expelled the writing sufficiently to leave a field for the new manuscript and yet not sufficiently to make the traces of the elder manuscript irrecoverable for us. Could magic could Hermes Trismegistus have done more? What would you think fair reader of a problem such as this--to write a book which should be sense for your own generation nonsense for the next should revive into sense for the next after that but again became nonsense for the fourth; and so on by alternate successions sinking into night or blazing into day like the Sicilian river Arethusa and the English river Mole--or like the undulating motions of a flattened stone which children cause to skim the breast of a river now diving below the water now grazing its surface sinking heavily into darkness rising buoyantly into light through a long vista of alternations? Such a problem you say is impossible. But really it is a problem not harder apparently than--to bid a generation kill but so that a subsequent generation may call back into life; bury but so that posterity may command to rise again. Yet _that_ was what the rude chemistry of past ages effected when coming into combination with the reaction from the more refined chemistry of our own. Had _they_ been better chemists had _we_ been worse--the mixed result viz. that dying for _them_ the flower should revive for _us_ could not have been effected: They did the thing proposed to them: they did it effectually; for they founded upon it all that was wanted: and yet ineffectually since we unravelled their work; effacing all above which they had superscribed; restoring all below which they had effaced. Here for instance is a parchment which contained some Grecian tragedy the Agamemnon of Æschylus or the Phoenissæ of Euripides. This had possessed a value almost inappreciable in the eyes of accomplished scholars continually growing rarer through generations. But four centuries are gone by since the destruction of the Western Empire. Christianity with towering grandeurs of another class has founded a different empire; and some bigoted yet perhaps holy monk has washed away (as he persuades himself) the heathen's tragedy replacing it with a monastic legend; which legend is disfigured with fables in its incidents and yet in a higher sense is true because interwoven with Christian morals and with the sublimest of Christian revelations. Three four five centuries more find man still devout as ever; but the language has become obsolete and even for Christian devotion a new era has arisen throwing it into the channel of crusading zeal or of chivalrous enthusiasm. The _membrana_ is wanted now for a knightly romance--for ""my Cid "" or Coeur de Lion; for Sir Tristrem or Lybæus Disconus. In this way by means of the imperfect chemistry known to the mediæval period the same roll has served as a conservatory for three separate generations of flowers and fruits all perfectly different and yet all specially adapted to the wants of the successive possessors. The Greek tragedy the monkish legend the knightly romance each has ruled its own period. One harvest after another has been gathered into the garners of man through ages far apart. And the same hydraulic machinery has distributed through the same marble fountains water milk or wine according to the habits and training of the generations that came to quench their thirst. Such were the achievements of rude monastic chemistry. But the more elaborate chemistry of our own days has reversed all these motions of our simple ancestors with results in every stage that to _them_ would have realized the most fantastic amongst the promises of thaumaturgy. Insolent vaunt of Paracelsus that he would restore the original rose or violet out of the ashes settling from its combustion--_that_ is now rivalled in this modern achievement. The traces of each successive handwriting regularly effaced as had been imagined have in the inverse order been regularly called back: the footsteps of the game pursued wolf or stag in each several chase have been unlinked and hunted back through all their doubles; and as the chorus of the Athenian stage unwove through the antistrophe every step that had been mystically woven through the strophe so by our modern conjurations of science secrets of ages remote from each other have been exorcised[9] from the accumulated shadows of centuries. Chemistry a witch as potent as the Erictho of Lucan (_Pharsalia_ lib. vi. or vii. ) has extorted by her torments from the dust and ashes of forgotten centuries the secrets of a life extinct for the general eye but still glowing in the embers. Even the fable of the Phoenix--that secular bird who propagated his solitary existence and his solitary births along the line of centuries through eternal relays of funeral mists--is but a type of what we have done with Palimpsests. We have backed upon each Phoenix in the long _regressus_ and forced him to expose his ancestral Phoenix sleeping in the ashes below his own ashes. Our good old forefathers would have been aghast at our sorceries; and if they speculated on the propriety of burning Dr Faustus _us_ they would have burned by acclamation. Trial there would have been none; and they could no otherwise have satisfied their horror of the brazen profligacy marking our modern magic than by ploughing up the houses of all who had been parties to it and sowing the ground with salt. Fancy not reader that this tumult of images illustrative or allusive moves under any impulse or purpose of mirth. It is but the coruscation of a restless understanding often made ten times more so by irritation of the nerves such as you will first learn to comprehend (its _how_ and its _why_) some stage or two ahead. The image the memorial the record which for me is derived from a palimpsest as to one great fact in our human being and which immediately I will show you is but too repellent of laughter; or even if laughter _had_ been possible it would have been such laughter as often times is thrown off from the fields of ocean[10]--laughter that hides or that seems to evade mustering tumult; foam-bells that weave garlands of phosphoric radiance for one moment round the eddies of gleaming abysses; mimicries of earth-born flowers that for the eye raise phantoms of gaiety as oftentimes for the ear they raise echoes of fugitive laughter mixing with the ravings and choir-voices of an angry sea. What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is the human brain? Such a palimpsest is my brain; such a palimpsest O reader! is yours. Everlasting layers of ideas images feelings have fallen upon your brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury all that went before. And yet in reality not one has been extinguished. And if in the vellum palimpsest lying amongst the other _diplomata_ of human archives or libraries there is any thing fantastic or which moves to laughter as oftentimes there is in the grotesque collisions of those successive themes having no natural connexion which by pure accident have consecutively occupied the roll yet in our own heaven-created palimpsest the deep memorial palimpsest of the brain there are not and cannot be such incoherencies. The fleeting accidents of a man's life and its external shows may indeed be irrelate and incongruous; but the organizing principles which fuse into harmony and gather about fixed predetermined centres whatever heterogeneous elements life may have accumulated from without will not permit the grandeur of human unity greatly to be violated or its ultimate repose to be troubled in the retrospect from dying moments or from other great convulsions. Such a convulsion is the struggle of gradual suffocation as in drowning; and in the original Opium Confessions I mentioned a case of that nature communicated to me by a lady from her own childish experience. The lady is still living though now of unusually great age; and I may mention--that amongst her faults never was numbered any levity of principle or carelessness of the most scrupulous veracity; but on the contrary such faults as arise from austerity too harsh perhaps and gloomy--indulgent neither to others nor herself. And at the time of relating this incident when already very old she had become religious to asceticism. According to my present belief she had completed her ninth year when playing by the side of a solitary brook she fell into one of its deepest pools. Eventually but after what lapse of time nobody ever knew she was saved from death by a farmer who riding in some distant lane had seen her rise to the surface; but not until she had descended within the abyss of death and looked into its secrets as far perhaps as ever human eye _can_ have looked that had permission to return. At a certain stage of this descent a blow seemed to strike her--phosphoric radiance sprang forth from her eye-balls; and immediately a mighty theatre expanded within her brain. In a moment in the twinkling of an eye every act--every design of her past life lived again--arraying themselves not as a succession but as parts of a coexistence. Such a light fell upon the whole path of her life backwards into the shades of infancy as the light perhaps which wrapt the destined apostle on his road to Damascus. Yet that light blinded for a season; but hers poured celestial vision upon the brain so that her consciousness became omnipresent at one moment to every feature in the infinite review. This anecdote was treated sceptically at the time by some critics. But besides that it has since been confirmed by other experiences essentially the same reported by other parties in the same circumstances who had never heard of each other; the true point for astonishment is not the _simultaneity_ of arrangement under which the past events of life--though in fact successive--had formed their dread line of revelation. This was but a secondary phenomenon; the deeper lay in the resurrection itself and the possibility of resurrection for what had so long slept in the dust. A pall deep as oblivion had been thrown by life over every trace of these experiences; and yet suddenly at a silent command at the signal of a blazing rocket sent up from the brain the pall draws up and the whole depths of the theatre are exposed. Here was the greater mystery: now this mystery is liable to no doubt; for it is repeated and ten thousand times repeated by opium for those who are its martyrs. Yes reader countless are the mysterious handwritings of grief or joy which have inscribed themselves successively upon the palimpsest of your brain; and like the annual leaves of aboriginal forests or the undissolving snows on the Himalaya or light falling upon light the endless strata have covered up each other in forgetfulness. But by the hour of death but by fever but by the searchings of opium all these can revive in strength. They are not dead but sleeping. In the illustration imagined by myself from the case of some individual palimpsest the Grecian tragedy had seemed to be displaced but was _not_ displaced by the monkish legend; and the monkish legend had seemed to be displaced but was _not_ displaced by the knightly romance. In some potent convulsion of the system all wheels back into its earliest elementary stage. The bewildering romance light tarnished with darkness the semi-fabulous legend truth celestial mixed with human falsehoods these fade even of themselves as life advances. The romance has perished that the young man adored. The legend has gone that deluded the boy. But the deep deep tragedies of infancy as when the child's hands were unlinked for ever from his mother's neck or his lips for ever from his sister's kisses these remain lurking below all and these lurk to the last. Alchemy there is none of passion or disease that can scorch away these immortal impresses. And the dream which closed the preceding section together with the succeeding dreams of this (which may be viewed as in the nature of choruses winding up the overture contained in Part I. ) are but illustrations of this truth such as every man probably will meet experimentally who passes through similar convulsions of dreaming or delirium from any similar or equal disturbance in his nature.[11] LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW. Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana? Reader that do not pretend to have leisure for very much scholarship you will not be angry with me for telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that performed for the newborn infant the earliest office of ennobling kindness--typical by its mode of that grandeur which belongs to man every where and of that benignity in powers invisible which even in Pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth just as the infant tasted for the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet it was laid on the ground. _That_ might bear different interpretations. But immediately lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant either the paternal hand as proxy for the goddess Levana or some near kinsman as proxy for the father raised it upright bade it look erect as the king of all this world and presented its forehead to the stars saying perhaps in his heart--""Behold what is greater than yourselves!"" This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. And that mysterious lady who never revealed her face (except to me in dreams ) but always acted by delegation had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) _levare_ to raise aloft. This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it has arisen that some people have understood by Levana the tutelary power that controls the education of the nursery. She that would not suffer at his birth even a prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the non-development of his powers. She therefore watches over human education. Now the word _educo_ with the penultimate short was derived (by a process often exemplified in the crystallization of languages) from the word _educo_ with the penultimate long. Whatsoever _educes_ or developes--_educates_. By the education of Levana therefore is meant--not the poor machinery that moves by spelling-books and grammars but that mighty system of central forces hidden in the deep bosom of human life which by passion by strife by temptation by the energies of resistance works for ever upon children--resting not day or night any more than the mighty wheel of day and night themselves whose moments like restless spokes are glimmering[12] for ever as they revolve. If then _these_ are the ministries by which Levana works how profoundly must she reverence the agencies of grief! But you reader! think--that children generally are not liable to grief such as mine. There are two senses in the word _generally_--the sense of Euclid where it means _universally_ (or in the whole extent of the _genus_ ) and a foolish sense of this world where it means _usually_. Now I am far f
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om saying that children universally are capable of grief like mine. But there are more than you ever heard of who die of grief in this island of ours. I will tell you a common case. The rules of Eton require that a boy on the _foundation_ should be there twelve years: he is superannuated at eighteen consequently he must come at six. Children torn away from mothers and sisters at that age not unfrequently die. I speak of what I know. The complaint is not entered by the registrar as grief; but _that_ it is. Grief of that sort and at that age has killed more than ever have been counted amongst its martyrs. Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the powers that shake man's heart: therefore it is that she doats upon grief. ""These ladies "" said I softly to myself on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was conversing ""these are the Sorrows; and they are three in number as the _Graces_ are three who dress man's life with beauty; the Parcæ are three who weave the dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom always with colours sad in part sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black; the _Furies_ are three who visit with retributions called on the other side of the grave offences that walk upon this; and once even the _Muses_ were but three who fit the harp the trumpet or the lute to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows all three of whom I know."" The last words I say _now_; but in Oxford I said--""one of whom I know and the others too surely I _shall_ know."" For already in my fervent youth I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark background of my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful sisters. These sisters--by what name shall we call them? If I say simply--""The Sorrows "" there will be a chance of mistaking the term; it might be understood of individual sorrow--separate cases of sorrow --whereas I want term expressing the mighty abstractions that incarnate themselves in all individual sufferings of man's heart; and I wish to have these abstractions presented as impersonations that is as clothed with human attributes of life and with functions pointing to flesh. Let us call them therefore _Our Ladies of Sorrow_. I know them thoroughly and have walked in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are of one mysterious household; and their paths are wide apart; but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw often conversing with Levana and sometimes about myself. Do they talk then? Oh no! Mighty phantoms like these disdain the infirmities of language. They may utter voices through the organs of man when they dwell in human hearts but amongst themselves is no voice nor sound--eternal silence reigns in _their_ kingdoms. _They_ spoke not as they talked with Levana. _They_ whispered not. _They_ sang not. Though oftentimes methought they _might_ have sung; for I upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by harp and timbrel by dulcimer and organ. Like God whose servants they are they utter their pleasure not by sounds that perish or by words that go astray but by signs in heaven--by changes on earth--by pulses in secret rivers--heraldries painted on darkness--and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. _They_ wheeled in mazes; _I_ spelled the steps. _They_ telegraphed from afar; _I_ read the signals. _They_ conspired together; and on the mirrors of darkness _my_ eye traced the plots. _Theirs_ were the symbols --_mine_ are the words. What is it the sisters are? What is it that they do? Let me describe their form and their presence; if form it were that still fluctuated in its outline; or presence it were that for ever advanced to the front or for ever receded amongst shades. The eldest of the three is named _Mater Lachrymarum_ Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves and moans calling for vanished faces. She stood in Rama when a voice was heard of lamentation--Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of Innocents and the little feet were stiffened for ever which heard at times as they tottered along floors overhead woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven. Her eyes are sweet and subtle wild and sleepy by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds; oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. And I knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon the winds when she heard the sobbing of litanies or the thundering of organs and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister the elder it is that carries keys more than Papal at her girdle which open every cottage and every palace. She to my knowledge sate all last summer by the bedside of the blind beggar him that so often and so gladly I talked with whose pious daughter eight years old with the sunny countenance resisted the temptations of play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send her a great reward. In the spring-time of the year and whilst yet her own spring was budding he recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns for ever over _her_; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is locked within his own; and still he wakens to a darkness that is _now_ within a second and a deeper darkness. This _Mater Lachrymarum_ also has been sitting all this winter of 1844-5 within the bedchamber of the Czar bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly and left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the power of her keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides a ghostly intruder into the chambers of sleepless men sleepless women sleepless children from Ganges to the Nile from Nile to Mississippi. And her because she is the first-born of her house and has the widest empire let us honour with the title of ""Madonna."" The second sister is called _Mater Suspiriorum_ Our Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And her eyes if they were ever seen would be neither sweet nor subtle; no man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her eyes; her head on which sits a dilapidated turban droops for ever; for ever fastens on the dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. Her sister Madonna is oftentimes stormy and frantic; raging in the highest against heaven; and demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never clamours never defies dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may but it is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate in ruined cities and when the sun has gone down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pariah of the Jew of the bondsman to the oar in Mediterranean galleys of the English criminal in Norfolk island blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far-off England of the baffled penitent reverting his eye for ever upon a solitary grave which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice on which altar no oblations can now be availing whether towards pardon that he might implore or towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid reproach as he points with one hand to the earth our general mother but for _him_ a stepmother as he points with the other hand to the Bible our general teacher but against _him_ sealed and sequestered;[13]--every woman sitting in darkness without love to shelter her head or hope to illumine her solitude because the heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections which God implanted in her womanly bosom having been stifled by social necessities now burn sullenly to waste like sepulchral lamps amongst the ancients;--every nun defrauded of her unreturning May-time by wicked kinsmen whom God will judge;--every captive in every dungeon;--all that are betrayed and all that are rejected; outcasts by traditionary law and children of _hereditary_ disgrace--all these walk with ""Our Lady of Sighs."" She also carries a key; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem and the houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks of man she finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that to the world carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer who yet secretly have received her mark upon their foreheads. But the third sister who is also the youngest----! Hush! whisper whilst we talk of _her_! Her kingdom is not large or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head turreted like that of Cybèle rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not; and her eyes rising so high _might_ be hidden by distance. But being what they are they cannot be hidden; through the treble veil of crape which she wears the fierce light of a blazing misery that rests not for matins or for vespers--for noon of day or noon of night--for ebbing or for flowing tide--may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She also is the mother of lunacies and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central convulsions; in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps fast or slow but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable motions bounding and with a tiger's leaps. She carries no key; for though coming rarely amongst men she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all. And _her_ name is _Mater Tenebrarum_--Our Lady of Darkness. These were the _Semnai Theai_ or Sublime Goddesses[14]--these were the _Eumenides_ or Gracious Ladies (so called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation)--of my Oxford dreams. MADONNA spoke. She spoke by her mysterious hand. Touching my head she beckoned to Our Lady of Sighs; and _what_ she spoke translated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man reads was this:-- ""Lo! here is he whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. Him I led astray him I beguiled and from heaven I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and through me it was by languishing desires that he worshipped the worm and prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness; saintly its corruption. Him this young idolater I have seasoned for thee dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou take him now to _thy_ heart and season him for our dreadful sister. And thou""--turning to the _Mater Tenebrarum_ she said--""wicked sister that temptest and hatest do thou take him from _her_. See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope--wither the relentings of love--scorch the fountains of tears: curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace--so shall he see the things that ought _not_ to be seen--sights that are abominable and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths sad truths grand truths fearful truths. So shall he rise again _before_ he dies. And so shall our commission be accomplished which from God we had--to plague his heart until we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit.""[15] THE APPARITION OF THE BROCKEN. Ascend with me on this dazzling Whitsunday the Brocken of North Germany. The dawn opened in cloudless beauty; it is a dawn of bridal June; but as the hours advance her youngest sister April that sometimes cares little for racing across both frontiers of May frets the bridal lady's sunny temper with sallies of wheeling and careering showers--flying and pursuing opening and closing hiding and restoring. On such a morning and reaching the summits of the forest-mountain about sunrise we shall have one chance the more for seeing the famous Spectre of the Brocken.[16] Who and what is he? He is a solitary apparition in the sense of loving solitude; else he is not always solitary in his personal manifestations but on proper occasions has been known to unmask a strength quite sufficient to alarm those who had been insulting him. Now in order to test the nature of this mysterious apparition we will try two or three experiments upon him. What we fear and with some reason is that as he lived so many ages with foul Pagan sorcerers and witnessed so many centuries of dark idolatries his heart may have been corrupted; and that even now his faith may be wavering or impure. We will try. Make the sign of the cross and observe whether he repeats it (as on Whitsunday [17] he surely ought to do.) Look! he _does_ repeat it; but the driving showers perplex the images and _that_ perhaps it is which gives him the air of one who acts reluctantly or evasively. Now again the sun shines more brightly and the showers have swept off like squadrons of cavalry to the rear. We will try him again. Pluck an anemone one of these many anemones which once was called the sorcerer's flower [18] and bore a part perhaps in his horrid ritual of fear; carry it to that stone which mimics the outline of a heathen altar and once was called the sorcerer's altar[18]; then bending your knee and raising your right hand to God say --""Father which art in heaven--this lovely anemone that once glorified the worship of fear has travelled back into thy fold; this altar which once reeked with bloody rites to Cortho has long been rebaptized into thy holy service. The darkness is gone--the cruelty is gone which the darkness bred; the moans have passed away which the victims uttered; the cloud has vanished which once sate continually upon their graves--cloud of protestation that ascended for ever to thy throne from the tears of the defenceless and the anger of the just. And lo! I thy servant with this dark phantom whom for one hour on this thy festival of Pentecost I make _my_ servant render thee united worship in this thy recovered temple."" Look now! the apparition plucks an anemone and places it on an altar; he also bends his knee he also raises his right hand to God. Dumb he is; but sometimes the dumb serve God acceptably. Yet still it occurs to you that perhaps on this high festival of the Christian Church he may be overruled by supernatural influence into confession of his homage having so often been made to bow and bend his knee at murderous rites. In a service of religion he may be timid. Let us try him therefore with an earthly passion where he will have no bias either from favour or from fear. If then once in childhood you suffered an affliction that was ineffable; If once when powerless to face such an enemy you were summoned to fight with the tiger that couches within the separations of the grave; in that case after the example of Judæa (on the Roman coins)--sitting under her palm-tree to weep but sitting with her head veiled--do you also veil your head. Many years are passed away since then; and you were a little ignorant thing at that time hardly above six years old; or perhaps (if you durst tell all the truth) not quite so much. But your heart was deeper than the Danube; and as was your love so was your grief. Many years are gone since that darkness settled on your head; many summers many winters; yet still its shadows wheel round upon you at intervals like these April showers upon this glory of bridal June. Therefore now on this dovelike morning of Pentecost do you veil your head like Judæa in memory of that transcendant woe and in testimony that indeed it surpassed all utterance of words. Immediately you see that the apparition of the Brocken veils _his_ head after the model of Judæa weeping under her palm-tree as if he also had a human heart and that _he_ also in childhood having suffered an affliction which was ineffable wished by these mute symbols to breathe a sigh towards heaven in memory of that affliction and by way of record though many a year after that it was indeed unutterable by words. This trial is decisive. You are now satisfied that the apparition is but a reflex of yourself; and in uttering your secret feelings to _him_ you make this phantom the dark symbolic mirror for reflecting to the daylight what else must be hidden for ever. Such a relation does the Dark Interpreter whom immediately the reader will learn to know as an intruder into my dreams bear to my own mind. He is originally a mere reflex of my inner nature. But as the apparition of the Brocken sometimes is disturbed by storms or by driving showers so as to dissemble his real origin in like manner the Interpreter sometimes swerves out of my orbit and mixes a little with alien natures. I do not always know him in these cases as my own parhelion. What he says generally is but that which _I_ have said in daylight and in meditation deep enough to sculpture itself on my heart. But sometimes as his face alters his words alter; and they do not always seem such as I have used or _could_ use. No man can account for all things that occur in dreams. Generally I believe this--that he is a faithful representative of myself; but he also is at times subject to the action of the god _Phantasus_ who rules in dreams. Hailstone choruses[19] besides and storms enter my dreams. Hailstones and fire that run along the ground sleet and blinding hurricanes revelations of glory insufferable pursued by volleying darkness--these are powers able to disturb any features that originally were but shadow and to send drifting the anchors of any vessel that rides upon deeps so treacherous as those of dreams. Understand however the Interpreter to bear generally the office of a tragic chorus at Athens. The Greek chorus is perhaps not quite understood by critics any more than the Dark Interpreter by myself. But the leading function of both must be supposed this--not to tell you any thing absolutely new _that_ was done by the actors in the drama; but to recall you to your own lurking thoughts--hidden for the moment or imperfectly developed and to place before you in immediate connexion with groups vanishing too quickly for any effort of meditation on your own part such commentaries prophetic or looking back pointing the moral or deciphering the mystery justifying Providence or mitigating the fierceness of anguish as would or might have occurred to your own meditative heart--had only time been allowed for its motions. The Interpreter is anchored and stationary in my dreams; but great storms and driving mists cause him to fluctuate uncertainly or even to retire altogether like his gloomy counterpart the shy Phantom of the Brocken--and to assume new features or strange features as in dreams always there is a power not contented with reproduction but which absolutely creates or transforms. This dark being the reader will see again in a further stage of my opium experience; and I warn him that he will not always be found sitting inside my dreams but at tines outside and in open daylight. FINALE TO PART I.--SAVANNAH-LA-MAR. God smote Savannah-la-Mar and in one night by earthquake removed her with all her towers standing and population sleeping from the steadfast foundations of the shore to the coral floors of ocean. And God said--""Pompeii did I bury and conceal from men through seventeen centuries: this city I will bury but not conceal. She shall be a monument to men of my mysterious anger; set in azure light through generations to come: for I will enshrine her in a crystal dome of my tropic seas."" This city therefore like a mighty galleon with all her apparel mounted streamers flying and tackling perfect seems floating along the noiseless depths of ocean: and oftentimes in glassy calms through the translucid atmosphere of water that now stretches like an air-woven awning above the silent encampment mariners from every clime look down into her courts and terraces count her gates and number the spires of her churches. She is one ample cemetery and _has_ been for many a year; but in the mighty calms that brood for weeks over tropic latitudes she fascinates the eye with a _Fata-Morgana_ revelation as of human life still subsisting in submarine asylums sacred from the storms that torment our upper air. Thither lured by the loveliness of cerulean depths by the peace of human dwellings privileged from molestation by the gleam of marble altars sleeping in everlasting sanctity oftentimes in dreams did I and the dark Interpreter cleave the watery veil that divided us from her streets. We looked into the belfries where the pendulous bells were waiting in vain for the summons which should awaken their marriage peals; together we touched the mighty organ keys that sang no _jubilates_ for the ear of Heaven--that sang no requiems for the ear of human sorrow; together we searched the silent nurseries where the children were all asleep and _had_ been asleep through five generations. ""They are waiting for the heavenly dawn "" whispered the Interpreter to himself; ""and when _that_ comes the bells and the organs will utter a _jubilate_ repeated by the echoes of Paradise."" Then turning to me he said--""This is sad: this is piteous: but less would not have sufficed for the purposes of God. Look here: put into a Roman clepsydra one hundred drops of water; let these run out as the sands in an hourglass; every drop measuring the hundredth part of a second so that each shall represent but the three-hundred-and-sixty-thousandth part of an hour. Now count the drops as they race along; and when the fiftieth of the hundred is passing behold! forty-nine are not because already they have perished; and fifty are not because they are yet to come. You see therefore how narrow how incalculably narrow is the true and actual present. Of that time which we call the present hardly a hundredth part but belongs either to a past which has fled or to a future which is still on the wing. It has perished or it is not born. It was or it is not. Yet even this approximation to the truth is _infinitely_ false. For again subdivide that solitary drop which only was found to represent the present into a lower series of similar fractions and the actual present which you arrest measures now but the thirty-sixth millionth of an hour; and so by infinite declensions the true and very present in which only we live and enjoy will vanish into a mote of a mote distinguishable only by a heavenly vision. Therefore the present which only man possesses offers less capacity for his footing than the slenderest film that ever spider twisted from her womb. Therefore also even this incalculable shadow from the narrowest pencil of moonlight is more transitory than geometry can measure or thought of angel can overtake. The time which _is_ contracts into a mathematic point; and even that point perishes a thousand times before we can utter its birth. All is finite in the present; and even that finite is infinite in its velocity of flight towards death. But in God there is nothing finite; but in God there is nothing transitory; but in God there _can_ be nothing that tends to death. Therefore it follows--that for God there can be no present. The future is the present of God; and to the future it is that he sacrifices the human present. Therefore it is that he works by earthquake. Therefore it is that he works by grief. Oh deep is the ploughing of earthquake! Oh deep "" [and his voice swelled like a _sanctus_ rising from the choir of a cathedral ]--""oh deep is the ploughing of grief! But oftentimes less would not suffice for the agriculture of God. Upon a night of earthquake he builds a thousand years of pleasant habitations for man. Upon the sorrow of an infant he raises oftentimes from human intellects glorious vintages that could not else have been. Less than these fierce ploughshares would not have stirred the stubborn soil. The one is needed for earth our planet--for earth itself as the dwelling-place of man. But the other is needed yet oftener for God's mightiest instrument; yes "" [and he looked solemnly at myself ] ""is needed for the mysterious children of the earth!"" END OF PART I. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 9: Some readers may be apt to suppose from all English experience that the word _exorcise_ means properly banishment to the shades. Not so. Citation _from_ the shades or sometimes the torturing coercion of mystic adjurations is more truly the primary sense.] [Footnote 10: ""_Laughter from the fields of ocean._""--Many readers will recall though at the moment of writing my own thoughts did _not_ recall the well-known passage in the Prometheus-- [Greek:----ôonliôn te chymapôn 'Anêzithmon Gelasma.] ""Oh multitudinous laughter of the ocean billows!"" It is not clear whether Æschylus contemplated the laughter as addressing the ear or the eye.] [Footnote 11: This it may be said requires a corresponding duration of experience; but as an argument for this mysterious power lurking in our nature I may remind the reader of one phenomenon open to the notice of every body viz. the tendency of very aged persons to throw back and concentrate the light of their memory upon scenes of early childhood as to which they recall many traces that had faded even to _themselves_ in middle life whilst they often forget altogether the whole intermediate stages of their experience. This shows that naturally and without violent agencies the human brain is by tendency a palimpsest.] [Footnote 12: ""_Glimmering._""--As I have never allowed myself to covet any man's ox nor his ass nor any thing that is his still less would it become a philosopher to covet other people's images or metaphors. Here therefore I restore to Mr Wordsworth this fine image of the revolving wheel and the glimmering spokes as applied by him to the flying successions of day and night. I borrowed it for one moment in order to point my own sentence; which being done the reader is witness that I now pay it back instantly by a note made for that sole purpose. On the same principle I often borrow their seals from young ladies--when closing my letters. Because there is sure to be some tender sentiment upon them about ""memory "" or ""hope "" or ""roses "" or ""reunion:"" and my correspondent must be a sad brute who is not touched by the eloquence of the seal even if his taste is so bad that he remains deaf to mine.] [Footnote 13: This the reader will be aware applies chiefly to the cotton and tobacco States of North America; but not to them only: on which account I have not scrupled to figure the sun which looks down upon slavery as _tropical_--no matter if strictly within the tropics or simply so near to them as to produce a similar climate.] [Footnote 14: ""_Sublime Goddesses._""--The word [Greek: semnos] is usually rendered _venerable_ in dictionaries; not a very flattering epithet for females. But by weighing a number of passages in which the word is used pointedly I am disposed to think that it comes nearest to our idea of the _sublime_; as near as a Greek word _could_ come.] [Footnote 15: The reader who wishes at all to understand the course of these Confessions ought not to pass over this dream-legend. There is no great wonder that a vision which occupied my waking thoughts in those years should re-appear in my dreams. It was in fact a legend recurring in sleep most of which I had myself silently written or sculptured in my daylight reveries. But its importance to the present Confessions is this--that it rehearses or prefigures their course. This FIRST part belongs to Madonna. The THIRD belongs to the ""Mater Suspiriorum "" and will be entitled _The Pariah Worlds_. The FOURTH which terminates the work belongs to the ""Mater Tenebrarum "" and will be entitled _The Kingdom of Darkness_. As to the SECOND it is an interpolation requisite to the effect of the others; and will be explained in its proper place.] [Footnote 16: ""_Spectre of the Brocken._""--This very striking phenomenon has been continually described by writers both German and English for the last fifty years. Many readers however will not have met with these descriptions: and on _their_ account I add a few words in explanation; referring them for the best scientific comment on the case to Sir David Brewster's ""Natural Magic."" The spectre takes the shape of a human figure or if the visitors are more than one then the spectres multiply; they arrange themselves on the blue ground of the sky or the dark ground of any clouds that may be in the right quarter or perhaps they are strongly relieved against a curtain of rock at a distance of some miles and always exhibiting gigantic proportions. At first from the distance and the colossal size every spectator supposes the appearance to be quite independent of himself. But very soon he is surprised to observe his own motions and gestures mimicked; and wakens to the conviction that the phantom is but a dilated reflection of himself. This Titan amongst the apparitions of earth is exceedingly capricious vanishing abruptly for reasons best known to himself and more coy in coming forward than the Lady Echo of Ovid. One reason why he is seen so seldom must be ascribed to the concurrence of conditions under which only the phenomenon can be manifested: the sun must be near to the horizon (which of itself implies a time of day inconvenient to a person starting from a station as distant as Elbingerode;) the spectator must have his back to the sun; and the air must contain some vapour--but _partially_ distributed. Coleridge ascended the Brocken on the Whitsunday of 1799 with a party of English students from Goettingen but failed to see the phantom; afterwards in England (and under the same three conditions) he saw a much rarer phenomenon which he described in the following eight lines. I give them from a corrected copy: (the apostrophe in the beginning must be understood as addressed to an ideal conception):-- ""And art thou nothing? Such thou art as when The woodman winding westward up the glen At wintry dawn when o'er the sheep-track's maze The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze Sees full before him gliding without tread An image with a glory round its head: This shade he worships for its golden hues And _makes_ (not knowing) that which he pursues.""] [Footnote 17: ""_On Whitsunday._""--It is singular and perhaps owing to the temperature and weather likely to prevail in that early part of summer that more appearances of the spectre have been witnessed on Whitsunday than on any other day.] [Footnote 18: ""_The sorcerer's flower_ "" and ""_the sorcerer's altar_.""--These are names still clinging to the anemone of the Brocken and to an altar-shaped fragment of granite near one of the summits; and it is not doubted that they both connect themselves through links of ancient tradition with the gloomy realities of Paganism when the whole Hartz and the Brocken formed for a very long time the last asylum to a ferocious but perishing idolatry.] [Footnote 19: ""_Hailstone choruses._""--I need not tell any lover of Handel that his oratorio of ""Israel in Egypt"" contains a chorus familiarly known by this name. The words are--""And he gave them hailstones for rain; fire mingled with the hail ran along upon the ground.""] HANNIBAL.[20] Two thousand one hundred years ago[21] a boy was born at Carthage whose name and exploits have rendered his country immortal. His character stands forth with unparalleled lustre even on the bright pages of ancient story. It is hard to say whether he was greater as a patriot statesman or a general. Invincible in determination inexhaustible in resources fertile in stratagem patient of fatigue cautious in council bold in action he possessed also that singleness of purpose that unity of object which more than all is the foundation of great achievements. Love of his country was his one and ruling principle. Hatred of its enemies his lasting and indelible passion. To these objects he devoted throughout life his great capacity: for this he lived for this he died. From the time that he swore hatred to the Romans while yet a boy on the altars of Carthage he never ceased to watch their designs to contend with their forces to resis
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their ambition. Alone of all his countrymen he measured the extent of the danger with which his fatherland was threatened by the progress of their power. Alone he stood forth with the strength of a giant to combat it. But for the shameful desertion of his victorious army by the jealousy of the rival faction at Carthage he would have crushed the power of the legions and given to Carthage not Rome the empire of the world. As it was he brought them to the brink of ruin and achieved triumphs over their armies greater than all other nations put together. After he was overthrown it was comparatively an easy task to conquer the world. For this he received in life exile disgrace and death: for this he has since obtained immortality. At his name the heart of the patriot has thrilled through every subsequent age. To illustrate his virtues genius and learning have striven in every succeeding country; and the greatest praise which the world can yet bestow on warriors is to compare them to Hannibal. No name even in the majestic annals of Roman victories stands forth with lustre equal to that of the Carthaginian hero. They were made by their countrymen but his countrymen were made by him. Scipio Pompey Cæsar himself did not evince equal capacity: they had lesser difficulties to contend with; they owed more to the support of others and did not do so much by the strength of their individual arm by the energy of their individual will. The institutions the laws the ideas the manners the very language of the Romans were made for conquest: they sprang up from the earth a race of armed men. Virtue with them was derived from ""manly valour:"" an army was designated by a word which signified ""exercised:""[22] their generals were borne aloft to conquest on the shields of the legions. Such was the spirit of the soldiers that they were fairly compelled to victory by the presence which urged them on; such the determination of the people that the armies were pressed forward to the conquest of the world as by a supernatural power. The purposes of Providence mysterious at the time apparent afterwards never were more clearly evinced than in the peculiar impress communicated to the Roman institutions. But the Carthaginians were a race not of warriors but of colonists. They rose to greatness not by their military spirit but by their commercial prosperity; their outposts were not the fortified camp but the smiling seaport. Extending as far as the waters of the Mediterranean roll they spread inwards from the sea-coast not outwards from the camp; the navy was the arm of their strength not their land forces. Their institutions habits national spirit and government were all adapted to the extension of commerce to the growth of manufactures to the spread of a colonial empire. What then must have been the capacity of the man who could by his single efforts alter the character of a whole people; chain victory at land to the standards of a maritime republic; and bow down to the earth on their own territory that rival power whose legions erelong triumphed over the armies of all the military monarchies of the world? The auxiliaries formed a considerable part in point of numbers of the Roman forces; but the strength of the legions was to be found in the Roman citizens. It was that indomitable body of men ever flowing out yet ever full animated with fiery passions but directed by consummate prudence panting for rapine and conquest but patient of all the toils by which they were to be attained which constituted the strength of the armies which conquered the world. But the Carthaginians had no body of citizens capable of forming such a force. They were nothing but a great and powerful seaport town with its adjacent villas spreading along the coast of Africa. The people of Dido had not like those of Romulus established off-shoots in the interior. No three-and-thirty colonies awaited the commands of the senate of Carthage as they did of the consuls in the time of Fabius to recruit the national armies. Twenty thousand native citizens was all at its last extremity at Zama that this mighty republic which had so nearly achieved the conquest of the Capitol could fit out to defend their country. The strength of the Punic armies consisted in what was merely an accessory to the Roman the auxiliaries. It was the Numidian horse the Balearic slingers the Spanish infantry the Gaulish broadswords which proved so formidable in the ranks of Hannibal. It was literally as Livy says a ""colluvies omnium gentium "" which rolled down from the Alps under his direction to overwhelm the Romans on their own hearths. Twenty different languages Polybius tells us were not unfrequently spoken at the same time in the Carthaginian camp. What then must have been the capacity of the general who could still the jealousies and overcome the animosities and give unity to the operations of a vast army composed of so many different tribes and people and mould them all into so perfect a form that for fifteen years that he remained in Italy after the first great defeats the consuls never once ventured to measure their strength with him in a pitched battle? If there is any thing more astonishing than another in the history of the Roman Republic it is the unconquerable spirit the persevering energy the invincible determination with which under every calamity and often in the very extremity of adverse fortune they combined to struggle for the superiority and at length attained it--not so much by conquering as by wearing out their adversaries. In no period of their long and glorious annals was this transcendent quality more strikingly evinced than in the second Punic War when after the battle of Cannæ Capua the second city of Italy yielded to the influence of Hannibal and nearly a half of the Roman colonies worn out by endless exactions in men and money refused to send any further succours. The heroic spirit the Roman senate then evinced the extraordinary sacrifices they made may without exaggeration be pronounced without parallel in the annals of mankind if we reflect on the length of time during which these sacrifices were required. But while this invincible spirit augments our admiration of the Roman character and makes us feel that they indeed deserved that mighty dominion which they afterwards attained it takes much from the merit of their individual commanders. It was almost impossible to avoid ultimate success with such armies to lead and so heroic a people to sustain the efforts and furnish the muniments of war. But the case was very different at Carthage. So vehement was the spirit of party which had seized upon its inhabitants in consequence of the great accession of democratic power which had been conceded fatally for the state as Polybius tells us a short time before to the people that Hannibal could rely on no assistance on his own government. Though he brought the Romans to the very brink of ruin and placed final victory within the grasp as it were of his country yet they would not put out their hand to snatch it. They were more jealous of him than afraid of their enemies. Though he descended to the southern extremity of Italy and drew near to Sicily in order to obtain from the African shores the necessary succours to recruit his armies wasted by the very number of his victories; and though they had during great part of the time the superiority at sea--yet he received no supplies of men or money from home during the fifteen years he carried on the war in Italy with the exception of the army which his brother Hamilcar raised in Spain and led across the Pyrenees and the Alps to perish on the Metaurus. What he did he did by himself and by his own unaided efforts. It was the contributions levied on the cities he conquered which furnished his supplies; it was the troops who flocked to his standard from the provinces he wrested from the Romans which filled up the chasms in the ranks he led from Saguntum. Not more than twenty-six thousand men descended with him from the Alps; of forty-eight thousand who fought at Cannæ thirty thousand were Gaulish auxiliaries. There is no example recorded in history of a general doing things so great with means so small and support from home so inconsiderable. Every great commander of whom we read in military annals possessed in a considerable degree the art of securing the affections and inspiring the confidence of his soldiers. Alexander the Great Cæsar Charles XII. Napoleon exercised this ascendancy in the highest degree. The anecdotes preserved in the pages of Plutarch and which every schoolboy knows by heart prove this beyond a doubt of the heroes of the ancient world; the annals of the last century and our own times demonstrate that their mantle had descended to the Swedish and French heroes. The secret of this marvellous power is always to be found in one mental quality. It is magnanimity which entrances the soldier's heart. The rudest breasts are accessible to emotion from the display of generosity self-denial and loftiness of purpose in their commanders. When Alexander in the deserts of Arabia on his return from India poured the untasted water on the sand he assuaged the thirst of a whole army; when Cæsar addressed the Tenth Legion in mutiny by the title of ""Quirites "" the very word which told them they were no longer the comrades of their general subdued every heart; when Charles XII. on his officers declaring themselves unable to undergo the fatigue of further watching desired them to retire to rest for he would go the rounds himself he silenced every murmur in his army; when Napoleon yielded up his carriages to the wounded in the Russian retreat or drew aside his suite to salute uncovered the Austrian wounded conveyed from Austerlitz and said ""Honour to the brave in misfortune!"" he struck a chord which vibrated in every heart of his vast array. No general ancient or modern possessed this key to the generous affections in a higher degree than Hannibal; and none ever stood so much or so long in need of its aid. In truth it was the secret of his success; the magic power which so long held together his multifarious array. We have few anecdotes indicating this ascendancy; for the historians of the Romans or their subjects the Greeks were in no hurry to collect traits to illustrate the character of their enemy. But decisive evidence of its existence and almost supernatural power is to be found in the fact that without the aid of reinforcements and scarce any remittances from Carthage he maintained the war in the heart of Italy with mercenary troops collected from every country of the earth against the native soldiers of the bravest and most warlike people on the earth. We read of no mutinies or disobedience of orders among his followers. It were hard to say whether the fiery Numidian the proud and desultory Spaniard the brave but inconstant Gaul or the covetous Balearic was most docile to his direction or obedient to his will. Great indeed must have been the ascendency acquired by one man over such various and opposite races of men usually the prey of such jealousies and divisions; and whom the most powerful coalition in general finds so much difficulty in retaining in subjection. Of Hannibal's political wisdom and far-seeing sagacity ancient history is full. Alone of all his contemporaries he clearly and from his very infancy perceived the extent of the danger which threatened his country from the insatiable ambition and growing power of the Romans; alone he pointed out the only mode in which it could be successfully combated. He was at once the Burke the Pitt and the Wellington of his country. Beyond all doubt if his advice had been followed and his enterprises duly supported Carthage would have been victorious in the second Punic War. It was because his countrymen were not animated with his heroic spirit nor inspired with his prophetic foresight that they failed. They were looking after gain or actuated by selfish ambition while he was straining every nerve to avert danger. When he swore hatred to the Roman on the altar at nine years of age he imbibed a principle which the judgment of his maturer years told him was the only means of saving his country. To the prosecution of this object he devoted his life. From his first entrance into public duty till his last hour when he swallowed poison to avoid being delivered up to the Romans he never ceased to combat their ambition with all the powers of his gigantic intellect. If history had preserved no other proof of his profound political discernment it would be sufficiently established by the memorable words he addressed to the senate of Carthage on the probable fate of Rome:--""Nulla magna civitas diu quiescere potest. Si fores hostem non habet domi invenit; ut prævalida corpora ab externis causis tutæ videntur sed suis ipsa viribus conficiuntur. Tantum nimirum ex publicis malis sentimus quantum ad res privatas attinet nec in eis quidquam acrius quàm pecuniæ damnum stimulat."" If anyone doubts the truth and profound wisdom of these remarks let him reflect on the exact demonstration of these truths which was afforded two thousand years after in the British empire. ""Si monumentum quæris circumspice."" He constantly affirmed that it was in Italy alone that Rome was vulnerable and that by striking hard and often there she might be conquered. He did not despair of effecting the deliverance of the world by a conflict on their own shores even after the battle of Zama had to all appearance decisively settled the conflict in favour of the Capitol and nothing remained to combat the legions but the unwarlike soldiers of the Eastern monarch. His own campaigns demonstrate that he was right: the Gauls and the Carthaginians in different ages brought the Romans to the brink of ruin; but it was by victories on the Tiber that Brennus and Hannibal penetrated to their gates. Nor is it difficult to see to what cause this comparative weakness at home of so great a military power was owing. Rome was not merely a powerful state but the head of a great military confederacy; the resources which partly by force partly by inclination and the natural appetite of mankind for victory and plunder were ranged on her side were in great part derived from foreign states. When she carried the war into foreign states this formidable mass of auxiliaries doubled the strength of her legions; when she was assailed at home one half of them were lost or appeared in the ranks of her enemies. The same cause appeared at a subsequent period in the campaigns of Napoleon: his armies were innumerable his force irresistible as long as he headed the forced confederacy of western Europe and he invaded Russia with five hundred thousand men; but when the disaster of Moscow and the resurrection of Germany brought the Russians into France the boasted strength of the empire disappeared its allies passed over to the other side and the mighty conqueror was reduced to a painful defensive with fifty thousand men on the plains of Champagne. The Roman historians affirm that these great military virtues were balanced by corresponding vices. Every scholar knows the inimitable description of his character drawn by Livy. ""Has tantas viri virtutes ingentia vitia æquabant:--inhumana crudelitas; perfidia plusquam Punica; nihil veri nihil sancti; nullus deoram metus nullum jusjurandum nulla religio."" This however was his character as drawn by his enemies; and by enemies who had suffered so much from his ability that they were incapable of forming a correct judgment on the subject. But the truth of modern history has dispelled the illusion and gathered facts sufficient even from their prejudiced sources to demonstrate that the moral virtues of Hannibal equalled his intellectual capacity. Certain it is by their own admission that his generosity on several important occasions afforded a example which the Romans would have done well to imitate but which they shewed themselves incapable of following. It was the judicious clemency which he showed to the allies which at length won over so many of the Italian states to his side; and if this is to be ascribed to policy what are we to say to the chivalrous courtesy which prompted him to send back the dead body of his inveterate enemy Marcellus surprised and slain by his Numidian horsemen to obtain the honours of sepulture from his countrymen? The Romans complained of his cruelty; but men feel cruelty keenly when it is exercised on themselves; and there are no instances recorded of his exceeding the established and universal customs ruthless as they were of ancient warfare. Certain it is that nothing he ever did equalled the savage and cold-blooded atrocity with which they tortured and massacred the citizens of Capua and Syracuse when they were again subdued by their arms. Hannibal's disposition appears to have been gay and cheerful; there are many instances recorded of his indulgence in presence of danger in a gaiety of temper more akin to that of Henry IV. than the usual stern determination of ancient warriors. On one memorable occasion when his army was in danger and the spirit of his troops unusually depressed he indulged in mirth and jests to such an extent in his tent that he set his whole officers in a roar of laughter; and these joyful sounds heard by the soldiers without restored confidence to the army from the belief that no anxious thoughts clouded the brows of their chiefs. Hannibal it is known preserved a diary and wrote a history of his campaigns which was extant at a very late period in the ancient world. What an inestimable treasure would the journal of the private thoughts of such a man have been! Modern times have no more irreparable loss to mourn. The just pride and elegant flattery of the French historians has often led them to compare Napoleon's passage of the Great St Bernard to Hannibal's passage of the Pennine Alps: but without detracting from the well-earned fame of the French general it may safely be affirmed that his achievement will bear no sort of comparison with that of the Carthaginian hero. When Napoleon began the ascent of the Alps from Martigny on the shores of the Rhone above the lake of Geneva he found the passage of the mountains cleared by the incessant transit of two thousand years. The road impracticable for carriages was very good for horsemen and foot passengers and was daily traversed by great numbers of both in every season of the year. Comfortable villages on the ascent and the descent afforded easy accommodation to the wearied soldiers both by night and by day; the ample stores of the monks at the summit and the provident foresight of the French generals had provided a meal to every man and horse that passed. No hostile troops opposed their passage: the guns were drawn up in sledges made of hollowed firs; and in four days from the time that they began the ascent from the banks of the Rhone the French troops without losing a man stood on the Doria Baltea the increasing waters of which flowed towards the Po amidst the gardens and vineyards and under the sun of Italy. But the case was very different when Hannibal crossed from the shores of the Durance to the banks of the Po. The mountain sides not yet cleared by centuries of laborious industry presented a continual forest furrowed at every hollow by headlong Alpine torrents; bridges there were none to cross these perpetually recurring obstacles; provisions scanty at all times in those elevated solitudes were then nowhere to be found having been hid by the affrighted inhabitants on the approach of the invaders; and a powerful army of mountaineers occupied the entrance of the defiles defended with desperate valour the gates of their country and when dispersed by the superior discipline and arms of Hannibal's soldiers still beset the ridges above their line of march and harassed his troops by continual hostility. When the woody region was passed and the vanguard emerged into the open mountain pastures which lead to the verge of perpetual snow fresh difficulties awaited them. The turf from the gliding down of newly fallen snow on those steep declivities was so slippery that it was often scarcely possible for the men to keep their feet; the beasts of burden lost their footing at every step and rolled down in great numbers into the abysses beneath; the elephants became restive amidst privations and a climate to which they were totally unaccustomed; and the strength of the soldiers worn out with incessant marching and fighting began to sink before the continued toil of the ascent. Horrors formidable to all but in an especial manner terrible to African soldiers awaited them at the summit. It was now the end of October; winter in all its severity had already set in on those lofty solitudes; the mountain sides silent and melancholy even at the height of summer when enamelled with flowers and dotted with flocks presented then an unbroken sheet of snow; the blue lakes which are interspersed over the level valley at their feet were frozen over and undistinguishable from the rest of the dreary expanse and a boundless mass of snowy peaks arose on all sides presenting apparently an impassable barrier to their further progress. But it was then that the greatness of Hannibal shone forth in all its lustre. ""That great general "" says Arnold ""who felt that he now stood victorious on the ramparts of Italy and that the torrent which rolled before him was carrying its waters to the rich plains of Cisalpine Gaul endeavoured to kindle his soldiers with his own spirit of hope. He called them together; he pointed out the valley beneath to which the descent seemed the work of a moment. 'That valley ' he said 'is Italy; it leads us to the country of our friends the Gauls and yonder is our way to Rome!' His eyes were eagerly fixed on that point of the horizon and as he gazed the distance between seemed to vanish till he could almost fancy that he was crossing the Tiber and assailing the Capitol[23]."" Such were the difficulties of the passage and the descent on the other side that Hannibal lost thirty-three thousand men from the time he left the Pyrenees till he entered the plains of Northern Italy; and he arrived on the Po with only twelve thousand Africans eight thousand Spanish infantry and six thousand horse. Napoleon's army which fought at Marengo was only twenty-nine thousand but he had lost no men in the passage of the Alps and only a few in the difficult passage across the precipices of Mont Albaredo opposite the fort of Bard in the valley of the Doria Baltea. It is ridiculous after this to compare the passages of the Alps by Napoleon to their crossing by Hannibal. The French emperor has many other titles too well founded to warrant a comparison with the Carthaginian hero to render it necessary to recur to one which is obviously chimerical. It is a question which has divided the learned since the revival of letters by what pass Hannibal crossed the Alps. The general opinion of those who have studied the subject inclines to the opinion that he crossed by the Little St Bernard; and to this opinion Arnold inclines. He admits however with his usual candour that ""in some respects also Mont Cenis suits the description of the march better than any other pass[24]."" After having visited and traversed on foot both passes the author of this paper has no hesitation in expressing his decided conviction that he passed by Mont Cenis. His reasons for this opinion are these:--1. It is mentioned by Polybius that Hannibal reached the summit of the Alps on the _ninth_ day after he had left the plains of Dauphiné. This period coincides well with what might have then been required to ascend as the country was on the neighbourhood of Grenoble or Echelles; while the ascent to the summit of the Little St Bernard would not require more than half the time. 2. The narrow defile of St Jean de Maurienne which leads from the plain of Montmelian to the foot of Mont Cenis corresponds much more closely with the description given both in Livy[25] and Polybius[26] of that in which the first serious engagement took place between Hannibal and the Mountaineers two days after they had left the plains of Dauphiné than the comparatively open valley which leads to the foot of the Little St Bernard. 3. From the summit of the Little St Bernard you can see nothing of Italy nor any thing approaching to it; a confused sea of mountains alone meets the eye on every side. Whereas from the southern front of the summit of Mont Cenis _not only the plains of Piedmont are distinctly visible_ at the opening of the lower end of the valley of Susa which lies at your feet _but the Appenines beyond them can be seen_. To settle this important point the author made a sketch of both on the spot on the 24th October the very time of Hannibal's passage which is still in his possession. How precisely does this coincide with the emphatic words of Hannibal as recorded by Polybius showing to them the plains around the Po ([Greek: ""ta peri ton Padon pedia ""]) and reminding them of the good disposition of the Gauls who dwelt there he further showed them the situation of Rome itself.[27] The Appenines beyond the plain of Piedmont seen from Mont Cenis might correctly be taken as the direction at least where Rome lay. 4. The steep and rocky declivity by which the _old_ road formerly descended to the valley of Susa and where the travellers descended in sledges till Napoleon's magnificent _chaussée_ was formed which makes great circuit to the westward corresponds perfectly to the famous places mentioned both by Livy and Polybius where the path had been torn away by a recent avalanche and the fabulous story of the vinegar was placed. This place in Mont Cenis is immediately below the summit of the pass and may now be seen furrowed by a roaring torrent amidst dark ledges of rock; the corresponding chasm on the southern side of the Little St Bernard is _below_ the reach of avalanches.[28] 5. On the summit of Mont Cenis is still to be seen a ""_white_ rock"" called the ""Roche Blanche "" which answers to the [Greek: ""leuchopetron ""] mentioned by Polybius on the summit of the Alps which Hannibal crossed whereas there is nothing like it on the Little St Bernard at least of such magnitude as to have formed a place of night refuge to Hannibal. 6. What is perhaps most important of all it is expressly mentioned by Polybius that ""_in one day's time_ the chasm in the mountain sides was repaired so that there was room for the horses and beasts of burden to descend. They were immediately conducted down _and having gained_ the plains were sent away to pasture in places where no snow had fallen. * * * * * Hannibal then descended last with all the army and thus on the _third day_ gained the plains[29]."" This description of the distances tallies perfectly with the passage by Mont Cenis for it is only half a day's journey to descend from the summit of that pass to Susa at the head of the wide and open valley of the same name where ample pasturage is to be found; and short day's journey more brings the traveller to the plain of Piedmont. But it is utterly irreconcilable with the idea that the Carthaginians passed by the Little St Bernard; for from its summit to the plains of Ivrea is four days' hard marching for an army through the narrow valley of Aosta destitute for the most part of forage. 7. This valley of Aosta is very rocky and narrow and affords many positions where a handful of men can arrest an army; in one of which that of Bard a small Austrian garrison stopped Napoleon for twenty-four hours; yet Polybius and Livy concur in stating that after he descended the mountains the Carthaginians experienced no molestation on their way to the Insubrians their allies on the banks of the Po. This is inexplicable if they were struggling for three days through the narrow and rocky defiles of the valley of Aosta but perfectly intelligible if they were traversing in half a day the broad and open valley of Susa offering no facilities to the attacks of the mountaineers. But if Napoleon's passage of the St Bernard can never be compared to that of Hannibal over Mont Cenis it is impossible to deny that there is a marked and striking similarity in some respects between the career of the two heroes. Both rose to eminence for the first time by the lustre of their Italian campaigns; the most brilliant strokes of both were delivered almost on the same ground immediately after having surmounted the Alps; both headed the forces of the democratic party in the country whose warriors they led and were aided by it in those which they conquered; both had a thorough aversion for that party in their hearts; both continued by their single genius for nineteen years in hostility against a host of enemies; both were overthrown at last in a single battle on a distant shore far from the scene of their former triumphs; both were driven into exile by the hatred or apprehensions of their enemies; both after having reached the summit of glory died alone and unbefriended in a distant land; both have left names immortal in the rolls of fame. It is no wonder that such striking similarities should have forcibly struck the imaginations of men in every land. It is remarkable that many of the greatest patriots who ever existed have died in exile after having rendered inestimable services to their country by which they were persecuted or betrayed. Themistocles Hannibal Scipio Africanus Belisarius Napoleon belong to this bright band. It is not difficult to see that the cause of it is to be found in their very greatness itself. They were too powerful to be tolerated by their countrymen: they were too formidable to be endured by their enemies. It is hard to say whether Hannibal's military capacity appeared most strongly in strategy that is the general direction of a campaign or in tactics that is the management of troops on the field of battle. In both he was unrivalled in ancient times. His wonderful ability in strategy and in preparing his multifarious forces for the grand enterprise for which they were destined appears from the very outset of his military career. Devoted to the destruction of Rome from his youth upwards and steady in the determination to over-throw that inveterate enemy to his country he had yet the difficult and apparently hopeless task of accomplishing this by land warfare when Carthage had no native born army in the slightest degree commensurate to its execution. To form such an army was his first object and this he accomplished by his successes in Spain before the second Punic War began. In the interval between the first and the second of those dire contests he was assiduously employed in conquering organizing and disciplining the forces by which his great object was to be effected; and such was his capacity that notwithstanding the untoward issue of the first Punic War the Carthaginians gradually regained the ascendant in the Peninsula while his manners were so winning that erelong he attracted all its military strength to his standard. The Roman influence was limited to the narrow and broken territory which lies between the Ebro and the Pyrenees and forms the modern province of Catalonia while all the rest of the Peninsula obeyed the orders of Hannibal. It was in Spain that he formed that great military force which so soon after shook to its foundation the solid fabric of Roman power; he there erected the platform on which his engines of assault were placed. When he began his triumphant march from Saguntum to attempt the conquest of Rome after surmounting both the Pyrenees and the Alps he was at the head of a splendid army of ninety thousand foot and twelve thousand horse with forty elephants; the most powerful array if the quality and discipline of the troops is taken into account which Europe had yet seen. Of this great force not more than a fourth part were Carthaginian soldiers; so mightily had the military force of Hannibal increased with the prosperous issue of his Peninsular campaigns. Had the Carthaginian general succeeded in reaching the banks of the Tiber with the half even of this force the fate of Rome was sealed and the glories of the Capitol were extinguished for ever. But he had innumerable difficulties to contend with--physical warlike and moral--before he reached the Italian plains. His march from the Ebro to the Po was a continued combat. The mountain tribes of Catalonia celebrated in every age for their obstinate and persisting hostility were then firm in the Roman interest. The mountain strength of the Pyrenees; the rapid currents of the Rhone; t
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e cruel warfare and yet more dangerous peace of the Gauls; the desperate valour of the inhabitants of the Alps; the inclemency of the weather on their snowy summits all required to be overcome and they thinned his ranks more than all the swords of the legions. Instead of ninety thousand foot and twelve thousand horse with which he broke up from Saguntum he brought only twenty thousand infantry and six thousand horse to the fields of Piedmont. No less than seventy-six thousand men had been lost or left to preserve the communications since they left the Valencian plains. So slender was the force with which this great commander commenced on its own territory the conflict with a power which ere three years had elapsed carried on the war with fourteen legions numbering an hundred and seventy thousand combatants between the auxiliaries and Roman soldiers. It is in the magnitude of this disproportion and the extremely small amount of the reinforcement which he received from home during the next fifteen years that the war lasted that the decisive proof of the marvellous capacity of the Carthaginian general is to be found. It is a similar disproportion which has marked the campaigns of Napoleon in Italy in 1796 and in France in 1814 with immortality. The first necessity was to augment his numbers and fill up the wide chasm in his ranks by fresh enrolments in the territory in which he had entered. The warlike habits and predatory dispositions of the Cisalpine Gauls afforded the means of obtaining this necessary succour. The victory over the Roman horse on the Ticino when the superiority of the Numidian cavalry was first decisively displayed had an immediate effect in bringing a crowd of Gaulish recruits to his standard. The Carthaginian general was careful in his first engagement to hazard only his cavalry in which arm he was certain of his superiority. The battle of the Trebia which followed and which first broke the strength of the legions excited an unbounded ferment in Lombardy and brought the Gaulish youths in crowds to follow the career of plunder and revenge under his victorious standards. Recruits speedily were not awanting; the only difficulty was to select from the crowds which presented themselves for enrolment. It was like the resurrection of Prussia in 1813 against the tyrannic domination of the French emperor. Winter was spent in organizing these rude auxiliaries and reducing them to something like military discipline; and so effective was their co-operation and so numerous the reinforcements which their zeal brought to his standard that in the following spring he crossed the Apennines and traversed the marshes of Volterra at the head of nearly fifty thousand men of whom above one half were Gaulish recruits. And when the Consul Flaminius attempted to stop him on the margin of the Thrasymene Lake where the stream still called ""_Sanguinetto_"" murmurs among the old oaks the children of the soil the total defeat of his army with the loss of thirty thousand men lost the Romans the whole north of Italy and carried consternation to the gates of the Capitol. After so great a victory within a few days' march of the Tiber and no considerable army intervening to arrest the advance of the conqueror it may seem extraordinary that Hannibal did not advance straight to the capital and terminate the war by its destruction: still more inexplicable does it at first sight appear that instead of doing so he should have turned to the left and passing Rome moved into the south of Italy; thus losing in a great measure his communication with Lombardy which had hitherto proved so invaluable a nursery for his army. But it was in these very movements more perhaps than in any others of his life that the wisdom and judgment of this great general's conduct were conspicuous. The chief difficulty he had now to contend with in Italy was the reduction of its fortified towns. The innumerable wars which had so long prevailed in the southern parts of the Peninsula between the Etruscans the Romans and the Samnites had studded the declivities of the Apennines with castles and fortified burghs the walls of which in great part still remain and constitute not the least of the many interesting objects which Italy presents to the traveller. Towards the reduction of those cities the tumultuary array of the Gauls numerous and efficient as they were in the field could not afford any assistance. Engines for assault or the reduction of walls they had none; funds for the maintenance of a protracted methodical warfare were not to be looked for in their savage and half-cultivated plains. The communication with Spain by the circuitous route of the Pyrenees and Alps had been found by dear-bought experience to be difficult in the extreme. It could only be opened again by an army nearly as powerful as that which had first penetrated through it under the guidance of his energetic will. It was in the south of the Peninsula amidst its opulent cities and long-established civilization that the resources for a war of sieges could alone be looked for. It was there too that the most direct the shortest and in fact the only secure channel of communication with Carthage could be opened: to a Punic as to a British army the true base of operations is the sea the worst possible base for that of any other military power. Beyond all question it was to the judicious choice of the south of Italy as his stronghold and the combined skill and policy by which he contrived to detach a large part of its rich republics with their harbours and places of strength from the Roman alliance that the subsequent protraction of the war for fifteen years is to be ascribed. Such however was the terror of the Roman arms and the influence acquired by the combined steadiness and severity of their rule that this irruption into the south of Italy was not at first attended with the desired effect. In vain he had in all preceding engagements sent back all the prisoners from the allies without any ransom and treated them in the most generous manner; in vain in all preceding marches he had cautiously abstained from pillaging or laying waste their lands. Still the Roman influence was predominant. Not one state in alliance had revolted: not one Roman colony had failed in its duty to the parent state. The Gauls alone who now formed half his army had repaired in crowds to his standard since he had descended from the Alps. A long season of inactivity followed during which the Romans were too prudent to hazard a conflict with Hannibal in the field and he was too weak in siege artillery to attempt the reduction of any of their fortified cities. But the time was not lost by that indefatigable commander and the following passage from Arnold will both show how it was employed and serve as a fair specimen of the style of that powerful and lamented writer:-- ""Never was Hannibal's genius more displayed than during this long period of inactivity. More than half of his army consisted of Gauls of all barbarians the most impatient and uncertain in their humour whose fidelity it was said could only be secured by an ever open hand; no man was their friend any longer than he could gorge them with pay or plunder. Those of his soldiers who were not Gauls were either Spaniards or Africans; the Spaniards were the newly conquered subjects of Carthage strangers to her race and language and accustomed to divide their lives between actual battle and the most listless bodily indolence; so that when one of their tribes first saw the habits of a Roman camp and observed the centurions walking up and down before the prætorium for exercise the Spaniards thought them mad and ran up to guide them to their tents thinking that he who was not fighting could do nothing but lie at his ease and enjoy himself. Even the Africans were foreigners to Carthage; they were subjects harshly governed and had been engaged within the last twenty years in a war of extermination with their masters. Yet the long inactivity of winter quarters trying to the discipline of the best national armies was borne patiently by Hannibal's soldiers; there was neither desertion nor mutiny amongst them; even the fickleness of the Gauls seemed spell-bound; they remained steadily in their camp in Apulia neither going home to their own country nor over to the enemy. On the contrary it seems that fresh bands of Gauls must have joined the Carthaginian army after the battle of Thrasymenus and the retreat of the Roman army from Ariminum. For the Gauls and the Spaniards and the Africans were overpowered by the ascendancy of Hannibal's character; under his guidance they felt themselves invincible; with such a general the yoke of Carthage might seem to the Africans and Spaniards the natural dominion of superior beings; in such a champion the Gauls beheld the appointed instrument of their country's gods to lead them once more to assault the Capitol.""--Vol. iii. 131-132. It was the battle of Cannæ which first shook the fidelity of the Roman allies and by opening to the Carthaginians the gates of Capua gave them the command of a city in the south of Italy second only to Rome herself in wealth and consideration. Of this great and memorable battle when upwards of eighty thousand Romans fell and their power was to all appearance irrecoverably broken Arnold give the following interesting account:-- ""The skirmishing of the light-armed troops preluded as usual to the battle; the Balearian slingers slung their stones like hail into the ranks of the Roman line and severely wounded the consul Æmilius himself. Then the Spanish and Gaulish horse charged the Romans front to front and maintained a standing fight with them many leaping off their horses and fighting on foot till the Romans outnumbered and badly armed without cuirasses with light and brittle spears and with shields made only of ox-hide were totally routed and driven off the field. Hasdrubal who commanded the Gauls and Spaniards followed up his work effectually; he chased the Romans along the river till he had almost destroyed them and then riding off to the right he came up to aid the Numidians who after their manner had been skirmishing indecisively with the cavalry of the Italian allies. These on seeing the Gauls and Spaniards advancing broke away and fled; the Numidians most effective in pursuing a flying enemy chased them with unweariable speed and slaughtered them unsparingly; while Hasdrubal to complete his signal services on this day charged fiercely upon the rear of the Roman infantry. ""He found its huge masses already weltering in helpless confusion crowded upon one another totally disorganized and fighting each man as he best could but struggling on against all hope by mere indomitable courage. For the Roman columns on the right and left finding the Gaulish and Spanish foot advancing in a convex line or wedge pressed forwards to assail what seemed the flanks of the enemy's column; so that being already drawn up with too narrow a front by their original formation they now became compressed still more by their own movements the right and left converging towards the centre till the whole army became one dense column which forced its way onwards by the weight of its charge and drove back the Gauls and Spaniards into the rear of their own line. Meanwhile its victorious advance had carried it like the English column at Fontenoy into the midst of Hannibal's army; it had passed between the African infantry on its right and left and now whilst its head was struggling against the Gauls and Spaniards its long flanks were fiercely assailed by the Africans who facing about to the right and left charged it home and threw it into utter disorder. In this state when they were forced together into one unwieldy crowd and already falling by thousands whilst the Gauls and Spaniards now advancing in their turn were barring further progress in front and whilst the Africans were tearing their mass to pieces on both flanks Hasdrubal with his victorious Gaulish and Spanish horsemen broke with thundering fury upon their rear. Then followed a butchery such as has no recorded equal except the slaughter of the Persians in their camp when the Greeks forced it after the battle of Platæa. Unable to fight or fly with no quarter asked or given the Romans and Italians fell before the swords of their enemies till when the sun set upon the field there were left out of that vast multitude no more than three thousand men alive and unwounded and these fled in straggling parties under cover of the darkness and found a refuge in the neighbouring towns. The consul Æmilius the proconsul Cn. Servilius the late master of the horse M. Minucius two quæstors twenty-one military tribunes eighty senators and eighty thousand men lay dead on the field of battle. The consul Varro with seventy horsemen had escaped from the rout of the allied cavalry on the right. The loss of the victors was only six thousand men.""--ARNOLD iii. 140-143. The dreadful battle of Cannæ bears a close resemblance in many important particulars to two of the most important which have been fought in modern times--those of Agincourt and Aspern. The close agglomeration of legionary soldiers in the Roman centre the tempest of stones which fell on their ranks from the slings of the Balearic marksmen and the laying bare of the huge unwieldy mass by the defeat of the cavalry on their flanks was precisely the counterpart of what occurred in the army of Philippe of Valois in the first of these memorable fields when the French men-at-arms thirty-two deep were thrown into confusion by the incessant discharges of the English archers their flanks laid open by the repulse of the vehement charge of their horse by Henry V. and their dense columns slaughtered where they stood unable alike to fight or to fly by the general advance of the English billmen. Still closer perhaps is the resemblance to the defeat of the French centre under Lannes which penetrated in a solid column into the centre of the Austrian army at Aspern. Its weight and the gallantry of the leading files brought the huge mass even to the reserves of the Archduke; but that gallant prince at length stopped their advance by six regiments of Hungarian grenadiers; the German artillery and musketry tore their flanks by an incessant discharge on either side; and at length the formidable column was forced back like an immense wild beast bleeding at every pore but still combating and unsubdued to the banks of the Danube. The repulse of the formidable English column fourteen thousand strong which defeated in succession every regiment in the French army except the last reserve of two regiments of guards at Fontenoy and the still more momentous defeat of the last attack of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo also bear a striking and interesting resemblance to the rout of the Roman centre after it had penetrated the Carthaginian line at the battle of Cannæ. In truth the attack in column formidable beyond measure if not met by valour and combated with skill is exposed to the most serious dangers if the line in its front is strong and resolute enough to withstand the impulse till its flanks are overlapped and enveloped by a cross fire from the enemies' lines converging inwards as Colborne and Maitland did at Waterloo on the flank of the Old Guard; and thence it is that the French attack in column so often victorious over the other troops in Europe has never succeeded against the close and destructive fire of the English infantry; guided by the admirable dispositions with which Wellington first repelled that formidable onset. Arnold whose account of Hannibal's campaigns in Italy is by much the best which has been given in modern times to the world and more scientific and discriminating than either of the immortal narratives of the ancient historians has clearly brought out two important truths from their examination. The first is that it was Hannibal's superiority in cavalry and above all the incomparable skill and hardihood of his Numidian horse which gave him what erelong proved an undisputed superiority in the field; the second that it was the strength of the towns in the Roman alliance in the south of Italy and the want of siege artillery on the side of the Carthaginian general which proved their salvation. So undisputed did the superiority of the invading army become that after the battle of Cannæ it was a fixed principle with the Roman generals during the thirteen subsequent campaigns that ensued in Italy never on any occasion or with any superority of force whatever to hazard a general battle. Such was their terror of the African horse that the sight of a few Numidian uniforms in the fields was sufficient to make a whole consular army stand to its arms. So paralysed was the strength of Rome by the slaughter of Cannæ that Capua soon after revolted and became the headquarters of Hannibal's army; and out of the thirty Roman colonies no less than twelve sent in answer to the requisitions of the consuls that they had not a man or a penny more to send and that Rome must depend on its own resources. Never not even when the disasters of Thrasymene and Cannæ were first heard was such consternation apparent in Rome as when that mournful resolution was communicated in the Forum. In truth such was the prostration of the strength of Rome by these terrible defeats that the republic was gone but for the jealousy of the Carthaginian government which hindered them from sending any efficient succours to Hannibal and the unconquerable spirit of the Roman aristocracy which rose with every disaster which ensued and led them to make efforts in behalf of their country which appear almost superhuman and never have been equalled by any subsequent people on earth. Republican as he is in his ideas Arnold with his usual candour as to facts admits in the strongest manner those prodigious efforts made by the patricians of Rome on this memorable occasion; and that the issue of the contest and with it the fate of the civilized world depended on their exertions. Out of 270 000 men of whom the citizens of Rome consisted before the war no less than seventy thousand were in arms in its fourth year. No such proportion has ever since been heard of in the world. One in a hundred of the whole population is the utmost which experience has shown a state is capable of bearing for any length of time in her regular army. ""As Hannibal "" says he ""utterly eclipses Carthage so on the contrary Fabius Marcellus Claudius Nero even Scipio himself are as nothing when compared to the spirit and wisdom and power of Rome. The senate which voted its thanks to its political enemy Varro 'because he had not despaired of the commonwealth ' and which disdained either to solicit or to reprove or to threaten or in any way to notice the twelve colonies which had refused to send their accustomed supplies of men for the army is far more to be honoured than the conqueror of Zama. Never was the wisdom of God's providence more manifest than in the issue of the struggle between Rome and Carthage. It was clearly for the good of mankind that Hannibal should be conquered; his triumph would have stopped the progress of the world. For great men can only act permanently by forming great nations and no one man even though it were Hannibal himself can in one generation effect such a work. But where the nation has been merely enkindled for a while by a great man's spirit the light passes away with him who communicated it; and the nation when he is gone is like a dead body to which magic power had for a moment given an unnatural life; when the charm has ceased the body is cold and stiff as before. He who grieves over the battle of Zama should carry on his thoughts to a period thirty years later when Hannibal must in the course of nature have been dead; and consider how the isolated Phoenician city of Carthage was fitted to receive and to consolidate the civilization of Greece or by its laws and institutions to bind together barbarians of every race and language into an organized empire and prepare them for becoming when that empire was dissolved the free members of the commonwealth of Christian Europe.""[30] Such was Hannibal; a man capable by his single capacity of arresting and all but overturning a nation destined by Providence for such mighty achievements such lasting services to the human race. His combat with Rome was not that of a general with a general of an army with an army; it was like the subsequent contest between Napoleon and England the contest of a man with a nation; and in both cases the nation after being reduced to the most grievous straits proved victorious over the man. But Hannibal was not supported as the French emperor was during the great part of his splendid career; no nation with forty millions of souls laid its youth at his feet; no obsequious senate voted him two millions of men in fifteen years; he did not march with the military strength of the half of Europe at his back. Alone unaided unbefriended with the Roman legions in front and the jealous Carthaginian senate in rear without succour reinforcements or assistance from home he maintained the contest for fifteen years in Italy against the might the energy and the patriotism of Rome. Such was the terror inspired by his name and exploits that it rendered even the fierce plebeians of Rome usually so jealous of patrician interference with their rights obsequious even in the comitia to their commands. ""Go back "" said Fabius when the first centuries had returned consuls of their own choice whom he knew to be unfit for the command ""and bid them recollect that the consuls must head the armies and that Hannibal is in Italy."" The people succumbed the votes were taken anew and the consuls whom he desired were returned. After the battle of Cannæ had rendered hopeless any further contest in the field the war in Italy degenerated into a mere succession of attempts to gain possession of fortified towns. Hannibal's total want of siege artillery left him no resource for this but stratagem or internal assistance and in gaining both his great capacity was eminently conspicuous. Capua Beneventum Tarentum and a great many others were successively wrested or won from the Romans; and it at one period seemed exceedingly doubtful whether in this war of posts and stratagems the Carthaginian would not prevail over them as he had done in the field. This war and from the influence of the same necessity in both cases much resembled the wars of the League and Henry IV. in France; and the military conduct of Hannibal bore alternately a striking resemblance to the skill and resources of the chivalrous king of Navarre and the bold daring of the emperor Napoleon. The gallant irruption in particular of the Carthaginian general by which he relieved Capua when closely besieged by the Roman forces bears as Arnold has observed the most remarkable resemblance to the similar march of Napoleon from Silesia to relieve Dresden when beset by the Allied armies under the command of Schwartzenberg in 1813. Nor did the admirable skill of the consul Nero--who took advantage of his interior line of communication and brought a decisive superiority of force from the frontiers of Apulia to bear on the army which Hamilcar had led across the Pyrenees and the Alps to aid his brother in the south of Italy and thus decide the war in Italy--bear a less striking analogy to Napoleon's cross marches from Rivoli to the neighbourhood of Mantua in 1796 to the able movement of the Archduke Charles on the Bavarian plains to the banks of the Maine which proved the salvation of Germany in 1796 or to the gallant irruption of Napoleon first into the midst of Blucher's scattered columns on the plains of Champagne and then against the heads of Schwartzenberg's weighty columns at the bridge of Montereau in 1814 during his immortal campaign in France. Eight years have now elapsed since we had the gratification of reviewing on its publication the first volume of Arnold's Rome; and we then foretold the celebrity which that admirable writer was qualified to attain.[31] The publication since that period of two additional volumes has amply verified that prediction; and augmented the bitterness of the regret which in common with all his countrymen we felt at his untimely death. It is clear that he was qualified beyond any modern writer who has yet undertaken the glorious task to write a history of the Rise and Progress of the Roman Republic. What a work would eight volumes such as that before us on Hannibal have formed in conjunction with Gibbon's immortal Decline and Fall! His ardent love of truth his warm aspiration after the happiness of the human race his profound and yet liberal religious feeling as much gave him the spirit requisite for such an undertaking as his extensive scholarship his graphic power his geographical eye and brilliant talents for description fitted him for carrying it into execution. It is one of the most melancholy events of our times which has reft one of the brightest jewels from the literary crown of England that such a man should have been cut off at the zenith of his power and the opening of his fame. Arnold was a liberal writer; but what then? We love and respect an honest opponent. He was candid ingenuous and truth-loving; and if a historian is such it matters not what his political opinions are for he cannot avoid stating facts that support the conservative side. His errors as we deem them in politics arose from the usual causes which mislead men on human affairs generosity of heart and inexperience of mankind. He could not conceive with an imagination warmed by the heroes of antiquity what a race of selfish pigmies the generality of men really are. No man of such an elevated cast can do so till he is painfully taught it by experience. Arnold died of a disease of the heart which physicians have named by the expressive words ""_angina pectoris_."" They were right: it was anxiety of the heart which brought him to an untimely grave. He died of disappointed hope of chilled religious aspirations of mortified political expectations of social felicity. Who can estimate the influence on so sensitive and enthusiastic a disposition of the heart-rending anguish which his correspondence proves he felt at the failure of his long-cherished hopes and visions of bliss in the Reform Bill and all the long catalogue of political and social evils now apparent to all it has brought in its train? FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 20: _History of Rome._ By THOMAS ARNOLD D.D. London: 1843. Vol. 3.] [Footnote 21: Hannibal was born in the year 247 before Christ or 2092 before this time.] [Footnote 22: _Virtus_ from _vir_--_exercitus_ from _exerceo_.] [Footnote 23: Arnold iii. 89.] [Footnote 24: _Ibid._ iii. 486 note.] [Footnote 25: Livy xxi. 33.] [Footnote 26: Polybius iii. 52.] [Footnote 27: _Ibid._ iii. 54.] [Footnote 28: ""The way on every side was utterly impassable through an accident of a peculiar kind which is peculiar to the Alps. The snows of the former years _having remained_ unmelted upon the mountains were now covered over by that which had fallen in the present autumn and when the soldiers feet went through the latter they fell and slid down with great violence.""--POLYBIUS iii. 54. This shows the place was within the circle of perpetual snow; whereas that on the Little St Bernard is much below it and far beneath any avalanches.] [Footnote 29: Polybius iii. 54.] [Footnote 30: Arnold iii. 64 65] [Footnote 31: See Arnold's Rome Blackwood's Magazine July 1837.] STANZAS WRITTEN AFTER THE FUNERAL OF ADMIRAL SIR DAVID MILNE G.C.B. BY DELTA. Another yet another! year by year As time progresses with resistless sweep Sever'd from life the patriots disappear Who bore St George's standards o'er the deep;-- Heroic men whose decks were Britain's trust When banded Europe scowl'd around in gloom; Nor least though latest Thou whose honour'd dust Our steps this day live follow'd to the tomb. Yet gallant Milne what more could'st thou desire Replete in fame in years and honours save To wrap thy sea-cloak round thee and expire Where thou had'st lived in glory on the wave? From boyhood to thy death-day 'mid the scenes Where love is garner'd or the brave have striven With scarce a breathing-time that intervenes Thy life was to our country's service given. A British sailor! 'twas thy proud delight Up glory's rugged pathway to aspire; Ready in council resolute in fight And Spartan coolness temper'd Roman fire! Yes; sixty years have pass'd since in thy prime Plunging from off the shatter'd Blanche o'erboard Amid the moonlight waves twas thine to climb La Pique's torn side and take the Frenchman's sword. And scarcely less remote that midnight dread Or venturous less that daring when La Seine Dismay'd dismasted cumber'd with her dead Struck to the ship she fled--and fought in vain. And veterans now are all who young in heart Burn'd as they heard how o'er the watery way Compell'd to fight yet eager to depart The Vengeance battled through the livelong day-- Battled with thee who steadfast on her track Not to be shaken off untiring bent; And how awhile the fire from each grew slack The shatter'd masts to splice and riggings rent -- And how at dawn the conflict was renew'd Muzzle to muzzle almost hand to hand Till useless on the wave and carnage-strew'd The foe lay wreck'd on St Domingo's strand -- And how huzza'd his brave triumphant crew! And how the hero burn'd within his eye When Milne beheld upon the staff where flew The Tricolor the flag of Britain fly!! And yet once more thy country calls!--beneath The towers and demi-lune of dark Algiers The Impregnable is anchor'd in the teeth Of bomb-proof batteries frowning tiers on tiers. Another day of triumph for the right -- Of laurels fresh for Exmouth and for thee -- When Afric's Demon palsied at the sight Of Europe's Angel bade the slave go free! But when away War's fiery storms had burn'd And Peace re-gladden'd Earth with skies of blue Thy sword into the pruning-hook was turn'd And Cæsar into Cincinnatus grew. The poor's protector the unbiass'd judge 'Twas thine with warm unwearied zeal to lend Time to each duty's call without a grudge; The Christian and the Patriot and the Friend. Farewell! 'tis dust to dust within the grave; But while one heart beats high to Scotland's fame Best of the good and bravest of the brave The name of Milne shall be an honour'd name. STANZAS TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS HOOD. BY B. SIMMONS. I. Take back into thy bosom Earth This joyous May-eyed morrow The gentlest child that ever Mirth Gave to be rear'd by Sorrow. 'Tis hard--while rays half green half gold Through vernal bowers are burning And streams their diamond-mirrors hold To Summer's face returning-- To say We're thankful that His sleep Shall never more be lighter In whose sweet-tongued companionship Stream bower and beam grew brighter! II. But all the more intensely true His soul gave out each feature Of elemental Love--each hue And grace of golden Nature The deeper still beneath it all Lurk'd the keen jags of Anguish; The more the laurels clasp'd his brow Their poison made it languish. Seem'd it that like the Nightingale Of his own mournful singing[32] The tenderer would his song prevail While most the thorn was stinging. III. So never to the Desert-worn Did fount bring freshness deeper Than that his placid rest this morn Has brought the shrouded sleeper. That rest may lap his weary head Where charnels choke the city Or where mid woodlands by his bed The wren shall wake its ditty: But near or far while evening's star Is dear to hearts regretting Around that spot admiring Thought Shall hover unforgetting. IV. And if _this_ sentient seething world Is after all ideal Or in the Immaterial furl'd Alone resides the Real FREED ONE! there's wail for thee this hour Through thy loved Elves' dominions[33]; Hush'd is each tiny trumpet-flower And droopeth Ariel's pinions; Even Puck dejected leaves his swing[34] To plan with fond endeavour What pretty buds and dews shall keep Thy pillow bright for ever. V. And higher if less happy tribes-- The race of earthly Childhood Shall miss thy Whims of frolic wit That in the summer wild-wood Or by the Christmas hearth were hail'd And hoarded as a treasure Of undecaying merriment And ever-changing pleasure. Things from thy lavish humour flung Profuse as scents are flying This kindling morn when blooms are born As fast as blooms are dying. VI. Sublimer Art own'd thy control The minstrel's mightiest magic With sadness to subdue the soul Or thrill it with the Tragic. How listening Aram's fearful dream We
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ee beneath the willow That dreadful THING [35] or watch him steal Guilt-lighted to his pillow.[36] Now with thee roaming ancient groves We watch the woodman felling The funeral Elm while through its boughs The ghostly wind comes knelling.[37] VII. Dead Worshipper of Dian's face In solitary places Shalt thou no more steal as of yore To meet her white embraces?[38] Is there no purple in the rose Henceforward to thy senses? For thee has dawn and daylight's close Lost their sweet influences? No!--by the mental might untamed Thou took'st to Death's dark portal The joy of the wide universe Is now to thee immortal! VIII. How fierce contrasts the city's roar With thy new-conquer'd Quiet! This stunning hell of wheels that pour With princes to their riot -- Loud clash the crowds--the very clouds With thunder-noise are shaken While pale and mute and cold afar Thou liest men-forsaken. Hot Life reeks on nor recks that One --The playful human-hearted-- Who lent its clay less earthiness Is just from earth departed. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 32: In his beautiful _Ode to Melancholy;_ originally published in Blackwood's Magazine.] [Footnote 33: See his _Plea of the Midsummer Fairies_ a poem perfectly unrivalled for the intimate sense of nature tender fancy and pathetic playfulness displayed in it.] [Footnote 34: ""Pity it was to hear the Elfins' wail Rise up in concert from their mingled dread Pity it was to see them all so pale Gaze on the grass as for a dying bed. But Puck was seated on a spider's thread That hung between two branches of a brier And 'gan to swing and gambol heels o'er head Like any Southwark tumbler on a wire For him no present grief could long inspire."" _Plea of the Midsummer Fairies._] [Footnote 35: Witness the terror of Aram _after_ his victim lies dead before him--(we quote from memory.) ""Nothing but lifeless flesh and bone That could not do me ill! And yet I fear'd him all the more For lying there so still; _There was a manhood in his look_ _That murder could not kill._"" _Dream of Eugene Aram._] [Footnote 36: ""For Guilt was my grim chamberlain Who lighted me to bed And drew my midnight curtains round With fingers bloody red."" _Dream of Eugene Aram._] [Footnote 37: See his impressive poem on _The Elm-Tree_. It appeared a couple of years back in _The New Monthly Magazine_.] [Footnote 38: ""Before I lived to sigh Thou wert in Avon and a thousand rills Beautiful Orb! and so _whene'er I lie_ _Trodden_ thou wilt be gazing from thy hills. Blest be thy loving light where'er it spills And blessed be thy face O Mother Mild!"" _Ode to the Moon published likewise in Blackwood_ 1829.] NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. V. DRYDEN ON CHAUCER.--_Concluded._ Dryden's poetical power appears most of all perhaps in his translations; and his translation of the most vulgar renown is that which unites his name to that of the great Roman epopeist; but it is not his greatest achievement. The tales modernized and paraphrased from Chaucer and those filled up into poetical telling from Boccacio as they are the works of Dryden's which the most fasten themselves with interest upon a mind open to poetry and free from preconceived literary opinion so do they seem to us to be after all those which a versed critic must distinguish as stamped beyond the others with the skilled ease the flow as of original composition the sustained spirit and force and fervour--in short by the mastery and by the keen zest of Writing. They are the works of his more than matured mind--of his waning life; and they show a rare instance of a talent so steadfastly and perseveringly self-improved as that in life's seventh decennium the growth of Art overweighed the detriment of Time. But in good truth no detriment of time is here perceptible; youthful fire and accomplished skill have the air of being met in these remarkable pieces. Chaucer in his last and greatest labour the _Canterbury Tales_ first effectually creating his own style and his translator Dryden at about the same years excelling himself to infuse renovated life into the _Canterbury Tales_--are brought singularly together. The age of Chaucer was widely and variously different from that of Dryden. Knowledge taste art had advanced with strides between the two dates; and the bleak and stormy English political atmosphere of the fourteenth century had changed notwithstanding the commotion of the later civil war into a far milder and more settled element when the seventeenth drew towards close. Genius likewise in the two poets was distinguished by marked differences. Strength simplicity earnestness human affection characterize Chaucer. Dryden has plenty of strength too but it shows itself differently. The strength of Chaucer is called out by the requisition of the subject and is measured to the call. Dryden bounds and exults in his nervous vigour like a strong steed broke loose. Exuberant power and rejoicing freedom mark Dryden versifying--a smooth flow a prompt fertility a prodigal splendour of words and images. Old Chaucer therefore having passed through the hands of Dryden is no longer old Chaucer--no longer Chaucer. But the well-chosen and well-disposed and well-told tale full of masculine sense lively with humour made present with painting--for all this Chaucer brings to Dryden--becomes by nothing more than the disantiquating and the different hand a new poem. Place the two side by side and whilst you feel that a total change has been effected you shall not always easily assign the secret of the change wrought. There then comes into view it must be owned something like an unpractised awkwardness in the gait of the great elder bard which you less willingly believe or to which you shut your eyes when you have him by himself to yourself. The step of Dryden is rapid and has perfect decision. He knows with every spring he takes where he shall alight. Now Chaucer you would often say is retarded by looking where he shall next set down his foot. The old poetry details the whole series of thinking. The modern supposes more. That is the consequence of practice. Writer and reader are in better intelligence. A hint goes further--that which is known to be meant needs not be explicitly said. Style as the art advances gains in dispatch. There is better keeping too in some respects. The dignity of the style--the purpose of the Beautiful--is more considerately maintained. And perhaps one would be justified in saying that if the earnestness of the heart which was in the old time the virtue of virtues is less--the glow of the fancy the tone of inspiration is proportionally more. And if any where the thought is made to give way to the straits of the verse the modern art more artfully hides the commission. In our preceding paper in which we spoke at large of the genius of Chaucer we gave some very noble extracts from Dryden's version of the Knight's Tale. But we did not then venture to quote any long passages from the original unassured how they might look on our page to the eyes of Young Britain. Having good reason to know that Young Britain desires some veritable Chaucer from the hands of Maga we shall now indulge her with some specimens; and as we have been given to understand that Dryden's versions of the same passages will be acceptable for comparison they shall be now produced while the wishes of Young Britain shall be further gratified with an occasional running commentary from our popular pen on both poets. We shall confine ourselves to the Knight's Tale with which all who love us are by this time familiar. Let us lead off with one or two short specimens and be not frightened Fair-eyes with the seemingly strange mayhap obsolete-looking words of the ancient bard. Con them over a few times and they will turn into letters of light. CHAUCER. Thus passeth yere by yere and day by day Till it felle onès in a morwe of May That Emelie that fayrer was to sene Than is the lilie upon the stalkè grene And fressher than the May with flourès newe (For with the rosè colour strof hire hewe; I n'ot which was the finer of hem two) Er it was day as she was wont to do She was arisen and all redy dight For May wol have no slogardie a-night. The seson priketh every gentil herte And maketh him out of his slepe to sterte And sayth 'arise and do thin observance.' This maketh Emelie have remembrance To don honour to May and for to rise. Yclothed was she fresshe for to devise. Hire yelwe here was broided in a tresse Behind hire back a yerdè long I guess. And in the garden at the sonne uprist She walketh up and down where as hire list. She gathereth flourès partie white and red To make a sotel gerlond for hire hed And as an angel hevenlich she sang &c. DRYDEN. Thus year by year they pass and day by day Till once--'twas on the morn of cheerful May-- The young Emilia fairer to be seen Than the fair lily on the flowery green More fresh than May herself in blossoms new For with the rosy colour strove her hue Waked as her custom was before the day To do the observance due to sprightly May; For sprightly May commands our youth to keep The vigils of her night and breaks their sluggard sleep; Each gentle breast with kindly warmth she moves Inspires new flames revives extinguish'd loves. In this remembrance Emily ere day Arose and dress'd herself in rich array; Fresh as the month and as the morning fair Adown her shoulders fell her length of hair; A ribband did the braided tresses bind The rest was loose and wanton'd in the wind: Aurora had but newly chased the night And purpled o'er the sky with blushing light When to the garden-walk she took her way To sport and trip along in cool of day And offer maiden vows in honour of the May. At every turn she made a little stand And thrust among the thorns her lily hand To draw the rose; and every rose she drew She shook the stalk and brush'd away the dew; Then party-colour'd flowers of white and red She wove to make a garland to her head. This done she sung and caroll'd out so clear That men and angels might rejoice to hear. Even wondering Philomel forgot to sing And learn'd from her to welcome in the spring. What can you wish more innocently beautiful than Chaucer's--what more graceful than Dryden's Emelie? And now look at Arcite--how he too does his observance of the May. CHAUCER. The besy lark the messenger of day Saleweth in hire song the morwè gray; And firy Phoebus riseth up so bright That all the orient laugheth of the sight And with his stremès drieth in the greves The silver dropès hanging on the leves And Arcite that is in the court real With Theseus the squier principal Is risen and loketh on the mery day. And for to don his observance to May Remembring on the point of his desire He on his courser sterting as the fire Is ridden to the feldès him to play Out of the court were it a mile or tway. And to the grove of which that I you told By aventure his way he 'gan to hold To maken him a gerlond of the greves Were it of woodbind or of hawthorn leves And loud he song agen the sonnè shene. O May with all thy flourès and thy grene Right welcome be thou fairè freshè May I hope that I some grene here getten may. DRYDEN. The morning lark the messenger of day Saluted in her song the morning gray; And soon the sun arose with beams so bright That all the horizon laugh'd to see the joyous sight. He with his tepid rays the rose renews And licks the drooping leaves and dries the dews; When Arcite left his bed resolved to pay Observance to the month of merry May: Forth on his fiery steed betimes he rode That scarcely prints the turf on which he trode: At ease he seem'd and prancing o'er the plains Turn'd only to the grove his horse's reins The grove I named before and lighting there A woodbine garland sought to crown his hair; Then turn'd his face against the rising day And raised his voice to welcome in the May:-- For thee sweet month the groves green liveries wear If not the first the fairest of the year: For thee the Graces lead the dancing hours And Nature's ready pencil paints the flowers: When thy short reign is past the feverish sun The sultry tropic fears and moves more slowly on. So may thy tender blossoms fear no blight Nor goats with venom'd teeth thy tendrils bite. As thou shalt guide my wandering feet to find The fragrant greens I seek my brows to bind. In Chaucer Arcite's address to the ""mery May"" is but of three plain lines and they suffice; in Dryden of ten ornate and they suffice too--""alike but oh! how different!"" The plain three are more in character for Arcite was thinking of Emelie all the while--but the ornate ten are in season now for summer has come at last and recite them to yourself and Amaryllis in the shade. But now for a loftier strain. Palamon and Arcite are about to fight for Emelie--and lo and behold their auxiliar kings! Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon Licurge himself the gretè king of Trace: Blake was his berd and manly was his face. The cercles of his eyen in his head They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red And like a griffon loked he about With kemped herès on his browès stout; His limmès gret his brawnès hard and stronge His shouldres brode his armès round and longe. And as the guisè was in his countree Full high upon a char of gold stood he With fourè whitè bollès in the trais. Instead of cote-armure on his harnais With naylès yelwe and bright as any gold He had a berès-skin cole-blake for old. His longè here was kempt behind his bak As any ravenes fether it shone for blake. A wreth of gold arm-gret of hugè weight Upon his hed sate ful of stonès bright Of finè rubins and of diamants. About his char ther wenten white alauns Twenty and mo as great as any stere To hunten at the leon or the dere And folwed him with mosel fast ybound Colered with gold and torettes filed round. A hundred lordès had he in his route Armed full wel with hertès sterne and stoute. With Arcite in stories as men find The gret Emetrius the King of Inde Upon a stedè bay trapped in stele Covered with cloth of gold diapered well Came riding like the god of armès Mars. His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars Couched with perlès white and round and grete. His sadel was of brent gold new ybete: A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging Bret-ful of rubies red as fire sparkling. His crispè here like ringès was yronne And that was yelwe and glittered as the sonne. His nose was high his eyen bright eitrin His lippès round his colour was sanguin A fewè fraknes in his face yspreint Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint And as a leon he his loking caste. Of five-and-twenty yere his age I caste. His berd was wel begonnen for to spring; His vois was as a trompè thondering. Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene A gerlond fresshe and lusty for to sene. Upon his hond he bare for his deduit An egle tame as any lily whit. An hundred lordès had he with him there All armed save hir hedes in all hir gere Full richèly in allè manere thinges. For trusteth wel that erlès dukès kinges Were gathered in this noble compagnie For love and for encrease of chevalrie. About this king ther ran on every part Full many a tame leon and leopart. What a plenitude of brilliant and powerful description! Every verse every half verse adds a characterizing circumstance a vivifying image. And what an integrity and self-completeness has the daring and large conception of either martial king! And how distinguishably the two stand apart from each other! But above all what a sudden and rich addition to our stock of heroic poetical portraitures! Here is no imitation. Neither Lycurge nor Emetrius is any where in poetry but here. Not in the _Iliad_-not in the _Æneid_. You cannot compose either of them from the heroes of antiquity. Each is original--new--self-subsisting. The monarch of Thrace is invested with more of uncouth and savage terror. He is bigger broader. Might for destroying is in his bulk of bone and muscle. Bulls draw him and he looks taurine. A bear-skin mantles him; and you would think him of ursine consanguinity. The huge lump of gold upon his raven-black head and the monster hounds bigger than the dog-kind can be imagined to produce that gambol about his chariot all betoken the grosser character of power--the power that is in size--material. The impression of the portentous is made without going avowedly out of the real. His looking is resembled to that of a griffin because in that monster imagined at or beyond the verge of nature the ferocity of a devouring destroying creature can be conceived as more wild and grim and fearful than in nature's known offspring in all of whom some kindlier sparkles from the heart of the great mother some beneficently-implanted instincts are thought of as tempering and qualifying the pure animal fierceness and rage. The opposed King of Inde has also of the prodigious within the limits of the apparently natural. He is also a tremendous champion; but he has more fire and less of mere thewes in the furnishing of his warlike sufficiency. There is more of mind and fancy about him. His fair complexion at once places him in a more gracious category of death-doers. Compare to the car drawn by four white bulls the gallant bay charger barded with steel and caparisoned with cloth of gold. Compare to that yellow-nailed swart bear-skin the coat-armour made with cloth of Tars the mantelet thick-sown with rubies; for the locks like the raven's plumage the curls like Apollo's tresses. He is in the dazzling prime of youth. Black Lycurge without question has more than twice his years. The beard that yet springs joined close to the voice that is like a trumpet is well found for raising the expression of native power in that thundering voice. The laurel wreath for the ponderous golden diadem--the white eagle on the wrist for the snowy alauns are all studied to carry through the same opposition. Emetrius is a son of chivalry; Lycurge might be kin or kith with a difference for the better of that renowned tyrant Diomedes who put men's limbs for hay into his manger and of whom Hercules had not so long ago ridded the world. _His_ looking too is paralleled away from humanity but it is by the kingly and generous lion. Observe that the companions of the two kings are described whether through chance or choice in terms correspondingly opposite. The Thracian leads a hundred lords with hearts stern and stout. The Indian's following earls dukes kings have thronged to him for the love and increment of chivalry. The lions and leopards too that run about him have been tamed. They finish the Indian picture. How does Dryden acquit himself here? Grandly. DRYDEN. With Palamon above the rest in place Lycurgus came the surly king of Thrace; Black was his beard and manly was his face: The balls of his broad eyes roll'd in his head And glared bewixt a yellow and a red; He look'd a lion with a gloomy stare And o'er his eye-brows hung his matted hair; Big-boned and large of limbs with sinews strong Broad-shoulder'd and his arms were round and long. Four milk-white bulls (the Thracian use of old ) Were yoked to draw his car of burnish'd gold. Upright he stood and bore aloft his shield Conspicuous from afar and overlook'd the field. His surcoat was a bear-skin on his back; His hair hung long behind and glossy raven-black. His ample forehead bore a coronet With sparkling diamonds and with rubies set; Ten brace and more of greyhounds snowy fair And tall as stags ran loose and coursed around his chair A match for pards in flight in grappling for the bear. With golden muzzles all their mouths were bound And collars of the same their necks surround. Thus through the field Lycurgus took his way; His hundred knights attend in pomp and proud array. To match this monarch with strong Arcite came Emetrius king of Inde a mighty name! On a bay courser goodly to behold The trappings of his horse emboss'd with barbarous gold. Not Mars bestrode a steed with greater grace; His surcoat o'er his arms was cloth of Thrace Adorn'd with pearls all orient round and great; His saddle was of gold with emeralds set; His shoulders large a mantle did attire With rubies thick and sparkling as the fire; His amber-coloured locks in ringlets run With graceful negligence and shone against the sun. His nose was aquiline his eyes were blue Ruddy his lips and fresh and fair his hue; Some sprinkled freckles on his face were seen Whose dusk set off the whiteness of the skin. His awful presence did the crowd surprise Nor durst the rash spectator meet his eyes Eyes that confess'd him born for kingly sway So fierce they flash'd intolerable day. His age in nature's youthful prime appear'd And just began to bloom his yellow beard. Whene'er he spoke his voice was heard around Loud as a trumpet with a silver sound; A laurel wreath'd his temples fresh and green And myrtle sprigs the marks of love were mix'd between. Upon his fist he bore for his delight An eagle well reclaim'd and lily white. His hundred knights attend him to the war All arm'd for battle save their heads were bare. Words and devices blazed on every shield And pleasing was the terror of the field. For kings and dukes and barons you might see Like sparkling stars though different in degree All for the increase of arms and love of chivalry. Before the king tame leopards led the way And troops of lions innocently play. So Bacchus through the conquer'd Indies rode And beasts in gambols frisk'd before the honest god. Dryden you will have noticed smooths down in some places a little the savagery of the Thracian. He has let go the fell gryphon borrowing instead the lion's glances of Emetrius. For the more refined poetical invention of the advanced world the opposition of the two animals for contrasting the two heroes had possibly something of the burlesque. To Chaucer it was simply energetic. Or Dryden perhaps had not taken up a right view of the gryphon's looking or he thought that his readers would not. He compensates Emetrius with plainly describing his eyes in four very animated verses. Lycurge's combed eye-brows are a little mitigated as is his ferocious bear-skin; and the ring of gold as thick as a man's arm has become merely a well-jewelled coronet. The spirit of the figure is notwithstanding caught and given. Dryden intends and conveys the impression purposed and effected by Chaucer. If the black and sullen portrait loses a little grimness under the rich and harmonious pencil of Dryden the needful contradistinction of the two royal auxiliars is maintained by heightening the favour of the more pleasing one. Throughout Dryden with pains insists upon the more attractive features which we have claimed for the King of Inde. Grace is twice attributed to his appearance. He has gained blue eyes. His complexion is carefully and delicately handled as may be especially seen in the management of the freckles. The _blooming_ of his yellow beard the thundering of the trumpet changed into a silvery sound the myrtle sprigs mixed amongst the warlike laurel--all unequivocally display the gracious intentions of Dryden towards Emetrius--all aid in rendering effective the opposition which Chaucer has deliberately represented betwixt the two kings. Why the surly Thracian should be rather allied to the knight who serves Venus and the more gallant Emetrius to the fierce Arcite the favourite of the War-god is left for the meditation of readers in all time to come. The two opposed pictures are perhaps as highly finished as any part of the version. The words fall into their own places painting their objects. The verse marches with freedom fervour and power. Translation has then reached its highest perfection when the suspicion of an original vanishes. The translator makes the matter his own and writes as if from his own unassisted conception. The allusion to Bacchus is Dryden's own happy addition. Now read with us--perhaps for the first time--the famous recital of the death of Arcite. CHAUCER. Nought may the woful spirit in myn herte Declare o point of all my sorwès smerte To you my lady that I lovè most; But I bequethe the service of my gost To you aboven every creature Sin that my lif ne may no longer dure. Alas the wo! alas the peinès stronge That I for you have suffered and so longe! Alas the deth! Alas min Emilie! Alas departing of our compagnie! Alas min hertès quene! alas my wif! My hertès ladie ender of my lif! What is this world? what axen men to have? Now with his love now in his coldè grave Alone withouten any compagnie. Farewel my swete farewel min Emilie And softè take me in your armès twey For love of God and herkeneth what I sey. I have here with my cosin Palamon Had strif and rancour many a day agon For love of you and for my jealousie. And Jupiter so wis my soulè gie To speken of a servant proprely With allè circumstancè trewèly That is to sayn trouth honour and knighthede Wisdom humblesse estat and high kinrede Fredom and all that longeth to that art So Jupiter have of my soulè part As in this world right now ne know I non So worthy to be loved as Palamon That serveth you and wol don all his lif. And if that ever ye shal ben a wif Foryete not Palamon the gentil man. And with that word his speech faillè began. For from his feet up to his brest was come The cold of death which had him overnome. And yet moreover in his armès two The vital strength is lost and all ago. Only the intellect withouten more That dwelled in his hertè sike and sore Gan faillen whan the hertè feltè deth; Dusked his eyen two and failled his breth. But on his ladie yet cast he his eye; His lastè word was: Mercy Emilie! His spirit changed hous and wentè ther As I came never I cannot tellen wher. Therefore I stent I am no divinistre; Of soulès find I not in this registre. Ne me lust not th' opinions to telle Of hem though that they writen wher they dwelle. Arcite is cold ther Mars his soulè gie. Now wol I speken forth of Emilie. Shright Emilie and houleth Palamon And Theseus his sister toke anon Swouning and bare hire from the corps away. What helpeth it to tarien forth the day To tellen how she wep both even and morwe? For in swiche cas wimmen haven swiche sorwe Whan that hir housbondes ben fro hem ago That for the morè part they sorwen so Or ellès fallen in swiche maladie That attè lastè certainly they die. Infinite ben the sorwes and the teres Of oldè folk and folk of tendre years In all the toun for deth of this Theban: For him ther wepeth bothè child and man: So gret a weping was there non certain When Hector was ybrought all fresh yslain To Troy: alas! the pitee that was there Cratching of chekès rending eke of here. Why woldest thou be ded? the women crie And haddest gold enough and Emilie. The death of Arcite is one of the scenes for which the admirers of Chaucer feel themselves entitled to claim that it shall be judged in comparison with analogous passages of the poets that stand highest in the renown of natural and pathetic delineation. The dying words of the hero are as _proper_ as if either great classical master of epic propriety--the Chian or the Mantuan--had left them to us. They are thoroughly sad thoroughly loving and supremely magnanimous. They have a perfect simplicity of purpose. They take the last leave of his Emelie; and they find for her if ever she shall choose to put off her approaching estate of unwedded widowhood a fit husband. They have answerable simplicity of sentiment and of language. He is unable to utter any particle of the pain which he feels in quitting her; but since the service which living he pays her draws to an end he pledges to her in the world whither he is going the constant love-fealty of his disembodied spirit. He recalls to her with a word only the long love-torments he has endured for her exchanged in the hour when they should have been crowned with possession for the pains of death. He heaps endearing names upon her. He glances at the vanity of human wishes imaged in himself and he bids her farewell. That is his first heart-offering towards herself. Can a death-severed heart's elocution be imitated more aptly more touchingly? He then turns to praising his rival. The jealousy which had so long been the madness of both filling the two kindred brotherly once-affectionate bosoms with hate has in his melted away with life thence melting away; and Arcite with his last intelligible breath describes Palamon briefly point by point as he knew him when he best loved him. He does not implore Emelie to remain for his sake single. He does not pretend if she shall marry to govern her choice; but he simply requests her if the season shall ever arrive of such a choice that she will not ""forget Palamon."" But the death-frost creeps on--his eyes darken--and the suspiration which finally wafts the soul from the body beseeches the favour of her only to earn whose favour he lived and with earning whose favour he dies. Her name leaves his lips last. Could Shakspeare have helped Chaucer? The whole speech is admirably direct and short. We shall presently have to deal with one from the same poem which wants that virtue. The clamorous outbreak that follows first of the private and supervening upon that of the public grief if not altogether couched in Homeric phraseology or numbers has an air however of the Homeric painting. But indeed neither is the language deficient in fanciful significancy nor the measure in good old melody. DRYDEN. No language can express the smallest part Of what I feel and suffer in my heart For you whom best I love and value most: But to your service I bequeath my ghost; Which from this mortal body when untied Unseen unheard shall hover at your side; Nor fright you waking nor your sleep offend But wait officious and your steps attend. How I have loved--excuse my faltering tongue! My spirit's feeble and my pains are strong: This I may say I only grieve to die Because I lose my charming Emily. To die when heaven had put you in my power! Fate could not choose a more malicious hour. What greater curse could envious fortune give Than just to die when I began to live? Vain men how vanishing a bliss we crave Now warm in love now withering in the grave! Never O never more to see the sun! Still dark in a damp vault and still alone! This fate is common; but I lose my breath Near bliss and yet not bless'd before my death. Farewell! but take me dying in your arms 'Tis all I can enjoy of all your charms: This hand I cannot but in death resign; Ah could I live! but while I live 'tis mine. I feel my end approach and thus embraced Am pleased to die; but hear me speak my last. Ah my sweet foe! for you and you alone I broke my faith with injured Palamon: But love the sense of right and wrong confounds; Strong love and proud ambition have no bounds. And much I doubt should Heaven my life prolong I should return to justify my wrong; For while my former flames remain within Repentance is but want of power to sin. With mortal hatred I pursued his life Nor he nor you were guilty of the strife; Nor I but as I loved; yet all combined Your beauty and my impotence of mind; And his concurrent flame that blew my fire; For still our kindred souls had one desire. He had a moment's right in point of time; Had I seen first then his had been the crime. Fate made it mine and justified his right; Nor holds this earth a more deserving knight For virtue valour and for noble blood Truth honour all that is comprised in good; So help me Heaven in all the world is none So worthy to be loved as Palamon. He loves you too with such a holy fire As will not cannot but with life expire; Our vow'd affections both have often tried Nor any love but yours could ours divide. Then by my love's inviolable band By my long-suffering and my short command If e'er you plight your vows when I am gone Have pity on the faithful Palamon. This was his last; for Death came on amain And exercised below his iron reign. Then upward to the seat of life he goes; Sense fled before him what he touch'd he froze: Yet could he not his closing eyes withdraw Though less and less of Emily he saw; So speechless for a little space he lay; Then grasp'd the hand he held and sigh'd his soul away. But whither went his soul let such relate Who search the secrets of the future state: Divines can say but what themselves believe; Strong proofs they have but not demonstrative; For were all plain then all sides must agree And faith itself be lost in certainty. To live uprightly then is sure the best; To save ourselves and not to damn the rest. The soul of Arcite went where heathens go Who better live than we though less they know. In Palamon a manly grief appears; Silent he wept ashamed to show his tears. Emilia shriek'd but once; and then oppres
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'd With sorrow sunk upon her lover's breast: Till Theseus in his arms convey'd with care Far from so sad a sight the swooning fair. 'Twere loss of time her sorrow to relate; Ill bears the sex a youthful lover's fate When just approaching to the nuptial state: But like a low-hung cloud it rains so fast That all at once it falls and cannot last. The face of things is changed and Athens now That laugh'd so late becomes the scene of woe: Matrons and maids both sexes every state With tears lament the knight's untimely fate. Nor greater grief in falling Troy was seen For Hector's death but Hector was not then. Old men with dust deform'd their hoary hair; The women beat their breasts their cheeks they tear: Why wouldst thou go (with one consent they cry ) When thou hadst gold enough and Emily? Dryden you observe exhibits various changes. Are they for the better or the worse? In the first place he introduces a new motive into the conduct of Arcite--remorse of conscience. When fate has declared against him and he finds that he cannot enjoy the possession of the prize which he has wrongfully won his eyes open upon his own injustice and he acknowledges the prior right of Palamon who first had seen Emilie. Does this innovation make good an ethical want in the rough and unschooled original? Or does it perplex the old heroic simplicity with a modern and needless refinement? By right of arms by gift of the king with her own gentle consent Emelie was Arcite's. Death unsinews the hand that held her against the world. Let a few winged moments fleet and she is his no more. He bows conquered by all-conquering alone unconquerable necessity. His love which had victoriously expelled his cousin's from the field of debate he carries with him to the melancholy Plutonic kingdom and leaves the field of debate still--Palamon victor and Emelie free. Really there seems to be something not only simpler in art but more pathetic and even morally greater in the humble submission of the fierce and giant-like spirit to inevitable decree--in the spontaneous return of the pristine fraternal appreciation when death withdraws the disturbing force of rivalry--and in his voluntarily appointing so far as he ventures to appoint his brother in arms and his bride to each other's happiness--than in the inventive display of a compunction for which as the world goes there appears to be positively no use and hardly clear room. Loftily viewing the case a wrong has been intended by Arcite to Palamon but no wrong done. He has been twice hacked and hewed a little--that is all; and it cannot be said that he has been robbed of her who would not have been his. Indeed the current of destiny has so run that the quarrel of the two noble kinsmen has brought as apparently it alone could bring the survivor to wedlock with his beloved. We suspect then that the attribution of the motive is equally modern with the style of the not ill-contrived witticism which accompanies the first mention of it-- ""Conscience that of all physick works the last Caused him to send for Emily in haste."" But that which upon the general comparison of the two speeches principally strikes us is the great expansion by the multiplying of the thoughts to which expression is given by Dryden. With old Geoffrey the weight of death seems actually to lie upon the tongue that speaks in few interrupted accents. Dryden's Moribund runs on quite at his ease in eloquent disquisition. Another unsatisfactory difference is the disappearing of that distinct commanding purpose or plan and the due proportion observed upon in the original. That mere cleaving desire to Emelie felt through the first half in word after word gushing up from a heart in which life but not love ebbs gets bewildered in the modern version among explications of the befallen unhappiness and lost in a sort of argumentative lamentation. And do but just look how that ""in his coldè grave "" the only word one may say in the whole allocution which does not expressly appertain to Emelie and yet half belongs to her by contrast--is extended in Dryden as if upon recollection of Claudio's complaint in ""Measure for Measure "" until like that complaint it becomes selfish. But there is small pleasure in picking out the poetical misses of John Dryden. It was to be foreseen that he would be worsted in this place of the competition; for the pathetic was not his _forte_ and was Chaucer's. So too instead of the summary and concise commendation of his happier cousin to the future regard of the bereaved bride so touching in Chaucer there comes in provoked by that unlucky repentance an expatiating and arguing review of the now extinct quarrel showing a liberty and vigour of thought that agree ill with the threatening cloud of dissolution and somewhat overlay and encumber the proper business to which the dying man has now turned himself--made imperative by the occasion--the formal and energetic eulogy on Palamon. The praise however is bestowed at last and handsomely. Have we think ye gentle lovers of Chaucer rightly understood the possibly somewhat obscure intention of the two verses at the beginning of our extract-- ""But I bequethe the service of my gost To you?"" We have accepted ""service"" in the sense which agreeably to our erudition it eminently holds the old love-vocabulary--homage devotion LOVE; the pure and entire dedication by the lover of his whole being to his lady. In this meaning the heart continually _serves_ if there should be no opportunity of rendering any useful offices. You will see that Dryden has taken the word in what strikes us as an inferior sense--namely available service; but then his verses are exquisite. And why gentle lovers of Chaucer why think ye does the expiring Arcite at that particular juncture of his address crave of his heart's queen softly to take him in her arms? Is it not that he is then about pouring out into her ear his dying design for her happiness? Received so the movement has great originality and an infinite beauty. His heart yearns the more towards her as he is on the point of giving utterance to his generous proposal. He will by that act of love upon her part and that mutual attitude of love deepen the solemnity truth power impression of his unexpected request. Will he perchance too approach her ear to his voice that grows weaker and weaker? The two verses appear by their wording to intimate something like all this. ""And softè take me in your armès twey For love of God _and herkeneth what I sey_."" If Chaucer had any such meaning it vanishes wholly in Dryden's version. On re-surveying the matter at last we feel the more that the passing over of Emelie from the dead Arcite to the living Palamon in Chaucer is by much more poetical when viewed as the voluntary concession and gift of the now fully heroic Arcite than as in Dryden the recovered right of the fortunate survivor. However the speech as Dryden has it is vigorous numerous spirited eloquent touched with poetry and might please you very well did you not compare it with the singular truth feeling fitness of Chaucer's--that unparalleled picture of a manly sorely-wrung lovingly-provident spirit upon its bed of untimely death. The process of dying has been considerately delineated by Chaucer. Death creeps from the feet upwards to the breast--it creeps up and possesses the arms. But the intellect which dwelled in the heart 'gan fail only when the very heart felt death. Then dimness fell upon the eyes and the breath faltered. One more look--one more word--and the spirit has forsaken its tenement. Dryden generalizes all this particularity--and therein greatly errs. But the last four flowing verses of the death-scene are in his more inspired manner and must be held good for redeeming a multitude of peccadilloes and some graver transgressions. Read them over again-- ""Yet could he not his closing eyes withdraw Though less and less of Emily he saw; So speechless for a little space he lay; Then grasp'd the hand he held and sigh'd his soul away."" When years rolling have in a manner exhausted the tears due to the remembrance of the heroic Arcite a parliament held upon matters of public interest gives occasion to Theseus of requiring the attendance of Palamon from Thebes to Athens. The benign monarch however is revolving affairs of nearer and more private concern. The national council is assembled; Palamon is in his place and Emelie has been called into presence. His majesty puts on a very serious countenance fixes his eyes heaves a sigh and begins unburthening his bosom of its concealed purposes. He ""begins from the beginning"" in this fashion:-- ""When the First Mover established the great chain of love in which he bound the four elements the mighty ordering proceeded of high wisdom. The same author himself inaccessible to alteration has appointed to all natural things the law of transiency and succession. The kinds endure; the individuals pass away. Nature examples us with decay. Trees rivers mighty towns wax and wane--much more we. All must die--the great and the small: and the wish to live is an impiety. Better it is to fall in the pride of strength and in the splendour of renown than to droop through long years into the grave; and the friend who survives should rejoice in his friend's happy and honourable departure. Wherefore then shall we longer mourn for Arcite?"" This is the copious preamble. The conclusion is more briefly dispatched. Emelie must accept the hand of her faithful servant Palamon. He wants no persuasion; and the knot of matrimony happily ties up at last their destinies wishes and expectations which the Tale in its progress has spun. The royal harangue is long; and marked doubtless with a sort of artificial solemnity. However it has a deliberative stateliness and a certain monarchal tone. _We_ do not now in the Speeches from the Throne begin regularly from the Creation--but that is a refinement. There has been eloquence of which Chaucer's deep display of philosophy and high deduction of argument is no ill-conceived representation. There is a grandeur in the earthly king's grounding his counsels in those of the heavenly King; and in his blending his own particular act of exerted kingly sway into the general system of things in the universe. The turn from the somewhat magniloquent dissertation to the parties immediately interested--the gentle disposing between injunction and persuasion of Emelie's will and the frank call upon Palamon to come forward and take possession of his happiness are natural princely and full of dramatic grace. Thus -- CHAUCER. Lo the oke that hath so long a norishing Fro the time that it ginneth first to spring And hath so long a lif as ye may see Yet at the lastè wasted is the tree. Considereth eke how that the hardè stone Under our feet on which we trede and gon It wasteth as it lieth by the way; The brodè river some time waxeth dry; The gretè tounès see we wane and wende; Then may ye see that all things hath an end. Of man and woman see we wel also That nedès in on of the termès two That is to sayn in youth or ellès age He mote be ded the king as shall a page; Som on his bed some on the depè see Som in the largè field as ye may see; Ther helpeth nought all goth that ilkè wey; Than may I say that allè things mote dey. What maketh this but Jupiter the king? The which is prince and cause of allè thing Converting allè unto his propre will From which it is derived soth to telle. And herè againes no creature on live Of no degree availeth for to strive. Then is it wisdom as it thinketh me To maken virtue of necessite And take it wel that we may not eschewe And namèly that to us all is dewe. And who so grutcheth ought he doth folie And rebel is to him that all may gie. And certainly a man hath most honour To dien in his excellence and flour Whan he is siker of his goodè name. Than hath he don his friend ne him no shame; And glader ought his friend been of his deth Whan with honour is yelden up his breath Than whan his name appalled is for age; For all foryetten is his vassalagè Than is it best as for a worthy fame To dien when a man is best of name. The contrary of all this is wilfulnesse. Why grutchen we? Why have we heavinesse That good Arcite of chivalry the flour Departed is with dutee and honour Out of this foulè prison of this lif? Why grutchen here his cosin and his wif Of his welfare that loven him so wel? Can he hem thank? Nay God wot never a del That both his soulè and eke himself offend And yet they mow hir lustres not amend. What may I conclude of this longè serie But after sorwe I rede us to be merie And thanken Jupiter of all his grace And er that we departen from this place I redè that we make of sorwes two O parfit joyè lasting evermo; And loketh now wher most sorwe is herein Ther wol I firste amenden and begin. Sister (quod he) this is my full assent With all the avis here of my parlement That gentil Palamon your owen knight That serveth you with will and herte and might And ever hath done sin ye first him knew That ye shall of your grace upon him vew And taken him for husbond and for lord: Lene me your hand for this is oure accord. Let see now of your womanly pitee. He is a kingè's brother's sone pardee And though he were a pourè bachelere Sin he hath served you so many a yere And had for you so gret adversitie It mostè ben considered leveth me. For gentil mercy oweth to passen right. Then sayd he thus to Palamon the knight: I trow ther nedeth little sermoning To maken you assenten to this thing. Cometh ner and take your lady by the hond. Betwixen hem was maked anon the bond That highte matrimoine or mariage By all the conseil of the baronage. And thus with allè blisse and melodie Hath Palamon ywedded Emilie. And God that all this widè world hath wrought Send him his love that hath it dere ybought. For now is Palamon in allè wele Living in blisse in richisse and in hele And Emelie him loveth so tendrely And he hire serveth all so gentilly That never was ther no word hem betwene Of jalousie ne of non other tene. Thus endeth Palamon and Emilie And God save all this fayrè compagnie. The whole oration is rendered by Dryden with zealous diligence in bringing out the sense into further effect and with a magnificent sweep of composition. If there is in the fine original any thing felt as a little too stiffly formal this impression is wholly obliterated or lost in the streaming poetry of the translator. Dryden may not on his own score have been much of a philosopher; but he handles a philosophical thought in verse with a dexterity that is entirely his own. The sharpness and swiftness of intellectual power concurring in him join so much ease with so much brevity that the poetical vein flows on unhindered even when involved with metaphysical notions and with scholastic recollections. The comparison of the following noble strain with the original now quoted decisively and successfully shows the character of an embellishing transformation which we have all along attributed to Dryden's treatment of Chaucer. The full thought of the original is often but as the seed of thought to the version or at least the ungrown plant of the one throws out the luxuriance and majesty of leaves blossoms and branches in the other. The growth and decay of the oak in the two and still more of the human being are marked instances. Dryden does not himself acknowledge the bold license which he has used in regenerating; he does himself less than justice. The worth of his work is not the giving to modern England her ancient poet without the trouble of acquiring his language or of learning to sympathize with his manner. It would almost seem as if that were an enterprise which there is no accomplishing. Rightly to speak it was not Dryden's. He really undertook from a great old poem lying before him to write a great modern poem which he has done; and in the new Knight's Tale we see Dryden the great poet--we do not see Chaucer the greater poet. But we see in it presumptive proof that the old poem worked from was great and interesting; and we must be lazy and unprofitable students if we do not from the proud and splendid modernization derive a yearning and a craving towards the unknown simple antique. Unknown to us in our first studies as we read upward from our own day into the past glories of our vernacular literature; but which when with gradually mounting courage endeavour and acquirement we have made our way up so far we find ""Worthy to have not remain'd so long unknown."" So Dryden has done honour and rendered service to his mighty predecessor--truer honour and better service--not by superseding but by guiding and impelling towards the knowledge of the old Knight's Tale. DRYDEN. The monarch oak the patriarch of the trees Shoots rising up and spreads by slow degrees; Three centuries he grows and three he stays Supreme in state and in three more decays: So wears the paving pebble in the street And towns and towers their fatal periods meet: So rivers rapid once now naked lie Forsaken of their springs and leave their channels dry: So man at first a drop dilates with heat; Then form'd the little heart begins to beat; Secret he feeds unknowing in the cell; At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell And struggles into breath and cries for aid; Then helpless in his mother's lap is laid. He creeps he walks and issuing into man Grudges their life from whence his own began; Retchless of laws affects to rule alone Anxious to reign and restless on the throne; First vegetive then feels and reasons last; Rich of three souls and lives all three to waste. Some thus but thousands more in flower of age For few arrive to run the latter stage. Sunk in the first in battle some are slain And others whelm'd beneath the stormy main. What makes all this but Jupiter the king At whose command we perish and we spring? Then 'tis our best since thus ordain'd to die To make a virtue of necessity; Take what he gives since to rebel is vain; The bad grows better which we well sustain; And could we choose the time and choose aright 'Tis best to die our honour at the height. When we have done our ancestors no shame But served our friends and well secured our fame Then should we wish our happy life to close And leave no more for fortune to dispose. So should we make our death a glad relief From future shame from sickness and from grief; Enjoying while we live the present hour And dying in our excellence and flower. Then round our death-bed every friend should run And joyous of our conquest early won; While the malicious world with envious tears Should grudge our happy end and wish it theirs. Since then our Arcite is with honour dead Why should we mourn that he so soon is freed Or call untimely what the gods decreed? With grief as just a friend may be deplored From a foul prison to free air restored Ought he to thank his kinsman or his wife Could tears recal him into wretched life? Their sorrow hurts themselves; on him is lost; And worse than both offends his happy ghost. What then remains but after past annoy To take the good vicissitude of joy; To thank the gracious gods for what they give Possess our souls and while we live to live? Ordain we then two sorrows to combine And in one point the extremes of grief to join; That thence resulting joy may be renew'd As jarring notes in harmony conclude. Then I propose that Palamon shall be In marriage join'd with beauteous Emily; For which already I have gain'd the assent Of my free people in full parliament. Long love to her has borne the faithful knight And well deserved had fortune done him right; 'Tis time to mend her fault since Emily By Arcite's death from former vows is free.-- If you fair sister ratify the accord And take him for your husband and your lord 'Tis no dishonour to confer your grace On one descended from a royal race; And were he less yet years of service past From grateful souls exact reward at last. Pity is heaven's and your's; nor can she find A throne so soft as in a woman's mind-- He said: she blush'd; and as o'erawed by might Seem'd to give Theseus what she gave the knight. Then turning to the Theban thus he said:-- Small arguments are needful to persuade Your temper to comply with my command: And speaking thus he gave Emilia's hand. Smiled Venus to behold her own true knight Obtain the conquest though he lost the fight; And bless'd with nuptial bliss the sweet laborious night. Eros and Anteros on either side One fired the bridegroom and one warm'd the bride; And long-attending Hymen from above Shower'd on the bed the whole Idalian grove. All of a tenor was their after-life No day discolour'd with domestic strife; No jealousy but mutual truth believed Secure repose and kindness undeceived. Thus Heaven beyond the compass of his thought Sent him the blessing he so dearly bought. So may the Queen of Love long duty bless And all true lovers find the same success. The time is come in which a curious and instructive chapter in English criticism--a long one too possibly--might be written on the Versification of Chaucer and upon the history of opinions respecting it. Tyrwhitt laid the basis in his edition of the _Canterbury Tales_--the only work of the ancestral poet that can yet fairly be said to have found an editor--by a text of which the admirable diligence fidelity skill and sound discretion wrung energetic and unqualified praise from the illaudatory pen of Ritson. But the Grammar of Chaucer has yet to be fully drawn out. The profound labours of the continental scholars late or living on the language that was immediate mother to our own the Anglo-Saxon makes that which was in Tyrwhitt's day a thing impossible to be done now almost an easy adventure. Accomplished it would at once considerably rectify even Tyrwhitt's text. The Rules of the Verse which are many and evince a systematic and cautious framing no less than a sensitive musical ear in the patriarch would follow of themselves. In the mean time a few observations for which the materials lie at hand are called for in this place by the collision of the two great names Chaucer and Dryden. Dryden says-- ""The verse of Chaucer I confess is not harmonious to us but it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends it was _auribus istius temporis accommodata_. They who lived with him and some time after him thought it musical; and it continues so even in our judgment if compared with the numbers of Lidgate and Gower his contemporaries:--there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it which is natural and pleasing though not perfect. It is true I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him; for he would make us believe the fault is in our ears and that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine; but this opinion is not worth confuting; it is so gross and obvious an error that common sense (which is a rule in every thing but matters of faith and revelation) must convince the reader that equality of numbers in every verse which we call heroic was either not known or not always practised in Chaucer's age. It were an easy matter to produce some thousands of his verses which are lame for want of half a foot and sometimes a whole one and which no pronunciation can make otherwise. We can only say that he lived in the infancy of our poetry and that nothing is brought to perfection at first. We must be children before we grow men. There was an Ennius and in process of time a Lucilius and a Lucretius before Virgil and Horace; even after Chaucer there was a Spenser a Harrington a Fairfax before Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in their nonage till these last appeared."" Strange to say by the changing pronunciation of the language there grew with time upon the minds of men a doubt whether or no the Father of our Poetry _wrote verse_! The tone of Dryden in the above passage when animadverting upon Speght shows that that editor in standing up for ten syllables put forth an unusual opinion; whilst the poet in alleging the deficiency manifestly agrees with the opinion of the antique versification that had become current in the world. _He_ taxes Chaucer it will be observed with going wrong on the side of deficiency not of excess; nor does he blame the interchange even of deficiency and excess as if the syllables were often nine and often eleven. His words leave no room for misconception of their meaning. They are as definite as language can supply. ""Thousands of the verses are lame for want of half a foot or of a whole one."" In this sense then he intends: ""That equality of numbers in every verse which we call heroic was either not known or not always practised in Chaucer's age."" But as Dryden has been severely taken to task by some insignificant writers of our day for the above passage let us not for his vindication but excuse take a moment's glance at Speght's edition (1602 ) which in Dryden's day was in high esteem and had been at first published on the recommendation of Speght's ""assured and ever-loving friend "" the illustrious Francis Beaumout. In his preface Speght says--""and his verses although in divers places they may seem to us to stand of unequal measures yet a skilful reader that can scan them in their nature shall find it otherwise. And if a verse here and there fal out a sillable shorter or longer than another I rather aret it to the negligence and rape of Adam Scrivener that I may speak as Chaucer doth than to any unconning or oversight in the Author. For how fearful he was to have his works miswritten or his verse mismeasured may appear in the end of his fifth book of Troilus and Cresside where he writeth thus:-- 'And for there is so great diversitie In English and in writing of our tongue So pray I God that none miswrite thee Ne thee mismetre for defaut of tongue'"" &c. How Speght made up the measure to his own satisfaction does not appear; nor what those methods of pronunciation may have been which Dryden tried and which left some thousand verses deficient by half a foot or a foot. But believing Speght's text to be accurate Dryden could not but believe in the artlessness and irregularity of Chaucer's versification. Speght's text is most inaccurate and altogether undeserving of his own very high opinion thus expressed in the Dedication to Sir Robert Cecil--""Now therefore that both by old written copies and by Master William Thynn's praiseworthy labours I have reformed the whole worke whereby Chaucer for the most part is restored to his owne antiquitie."" In _his_ Chaucer Dryden met every where such lines as these-- ""When that April with his shours sote."" ""And small foules maken melodie That slepen all night with open eie."" ""It befell that season on a day."" ""Ready to wend in my pilgrimage."" ""That toward Canterbury would ride-- The chambres and stables weren wide."" ""To tell you all the condition."" ""Full worthy was he in his lords warre."" ""Aboven all nations in Pruce."" ""For to tell you of his array."" We suspect that there was all along a lingering tradition amongst the learned about the virtue of the Mute E's. Vestiges of the use occur in the poets of Elizabeth's time. Wallis the celebrated grammarian says that ""with our early poets it is found that that (final) E did or did not constitute an additional syllable just as the stricture of the verse required it."" Urry whose edition of Chaucer was published not long after his death in 1721 knows for vocal the termination in ES of genitive singular and of the plural--also the past tense and participle in ED which however can hardly be thought much of as it is a power over one mute E that we retain in use to this day. The final E too he marks for a syllable where he finds one wanted but evidently without any grammatical reason. Urry was an unfortunate editor. Truly does Tyrwhitt say of him that ""his design of restoring the metre of Chaucer by a collation of MSS. was as laudable as his execution of it has certainly been unsuccessful."" The natural causes of this ill success are thus severely and distinctly stated ""The strange license in which he appears to have indulged himself of lengthening and shortening Chaucer's words according to his own fancy and of even adding words of his own without giving his readers the least notice has made the text of Chaucer in his edition by far the worst that was ever published."" One is not surprised when Tyrwhitt the model of gentlemanly and scholarly editor a very pattern of temperate equitable and merciful criticism cannot refrain from closing his preface with this extinguishing censure of his wilful predecessor--""Mr Urry's edition should never be opened by any one for the purpose of reading Chaucer."" Morell a scholar published in 1737 the Prologue and the Knight's Tale--and he too marked at need the Mute E's in his text but by what rule Tyrwhitt does not intimate nor do we now distinctly recollect. He courageously holds that the numbers of Chaucer ""are always musical whether they want or exceed the complement."" But that cannot well be; for except in very peculiar cases--such for example as the happy line ""Gingling in the whistling wind full clear""--if the MS. have it so--a line of nine syllables only must be a _lame_ one--and their frequent recurrence would be the destruction of all music. Tyrwhitt urges the reason of pronouncing the final E; namely that it remains to us from a language in which it formed a syllable. So from the Norman French we have _fac_-E _host_-E _chang_-E &c. This is basing the matter on its true ground. It must however be acknowledged with some sorrow that this well-schooled clear-minded and most laborious editor did not feel himself bound for the behoof of his author to master as far as the philology of the day might have enabled him the Saxon tongue itself and learn from the fountain what might and what could not be--the language of Chaucer. Imperfect as the study of the Anglo-Saxon then was he would thus have possessed a needful mastery over the manuscripts upon which as it was he wholly depended; and he would have been saved from some unguarded philological assertions and whimsical speculations. Wanting this guidance the work so well executed as it is is a monument only the more to be wondered at of his indefatigable industry and extraordinary good sense. Upon any where opening Chaucer of the many seemingly defective verses (Dryden in saying thousands may have exaggerated the number even in Speght ) by far the greater part will be found recoverable to measure by that restitution of the Mute E which we since too exclusively perhaps connect with the name of Tyrwhitt. The confidence felt in his text however--the only one upon which a metrical scholar dares work--in some sort justifies the honour. Meanwhile this metrical theory from his time has been generally received; and the renown of the founder of our poetry settled on all the wider and firmer basis when he appears as the earliest skilled artificer of the verse itself--the ten-syllabled or now national verse of Shakspeare Spenser Milton Dryden and Pope. One starts therefore to find a name of such distinction as the late Laureate's formally opposed to Tyrwhitt and committed to the opinion which may seem to have been Dryden's that the verse of Chaucer is ""rhythmical not metrical."" This hardly self-explicating distinction of Dr Geo. Fred. Nott's Southey in his Life of Cowper has explained in set terms--a verse for which the number of beats or accents is ruled is rhythmical--for example the verse of Coleridge's _Christabel_. In that beautiful poem the verse is fixed at four beats or accents but is free syllabled having six seven ten twelve or fourteen. Southey cannot believe that the prudent and practical Chaucer would have placed his verse intended for general reception in the jeopardy of a reader's discretion for determining when the verse required the sounding and when the silence of a vowel by its nature free to be sounded or left silent as exigency might require. But he misapprehends the proposed remedy; and the discretion which he supposes is not given. In the two languages from which ours is immediately derived the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman-French there are found many final syllables entirely dropped in our pronunciation and many of them in our writing but which in the time of Chaucer were all still written and all with the same vowel E. The metrical hypothesis to which Tyrwhitt's labours gave a lustre much heightened by the Anglo-Saxon studies abroad and at home of the present century bears--first that in the language of Chaucer's day these syllables were still audible; and secondly that Ch
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ucer consequently employed them in his verse like any other syllables with the due metrical value:--herein not as the Laureate thought overruling but conforming himself to the use of his mother tongue. To this more than plausible view which if the late studies that have been taken in the intelligence of Alfred's speech had been made in Tyrwhitt's day would not have waited till now for its full establishment no objection has yet been raised that seems to deserve the slightest attention. The Laureate's vanish upon the mere statement. For Dr Nott on whom he triumphantly builds and whose proofs he seems to adopt--he is the weakest and most wrongheaded of all possible prosers; and what is more his opinions if they deserve the name differ _toto coelo_ from Southey's. For we have seen that Southey's ground of distinction is the number of syllables unrestrained or varying as in _Christabel_. But Nott says repeatedly that the number of syllables is fixed namely to ten; and of the five beats he says not a word. To extricate Nott's argument (in his edition of Surrey) from entanglement would not repay a tithe of the trouble; suffice it to say that he holds that as English verse before Chaucer was rhythmical it is not likely that Chaucer all at once made it metrical. We answer first--the question is of a fact offering its own evidence not of an anterior likelihood. Secondly--Tyrwhitt's theory that Chaucer from his intimacy with the more advanced French and Italian poetry adopted their measure and stamped art upon a poetry till then rude and helpless has high natural probability and agrees to the vehement early extollings of Chaucer as sovereign master of art. Thirdly--we desire a better proof and explanation of the difference between rhythmical and metrical verse than Dr Nott has given who has placed some extracts from these anterior poets at the side of some from Chaucer which prove just nothing. Fourthly there _was_ metrical verse in England before Chaucer eight-syllabled and _fifteen_-syllabled--if no others. Mr Hallam (_Introduction to the Literature of Europe_) writes with more commendation of Dr Nott's accomplishments than they merit; but in the following excellent passage he shows his usual knowledge of his subject and his usual judgment. ""It had been supposed to be proved by Tyrwhitt that Chaucer's lines are to be read metrically in ten or eleven syllables like the Italian and as I apprehend the French of his time. For this purpose it is necessary to presume that many terminations now mute were syllabically pronounced; and where verses prove refractory after all our endeavours Tyrwhitt has no scruple in declaring them corrupt. It may be added that Gray before the appearance of Tyrwhitt's essay on the versification of Chaucer had adopted without hesitation the same hypothesis. But according to Dr Nott the verses of Chaucer and of all his successors down to Surrey are merely rhythmical to be read by cadence and admitting of considerable variety in the number of syllables though ten may be the more frequent. In the manuscripts of Chaucer the line is always broken by a cæsura in the middle which is pointed out by a virgule; and this is preserved in the early editions down to that of 1532. They come near therefore to the short Saxon line differing chiefly by the alternate rhyme which converts two verses into one. He maintains that a great many lines of Chaucer cannot be read metrically though harmonious as verses of cadence. This rhythmical measure he proceeds to show in Hoccleve Lydgate Hawes Barclay Skelton and even Wyatt; and thus concludes that it was first abandoned by Surrey in whom it very rarely occurs. This hypothesis it should be observed derives some additional plausibility from a passage in Gascoyne's 'Notes of instruction concerning the making of verse or rhyme in English ' printed in 1575. 'Whosoever do peruse and well consider his (Chaucer's) works he shall find that although his lines are not always of one selfsame number of syllables yet being read by one that hath understanding the longest verse and that which hath most syllables in it will fall (to the ear) correspondent unto that which hath fewest syllables; and likewise that which hath fewest syllables shall be found yet to consist of words that have such natural sound as may seem equal in length to a verse which hath many more syllables of lighter accents.' ""A theory so ingeniously maintained and with so much induction of examples has naturally gained a good deal of credit. I cannot however by any means concur in the extension given to it. Pages may be read in Chaucer and still more in Dunbar where every line is regularly and harmoniously decasyllabic; and though the cæsura may perhaps fall rather more uniformly than it does in modern verse it would be very easy to find exceptions which could not acquire a rhythmical cadence by any artifice of the reader. The deviations from the normal type or decasyllable line were they more numerous than after allowance for the license of pronunciation as well as the probable corruption of the text they appear to be would not I conceive justify us in concluding that it was disregarded. These aberrant lines are much more common in the dramatic blank verse of the seventeenth century. They are doubtless vestiges of the old rhythmical forms; and we may readily allow that English versification had not in the fifteenth or even sixteenth centuries the numerical regularity of classical or Italian metre. In the ancient ballads Scots and English the substitution of the anapaest for the iambic foot is of perpetual recurrence and gives them a remarkable elasticity and animation; but we never fail to recognize a uniformity of measure which the use of nearly equipollent feet cannot on the strictest metrical principles be thought to impair."" Mr. Guest in his work of which we hope erelong to give an account brings to the story of English verse far more extensive research than had hitherto been bestowed upon it; and that special scholarship which was needed--the Anglo-Saxon language learned in the new continental school of Rask and Grimm. His examination of our subject merges in a general history of the Language viewed as a metrical element or material; and hence his exposition which we rapidly collect _seriatim_ is plainly different in respect of both order and fulness from what it would have been had the illustration of Chaucer been his main purpose. He follows down the gradual Extinction of Syllables; and in this respect our anciently syllabled now mute E takes high place and falls first under his consideration. This now silent or vanished Vowel occurred heretofore with metrical power in adopted FRENCH Substantives as--eloquenc-E maladi-E; and in their plurals as--maladi-ES. And in Adjectives of the same origin as--larg-E. It remained from several parts of the ANGLO-SAXON grammar.--From A E U endings of Anglo-Saxon substantives--as nam-A nam-E; tim-A tim-E; mon-A (the moon ) mon-E; sunn-E (the sun ) sonn-E; heort-E (the heart ) hert-E; ear-E (the ear ) er-E; scol-U (school ) scol-E; luf-U lov-E; sceam-U sham-E; lag-A law-E; sun-U (a son ) son-E; wud-U (a wood ) wod-E.--(To Mr Guest's three vowels add O:--as bræd-O (breadth) bred-E.)--From the termination THE; as--streng-THE; yow-THE.--From a few adjectives ending in E; as--getrew-E trew-E; new-E new-E.--From adverbs formed by the same vowel from adjectives; as from beorht (bright ) is made in Anglo-Saxon beorht-E (brightly ) remaining with Chaucer as bright-E.--Inflexion produces the final E. In substantives the prevalent singular dative of the mother speech was in E. Chaucer now and then seems to present us with a dative; as in the second verse of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales from rot (root ) rot-E. And Mr Guest thinks that he has found ONE instance of a genitive plural E from A; namely from the earlier ath (an oath ) genitive plural ath-A; with Chaucer--oth oth-E. The German family of languages exhibits a fine and bold peculiarity--a double declension of its Adjectives depending on a condition of syntax. The Anglo-Saxon adjective in its ordinary (or as grammarians have called it Indefinite) declension makes the nominative plural for all the genders in E; and this remains as the regular plural termination of the adjective to Chaucer. Thus we have in the more ancient language--eald; plural eald-E; with Chaucer--old; plural old-E &c. The rule of the extraordinary (or Definite) declension is thus generally given by Mr Guest for Chaucer. ""When the adjective follows the definite article or the definite pronoun _this_ _that_ or any one of the possessive pronouns--_his_ _her_ &c.--it takes what is called its definite form.""--(Vol. i. p. 32.) From the Anglo-Saxon definite declension (running through three genders five cases and two numbers ) remains to the language that arose after the Conquest ONE final E. _E.g._ Indefinite--strong; definite strong-E;--indefinite--high; definite--high-E. The Verb ends the first person singular and the three persons plural of the present tense and makes imperative and infinitive in E. The past tense generally ends in DE or EDE; (Mr Guest has forgotten TE;) sometimes in ED. As for those two principal endings the genitive singular in ES which is the Anglo-Saxon termination retained and the plural in ES which is the Anglo-Saxon ending obscured--they happen hardly to fall under Mr Guest's particular regard; but it is easily understood that the Anglo-Saxon hlaford (lord ) gen. sing. hlaford-ES had in Chaucer's day become lord lord-ES;--and that scur (shower ) plural scur-AS of our distant progenitors had bequeathed to his verse--shour shour-ES. Legitimate scepticism surely ceases when it thus appears that ignorance alone has hastily understood that this vowel extant in this or that word with a quite alien meaning and use (--_e.g._ for lengthening a foregoing vowel--softening an antecedent consonant )--or with none and through the pure casualty of negligence or of error might at any time be pressed irregularly into metrical service. Assuredly Chaucer never used such blind and wild license of straightening his measure; but an instructed eye sees in the Canterbury Tales--and in all his poetry of which the text is incorrupt--the uniform application of an intricate and thoroughly critical rule which fills up by scores by hundreds or by thousands the time-wronged verses of ""the Great Founder"" to true measure and true music. To sum up in a few words our own views--First if you take NO account of the mute E the great majority of Chaucer's verses in the only justifiable text--Tyrwhitt's Canterbury Tales--are in what we commonly call the TEN-syllabled Iambic metre. Secondly if you take account of the metrical E the great majority of them appear if you choose so to call them as ELEVEN-syllabled Iambic verses or as the common heroic measure with a supernumerary terminal syllable. Thirdly if you take NO account of the disputed E a very large number of the verses but less apparently than the majority appear as wanting internally one or two syllables. Fourthly if you take account of the said troublesome E almost universally these deficient measures become filled up to the due complement--become decasyllabic or hendecasyllabic as the case may be. Fifthly if you consent to take account of this grammatical metrical E no inconsiderable number of the verses--ten-syllabled or eleven-syllabled by technical computation--acquire one or two supernumerary syllables distributed if one may so speak _within_ the verse--and to be viewed as enriching the harmony without distorting or extending the measure after the manner of the _Paradise Lost_. Finally (for the present ) whether the verses in general fall under our usual English scheme of the one-syllabled ending or end as the Italian for the most part do dissyllabically has been disputed by those who agree in the recognition of the metrical E. To wit--shall the final E of Mr Guest's rule ending the verse and where it would consequently make a hypercatalectic eleventh syllable still be pronounced--as Tyrwhitt although not anxiously contends? If the grammatical rule is imperative within the verse as much one would think must it be so at its termination. That Chaucer admits the doubled ending we see by numerous unequivocal instances from all moods of the verse mirthful and solemn; these show a versification friendly to the doubled ending; and must go far to remove any scruple of admitting Tyrwhitt's conception of it as generally hendecasyllabic. Let the position of Chaucer in the history of his art be considered and it will be seen that those who maintain a systematic art in him have a relief from objections greater than those who should enquire concerning perhaps any other poet. In the formation of his verse and the lifting up of a rude language more than Dante himself a creator! What wonder then if he should sometimes make mistakes and that some inconsistencies remain at last irreducible? If the method undertaken draws the irreducible cases into a narrower and a narrower compass that sufficiently justifies the theory of the method against all gainsayers. This copious and possibly tedious grammatical display of this once active metrical element was forced from us as the only proper answer to the doubt revived in our own day on the versification of Chaucer. We are too prone to believe that our forefathers were as rude as their speech and their speech as they; but this multitude of grammatical delicacies retained for centuries after the subjection of the native language by conquest and systematically applied in the versification of the great old poet shows a feeling of language and an authentic stamp of art that claim the most genial and sympathizing respect of a refined posterity to their not wholly unrefined more heroic ancestors. INDEX TO VOL. LVII. About a bonnet 242. Aden town of 206. Advice to an author on the novel and the drama 679. Æsthetics of dress: --A case of hats 51 --No. II. about a bonnet 242 --No. III. the cut of a coat and the good of a gown 608 --No. IV. minor matters 731. Affliction of childhood the by the English Opium-Eater 274. Agriculture Practical 298. Almaden the quicksilver mines of 186. Anacreon's grave from Goethe 175. Apparition of the Brocken the by the English Opium-Eater 747. Ariosto remarks on 404. Arnold's history of Rome vol. iii. review of 752. Betham's Etruria Celtica review of 474. Blind girl to a 98. Bonnet about a 242. Book of the Farm review of 298. Borodino an ode 30. Bravo character of 601. Breeze the from Goethe 173. British critics North's specimens of No. I. Dryden 133 --No. II. Dryden and Pope 369 --No. III. Dryden 503 --No. IV. Dryden on Chaucer 617 --No. V. the same concluded 771. British history during the eighteenth century 353. Brothers the from Goethe 176. Cairo town of 210. Calm at sea the from Goethe 173. Campagna of Rome the 546. Case of hats a 51. Cattaro sketches of 34. Cavalier's choice from Goethe 174. Cennino Cennini on painting 717. Cervantes remarks on 8. Ceylon sketch of 204. Chapman's Homer remarks on 381. Chaucer Dryden on 617 771. Chosen rock the from Goethe 177. Coleridge and opium-eating 117. Comfort in tears from Goethe 170. Confessions of an English Opium-eater a sequel to. Introductory notice 269 --Part I. The affliction of childhood 274 --Part I. continued 489. --Part I. concluded The Palimpsest 739 --Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow 743 --The apparition of the Brocken 747 --Finale to Part I. Savannah-la-Mar 750. Critics the British--_see_ British. Cuba insurrection in 605. Cut of a coat the 608. Dance of death from Goethe 167. Dante characteristics of 2 9. Death trance from Goethe 177. Delta stanzas written after the funeral of Sir David Milne by 766. Desert journey across the 204. Draining land on 299. Drama and the novel the 679. Dress æsthetics of a case of hats 51 --No. II. about a bonnet 242 --No. III. The cut of a coat and the good of a gown 608. Dryden as a critic 133 369 503--as a translator 511--on Chaucer 617 771. Dumas M. the three guardsmen by 59. Egypt sketches of 286. Englishwoman in Egypt the 286. Etruria Celtica review of 474. Etudes des Sciénces Sociales review of 529. Evening from Goethe 173. Exculpation from Goethe 179. Fairest flower the from Goethe 168. Fasti of Ovid translation from the 94. Forced sale the 99 --Chap. II. 103 --Chap. III 107 --Chap. IV. 111. France state of manners &c. in before the Revolution 705. George III. review of Walpole's memoirs of 353. German-American romances --The Viceroy and the Aristocracy or Mexico in 1812 --Part I. Introduction 251 --Chap. I. 257--Chap. XI. 262 --Part II. 331 --Chap. XVIII. 333 --Chap. XIX. 340 --Chap. XX. 345 --Chap. XXIII. 349 --Part III. 561 --Chap. XLI. 572 --Chap. XLII. 575. Gillman's life of Coleridge strictures on 117. Glance at the Peninsula 595. Goethe--_see_ Poems. Good of a gown the 608. Grant to Maynooth the 647. Hannibal 752. Hats a case of 51. History on translating 507. Holy family the from Goethe 178. Homer on the translation of 507. Homer Dante and Michael Angelo 1. Homeward bound 18. Hood Thomas stanzas to the memory of by B. Simmons 768. Husbandman the from Goethe 175. Isabel Queen of Spain character of 598. Janus from the Fasti of Ovid 94. J.D. To a Blind Girl by 98 --Stanzas by 314. Juvenal remarks on 516. King in Thule the from Goethe 166. Lebrun's Lawsuit 705. Leon General 606. Letters of the Dead by B. Simmons 114. Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow by the English Opium-Eater 743. Lopez character of 601. Love's Hour-Glass from Goethe 176. Lucretius remarks on 517. Malmesbury's Diary and Correspondence review of 315. Malta 215. Marriage unequal from Goethe 178. Marston; or Memoirs of a Statesman --Part XV. 75 --Part XVI. 461 --Part XVII. 679. Matanzas insurrection at 605. Maynooth 647. Merrifield Mrs. translation of Cennino Cennini on Painting by 717. Mesmerism 219. Mexico in 1812 --Part I. 251 --Part II. 331 --Part III. 561. Michael Angelo 1 15. Midnight Watch the --Chap. I. 424 --Chap. II. 431 --Chap. III. 439 --Chap. IV. 444. Milne Sir David stanzas written after the funeral of by Delta 766. Milton critiques on 5 503. Modern Political Economy remarks on 529. Mohammed Ali 215. Montenegro a ramble in 33. Muse's mirror from Goethe 179. My first spec in the Biggleswades 549. Narvaez characte of 599. New love from Goethe 179. North's Specimens of the British Critics No. I. Dryden 133 --No. II. Dryden and Pope 369 --No. III. Dryden 503 --No. IV Dryden on Chaucer 617 --the same concluded 771. Novel and the Drama the 679. O'Donnell governor of Cuba 605. Opium-Eater a sequel to the confessions of the introductory notice 269 --Part I. The affliction of childhood 274 --Part I. continued 489 --concluded; the Palimpsest 739 --Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow 743 --the apparition of the Brocken 747 --Finale to Part I. Savannah-la-Mar 750. Overland passage the 204. Ovid's Fasti translation from 94. Painting Cennino Cennini on 717. Park the from Goethe 178. Parting precepts by B. Simmons 114. Pauperism increase of 531. Peel E. Borodino an ode by 30. Peninsula a glance at the 595. Perfect bliss from Goethe 176. Philomela from Goethe 177. Phoebus and Hermes from Goethe 179. Ping-Kee's view of the stage 415. Poems and ballads of Goethe No. III. The waterman 165 --the king in Thule 166 --the dance of death 167 --the fairest flower 168 --sorrow without consolation 170 --comfort in tears ib. --to a golden heart 171 --welcome and departure 172 --evening 173 --a calm at sea ib. --the breeze ib. --the cavalier's choice 174 --retribution 175 --poems after the manner of the antique; the husbandman ib. --Anacreon's grave ib. --the brothers 176 --Love's hourglass ib. --warning ib. --solitude ib. --perfect bliss ib. --the chosen rock 177 --the death-trance ib. --Philomela ib. --sacred ground ib. --the park 178 --the teachers ib. --marriage unequal ib. --holy family ib. --exculpation 179 --the muses' mirror ib. --Phoebus and Hermes ib. --a new love ib. --the wreaths 180 --the Swiss Alp ib. Poetry: --Borodino an ode by E. Peel 30 --Janus from the Fasti of Ovid 94 --to a blind girl 98 --Vanities in verse by B. Simmons 114 --the tower of London by Thomas Roscoe 158 --the poems and ballads of Goethe No. III. 165 --stanzas by J. D. 314 --stanzas written after the funeral of Sir David Milne by Delta 766 --stanzas to the memory of Thomas Hood by B. Simmons 768. Poetry on the translation of 507. Political economy remarks on modern 529. Pompeii 218. Poole's Englishwoman in Egypt review of 286. Pope critique on 369. Practical agriculture 298. Púshkin the Russian poet No. I. by Thomas B. Shaw 657. Race the a Red River recollection 21. Ragusa sketch of 41. Ramble in Montenegro a 33. Raphael characteristics of 17 --critique on 411. Rector's daughter the Chap. I. 580 --Chap. II. 582 --Chap. III. 585 --Chap. IV. 588 --Chap. V. 590 --Chap. VI. 592 --Chap. VII. 593. Red River recollections Chap. I. homeward bound 18 --Chap. II. the race 21 --Chap. III. the stag-hunt 26. Red Sea navigation of the 208. Retribution from Goethe 175. Revelations of Spain by an English resident review of 595. Reviews: --Gillman's life of Coleridge 117 --Widdrington's Spain and the Spaniards 181 --Griffith's journey across the desert 204 --Townsend's facts in mesmerism 219 --Mrs Poole's Englishwoman in Egypt 286 --Stephens' book of the farm 298 --Lord Malmesbury's diaries and correspondence 315 --Walpole's memoirs of the reign of George III. 353 --Vestiges of the natural history of creation 448 --Betham's Etruria Celtica 474 --Sismondi's études des sciénces sociales 529 --Revelations of Spain by an English resident 595 --Cennino Cennini on painting 717 --Arnold's history of Rome vol. iii. 752. Revolution effects of the 355. Reynolds Sir Joshua 16. Rome causes of the decline of 546. Roscoe Thomas the tower of London by Part I. 158 --Part II. 161. Sacred ground from Goethe 177. Savannah-la-Mar by the English Opium-Eater 750. Scott Sir Walter critique on 8. Settled at last or Red River recollections; Chap. I. homeward bound 18 --Chap. II. the race 21 --Chap. III. the stag-hunt 26. Shaw Thomas B. sketch of the life of Púshkin by 657. Simmons B. vanities in verse by --letters of the dead 114 --parting precepts 115 --stanzas to the memory of Thomas Hood by 768. Sismondi 529. Slavery in the Spanish colonies 605. Solitude from Goethe 176. Sorrow without consolation from Goethe 170. Spain as it is 181 --present condition of 595. State Ping-Kee's view of the 415. Stag-hunt the a Red-River recollections 21. Stanzas to the memory of Sir David Milne by Delta 766 --of Thomas Hood by B. Simmons 768. Stephens' book of the farm review of 298. Superfluities of life the a tale from Tieck Chap. I. 194 --Chap. II. 198. Suspiria de profundis; being a sequel to the confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Introductory notice 269 --Part I. the affliction of childhood 274 --Part I. continued 489 --Part I. concluded the Palimpsest 739 --Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow 743 --the apparition of the Brocken 747 --Finale to Part I. Savannah-la-Mar 750. Swiss Alp the from Goethe 180. Tasso critique on 405. Teachers the from Goethe 178. Three guardsmen the 59. Tieck the superfluities of life by Chap. I. 194 --Chap. II. 198. To a blind girl 98. To a golden heart from Goethe 170. To Livia by B. Simmons 114. Tower of London the by Thomas Roscoe Part I. 158 --Part II. 161. Townsend's facts in mesmerism review of 219. Translation remarks on 507. Vanities in verse by B. Simmons --Letters of the dead 114 --parting precepts 115. Vestiges of the natural history of creation review of 448. Viceroy and the aristocracy or Mexico in 1812 --Part I. 251 --Part II. 331 --Part III. 561. Virgil remarks on Dryden's translation of 520. Virgil Tasso and Raphael 401. Walpole's memoirs of the reign of George III. review of 353. Warning the from Goethe 176. Waterman the from Goethe 165. Welcome and departure from Goethe 170. Widdrington's Spain and the Spaniards review of 181. Wreaths the from Goethe 180. * * * * * _Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes Paul's Work._ "
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Ingram 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 VOL. LVIII. JULY-DECEMBER 1845. * * * * * WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS EDINBURGH AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW LONDON. * * * * * 1845. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLVII. JULY 1845. Vol. LVIII. CONTENTS. MARLBOROUGH NO. I. 1 PÚSHKIN THE RUSSIAN POET. NO. II. 28 SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS: BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER PART II. 43 NORTHERN LIGHTS 56 HOUSE-HUNTING IN WALES 74 THE TORQUATO TASSO OF GOETHE 87 DAVID THE "TELYNWR " OR THE DAUGHTER'S TRIAL; A TALE OF WALES 96 NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS. NO. VI.--SUPPLEMENT TO DRYDEN ON CHAUCER 114 * * * * * EDINBURGH: WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 45 GEORGE STREET; AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW LONDON. _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._ SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. PRINTED BY BALLANTINE AND HUGHES EDINBURGH. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCCLVII. JULY 1845. VOL. LVIII. MARLBOROUGH. No. I. Alexander the Great said when he approached the tomb of Achilles "Oh! fortunate youth who had a Homer to be the herald of your fame!" "And well did he say so " says the Roman historian: "for unless the _Iliad_ had been written the same earth which covered his body would have buried his name." Never was the truth of these words more clearly evinced than in the case of the Duke of MARLBOROUGH. Consummate as were the abilities unbroken the success immense the services of this great commander he can scarcely be said to be known to the vast majority of his countrymen. They have heard the distant echo of his fame as they have that of the exploits of Timour of Bajazet and of Genghis Khan; the names of Blenheim and Ramillies of Malplaquet and Oudenarde awaken a transient feeling of exultation in their bosoms; but as to the particulars of these events the difficulties with which their general had to struggle the objects for which he contended even the places where they occurred they are for the most part as ignorant as they are of similar details in the campaigns of Baber or Aurengzebe. What they do know is derived chiefly if not entirely from the histories of their enemies. Marlborough's exploits have made a prodigious impression on the Continent. The French who felt the edge of his flaming sword and saw the glories of the _Grande Monarque_ torn from the long triumphant brow of Louis XIV.; the Dutch who found in his conquering arm the stay of their sinking republic and their salvation from slavery and persecution; the Germans who saw the flames of the Palatinate avenged by his resistless power and the ravages of war rolled back from the Rhine into the territory of the state which had provoked them; the Lutherans who beheld in him the appointed instrument of divine vengeance to punish the abominable perfidy and cruelty of the revocation of the edict of Nantes--have concurred in celebrating his exploits. The French nurses frightened their children with stories of "Marlbrook " as the Orientals say when their horses start they see the shadow of Richard Coeur-de-Lion crossing their path. Napoleon hummed the well-known air "Marlbrook s'en va à la guerre " when he crossed the Niemen to commence the Moscow campaign. But in England the country which he has made illustrious the nation he has saved the land of his birth he is comparatively forgotten; and were it not for the popular pages of Voltaire and the shadow which a great name throws over the stream of time in spite of every neglect he would be virtually unknown at this moment to nineteen-twentieths of the British people. It is the fault of the national historians which has occasioned this singular injustice to one of the greatest of British heroes--certainly the most consummate if we except Wellington of British military commanders. No man has yet appeared who has done any thing like justice to the exploits of Marlborough. Smollett whose unpretending narrative compiled for the bookseller has obtained a passing popularity by being the only existing sequel to Hume had none of the qualities necessary to write a military history or make the narrative of heroic exploits interesting. His talents for humour as all the world knows were great--for private adventure or the delineation of common life in novels considerable. But he had none of the higher qualities necessary to form a great historian; he had neither dramatic nor descriptive power; he was entirely destitute of philosophic views or power of general argument. In the delineation of individual character he is often happy; his talents as a novelist and as the narrator of private events there appear to advantage. But he was neither a poet nor a painter a statesman nor a philosopher. He neither saw whence the stream of events had come nor whither it was going. We look in vain in his pages for the lucid arguments and rhetorical power with which Hume illustrated and brought as it were under the mind's eye the general arguments urged or rather which might be urged by ability equal to his own for and against every great change in British history. As little do we find the captivating colours with which Robertson has painted the discovery and wonders of America or the luminous glance which he has thrown over the progress of society in the first volume of Charles V. Gibbon's incomparable powers of classification and description are wholly awanting. The fire of Napier's military pictures need not be looked for. What is usually complained of in Smollett especially by his young readers is that he is so dull--the most fatal of all defects and the most inexcusable in an historian. His heart was not in history his hand was not trained to it; it is in "Roderick Random" or "Peregrine Pickle " not the continuation of Hume that his powers are to be seen. Lord Mahon has brought to the subject of the history of England from the treaty of Utrecht to that of Aix-la-Chapelle talents of a kind much better adapted for doing justice to Marlborough's campaigns. He has remarkable power for individual narrative. His account of the gallant attempt and subsequent hair-breadth escapes of the Pretender in 1745 is full of interest and is justly praised by Sismondi as by far the best account extant of that romantic adventure. He possesses also a fair and equitable judgment much discrimination evident talent for drawing characters and that upright and honourable heart which is the first requisite for success in the delineation as it is for success in the conduct of events. His industry in examining and collecting authorities is great; he is a scholar a statesman and a gentleman--no small requisites for the just delineation of noble and generous achievements. But notwithstanding all this his work is not the one to rescue Marlborough's fame from the unworthy obscurity into which in this country it has fallen. He takes up the thread of events where Marlborough left them: he begins only at the peace of Utrecht. Besides this he is not by nature a military historian and if he had begun at the Revolution the case would probably have been the same. Lord Mahon's attention has been mainly fixed on domestic story; it is in illustrating parliamentary contests or court intrigues not military events that his powers have been put forth. He has given a clear judicious and elegant narrative of British history as regards these so far as it is embraced by his accomplished pen; but the historian of Marlborough must treat him as second to none not even to Louis XIV. or William III. Justice will never be done to the hero of the English revolution till his Life is the subject of a separate work in every schoolboy's hands. We must have a memoir of him to be the companion of Southey's Life of Nelson and Napier's Peninsular War. Voltaire in his "Siècle de Louis XIV. " could not avoid giving a sketch of the exploits of the British hero; and his natural impartiality has led him so far as it goes to give a tolerably fair one. It need hardly be said that coming from the pen of such a writer it is lively animated and distinct. But Voltaire was not a military historian; he had none of the feelings or associations which constitute one. War when he wrote had been for above half a century with a few brilliant exceptions a losing game to the French. In the War of the Succession they had lost their ascendancy in continental Europe; in that of the Seven Years nearly their whole colonial dominions. The hard-won glories of Fontenoy the doubtful success of Laffelt were a poor compensation for these disasters. It was the fashion of his day to decry war as the game of kings or flowing from the ambition of priests; if superstition was abolished and popular virtue let into government one eternal reign of peace and justice would commence. With these writers the great object was to carry the cabinets of kings by assault and introduce philosophers into government through the antechambers of mistresses. Peter the Great was their hero Catharine of Russia their divinity for they placed philosophers at the head of affairs. It was not to be supposed that in France the vanquished country in such an age justice should be done to the English conqueror. Yet such were the talents of Voltaire especially for making a subject popular that it is on his work such as it is that the fame of Marlborough mainly rests even in his own country. Marlborough as might be expected has not wanted biographers who have devoted themselves expressly and exclusively to transmit his fame and deeds to posterity. They have for the most part failed from the faults most fatal and yet most common to biographers--undue partiality in some dulness and want of genius in others. They began at an early period after his death and are distinguished at first by that rancour on the one side and exaggeration on the other by which such contemporary narratives are generally and in that age were in a peculiar manner distinguished. I. An abridged account of his life dedicated to the Duke of Montague his son-in-law appeared at Amsterdam in 12mo; but it is nothing but an anonymous panegyric. II. Not many years after a life of Marlborough was published in three volumes quarto by Thomas Ledyard who had accompanied him in many of his later travels and had been the spectator of some of the last of his military exploits. This is a work of much higher authority and contains much valuable information; but it is prolix long-winded and diffuse filled with immaterial documents and written throughout in a tone of inflated panegyric. III. Another life of Marlborough written with more ability appeared at Paris in 1806 in three volumes octavo by Dutems. The author had the advantage of all the resources for throwing light on his history which the archives of France then at the disposal of Napoleon who had a high admiration for the English general could afford; but it could hardly be expected that till national historians of adequate capacity for the task had appeared it was to be properly discharged by foreigners. Yet such is the partiality which an author naturally contracts for the hero of his biography that the work of Dutems though the author has shown himself by no means blind to his hero's faults is perhaps chiefly blameable for being too much of a panegyric. IV. By far the fullest and most complete history of Marlborough however is that which was published at London in 1818 by Archdeacon Coxe in five volumes octavo. This learned author had access to all the official documents on the subject then known to be in existence particularly the Blenheim Papers and he has made good use of the ample materials placed at his disposal; but it cannot be said that he has made an interesting though he certainly has a valuable work. It has reached a second edition but it is now little heard of: a certain proof if the importance of his subject and value of his materials is taken into account that it labours under some insurmountable defects in composition. Nor is it difficult to see what these defects are. The venerable Archdeacon respectable for his industry his learning his researches had not a ray of genius and genius is the soul of history. He gives every thing with equal minuteness makes no attempt at digesting or compression and fills his pages with letters and state-papers at full length; the certain way if not connected by ability to send them to the bottom. Dean Swift's history of the four last years of Queen Anne and his Apology for the same sovereign contain much valuable information concerning Marlborough's life; but it is so mixed up with the gall and party spirit which formed so essential a part of the Dean of St Patrick's character that it cannot be relied on as impartial or authentic.[2] The life of James II. by Clarke contains a great variety of valuable and curious details drawn from the Stuart Papers sent to the Prince Regent on the demise of the Cardinal York; and it would be well for the reputation of Marlborough as well as many other eminent men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries if some of them could be buried in oblivion. But by far the best life of Marlborough in a military point of view is that recently published by Mr Gleig in his "Military Commanders of Great Britain "--a sketch characterized by all the scientific knowledge practical acquaintance with war and brilliant power of description by which the other writings of that gifted author are distinguished. If he would make as good use of the vast collection of papers which under the able auspices of Sir George Murray have now issued from the press as he has of the more scanty materials at his disposal when he wrote his account of Marlborough he would write _the_ history of that hero and supersede the wish even for any other. The fortunate accident is generally known by which the great collection of papers now in course of publication in London has been brought to light. That this collection should at length have become known is less surprising than that it should so long have remained forgotten and have eluded the searches of so many persons interested in the subject. It embraces as Sir George Murray's lucid preface mentions a complete series of the correspondence of the great duke from 1702 to 1712 the ten years of his most important public services. In addition to the despatches of the duke himself the letters almost equally numerous of his private secretary M. Cardonnell and a journal written by his grace's chaplain Dr Hare afterwards Bishop of Chichester are contained in the eighteen manuscript volumes which were discovered in the record-room of Hensington near Woodstock in October 1842 and are now given to the public. They are of essential service especially in rendering intelligible the details of the correspondence which would otherwise in great part be uninteresting and scarce understood at least by the ordinary reader. Some of the most valuable parts of the work particularly a full detail of the battle of Blenheim are drawn from Dr Hare's journal. In addition to this the bulletins of most of the events issued by government at the time are to be found in notes at the proper places; and in the text are occasionally contained short but correct and luminous notices of the preceding or contemporaneous political and military events which are alluded to but not described in the despatches and which are necessary to understand many of their particulars. Nothing in a word has been omitted by the accomplished editor which could illustrate or render intelligible the valuable collection of materials placed at his disposal; and yet with all his pains and ability it is often very difficult to follow the detail of events or understand the matter alluded to in the despatches:--so great is the lack of information on the eventful War of the Succession which prevails from the want of a popular historian to record it even among well-informed persons in this country; and so true was the observation of Alexander the Great that but for the genius of Homer the exploits of Achilles would have been buried under the tumulus which covered his remains! And what should we have known of Alexander himself more than of Attila or Genghis Khan but for the fascinating pages of Quintus Curtius and Arrian? To the historian who is to go minutely into the details of Marlborough's campaigns and negotiations and to whom accurate and authentic information is of inestimable importance it need hardly be said that these papers are of the utmost value. But to the general reader all such voluminous publications and despatches must as a matter of necessity be comparatively uninteresting. They always contain a great deal of repetition in consequence of the necessity under which the commander lay of communicating the same event to those with whom he was in correspondence in many different quarters. Great part of them relate to details of discipline furnishing supplies getting up stores and other necessary matters of little value even to the historian except in so far as they illustrate the industry energy and difficulties of the commander. The general reader who plunges into the midst of the Marlborough despatches in this age or into those of Wellington in the next when contemporary recollection is lost will find it impossible to understand the greater part of the matters referred to and will soon lay aside the volumes in despair. Such works are highly valuable but they are so to the annalist or historian rather than the ordinary reader. They are the materials of history not history itself. They bear the same relation to the works of Livy or Gibbon which the rude blocks in the quarry do to the temples of St Peter's or the Parthenon. Ordinary readers are not aware of this when they take up a volume of despatches; they expect to be as much fascinated by it as they are by the correspondence of Madame de Sevigné Cowper Gibbon or Arnold. They will soon find their mistake: the book-sellers will erelong find it in the sale of such works. The matter-of-fact men in ordinary life and the compilers and drudges in literature--that is nine-tenths of the readers and writers in the world--are never weary of descanting on the inestimable importance of authentic documents for history; and without doubt they are right so far as the collecting of materials goes. There must be quarriers before there can be architects: the hewers of wood and drawers of water are the basis of all civilization. But they are not civilization itself they are its pioneers. Truth is essential to an estimable character: but many a man is insupportably dull who never told a falsehood. The pioneers of Marlborough however have now gone before and it will be the fault of English genius if the divine artist does not erelong make the proper use of the materials at length placed in his hands. John Churchill afterwards Duke of Marlborough was born on the 5th July 1650 (new style ) at Ash in the county of Devon. His father was Sir Winston Churchill a gallant cavalier who had drawn his sword in behalf of Charles I. and had in consequence been deprived of his fortune and driven into exile by Cromwell. His paternal family was very ancient and boasted its descent from the _Courcils_ de Poitou who came into England with the Conqueror. His mother was Elizabeth Drake who claimed a collateral connexion with the descendants of the illustrious Sir Francis Drake the great navigator. Young Churchill received the rudiments of his education from the parish clergyman in Devonshire from whom he imbibed that firm attachment to the Protestant faith by which he was ever afterwards distinguished and which determined his conduct in the most important crisis of his life. He was afterwards placed at the school of St Paul's; and it was there that he first discovered on reading Vegetius that his bent of mind was decidedly for the military life. Like many other men destined for future distinction he made no great figure as a scholar a circumstance easily explained if we recollect that it is on the knowledge of words that the reputation of a schoolboy of things that of a man is founded. But the despatches now published demonstrate that before he attained middle life he was a proficient at least in Latin French and English composition; for letters in each written in a very pure style are to be found in all parts of his correspondence. From early youth young Churchill was distinguished by the elegance of his manners and the beauty of his countenance and figure--advantages which coupled with the known loyal principles of his father and the sufferings he had undergone in the royal cause procured for him at the early age of fifteen the situation of page in the household of the Duke of York afterwards James II. His inclination for arms was then so decided that that prince procured for him a commission in one of the regiments of guards when he was only sixteen years old. His uncommonly handsome figure then attracted no small share of notice from the beauties of the court of Charles II. and even awakened a passion in one of the royal mistresses herself. Impatient to signalize himself however he left their seductions and embarked as a volunteer in the expedition against Tangiers in 1766. Thus his first essay in arms was made in actions against the Moors. Having returned to Great Britain he attracted the notice of the Countess of Castlemaine afterwards Duchess of Cleveland then the favorite mistress of Charles II. who had distinguished him by her regard before he embarked for Africa and who made him a present of £5000 with which the young soldier bought an annuity of £500 a-year which laid the foundation says Chesterfield of all his subsequent fortunes. Charles to remove a dangerous rival in her unsteady affections gave him a company in the guards and sent him to the Continent with the auxiliary force which in those days of English humiliation the cabinet of St James's furnished to Louis XIV. to aid him in subduing the United Provinces. Thus by a singular coincidence it was under Turenne Condé and Vauban that the future conqueror of the Bourbons first learned the art of scientific warfare. Wellington went through the same discipline but in the inverse order: his first campaigns were made against the French in Flanders his next against the bastions of Tippoo and the Mahratta horse in Hindostan. Churchill had not been long in Flanders before his talents and gallantry won for him deserved distinction. The campaign of 1672 which brought the French armies to the gates of Amsterdam and placed the United States within a hair's-breadth of destruction was to him fruitful in valuable lessons. He distinguished himself afterwards so much at the siege of Nimeguen that Turenne who constantly called him by his _sobriquet_ of "the handsome Englishman " predicted that he would one day be a great man. In the following year he had the good fortune to save the life of his colonel the Duke of Monmouth; and distinguished himself so much at the siege of Maestricht that Louis XIV. publicly thanked him at the head of his army and promised him his powerful influence with Charles II. for future promotion. He little thought what a formidable enemy he was then fostering at the court of his obsequious brother sovereign. The result of Louis XIV.'s intercession was that Churchill was made lieutenant-colonel; and he continued to serve with the English auxiliary force in Flanders under the French generals till 1677 when he returned with his regiment to London. Beyond all doubt it was these five years' service under the great masters of the military art who then sustained the power and cast a halo round the crown of Louis XIV. which rendered Marlborough the consummate commander that from the moment he was placed at the head of the Allied armies he showed himself to have become. One of the most interesting and instructive lessons to be learned from biography is the long steps the vast amount of previous preparation the numerous changes some prosperous others adverse by which the mind of a great man is formed and he is prepared for playing the important part he is intended to perform on the theatre of the world. Providence does nothing in vain and when it has selected a particular mind for great achievement the events which happen to it all seem to conspire in a mysterious way for its development. Were any one omitted some essential quality in the character of the future hero statesman or philosopher would be found to be awanting. Here also as in every other period of history we may see how unprincipled ambition overvaults itself and the measures which seem at first sight most securely to establish its oppressive reign are the unseen means by which an overruling power works out its destruction. Doubtless the other ministers of Louis XIV. deemed their master's power secure when this English alliance was concluded; when the English monarch had become a state pensioner of the court of Versailles; when a secret treaty had united them by apparently indissoluble bonds; when the ministers equally and the patriots of England were corrupted by his bribes; when the dreaded fleets of Britain were to be seen in union with those of France to break down the squadrons of an inconsiderable republic; when the descendants of the conquerors of Cressy Poitiers and Azincour stood side by side with the successors of the vanquished in those disastrous fields to achieve the conquest of Flanders and Holland. Without doubt so far as human foresight could go Louvois and Colbert were right. Nothing could appear so decidedly calculated to fix the power of Louis XIV. on an immovable foundation. But how vain are the calculations of the greatest human intellects when put in opposition to the overruling will of Omnipotence! It was that very English alliance which ruined Louis XIV. as the Austrian alliance and marriage which seemed to put the keystone in the arch of his greatness afterwards ruined Napoleon. By the effect and one of the most desired effects of the English alliance a strong body of British auxiliaries were sent to Flanders; the English officers learned the theory and practice of war in the best of all schools and under the best of all teachers; that ignorance of the military art the result in every age of our insular situation and which generally causes the four or five first years of every war to terminate in disaster was for the time removed and that mighty genius was developed under the eye of Louis XIV. and by the example of Turenne which was destined to hurl back to their own frontiers the tide of Gallic invasion and close in mourning the reign of the _Grande Monarque_. "Les hommes agissent " says Bossuet "mais Dieu les mène." Upon Churchill's return to London the brilliant reputation which had preceded and the even augmented personal advantages which accompanied him immediately rendered him the idol of beauty and fashion. The ladies of the palace vied for his homage--the nobles of the land hastened to cultivate his society. Like Julius Caesar he was carried away by the stream and plunged into the vortex of courtly dissipation with the ardour which marks an energetic character in the pursuit whether of good or evil. The elegance of his person and manners and charms of his conversation prevailed so far with Charles II. and the Duke of York that soon after though not yet thirty years of age he obtained a regiment. In 1680 he married the celebrated Sarah Jennings the favourite lady in attendance on the Princess Anne second daughter of the Duke of York one of the most admired beauties of the court and this alliance increased his influence already great with that Prince and laid the foundation of the future grandeur of his fortunes. Shortly after his marriage he accompanied the Duke of York to Scotland in the course of which they both were nearly shipwrecked on the coast of Fife. On this occasion the Duke made the greatest efforts to preserve his favourite's life and succeeded in doing so although the danger was such that many of the Scottish nobles perished under his eye. On his return to London in 1682 he was presented by his patron to the King who made him colonel of the third regiment of guards. When the Duke of York ascended the throne in 1685 on the demise of his brother Churchill kept his place as one of the gentlemen of the bedchamber and was raised to the rank of brigadier-general. He was sent by his sovereign to Paris to notify his accession to Louis XIV. and on his return he was created a peer by the title of Baron Churchill of Sandbridge in the county of Hertford--a title which he took from an estate there which he had acquired in right of his wife. On the revolt of the Duke of Monmouth he had an opportunity of showing at once his military ability and by a signal service his gratitude to his benefactor. Lord Feversham had the command of the royal forces and Churchill was his major-general. The general-in-chief however kept so bad a look-out that he was on the point of being surprised and cut to pieces by the rebel forces who on this occasion at least were conducted with ability. The general and almost all his officers were in their beds and sound asleep when Monmouth at the head of all his forces silently debouched out of his camp and suddenly fell on the royal army. The rout would have been complete and probably James II. dethroned had not Churchill whose vigilant eye nothing escaped observed the movement and hastily collected a handful of men with whom he made so vigorous a resistance as gave time for the remainder of the army to form and repel this well-conceived enterprise. Churchill's mind was too sagacious and his knowledge of the feelings of the nation too extensive not to be aware of the perilous nature of the course upon which James had adventured in endeavouring to bring about if not the absolute re-establishment of the Catholic religion at least such a quasi-establishment of it as the people deemed and probably with reason was with so aspiring a body of ecclesiastics in effect the same thing. When he saw the headstrong monarch break through all bounds and openly trample on the liberties while he shocked the religious feelings of his people he wrote to him to point out in firm but respectful terms the danger of his conduct. He declared to Lord Galway when James's innovations began that if he persisted in his design of overturning the constitution and religion of his country he would leave his service. So far his conduct was perfectly unexceptionable. Our first duty is to our country our second only to our benefactor. If they are brought into collision as they often are during the melancholy vicissitudes of a civil war an honourable man whatever it may cost him has but one part to take. He must not abandon his public duty for his private feelings but he must never betray official duty. If Churchill perceiving the frantic course of his master had withdrawn from his service and then either taken no part in the revolution which followed or even appeared in arms against him the most scrupulous moralist could have discovered nothing reprehensible in his conduct. History has in every age applauded the virtue while it has commiserated the anguish of the elder Brutus who sacrificed his sons to the perhaps too rigorous laws of his country. But Churchill did not do this and thence has arisen an ineffaceable blot on his memory. He did not relinquish the service of the infatuated monarch; he retained his office and commands; but he employed the influence and authority thence derived to ruin his benefactor. So far were the representations of Churchill from having inspired any doubts of his fidelity that James when the Prince of Orange landed confided to him the command of a corps of five thousand men destined to oppose his progress. At the very time that he accepted that command he had if we may believe his panegyrist Ledyard signed a letter along with several other peers addressed to the Prince of Orange inviting him to come over and had actually concluded with Major-General Kirk who commanded at Axminster a convention for the seizure of the king and giving him up to his hostile son-in-law. James was secretly warned that Churchill was about to betray him but he refused to believe it of one from whom he had hitherto experienced such devotion and was only wakened from his dream of security by learning that his favourite had gone over with the five thousand men whom he commanded to the Prince of Orange. Not content with this it was Churchill's influence joined to that
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of his wife which is said to have induced James's own daughter the Princess Anne and Prince George of Denmark to detach themselves from the cause of the falling monarch; and drew from that unhappy sovereign the mournful exclamation ""My God! my very children have forsaken me."" In what does this conduct differ from that of Labedoyere who at the head of the garrison of Grenoble deserted to Napoleon when sent out to oppose him?--or Lavalette who employed his influence as postmaster under Louis XVIII. to forward the Imperial conspiracy?--or Marshal Ney who after promising at the court of the Tuileries to bring the ex-emperor back in an iron cage no sooner reached the royal camp at Melun than he issued a proclamation calling on the troops to desert the Bourbons and mount the tricolor cockade? Nay is not Churchill's conduct in a moral point of view worse than that of Ney; for the latter abandoned the trust reposed in him by a new master forced upon an unwilling nation to rejoin his old benefactor and companion in arms; but the former abandoned the trust reposed in him by his old master and benefactor to range himself under the banner of a competitor for the throne to whom he was bound neither by duty nor obligation. And yet such is often the inequality of crimes and punishments in this world that Churchill was raised to the pinnacle of greatness by the very conduct which consigned Ney with justice so far as his conduct is concerned to an ignominious death. ""Treason ne'er prospers; for when it does None dare call it treason."" History forgets its first and noblest duty when it fails by its distribution of praise and blame to counterbalance so far as its verdict can this inequality which for inscrutable but doubtless wise purposes Providence has permitted in this transient scene. Charity forbids us to scrutinize such conduct too severely. It is the deplorable effect of a successful revolution even when commenced for the most necessary purposes to obliterate the ideas of man on right and wrong and leave no other test in the general case for public conduct but success. It is its first effect to place them in such trying circumstances that none but the most confirmed and resolute virtue can pass unscathed through the ordeal. He knew the human heart well who commanded us in our daily prayers to supplicate not to be led into temptation even before asking for deliverance from evil. Let no man be sure however much on a calm survey he may condemn the conduct of Marlborough and Ney that in similar circumstances he would not have done the same. The magnitude of the service rendered by Churchill to the Prince of Orange immediately appeared in the commands conferred upon him. Hardly was he settled at William's headquarters when he was dispatched to London to assume the command of the Horse Guards; and while there he signed on the 20th December 1688 the famous Act of Association in favour of the Prince of Orange. Shortly after he was named lieutenant-general of the armies of William and immediately made a new organization of the troops under officers whom he could trust which proved of the utmost service to William on the unstable throne on which he was soon after seated. He was present at most of the long and momentous debates which took place in the House of Peers on the question on whom the crown should be conferred and at first is said to have inclined to a regency; but with a commendable delicacy he absented himself on the night of the decisive vote on the vacancy of the throne. He voted however on the 6th of February for the resolution which settled the crown on William and Mary; and he assisted at their coronation under the title of Earl of Marlborough to which he had shortly before been elevated by William. England having on the accession of the new monarch joined the continental league against France Marlborough received the command of the British auxiliary force in the Netherlands and by his courage and ability contributed in a remarkable manner to the victory of Walcourt. In 1690 he received orders to return from Flanders in order to assume a command in Ireland then agitated by a general insurrection in favour of James; but actuated by some remnant of attachment to his old benefactor he eluded on various pretences complying with the order till the battle of the Boyne had extinguished the hopes of the dethroned monarch when he came over and made himself master of Cork and Kinsale. In 1691 he was sent again into Flanders in order to act under the immediate orders of William who was then with heroic constancy contending with the still superior forces of France; but hardly had he landed there when he was arrested deprived of all his commands and sent to the Tower of London along with several of the noblemen of distinction in the British senate. Upon this part of the history of Marlborough there hangs a veil of mystery which all the papers brought to light in more recent times have not entirely removed. At the time his disgrace was by many attributed to some cutting sarcasms in which he had indulged on the predilection of William for the continental troops and especially the Dutch; by others to intrigues conducted by Lady Marlborough and him to obtain for the Princess Anne a larger pension than the king was disposed to allow her. But neither of these causes are sufficient to explain the fall and arrest of so eminent a man as Marlborough and who had rendered such important services to the newly-established monarch. It would appear from what has transpired in later times that a much more serious cause had produced the rupture between him and William. The charge brought against him at the time but which was not prosecuted as it was found to rest on false or insufficient evidence was that of having along with Lords Salisbury Cornbury the Bishop of Rochester and Sir Basil Ferebrace signed the scheme of an association for the restoration of James. Sir John Fenwick who was executed for a treasonable correspondence with James II. shortly after Marlborough's arrest declared in the course of his trial that he was privy to the design had received the pardon of the exiled monarch and had engaged to procure for him the adhesion of the army. The Papers published in Coxe rather corroborate the view that he was privy to it; and it is supported by those found at Rome in the possession of Cardinal York.[3] That Marlborough disgusted with the partiality of William for his Dutch troops and irritated at the open severity of his Government should have repented of his abandonment of his former sovereign and benefactor is highly probable. But it can scarcely be taken as an apology for one act of treason that he meditated the commission of another. It only shows how perilous in public as in private life is any deviation from the path of integrity that it impelled such a man into so tortuous and disreputable a path. Marlborough however was a man whose services were too valuable to the newly-established dynasty for him to be permitted to remain long in disgrace. He was soon liberated indeed from the Tower as no sufficient evidence of his alleged accession to the conspiracy had been obtained. Several years elapsed however before he emerged from the privacy into which he prudently retired on his liberation from confinement. Queen Mary having been carried off by the smallpox on the 17th of January 1696 Marlborough wisely abstained from even taking part in the debates which followed in Parliament during which some of the malcontents dropped hints as to the propriety of conferring the crown on his immediate patroness the Princess Anne. This prudent reserve together with the absence of any decided proofs at the time of Marlborough's correspondence with James seems to have at length weakened William's resentment and by degrees he was taken back into favour. The peace of Ryswick signed on the 20th of September 1697 having consolidated the power of that monarch Marlborough was on the 19th of June 1698 made preceptor of the young Duke of Gloucester his nephew son of the Princess Anne and heir-presumptive to the throne; and this appointment which at once restored his credit at court was accompanied by the gracious expression--""My lord make my nephew to resemble yourself and he will be every thing which I can desire."" On the same day he was re-appointed to his rank as a privy councillor and took the oaths and his seat accordingly. So fully had he now regained the confidence of William that he was three times named one of the nine lords justiciars to whom the administration of affairs in Great Britain was subsequently entrusted during the temporary absence of William in Holland; and the War of the Succession having become certain in the year 1700 that monarch who was preparing to take an active part in it appointed Marlborough on 1st June 1701 his ambassador-extraordinary at the Hague and commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in Flanders. This double appointment in effect invested Marlborough with the entire direction of affairs civil and military so far as England was concerned on the Continent. William who was highly indignant at the recognition of the Chevalier St George as King of England on the death of his father James II. in September 1701 was preparing to prosecute the war with the vigour and perseverance which so eminently distinguished his character when he was carried off by the effects of a fall from his horse on the 19th March 1702. But that event made no alteration in the part which England took in the war which was commencing and it augmented rather than diminished the influence which Marlborough had in its direction. The Princess Anne with whom both individually and through Lady Marlborough he was so intimately connected mounted the throne without opposition; and one of her first acts was to bestow on Marlborough the order of the Garter confirm him in his former offices and appoint him in addition her plenipotentiary at the Hague. War was declared on the 15th May 1702 and Marlborough immediately went over to the Netherlands to take the command of the Allied army sixty thousand strong then lying before Nimeguen which was threatened by a superior force on the part of the French. It is at this period--time 1702--that the great and memorable and withal blameless period of Marlborough's life commenced; the next ten years were one unbroken series of efforts victories and glory. He arrived in the camp at Nimeguen on the evening of the 2d July having been a few weeks before at the Hague; and immediately assumed the command. Lord Athlone who had previously enjoyed that situation at first laid claim to an equal authority with him; but this ruinous division which never is safe save with men so great as he and Eugene and would unquestionably have proved ruinous to the common cause if shared with Athlone was prevented by the States-General who insisted upon the undivided direction being conferred on Marlborough. Most fortunately it is precisely at this period that the correspondence now published commences which in the three volumes already published presents an unbroken series of his letters to persons of every description down to May 1708. They thus embrace the early successes in Flanders the cross march into Bavaria and battle of Blenheim the expulsion of the French from Germany the battle of Ramillies and taking of Brussels and Antwerp the mission to the King of Sweden at Dresden the battle of Almanza in Spain and all the important events of the first six years of the war. More weighty and momentous materials for history never were presented to the public; and their importance will not be properly appreciated if the previous condition of Europe and imminent hazard to the independence of all the adjoining states from the unmeasured ambition and vast power of Louis XIV. is not taken into consideration. Accustomed as we are to regard the Bourbons as a fallen and unfortunate race the objects rather of commiseration than apprehension and Napoleon as the only sovereign who has really threatened our independence and all but effected the subjugation of the Continent we can scarcely conceive the terror with which a century and a half ago they with reason inspired all Europe or the narrow escape which the continental states at least then made from being all reduced to the condition of provinces of France. The forces of that monarchy at all times formidable to its neighbours from the warlike spirit of its inhabitants and their rapacious disposition conspicuous alike in the earliest and the latest times;[4] its central situation forming as it were the salient angle of a bastion projecting into the centre of Germany; and its numerous population--were then in a peculiar manner to be dreaded from their concentration in the hands of an able and ambitious monarch who had succeeded for the first time for two hundred years in healing the divisions and stilling the feuds of its nobles and turned their buoyant energy into the channel of foreign conquest. Immense was the force which by this able policy was found to exist in France and terrible the danger which it at once brought upon the neighbouring states. It was rendered the more formidable in the time of Louis XIV. from the extraordinary concentration of talent which his discernment or good fortune had collected around his throne and the consummate talent civil and military with which affairs were directed. Turenne Boufflers and Condé were his generals; Vauban was his engineer Louvois and Torcy were his statesmen. The lustre of the exploits of these illustrious men in itself great was much enhanced by the still greater blaze of fame which encircled his throne from the genius of the literary men who have given such immortal celebrity to his reign. Corneille and Racine were his tragedians; Molière wrote his comedies; Bossuet Fénélon and Bourdaloue were his theologians; Massillon his preacher Boileau his critic; Le Notre laid out his gardens; Le Brun painted his halls. Greatness had come upon France as in truth it does to most other states in all departments at the same time; and the adjoining nations alike intimidated by a power which they could not resist and dazzled by a glory which they could not emulate had come almost to despair of maintaining their independence; and were sinking into that state of apathy which is at once the consequence and the cause of extraordinary reverses. The influence of these causes had distinctly appeared in the extraordinary good fortune which had attended the enterprises of Louis and the numerous conquests he had made since he had launched into the career of foreign aggrandizement. Nothing could resist his victorious arms. At the head of an army of an hundred thousand men directed by Turenne he speedily overran Flanders. Its fortified cities yielded to the science of Vauban or the terrors of his name. The boasted barrier of the Netherlands was passed in a few weeks; hardly any of its far-famed fortresses made any resistance. The passage of the Rhine was achieved under the eyes of the monarch with little loss and melodramatic effect. One half of Holland was soon overrun and the presence of the French army at the gates of Amsterdam seemed to presage immediate destruction to the United Provinces; and but for the firmness of their leaders and a fortunate combination of circumstances unquestionably would have done so. The alliance with England in the early part of his reign and the junction of the fleets of Britain and France to ruin their fleets and blockade their harbours seemed to deprive them of their last resource derived from their energetic industry. Nor were substantial fruits awanting from these conquests. Alsace and Franche Comté were overrun and with Lorraine permanently annexed to the French monarchy; and although by the peace of Nimeguen part of his acquisitions in Flanders was abandoned enough was retained by the devouring monarchy to deprive the Dutch of the barrier they had so ardently desired and render their situation to the last degree precarious in the neighbourhood of so formidable a power. The heroic William indeed had not struggled in vain for the independence of his country. The distant powers of Europe at length wakened to a sense of their danger had made strenuous efforts to coerce the ambition of France; the revolution of 1688 had restored England to its natural place in the van of the contest for continental freedom; and the peace of Ryswick in 1697 had in some degree seen the trophies of conquests more equally balanced between the contending parties. But still it was with difficulty that the alliance kept its ground against Louis--any untoward event the defection of any considerable power would at once it was felt cast the balance in his favour; and all history had demonstrated how many are the chances against any considerable confederacy keeping for any length of time together when the immediate danger which had stilled their jealousies and bound together their separate interests is in appearance removed. Such was the dubious and anxious state of Europe when the death of Charles II. at Madrid on the 1st November 1700 and the bequest of his vast territories to Philip Duke of Anjou second son of the Dauphin and grandson of Louis XIV. threatened at once to place the immense resources of the Castilian monarchy at the disposal of the ambitious monarch of France whose passion for glory had not diminished with his advanced years and whose want of moderation was soon evinced by his accepting after an affected hesitation the splendid bequest. Threatened with so serious a danger it is not surprising that the powers of Europe were in the utmost alarm and erelong took steps to endeavour to avert it. Such however was the terror inspired by the name of Louis XIV. and the magnitude of the addition made by this bequest to his power that the new monarch in the first instance ascended the throne of Spain and the Indies without any opposition. The Spanish Netherlands so important both from their intrinsic riches their situation as the certain theatre of war and the numerous fortified towns with which they were studded had been early secured for the young Bourbon prince by the Elector of Bavaria who was at that time the governor of those valuable possessions. Sardinia Naples Sicily the Milanese and the other Spanish possessions in Italy speedily followed the example. The distant colonies of the crown of Castile in America and the Indies sent in their adhesion. The young Prince of Anjou made his formal entry into Spain in the beginning of 1701 and was crowned at Madrid under the title of Philip V. The principal continental powers with the exception of the Emperor acknowledged his title to the throne. The Dutch were in despair: they beheld the power of Louis XIV. brought to their very gates. Flanders instead of being the barrier of Europe against France had become the outwork of France against Europe. The flag of Louis XIV. floated on Antwerp Brussels and Ghent. Italy France Spain and Flanders were united in one close league and in fact formed but one dominion. It was the empire of Charlemagne over again directed with equal ability founded on greater power and backed by the boundless treasures of the Indies. Spain had threatened the liberties of Europe in the end of the sixteenth century: France had all but proved fatal to them in the close of the seventeenth. What hope was there of being able to make head against them both united under such a head as Louis XIV.? Great as these dangers were however they had no effect in daunting the heroic spirit of William III. In concert with the Emperor and the United Provinces who were too nearly threatened to be backward in falling into his views he laboured for the formation of a great confederacy which might prevent the union of the crowns of France and Castile in one family and prevent before it was too late the consolidation of a power which threatened to be so formidable to the liberties of Europe. The death of that intrepid monarch in March 1702 which had it taken place earlier might have prevented the formation of the confederacy as it was proved no impediment but rather the reverse. His measures had been so well taken his resolute spirit had laboured with such effect that the alliance offensive and defensive between the Emperor England and Holland had been already signed. The accession of the Princess Anne without weakening its bonds added another power of no mean importance to its ranks. Her husband Prince George of Denmark brought the forces of that kingdom to aid the common cause. Prussia soon after followed the example. On the other hand Bavaria closely connected with the French and Spanish monarchies both by jealousy of Austria and the government of the Netherlands which its Elector held adhered to France. Thus the forces of Europe were mutually arrayed and divided much as they afterwards were in the coalition against Napoleon in 1813. It might already be foreseen that Flanders the Bavarian plains Spain and Lombardy would as in the great contest which followed a century after be the theatre of war. But the forces of France and Spain possessed this advantage unknown in former wars but immense in a military point of view that they were in possession of the whole of the Netherlands the numerous fortresses of which were alike valuable as a basis of offensive operations and as affording asylums all but impregnable in cases of disaster. The Allied generals whether they commenced their operations in Flanders or on the side of Germany had to begin on the Rhine and cut their way through the long barrier of fortresses with which the genius of Vauban and Cohorn had encircled the frontiers of the monarchy. War having been resolved on the first step was taken by the Emperor who laid claim to Milan as a fief of the empire and supported his pretensions by moving an army into Italy under the command of Prince Eugene of Savoy who afterwards became so celebrated as the brother and worthy rival of Marlborough in arms. The French and Spaniards assembled an army in the Milanese to resist his advance; and the Duke of Mantua having joined the cause that important city was garrisoned by the French troops. But Prince Eugene erelong obliged them to fall back from the banks of the Adige to the line of the Oglio on which they made a stand. But though hostilities had thus commenced in Italy negotiations were still carried on at the Hague; though unhappily the pretensions of the French king were found to be of so exorbitant a character that an accommodation was impossible. Marlborough's first mission to the Continent however after the accession of Anne was of a diplomatic character; and it was by his unwearied efforts suavity of manner and singular talents for negotiation that the difficulties which attend the formation of all such extensive confederacies were overcome. And it was not till war was declared on 4th May 1702 that he first took the command as commander-in-chief of the Allied armies. The first operation of the Allies was an attack on the small fort of Kaiserworth on the right bank of the Rhine which belonged to the Elector of Cologne which surrendered on the 15th May. The main French army nominally under the direction of the Duke of Burgundy really of Marshal Boufflers entered the Duchy of Cleves in the end of the same month and soon became engaged with the Allied forces which at first being inferior in numbers fell back. Marlborough reached headquarters when the French lay before Nimeguen; and the Dutch trembled for that frontier town. Reinforcements however rapidly came in from all quarters to join the Allied army; and Marlborough finding himself at the head of a gallant force sixty thousand strong resolved to commence offensive operations. His first operation was the siege of Venloo which was carried by storm on the 18th September after various actions in the course of the siege. ""My Lord Cutts "" says Marlborough ""commanded at one of the breaches; and the English grenadiers had the honour of being the first that entered the fort.""[5] Ruremonde was next besieged; and the Allies steadily advancing opened the navigation of the Meuse as far as Maestricht. Stevenswart was taken on the 1st October; and on the 6th Ruremonde surrendered. Liege was the next object of attack; and the breaches of the citadel were by the skilful operations of Cohorn who commanded the Allied engineers and artillery declared practicable on the 23d of the same month. The assault was immediately ordered; and ""by the extraordinary bravery "" says Marlborough ""of the officers and soldiers the citadel was carried by storm; and for the honour of her Majesty's subjects the English were the first that got upon the breach.""[6] So early in this as in every other war where ignorance and infatuation has not led them into the field did the native-born valour of the Anglo-Saxon race make itself known! Seven battalions and a half were made prisoners on this occasion; and so disheartened was the enemy by the fall of the citadel that the castle of the Chartreuse with its garrison of 1500 men capitulated a few days afterwards. This last success gave the Allies the entire command of Liege and concluded this short but glorious campaign in the course of which they had made themselves masters by main force in presence of the French army of four fortified towns conquered all Spanish Guelderland opened the Meuse as far as Maestricht carried the strong castles of Liege by storm advanced their standards from the Rhine far into Flanders and become enabled to take up their winter quarters in the enemy's territory amidst its fertile fields. The campaign being now concluded and both parties having gone into winter quarters Marlborough embarked on the Meuse to return to London where his presence was much required to steady the authority and direct the cabinet of the Queen who had so recently taken her seat on the throne. When dropping down the Meuse in company of the Dutch commissioners he was made prisoner by a French partisan who had made an incursion into those parts; and owed his escape to the presence of mind of a servant named Gill who unperceived put into his master's hands an old passport in the name of General Churchill. The Frenchman intent only on plunder seized all the plate and valuables in the boat and made prisoners the small detachment of soldiers who accompanied them; but ignorant of the inestimable prize within his grasp allowed the remainder of the party including Marlborough to proceed on their way. On this occasion it may truly be said the boat carried Caesar and his fortunes. He arrived in safety at the Hague where the people who regarded him as their guardian angel and had heard of his narrow escape received him with the most enthusiastic acclamations. From thence having concerted the plan with the Dutch government for the ensuing campaign he crossed over to London where his reception by the Queen and nation was of the most gratifying description. Her Majesty conferred on him the title of Duke of Marlborough and Marquis of Blandford and sent a message to the House of Commons suggesting a pension to him of £5000 a-year secured on the revenue of the post-office; but that House refused to consent to the alienation of so considerable a part of the public revenue. He was amply compensated however for this disappointment by the enthusiastic reception he met with from all classes of the nation which long unaccustomed to military success at least in any cause in which it could sympathize hailed with transports of joy this first revival of triumph in support of the Protestant faith and over that power with whom for centuries they had maintained so constant a rivalry. The campaign of 1703 was not fruitful of great events. Taught by the untoward issue of the preceding one the quality of the general and army with whom he had to contend the French general cautiously remained on the defensive; and so skilfully were the measures of Marshal Boufflers taken that all the efforts of Marlborough were unable to force him to a general action. The war in Flanders was thus limited to one of posts and sieges; but in that the superiority of the Allied arms was successfully asserted Parliament having been prevailed on to consent to an augmentation of the British contingent. But a treaty having been concluded with Sweden and various reinforcements having been received from the lesser powers preparations were made for the siege of Bonn on the Rhine a frontier town of Flanders of great importance from its commanding the passage of that artery of Germany and stopping while in the enemy's hands all transit of military stores or provisions for the use of the armies in Bavaria or on the Upper Rhine. The batteries opened with seventy heavy guns and English mortars on the 14th May 1704; a vigorous sortie with a thousand foot was repulsed after having at first gained some success on the following day and on the 16th two breaches having been declared practicable the garrison surrendered at discretion. After this success the army moved against Huys and it was taken with its garrison of 900 men on the 23d August. Marlborough and the English generals after this success were decidedly of opinion that it would be advisable at all hazard to attempt forcing the French lines which were strongly fortified between Mehaigne and Leuwe and a strong opinion to that effect was transmitted to the Hague on the very day after the fall of Huys.[7] They alleged with reason that the Allies being superior in Flanders and the French having the upper hand in Germany and Italy it was of the utmost importance to follow up the present tide of success in the only quarter where it flowed in their favour and counterbalance disasters elsewhere by decisive events in the quarter where it was most material to obtain it. The Dutch government however set on getting a barrier for themselves could not be brought to agree to this course how great soever the advantages which it promised and insisted instead that he should undertake the siege of Limbourg which lay open to attack. This was accordingly done; the trenches were commenced in the middle of September and the garrison capitulated on the 27th of the same month: a poor compensation for the total defeat of the French army which would in all probability have ensued if the bolder plan of operation he had so earnestly counselled had been adopted.[8] This terminated the campaign of 1703 which though successful had led to very different results from what might have been anticipated if Marlborough's advice had been followed and an earlier victory of Ramillies laid open the whole Flemish plains. Having dispatched eight battalions to reinforce the Prince of Hesse who had sustained serious disaster on the Moselle he had an interview with the Archduke Charles whom the Allies had acknowledged as King of Spain who presented him with a magnificent sword set with diamonds and set out for the Hague from whence he again returned to London to concert measures for the ensuing campaign and stimulate the British government to the efforts necessary for its successful prosecution. But while success had thus attended all the operations of the Allies in Flanders where the English contingent acted and Marlborough had the command affairs had assumed a very different aspect in Germany and Italy. The French were there superior alike in the number and quality of their troops and in Germany at least in the skill with which they were commanded. Early in June Marshal Tallard assumed the command of the French forces in Alsace passed the Rhine at Strasburg on the 16th July took Brissac on the 7th September and invested Landau on the 16th October. The Allies under the Prince of Hesse attempted to raise the siege but were defeated with considerable loss; and soon after Landau surrendered thus terminating with disaster the campaign on the Upper Rhine. Still more considerable were the disasters sustained in Bavaria. Marshal Villars there commanded and at the head of the French and Bavarians defeated General Stirum who headed the Imperialists on the 20th September. In December Marshal Marsin who had succeeded Villars in the command made himself master of the important city of Augsburg and in January 1704 the Bavarians got possession of Passau. Meanwhile a formidable insurrection had broken out in Hungary which so distracted the cabinet of Vienna that that capital itself seemed to be threatened by the combined forces of the French and Bavarians after the fall of Passau. No event of importance took place in Italy during the campaign; Count Strahrem
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erg who commanded the Imperial forces having with great ability forced the Duke de Vendôme who was at the head of a superior body of French troops to retire. But in Bavaria and on the Danube it was evident that the Allies were overmatched; and to the restoration of the balance in that quarter the anxious attention of the confederates was turned during the winter of 1703-4. The dangerous state of the Emperor and the empire awakened the greatest solicitude at the Hague as well as unbounded terror at Vienna from whence the most urgent representations were made on the necessity of reinforcements being sent from Marlborough to their support. But though this was agreed to by England and Holland so straitened were the Dutch finances that they were wholly unable to form the necessary magazines to enable the Allies to commence operations. Marlborough during the whole of January and February 1704 was indefatigable in his efforts to overcome these difficulties; and the preparations having at length been completed it was agreed by the States according to a plan of the campaign laid down by Marlborough that he himself should proceed into Bavaria with the great body of the Allied army in Flanders leaving only an army of observation there to restrain any incursion which the French troops might attempt during his absence. Marlborough began his march with the great body of his forces on the 8th May and crossing the Meuse at Maestricht proceeded with the utmost expedition towards the Rhine by Bedbourg and Kirpen and arrived at Bonn on the 22d May. Meanwhile the French were also powerfully reinforcing their army on the Danube. Early in the same month 26 000 men joined the Elector of Bavaria while Villeroi with the army of Flanders was hastening in the same direction. Marlborough having obtained intelligence of these great additions to the enemy's forces in the vital quarter wrote to the States-General that unless they promptly sent him succour the Emperor would be entirely ruined.[9] Meanwhile however relying chiefly on himself he redoubled his activity and diligence. Continuing his march up the Rhine by Coblentz and Cassel opposite Mayence he crossed the Necker near Ladenbourg on the 3d June. From thence he pursued his march without intermission by Mundelshene where he had on the 10th June his first interview with Prince Eugene who had been called from Italy to co-operate in stemming the torrent of disaster in Germany. From thence he advanced by Great Heppach to Langenau and first came in contact with the enemy on the 2d July on the Schullenberg near Donawert. Marlborough at the head of the advanced guard of nine thousand men there attacked the French and Bavarians 12 000 strong in their intrenched camp which was extremely strong and after a desperate resistance aided by an opportune attack by the Prince of Baden who commanded the Emperor's forces carried the intrenchments with the whole artillery which they mounted and the loss of 7000 men and thirteen standards to the vanquished. He was inclined to venture upon this hazardous attempt by having received intelligence on the same day from Prince Eugene that Marshals Villeroi and Tallard at the head of fifty battalions and sixty squadrons of their best troops had arrived at Strasburg and were using the utmost diligence to reach the Bavarian forces through the defiles of the Black Forest. This brilliant opening of the German campaign was soon followed by substantial results. A few days after Rain surrendered Aicha was carried by assault; and following up his career of success Marlborough advanced to within a league of Augsburg under the cannon of which the Elector of Bavaria was placed with the remnant of his forces in a situation too strong to admit of its being forced. He here made several attempts to detach the Elector who was now reduced to the greatest straits from the French alliance; but that prince relying on the great army forty-five thousand strong which Marshal Tallard was bringing up to his support from the Rhine adhered with honourable fidelity to his engagements. Upon this Marlborough took post near Friburg in such a situation as to cut him off from all communication with his dominions; and ravaged the country with his light troops levying contributions wherever they went and burning the villages with savage ferocity as far as the gates of Munich. Thus was avenged the barbarous desolation of the Palatinate thirty years before by the French army under the orders of Marshal Turenne. Overcome by the cries of his suffering subjects the Elector at length consented to enter into a negotiation which made some progress; but the rapid approach of Marshal Tallard with the French army through the Black Forest caused him to break it off and hazard all on the fortune of war. Unable to induce the Elector by the barbarities unhappily at that time too frequent on all sides in war either to quit his intrenched camp under the cannon of Augsburg or abandon the French alliance the English general undertook the siege of Ingolstadt; he himself with the main body of the army covering the siege and Prince Louis of Baden conducting the operations in the trenches. Upon this the Elector of Bavaria broke up from his strong position and abandoning with heroic resolution his own country marched to Biberbach where he effected his junction with Marshal Tallard who now threatened Prince Eugene with an immediate attack. No sooner had he received intelligence of this than Marlborough on the 10th of August sent the Duke of Wirtemburg with twenty-seven squadrons of horse to reinforce the prince; and early next morning detached General Churchill with twenty battalions across the Danube to be in a situation to support him in case of need. He himself immediately after followed and joined the Prince with his whole army on the 11th. Every thing now presaged decisive events. The Elector had boldly quitted Bavaria leaving his whole dominions at the mercy of the enemy except the fortified cities of Munich and Augsburg and periled his crown upon the issue of war at the French headquarters; while Marlborough and Eugene had united their forces with a determination to give battle in the heart of Germany in the enemy's territory with their communications exposed to the utmost hazard under circumstances where defeat could be attended with nothing short of total ruin. The French and Bavarian army consisted of fifty-five thousand men of whom nearly forty-five thousand were French troops the very best which the monarchy could produce. Marlborough and Eugene had sixty-six battalions and one hundred and sixty squadrons which with the artillery might be about fifty thousand combatants. The forces on the opposite sides were thus nearly equal in point of numerical amount; but there was a wide difference in their composition. Four-fifths of the French army were national troops speaking the same language animated by the same feelings accustomed to the same discipline and the most of whom had been accustomed to act together. The Allies on the other hand were a motley assemblage like Hannibal's at Cannæ or Wellington's at Waterloo composed of the troops of many different nations speaking different languages trained to different discipline but recently assembled together and under the orders of a stranger general one of those haughty islanders little in general inured to war but whose cold or supercilious manners had so often caused jealousies to arise in the best cemented confederacies. English Prussians Danes Wirtemburgers Dutch Hanoverians and Hessians were blended in such nearly equal proportions that the arms of no one state could be said by its numerical preponderance to be entitled to the precedence. But the consummate address splendid talents and conciliatory manners of Marlborough as well as the brilliant valour which the English auxiliary force had displayed on many occasions had won for them the lead as they had formerly done when in no greater force among the confederates under Richard Coeur-de-Lion in the Holy War. It was universally felt that upon them as the Tenth Legion of Caesar or the Old Guard of Napoleon the weight of the contest at the decisive moment would fall. The army was divided into two _corps-d'armée_; the first commanded by the duke in person being by far the strongest destined to bear the weight of the contest and carry in front the enemy's position. These two corps though co-operating were at such a distance from each other that they were much in the situation of the English and Prussians at Waterloo or Napoleon and Ney's corps at Bautzen. The second under Prince Eugene which consisted chiefly of cavalry was much weaker in point of numerical amount and was intended for a subordinate attack to distract the enemy's attention from the principal onset in front under Marlborough.[10] With ordinary officers or even eminent generals of a second order a dangerous rivalry for the supreme command would unquestionably have arisen and added to the many seeds of division and causes of weakness which already existed in so multifarious an array. But these great men were superior to all such petty jealousies. Each conscious of powers to do great things and proud of fame already acquired was willing to yield what was necessary for the common good to the other. They had no rivalry save a noble emulation who should do most for the common cause in which they were jointly engaged. From the moment of their junction it was agreed that they should take the command of the whole army day about; and so perfectly did their views on all points coincide and so entirely did their noble hearts beat in unison that during eight subsequent campaigns that they for the most part acted together there was never the slightest division between them nor any interruption of the harmony with which the operations of the Allies were conducted. The French position was in places strong and their disposition for resistance at each point where they were threatened by attack from the Allied forces judicious; but there was a fatal defect in its general conception. Marshal Tallard was on the right resting on the Danube which secured him from being turned in that quarter having the village of BLENHEIM in his front which was strongly garrisoned by twenty-six battalions and twelve squadrons all native French troops. In the centre was the village of Oberglau which was occupied by fourteen battalions among whom were three Irish corps of celebrated veterans. The communication between Blenheim and Oberglau was kept up by a screen consisting of eighty squadrons in two lines having two brigades of foot consisting of seven battalions in its centre. The left opposite Prince Eugene was under the orders of Marshal Marsin and consisted of twenty-two battalions of infantry and thirty-six squadrons consisting for the most part of Bavarians and Marshal Marsin's men posted in front of the village of Lutzingen. Thus the French consisted of sixty-nine battalions and a hundred and thirty-four squadrons and were posted in a line strongly supported at each extremity but weak in the centre and with the wings where the great body of the infantry was placed at such a distance from each other that if the centre was broken through each ran the risk of being enveloped by the enemy without the other being able to render them any assistance. This danger as to the troops in Blenheim the flower of their army was much augmented by the circumstance that if their centre was forced where it was formed of cavalry only and the victors turned sharp round towards Blenheim the horse would be driven headlong into the Danube and the foot in that village would run the hazard of being surrounded or pushed into that river which was not fordable even for horse in any part. But though these circumstances would to a far-seeing general have presaged serious disaster in the event of defeat yet the position was strong in itself and the French generals long accustomed to victory had some excuse for not having taken sufficiently into view the contingencies likely to occur in the event of defeat. Both the villages at the extremity of their line had been strengthened not only with intrenchments hastily thrown up around them thickly mounted with heavy cannon but with barricades at all their principal entrances formed of overturned carts and all the furniture of the houses which they had seized upon as the insurgents did at Paris in 1830 for that purpose. The army stood upon a hill or gentle eminence the guns from which commanded the whole plain by which alone it could be approached; and this plain was low and intersected on the right in front of Blenheim by a rivulet which flows down by a gentle descent to the Danube and in front of Oberglau by another rivulet which runs in two branches till within a few paces of the Danube; into which it also empties itself. These rivulets had bridges over them at the points where they flowed through villages; but they were difficult of passage in the other places for cavalry and artillery and with the ditches cut in the swampy meadows through which they flowed proved no small impediment to the advance of the Allied army. The Duke of Marlborough before the action began in person visited each important battery in order to ascertain the range of the guns. The troops under his command were drawn up in four lines; the infantry being in front and the cavalry behind in each line. This arrangement was adopted in order that the infantry which would get easiest through the streams might form on the other side and cover the formation of the cavalry who might be more impeded. The fire of cannon soon became very animated on both sides and the infantry advanced to the edge of the rivulets with that cheerful air and confident step which is so often the forerunner of success. On Prince Eugene's side the impediments however proved serious; the beds of the rivulets were so broad that they required to be filled up with fascines before they could be passed by the guns; and when they did get across they replied without much effect to the French cannon thundering from the heights which commanded the whole field. At half-past twelve however these difficulties were by great efforts on the part of Prince Eugene and his wing overcome and he sent word to Marlborough that he was ready. The English general instantly called for his horse; the troops every where stood to their arms and the signal was given to advance. The rivulets and marshy ground in front of Blenheim and Unterglau were passed by the first line without much difficulty though under a heavy fire of artillery from the French batteries; and the firm ground on the slope being reached the first line advanced in the finest order to the attack--the cavalry in front having now defiled to a side so as to let the English infantry take the lead. The attack must be given in the words of Dr Hare's Journal. ""Lord Cutts made the first attack upon Blenheim with the English grenadiers. Brigadier-general Rowe led up his brigade which formed the first line and was sustained in the second by a brigade of Hessians. Rowe was within thirty paces of the palisades about Blenheim when the enemy gave their first fire by which a great many officers and men fell; but notwithstanding this that brave officer marched direct up to the pales on which he struck his sword before he allowed his men to fire. His orders were to enter at the point of the bayonet; but the superiority of the enemy and the strength of their post rendered this impossible. The first line was therefore forced to retire; Rowe was struck down badly wounded at the foot of the pales; his lieut.-colonel and major were killed in endeavouring to bring him off and some squadrons of French gens-d'armes having charged the brigade while retiring in disorder it was partially broken and one of the colours of Rowe's regiment was taken. The Hessians in the second line upon this advanced briskly forward charged the squadrons retook the colour and repulsed them. Lord Cutts however seeing fresh squadrons coming down upon him sent to request some cavalry should be sent to cover his flank. Five British squadrons accordingly were moved up and speedily charged by eight of the enemy; the French gave their fire at a little distance but the English charged sword in hand and put them to the rout. Being overpowered however by fresh squadrons and galled by the fire which issued from the enclosures of Blenheim our horse were driven back in their turn and recoiled in disorder. ""Marlborough foreseeing that the enemy would pursue this advantage resolved to bring his whole cavalry across the rivulets. The operation was begun by the English horse. It proved more difficult however than was expected especially to the English squadrons; as they had to cross the rivulet where it was divided and the meadows were very soft. However they surmounted those difficulties and got over; but when they advanced they were so severely galled by the infantry in Blenheim firing upon their flank while the cavalry charged them in front that they were forced to retire which they did under cover of Bulow and Bothmer's German dragoons who succeeded them in the passage. Marlborough seeing the enemy resolute to maintain the ground occupied by his cavalry gave orders for the whole remainder of his cavalry to pass wherever they could get across. There was very great difficulty and danger in defiling over the rivulet in the face of an enemy already formed and supported by several batteries of cannon; yet by the brave examples and intrepidity of the officers they were at length got over and kept their ground on the other side. Bulow stretched across opposite to Oberglau with the Danish and Hanoverian horse; but near that village they were so vigorously charged by the French cavalry that they were driven back. Rallying they were again led to the charge and again routed with great slaughter by the charges of the horse in front and the dreadful fire from the inclosures of Blenheim. Nor did the attack on Oberglau to the British right under Prince Holstein succeed better; no sooner had he passed the rivulet than the Irish veterans posted there came pouring down upon them took the prince prisoner and threw the whole into confusion. Upon this Marlborough galloped to the spot at the head of some squadrons followed by three battalions which had not yet been engaged. With the horse he charged the Irish battalions in flank and forced them back; the foot he posted himself and having re-established affairs at that point returned rapidly to the left where he found the whole of his corps passed over the streams and on firm ground on the other side. The horse were drawn up in two lines fronting the enemy; the foot in two lines behind them; and some guns under Colonel Blood having been hurried across by means of pontoons were brought to bear upon some battalions of foot which were intermingled with the enemy's horse and made great havoc in their ranks. ""It was now past three and the Duke having got his whole men ready for the attack sent to Prince Eugene to know if he was ready to support him. But the efforts of that gallant prince had not been attended with the same success. In the first onset indeed his Danish and Prussian infantry had gained considerable success and taken six guns and the Imperial cavalry had by a vigorous charge broken the first line of the enemy's horse; but they failed in their attack on the second line and were driven back to their original ground; whereupon the Bavarian cavalry rushing forward enveloped Eugene's foot who were forced to retire and with difficulty regained their original ground. Half an hour afterwards Prince Eugene made a second attack with his horse; but they were again repulsed by the bravery of the Bavarian cavalry and driven for refuge into the wood in the rear of their original position. Nothing daunted by this bad success the Prince formed his troops for a third attack and himself led his cavalry to the charge; but so vigorous was the defence that they were again repulsed to the wood and the victorious enemy's dragoons with loud cheers charged the Prussian foot in flank and were only repelled by the admirable steadiness with which they delivered their fire and stood their ground with fixed bayonets in front. ""About five the general forward movement was made which determined the issue of this great battle which till then had seemed doubtful. The Duke of Marlborough having ridden along the front gave orders to sound the charge when all at once our lines of horse moved on sword in hand to the attack. Those of the enemy presented their carbines at some distance and fired; but they had no sooner done so than they wheeled about broke and fled. The gens-d'armes fled towards Hochstedt which was about two miles in the rear; the other squadrons towards the village of Sondersheim which was nearer and on the bank of the Danube. The Duke ordered General Hompesch with thirty squadrons to pursue those who fled to Hochstedt; while he himself with Prince Hesse and the whole remainder of the cavalry drove thirty of the enemy's squadrons headlong down the banks of the Danube which being very steep occasioned the destruction of the greater part. Vast numbers endeavoured to save themselves by swimming and perished miserably. Among the prisoners taken here were Marshal Tallard and his suite who surrendered to M. Beinenbourg aid-de-camp to the Prince of Hesse. Marlborough immediately desired him to be accommodated with his coach and sent a pencil note to the duchess[11] to say the victory was gained. Others seeing the fate of their comrades in the water endeavoured to save themselves by defiling to the right along its margin towards Hochstedt but they were met and intercepted by some English squadrons; upon seeing which they fled in utter confusion towards Morselingen and did not again attempt to engage. The victorious horse upon this fell upon several of the enemy's battalions who had nearly reached Hochstedt and cut them to pieces. ""Meanwhile Prince Eugene by a fourth attack succeeded in driving the Elector of Bavaria from his position; and the Duke seeing this sent orders to the squadrons in pursuit towards Morselingen to wheel about and join him. All this while the troops in Blenheim had been incessantly attacked but it still held out and gave employment to the Duke's infantry. The moment the cavalry had beaten off that of the enemy and cleared the field between the two villages of them General Churchill moved both lines of foot upon the village of Blenheim and it was soon surrounded so as to cut off all possibility of escape except on the side next the Danube. To prevent the possibility of their escape that way Webb with the Queen's regiment took possession of a barrier the enemy had constructed to cover their retreat and having posted his men across the street which led to the Danube several hundreds of the enemy who were attempting to make their escape that way were made prisoners. The other issue to the Danube was occupied in the same manner by Prince George's regiment: all who came out that way were made prisoners or driven into the Danube. Some endeavoured to break out at other places but General Wood with Lord John Hay's regiment of _grey_ dragoons (Scots Greys) immediately advanced towards them and cantering up to the top of a rising ground made them believe they had a larger force behind them and stopped them on that side. When Churchill saw the defeat of the enemy's horse decided he sent to request Lord Cutts to attack them in front while he himself attacked them in flank. This was accordingly done; the Earl of Orkney and General Ingoldesby entering the village at the same time at two different places at the head of their respective regiments. But so vigorous was the resistance made by the enemy especially at the churchyard that they were forced to retire. The vehement fire however of the cannon and howitzers which set fire to several barns and houses added to the circumstance of their commander M. Clerambault having fled and their retreat on all sides being cut off led to their surrendering at discretion to the number of six-and-twenty battalions. Thus concluded this great battle in which the enemy had 5900 more than the Allies [12] and the advantage of a very strong position difficult of attack.""[13] In this battle Marlborough's wing lost 3000 men and Eugene's the same number in all 6000. The French lost 13 000 prisoners including 1200 officers almost all taken by Marlborough's wing besides 34 pieces of cannon 26 standards and 90 colours; Eugene took 13 pieces. The killed and wounded were 14 000 more. But the total loss of the French and Bavarians including those who deserted during their calamitous retreat through the Black Forest was not less than 40 000 men [14] a number greater than any which they sustained till the still more disastrous day of Waterloo. This account of the battle which is by far the best and most intelligible which has ever yet been published makes it quite evident to what cause the overwhelming magnitude of this defeat to the French army was owing. The strength of the position consisted solely in the rivulets and marshy grounds in its front; when they were passed the error of Marshal Tallard's disposition of his troops was at once apparent. The infantry was accumulated in useless numbers in the villages. Of the twenty-six battalions in Blenheim twenty were useless and could not get into action while the long line of cavalry from thence to Oberglau was sustained only by a few battalions of foot incapable of making any effective resistance. This was the more inexcusable as the French having sixteen battalions of infantry more than the Allies should at no point have shown themselves inferior in foot soldiers to their opponents. When the curtain of horse which stretched from Blenheim to Oberglau was broken through and driven off the field the 13 000 infantry accumulated in the former of these villages could not avoid falling into the enemy's hands; for they were pressed between Marlborough's victorious foot and horse on the one side and the unfordable stream of the Danube on the other. But Marlborough it is evident evinced the capacity of a great general in the manner in which he surmounted these obstacles and took advantage of these faulty dispositions; resolutely in the first instance overcoming the numerous impediments which opposed the passage of the rivulets and then accumulating his horse and foot for a grand attack on the enemy's centre which besides destroying above half the troops assembled there and driving thirty squadrons into the Danube cut off and isolated the powerful body of infantry now uselessly crowded together in Blenheim and compelled them to surrender. Immense were the results of this transcendent victory. The French army lately so confident in its numbers and prowess retreated ""or rather fled "" as Marlborough says through the Black Forest; abandoning the Elector of Bavaria and all the fortresses on the Danube to their fate. In the deepest dejection and the utmost disorder they reached the Rhine scarce twelve thousand strong on the 25th August and immediately began defiling over by the bridge of Strasburg. How different from the triumphant army which with drums beating and colours flying had crossed at the same place six weeks before! Marlborough having detached part of his force to besiege Ulm drew near with the bulk of his army to the Rhine which he passed near Philipsburg on the 6th September and soon after commenced the siege of Landau on the French side; Prince Louis with 20 000 men forming the besieging force and Eugene and Marlborough with 30 000 the covering army. Ulm surrendered on the 16th September with 250 pieces of cannon and 1200 barrels of powder which gave the Allies a solid foundation on the Danube and effectually crushed the power of the Elector of Bavaria who isolated now in the midst of his enemies had no alternative but to abandon his dominions and seek refuge in Brussels where he arrived in the end of September. Meanwhile as the siege of Landau was found to require more time than had been anticipated owing to the extraordinary difficulties experienced in getting up supplies and forage for the troops; Marlborough repaired to Hanover and Berlin to stimulate the Prussian and Hanoverian cabinets to greater exertions in the common cause and he succeeded in making arrangements for the addition of 8000 more Prussian troops to their valuable auxiliary force to be added to the army of the Imperialists in Italy which stood much in need of reinforcement. The Electress of Bavaria who had been left Regent of that State in the absence of the Elector in Flanders had now no resource left but submission; and a treaty was accordingly concluded in the beginning of November by which she agreed to disband all her troops. Trarbach was taken in the end of December; the Hungarian insurrection was appeased; Landau capitulated in the beginning of the same month; a diversion which the enemy attempted on Trêves was defeated by Marlborough's activity and vigilance and that city put in a sufficient posture of defence; and the campaign being now finished that accomplished commander returned to the Hague and London to receive the honour due for his past services and urge their respective cabinets to the efforts necessary to turn them to good account. Thus by the operations of one single campaign was Bavaria crushed Austria and Germany delivered. Marlborough's cross-march from Flanders to the Danube had extricated the Imperialists from a state of the utmost peril and elevated them at once to security victory and conquest. The decisive blow struck at Blenheim resounded through every part of Europe; it at once destroyed the vast fabric of power which it had taken Louis XIV. aided by the talents of Turenne and the genius of Vauban so long to construct. Instead of proudly descending the valley of the Danube and threatening Vienna as Napoleon afterwards did in 1805 and 1809 the French were driven in the utmost disorder across the Rhine. The surrender of Trarbach and Landau gave the Allies a firm footing on the left bank of that river. The submission of Bavaria deprived the French of that great outwork of which they have made such good use in their German wars the Hungarian insurrection deprived of the hoped-for aid from the armies on the Rhine was pacified. Prussia was induced by this great triumph to co-operate in a more efficient manner in the common cause; the parsimony of the Dutch gave way before the tumult of success; and the empire delivered from invasion was preparing to carry its victorious arms into the heart of France. Such results require no comment; they speak for themselves and deservedly place Marlborough in the very highest rank of military commanders. The campaigns of Napoleon exhibit no more decisive or glorious results. Honours and emoluments of every description were showered on the English hero for this glorious success. He was created a prince of the Holy Roman empire [15] and a tract of land in Germany erected into a principality in his favour. His reception at the courts of Berlin and Hanover resembled that of a sovereign prince; the acclamations of the people in all the towns through which he passed rent the air; at the Hague his influence was such that he was regarded as the real Stadtholder. More substantial rewards awaited him in his own country. The munificence of the queen and the gratitude of Parliament conferred upon him the extensive honour and manor of Woodstock long a royal palace and once the scene of the loves of Henry II. and the fair Rosamond. By order of the Queen not only was this noble estate settled on the duke and his heirs but the royal comptroller commenced a magnificent palace for the duke on a scale worthy of his services and England's gratitude. From this origin the superb palace of Blenheim has taken its rise; which although not built in the purest taste or after the most approved models remains and will long remain a splendid monument of a nation's gratitude and of the genius of Vanbrugh. Notwithstanding the invaluable services thus rendered by Marlborough both to the Emperor of Germany and the Queen of England he was far from experiencing from either potentate that liberal support for the future prosecution of the war which the inestimable opportunity now placed in their hands and the formidable power still at the disposal of the enemy so loudly required. As usual the English Parliament were exceedingly backward in voting supplies either of men or money; nor was
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he cabinet of Vienna inclined to be more liberal in its exertions. Though the House of Commons agreed to give £4 670 000 for the service of the ensuing year; yet the land forces voted were only 40 000 men although the population of Great Britain and Ireland could not be at that period under ten millions while France with about twenty millions had above two hundred thousand under arms. It is this excessive and invariable reluctance of the English Parliament ever to make those efforts at the commencement of a war which are necessary to turn to a good account the inherent bravery of its soldiers and frequent skill of its commanders that is the cause of the long duration of our Continental wars and of three-fourths of the national debt which now oppresses the empire and in its ultimate results will endanger its existence. The national forces are by the cry for economy and reduction which invariably is raised in peace reduced to so low an ebb that it is only by successive additions made in many different years that it can be raised up to any thing like the amount requisite for successful operations. Thus disaster generally occurs in the commencement of every war; or if by the genius of any extraordinary commander as by that of Marlborough unlooked-for success is achieved in the outset the nation is unable to follow it up; the war languishes for want of the requisite support; the enemy gets time to recover from his consternation; his danger stimulates him to greater exertions; and many long years of warfare deeply checkered with disaster and attended with an enormous expense are required to obviate the effects of previous undue pacific reduction. How bitterly Marlborough felt this want of support on the part of the cabinets both of London and Vienna which prevented him from following up the victory of Blenheim with the decisive operations against France which he would otherwise have undoubtedly commenced is proved by various parts of his correspondence. On the 16th of December 1704 he wrote to Mr Secretary Harley--""I am sorry to see nothing has been offered yet _nor any care taken by Parliament for recruiting the army_. I mean chiefly the foot. It is of that consequence for an early campaign that without it _we may run the hazard of losing in a great measure the fruits of the last_; and therefore pray leave to recommend it to you to advise with your friends if any proper method can be thought of that may be laid before the House immediately without waiting my arrival.""[16] Nor was the cabinet of Vienna notwithstanding the imminent danger they had recently run more active in making the necessary efforts to repair the losses of the campaign--""You cannot "" says Marlborough ""say more to us of the _supine negligence of the Court of Vienna_ with reference to your affairs _than we are sensible of every where else_; and certainly if the Duke of Savoy's good conduct and bravery at Verue had not reduced the French to a very low ebb the game must have been over before any help could come to you.""[17] It is ever thus especially with states such as Great Britain in which the democratic element is so powerful as to imprint upon the measures of government that disregard of the future and aversion to present efforts or burdens which is the invariable characteristic of the bulk of mankind. If Marlborough had been adequately supported and strengthened after the decisive blow struck at Blenheim; that is if the governments of Vienna and London with that of the Hague had by a great and timely effort doubled his effective force when the French were broken and disheartened by defeat he would have marched to Paris in the next campaign and dictated peace to the _Grand Monarque_ in his gorgeous halls of Versailles. It was short-sighted economy which entailed upon the nations the costs and burdens of the next ten years of the War of the Succession as it did the still greater costs and burdens of the Revolutionary War after the still more decisive success of the Allies in the summer of 1793 when the iron frontier of the Netherlands was entirely broken through and their advanced posts without any force to oppose them were within an hundred and sixty miles of Paris. This parsimony of the Allied governments and their invincible repugnance to the efforts and sacrifices which could alone bring and certainly would have brought the war to an early and glorious issue is the cause of the subsequent conversion of the war into one of blockades and sieges and of its being transferred to Flanders where its progress was necessarily slow and cost enormous from the vast number of strongholds which required to be reduced at every stage of the Allied advance. It was said at the time that in attacking Flanders in that quarter Marlborough took the bull by the horns; that France on the side of the Rhine was far more vulnerable and that the war was fixed in Flanders in order by protracting it to augment the profits of the generals employed. Subsequent writers not reflecting on the difference of the circumstances have observed the successful issue of the invasions of France from Switzerland and the Upper Rhine in 1814 and Flanders and the Lower Rhine in 1815 and concluded that a similar result would have attended a like bold invasion under Marlborough and Eugene. There never was a greater mistake. The great object of the war was to wrest Flanders from France; when the lilied standard floated on Brussels and Antwerp the United Provinces were constantly in danger of being swallowed up and there was no security for the independence either of England Holland or any of the German States. If Marlborough and Eugene had had two hundred thousand effective men at their disposal as Wellington and Blucher had in 1815 or three hundred thousand as Schwartzenberg and Blucher had in 1814 they would doubtless have left half their force behind them to blockade the fortresses and with the other half marched direct to Paris. But as they had never had more than eighty thousand on their muster-rolls and could not bring at any time more than sixty thousand effective men into the field this bold and decisive course was impossible. The French army in their front was rarely inferior to theirs often superior; and how was it possible in these circumstances to adventure on the perilous course of pushing on into the heart of the enemy's territory leaving the frontier fortresses yet unsubdued in their rear? The disastrous issue of the Blenheim campaign to the French arms even when supported by the friendly arms and all the fortresses of Bavaria in the preceding year had shown what was the danger of such a course. The still more calamitous issue of the Moscow campaign to the army of Napoleon demonstrated that even the greatest military talents and most enormous accumulation of military force affords no security against the incalculable danger of an undue advance beyond the base of military operations. The greatest generals of the last age fruitful beyond all others in military talent have acted on those principles whenever they had not an overwhelming superiority of forces at their command. Wellington never invaded Spain till he was master of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos; nor France till he had subdued St Sebastian and Pampeluna. The first use which Napoleon made of his victories at Montenotte and Dego was to compel the Court of Turin to surrender all their fortresses in Piedmont; of the victory of Marengo to force the Imperialists to abandon the whole strongholds of Lombardy as far as the Adige. The possession of the single fortress of Mantua in 1796 enabled the Austrians to stem the flood of Napoleon's victories and gain time to assemble four different armies for the defence of the monarchy. The case of half a million of men flushed by victory and led by able and experienced leaders assailing a single state is the exception not the rule. Circumstances therefore of paramount importance and irresistible force compelled Marlborough to fix the war in Flanders and convert it into one of sieges and blockades. In entering upon such a system of hostility sure and comparatively free from risk but slow and extremely costly the alliance ran the greatest risk of being shipwrecked on the numerous discords jealousies and separate interests which in almost every instance recorded in history have proved fatal to a great confederacy if it does not obtain decisive success at the outset before these seeds of division have had time to come to maturity. With what admirable skill and incomparable address Marlborough kept together the unwieldy alliance will hereafter appear. Never was a man so qualified by nature for such a task. He was courtesy and grace personified. It was a common saying at the time that neither man nor woman could resist him. ""Of all the men I ever knew "" says no common man himself a perfect master of the elegances he so much admired ""the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree not to say engrossed them. Indeed he got the most by them and contrary to the custom of profound historians who always assign deep causes for great events I ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough's greatness to those graces. He had no brightness nothing shining in his genius. He had most undoubtedly an excellent plain understanding and sound judgment. But these qualities alone would probably have never raised him higher than they found him which was page to James the Second's queen. But there the grace protected and promoted him. His figure was beautiful but his manner was irresistible either by man or woman. It was by this engaging graceful manner that he was enabled during all his war to connect the various and jarring powers of the Grand Alliance and to carry them on to the main object of the war notwithstanding their private and separate views jealousies and wrongheadedness. Whatever court he went to (and he was often obliged to go to restive and refractory ones) he brought them into his measures. The pensionary Heinsius who had governed the United Provinces for forty years was absolutely governed by him. He was always cool and nobody ever observed the least variation in his countenance; he could refuse more gracefully than others could grant and those who went from him the most dissatisfied as to the substance of their business were yet charmed by his manner and as it were comforted by it.""[18] FOOTNOTES: [1] _Letters and Despatches of John Churchill First Duke of Marlborough from 1702 to 1712._ Edited by SIR GEORGE MURRAY G.C.B. Master-General of the Ordnance &c. 3 vols. London 1845. [2] ""Marlborough "" says Swift ""is as voracious as hell and as ambitious as the devil. What he desires above every thing is to be made commander-in-chief for life and it is to satisfy his ambition and his avarice that he has opposed so many intrigues to the efforts made for the restoration of peace."" [3] ""During the interval between the liberation of Marlborough and the death of Queen Mary we find him in conjunction with Godolphin and many others maintaining a clandestine intercourse with the exiled family. On the 2d May 1694 only a few days before he offered his services to King William he communicated to James through Colonel Sackville intelligence of an expedition then fitting out for the purpose of destroying the fleet in Brest harbour.""--COXE'S _Marlborough_ i. 75. ""Marlborough's conduct to the Stuarts "" says Lord Mahon ""was a foul blot on his memory. To the last he persevered in those deplorable intrigues. In October 1713 he protested to a Jacobite agent he would rather have his hands cut off than do any thing to prejudice King James.""--MAHON i. 21-22. [4] ""Galli turpe esse ducunt frumentum manu quaerere; itaque armati alienos agros demetunt.""--CAESAR. [5] _Despatches_ 21st September 1702. [6] _Despatches_ 23d October 1702. [7] Memorial 24th August 1703.--_Despatches_ i. 165. [8] Marlborough was much chagrined at being interrupted in his meditated decisive operations by the States-General on this occasion. On the 6th September he wrote to them:--""Vos Hautes Puissances jugeront bien par le camp que nous venons de prendre qu'on n'a pas voulu se résoudre à tenter les lignes. J'ai été convaincu de plus en plus depuis l'honneur que j'ai eu de vous écrire par les avis que j'ai reçu journellement de la situation des ennemis que cette entreprise n'était pas seulement practicable mais même qu'on pourrait en espérer tout le succès que je m'étais proposé: enfin l'occasion en est perdue et je souhaite de tout mon coeur qu'elle n'ait aucune fâcheuse suite et qu'on n'ait pas lieu de s'en repentir quand il sera trop tard.""--MARLBOROUGH _aux Etats Généraux_; _6 Septembre 1703. Despatches_ i. 173. [9] ""Ce matin j'ai appris par une estafette que les ennemis avaient joint l'Electeur de Bavière avec 26 000 hommes et que M. de Villeroi a passé la Meuse avec la meilleure partie de l'armée des Pays Bas et qu'il poussait sa marche en toute diligence vers la Moselle de sorte que sans un prompt sécours l'empire court risque d'être entièrement abimé.""--MARLBOROUGH _aux Etats Généraux; Bonn_ _2 Mai 1704_. _Despatches_ i. 274. [10] The following was the composition of these two corps which will show of what a motley array the Allied army was composed:-- Left wing Marlborough. Batt. Squad. English 14 14 Dutch 14 22 Hessians 7 7 Hanoverians 13 25 Danes 0 22 -- -- 48 86 Right wing Eugene. Batt. Squad. Danes 7 0 Prussians 11 15 Austrians 0 24 Of the Empire 0 35 -- -- 18 74 [11] This pencil note is still preserved at Blenheim. [12] French--Bat. 82. Squad. 146. Allies--Bat. 66. Squad. 160. At 500 to a battalion and 150 to a squadron this gives a superiority of 5900 to the French. [13] Marl. _Desp._ i. 402-409. [14] Cardonnell Desp. to Lord Harley 25th Sept. 1704 _Desp._ i. 410. By intercepted letters it appeared the enemy admitted a loss of 40 000 men before they reached the Rhine. Marlborough to the Duke of Shrewsbury 28th Aug. 1704 _Desp._ i. 439. [15] The holograph letter of the Emperor announcing this honour said with equal truth and justice--""I am induced to assign to your highness a place among the princes of the empire in order that it may universally appear how much I acknowledge myself and the empire to be indebted to the Queen of Great Britain who sent her arms as far as Bavaria at a time when the affairs of the empire by the defection of the Bavarians to the French most needed that assistance and support:--And to your Grace likewise to whose prudence and courage together with the bravery of the forces fighting under your command the two victories lately indulged by Providence to the Allies are principally attributed not only by the voice of fame but by the general officers in my army who had their share in your labour and your glory.""--THE EMPEROR LEOPOLD TO MARLBOROUGH _28th August 1704_.--_Desp._ i. 538. [16] Marlborough to Mr Secretary Harley 16th Dec. 1704.--_Desp._ i. 556. [17] Marlborough to Mr Hill at Turin 6th Feb. 1705.--_Desp._ i. 591. [18] _Lord Chesterfield's Letters_ Lord Mahon's edition i. 221-222. PÚSHKIN THE RUSSIAN POET. No. II. SPECIMENS OF HIS LYRICS. TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL RUSSIAN BY THOMAS B. SHAW B.A. OF CAMBRIDGE ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE IMPERIAL ALEXANDER LYCEUM TRANSLATOR OF ""THE HERETIC "" &c. &c. In offering to the public the following specimens of Púshkin's poetry in an English dress the translator considers it part of his duty to make a few remarks. The number and extent of these observations he will of course confine within the narrowest limits consistent with his important duty of making his countrymen acquainted with the style and character of Russia's greatest poet; a duty which he would certainly betray were he to omit to explain the chief points indispensable for the true understanding not only of the extracts which he has selected as a sample of his author's productions but of the general tone and character of those productions viewed as a whole. The translator wishes it therefore to be distinctly understood that he by no means intends to offer in the character of a complete poetical portrait the few pieces contained in these pages but rather as an attempt however imperfect to daguerreotype--by means of the most faithful translation consistent with ease--_one_ of the various expressions of Púshkin's literary physiognomy; to represent one phase of his developement. That physiognomy is a very flexible and a varying one; Púshkin (considered only as a _poet_) must be allowed to have attained very high eminence in various walks of his sublime art; his works are very numerous and as diverse in their form as in their spirit; he is sometimes a romantic sometimes a legendary sometimes an epic sometimes a satiric and sometimes a dramatic poet;--in most if not in all of these various lines he has attained the highest eminence as yet recognised by his countrymen; and consequently whatever impression may be made upon our readers by the present essay at a transfusion of his works into the English language will be necessarily a very imperfect one. In the prosecution of the arduous but not unprofitable enterprise which the translator set before himself three years ago--viz. the communication to his countrymen of some true ideas of the scope and peculiar character of Russian literature--he met with so much discouragement in the unfavourable predictions of such of his friends as he consulted with respect to the feasibility of his project that he may be excused for some degree of timidity in offering the results of his labours to an English public. So great indeed was that timidity that not even the very flattering reception given to his two first attempts at prose translation has entirely succeeded in destroying it; and he prefers on the present occasion to run the risk of giving only a partial and imperfect reflection of Púshkin's intellectual features to the danger that might attend a more ambitious and elaborate version of any of the poet's longer works. Púshkin is here presented solely in his _lyrical_ character; and it is trusted that in the selection of the compositions to be translated--selections made from a very large number of highly meritorious works--due attention has been paid not only to the intrinsic beauty and merit of the pieces chosen but also to the important consideration which renders indispensable (in cases where we find an _embarras de richesses_ and where the merit is equal) the adoption of such specimens as would possess the greatest degree of novelty for an English reader. The task of translating all Púshkin's poetry is certainly too dignified a one not to excite our ambition; and it is meditated in the event of the accompanying versions finding in England a degree of approbation sufficiently marked to indicate a desire for more specimens to extend our present labours so far as to admit passages of the most remarkable merit from Púshkin's longer works; and perhaps even complete versions of some of the more celebrated. Should therefore the British public give the _fiat_ of its approbation we would still further contribute to its knowledge of the great Russian author by publishing for example some of the more remarkable _places_ in the poem of ""Evgénii Oniégin "" the charming ""Gypsies "" scenes and passages from the tragedy of ""Bóris Godunóff "" the ""Prisoner of the Caucasus "" ""Mazépa "" &c. &c. With respect to the present or _lyrical_ specimens we shall take the liberty to make a few remarks having reference to the principles which have governed the translator in the execution of the versions; and we shall afterwards preface each poem with a few words of notice such as may appear to be rendered necessary either by the subject or by the form of the composition itself. Of the poetical merit of these translations considered as English poems their writer has no very exalted idea; of their _faithfulness as versions_ on the contrary he has so deep a conviction that he regrets exceedingly the fact that the universal ignorance prevailing in England of the Russian language will prevent the possibility of that important merit--strict fidelity--being tested by the British reader. Let the indulgent therefore remember if we have in any case left an air of stiffness and constraint but too perceptible in our work that this fault is to be considered as a sacrifice of grace at the altar of truth. It would have been not only possible but easy to have spun a collection of easy rhymes bearing a general resemblance to the vigorous and passionate poetry of Púshkin; but this would not have been a _translation_ and a translation it was our object to produce. Bowring's _Russian Anthology_ (not to speak of his other volumes of translated poetry) is a melancholy example of the danger of this attractive but fatal system; while the names of Cary of Hay and of Merivale will remain as a bright encouragement to those who have sufficient strength of mind to prefer the ""strait and narrow way"" of masterly _translation_ to the ""flowery paths of dalliance"" so often trodden by the _paraphraser_. In all cases the metre of the original the musical movement and modulation has as far as the translator's ear enabled him to judge been followed with minute exactness and at no inconsiderable expense in some cases of time and labour. It would be superfluous therefore to state that the number of lines in the English version is always the same as in the original. It has been our study wherever the differences in the structure of the two languages would permit to include the same thoughts in the same number of lines. There is also a peculiarity of the Russian language which frequently rendered our task still more arduous; and the conquest of this difficulty has we trust conferred upon us the right to speak of our triumph without incurring the charge of vanity. We allude to the great abundance in the Russian of double terminations and the consequent recurrence of double rhymes a peculiarity common also to the Italian and Spanish versification and one which certainly communicates to the versification of those countries a character so marked and peculiar that no translator would be justified in neglecting it. As it would be impossible without the use of Russian types to give our readers an example of this from the writings of Púshkin and as they would be unable to pronounce such a quotation even if they saw it we will give an illustration of what we mean from the Spanish and the Italian. The first is from the fourth book of the _Galatea_ of Cervantes-- ""Venga á mirar á la pastora mia Quien quisiere contar de gente en gente Que vió otro sol que daba luz al dia Mas claro que el que sale del oriente "" &c.; and the second from Chiabrera's sublime _Ode on the Siege of Vienna_-- ""E fino a quanto inulti Sian Signore i tuoi servi? E fino a quanto Dei barbarici insulti Orgogliosa n'andrà l'empia baldanza? Dov'è dov'è gran Dio l'antico vanto Di tua alta possanza?"" &c. &c. In the two passages here quoted it will be observed that all the lines end with two syllables in both of which the rhyme is engaged; and an English version of the above verses however faithful in other respects which should omit to use the same species of double termination and content itself with the monosyllable rhyme would indubitably lose some of the harmony of the original. These double rhymes are far from abundant in our monosyllabic language; but we venture to affirm that their conscientious employment would be found so valuable as to amply repay the labour and difficulty attending their search. We trust that our readers will pardon the apparent technicality of these remarks for the sake of the consideration which induced us to make them. In all translation even in the best there is so great a loss of spirit and harmony that the conscientious labourer in this most difficult and ungrateful art should never neglect even the most trifling precaution that tends to hinder a still further depreciation of the gold of his original; not to mention the principle that whatever it is worth our while to do at all it is assuredly worth our while to do as well as we can. * * * * * The first specimen of Púshkin's lyric productions which we shall present to our countrymen ""done into English "" as Jacob Tonson was wont to phrase it ""by an eminent hand "" is a production considered by the poet's critics to possess the very highest degree of merit in its peculiar style. We have mentioned some details respecting the nature and history of the Imperial Lyceum of Tsarskoë Seló in which Púshkin was educated and we have described the peculiar intensity of feeling with which all who quitted its walls looked back upon the happy days they had spent within them and the singular ardour and permanency of the friendships contracted beneath its roof. On the anniversary of the foundation (by the Emperor Alexander) of the institution it is customary for all the ""old Lyceans"" to dine together in the same way as the Eton Harrow or Rugby men are accustomed to unite once a-year in honour of their school. On many of these occasions Púshkin contributed to the due celebration of the event by producing poems of various lengths and different degrees of merit; we give here the best of these. It was written during the poet's residence in the government of Pskoff and will be found we think a most beautiful and touching embodiment of such feelings as would be suggested in the mind of one obliged to be absent from a ceremony of the nature in question. Of the comrades whose names Púshkin has immortalized in these lines it is only necessary to specify that the first Korsákoff distinguished among his youthful comrades for his musical talents met with an early death in Italy; a circumstance to which the poet has touchingly alluded. Matiúshkin is now an admiral of distinction and is commanding the Russian squadron in the Black Sea. Of the two whom he mentions as having passed the anniversary described in this poem (October 19 1825) in his company the first was Pústchin since dead and the second the Prince Gortchakóff whom he met by accident travelling in the neighbourhood of his (the poet's) seclusion. Our readers cannot fail we think to be struck with the beautiful passage consecrated to his friendship with Délvig; and the only other personal allusion which seems to stand in need of explanation is that indicated by the name Wilhelm towards the end of the poem. This is the Christian name of his friend Küchelbecher since dead and whose family name was hardly harmonious enough to enter Púshkin's line and was therefore omitted on the Horatian principle--""versu quod dicere nolim."" We now hasten to present the lines. OCTOBER 19 1825. The woods have doff'd their garb of purply gold; The faded fields with silver frost are steaming; Through the pale clouds the sun reluctant gleaming Behind the circling hills his disk hath roll'd. Blaze brightly hearth! my cell is dark and lonely: And thou O Wine thou friend of Autumn chill Pour through my heart a joyous glow--if only One moment's brief forgetfulness of ill! Ay I am very sad; no friend is here With whom to pledge a long unlooked-for meeting To press his hand in eagerness of greeting And wish him life and joy for many a year. I drink alone; and Fancy's spells awaken-- With a vain industry--the voice of friends: No well-known footstep strikes mine ear forsaken No well-beloved face my heart attends. I drink alone; ev'n now on Neva's shore Haply my name on friendly lips has trembled.... Round that bright board say are ye _all_ assembled? Are there no other names ye count no more? Has our good custom been betray'd by others? Whom hath the cold world lured from ye away? Whose voice is silent in the call of brothers? Who is not come? Who is not with you? Say! _He_ is not come he of the curled hair He of the eye of fire and sweet-voiced numbers: Beneath Italia's myrtle-groves he slumbers; He slumbers well although no friend was there Above the lonely grave where he is sleeping A Russian line to trace with pious hand That some sad wanderer might read it weeping-- Some Russian wandering in a foreign land. Art _thou_ too seated in the friendly ring O restless Pilgrim? Haply now thou ridest O'er the long tropic-wave; or now abidest 'Mid seas with ice eternal glimmering! Thrice happy voyage!... With a jest thou leapedst From the Lyceum's threshold to thy bark Thenceforth thy path aye on the main thou keepedst O child beloved of wave and tempest dark! Well hast thou kept 'neath many a stranger sky The loves the hopes of Childhood's golden hour: And old Lyceum scenes by memory's power 'Mid lonely waves have ris'n before thine eye; Thou wav'dst thy hand to us from distant ocean Ever thy faithful heart its treasure bore; ""A long farewell!"" thou criedst with fond emotion ""Unless our fate hath doom'd we meet no more."" The bond that binds us friends is fair and true! Destructless as the soul and as eternal-- Careless and free unshakable fraternal Beneath the Muses' friendly shade it grew. We are the same: wherever Fate may guide us Or Fortune lead--wherever we may go The world is aye a foreign land beside us; _Our_ fatherland is Tsárkoë Seló! From clime to clime pursued by storm and stress In Destiny's dark nets long time I wrestled Until on Friendship's lap I fluttering nestled And bent my weary head for her caress.... With wistful prayers with visionary grieving With all the trustful hope of early years I sought new friends with zeal and new believing; But bitter was their greeting to mine ears. And even here in this lone dwelling-place Of desert-storm of cold and desolation There was prepared for me a consolation: Three of ye here O friends! did I embrace. Thou enteredst first the poet's house of sorrow O Pústchin! thanks be with thee thanks and praise Ev'n exile's bitter day from thee could borrow The light and joy of old Lyceum-days. Thee too my Gortchakóff; although thy name Was Fortune's spell though her cold gleam was on thee Yet from thy noble thoughts she never won thee: To honour and thy fiends thou'rt still the same. Far different paths of life to us were fated Far different roads before our feet were traced In a by-road but for a moment mated We met by chance and brotherly embraced. When sorrow's flood o'erwhelmd me like a sea; And like an orphan houseless poor unfriended My head beneath the storm I sadly bended Seer of the Aonian maids! I look'd for thee: Thou camest--lazy child of inspiration My Délvig; and thy voice awaken'd straight In this numb'd heart the glow of consolation; And I was comforted and bless'd my fate. Even in infancy within us burn'd The light of song--the poet-spell had bound us; Even in infancy there flitted round us Two Muses whose sweet glamour soon we learn'd. Even then _I_ loved applause--that vain delusion!-- _Thou_ sang'st but for thy Muse and for thy heart; _I_ squander'd gifts and life with rash profusion _Thou_ cherishedst thy gifts in peace apart. The worship of the Muse no care beseems; The Beautiful is calm and high and holy; Youth is a cunning counsellor--of folly!-- Lulling our sense with vain and empty dreams.... Upon the past we gaze--the same yet other-- And find no trace.--We wake alas! too late. Was it not so with us Délvig my brother?-- My brother in our Muse as in our fate! 'Tis time 'tis time! Let us once more be free! The world's not worth this torturing resistance! Beneath retirement's shade will glide existence-- Thee my belated friend--I wait for thee! Come! with the flame of an enchanted story Tradition's lore shall wake our hearts to move; We'll talk of Caucasus of war of glory Of Schiller and of genius and of love. 'Tis time no less for me ... Friends feast amain! Behold a joyful meeting is before us; Think of the poet's prophecy; for o'er us A year shall pass and we shall meet again! My vision's covenant shall have fulfilling; A year--and I shall be with ye once more! Oh then what shouts what hand-grasps warm and thrilling! What goblets skyward heaved with merry roar! Unto our Union consecrated be The first we drain--fill higher yet and higher! Bless it O Muse in strains of raptured fire! Bless it! All hail Lyceum! hail to thee!-- To those who led our youth with care and praises Living and dead! the next we grateful fill; Let each as to his lips the cup he raises The good remember and forget the ill. Feast then while we are here while yet we may: Hour after hour alas! Time thins our numbers; One pines afar one in the coffin slumbers; Days fly; Fate looks on us; we fade away; Bending insensibly to ear
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h and chilling We near our starting-place with many a groan.... Whose lot will be in old age to be filling On this Lyceum-day his cup _alone_? Unhappy friend! Amid a stranger race Like guest intrusive that superfluous lingers He'll think of us that day with quivering fingers Hiding the tears that wet his wrinkled face.... O may he then at least in mournful gladness Pass with his cup this day for ever dear As even I in exile and in sadness Yet with a fleeting joy have pass'd it here! * * * * * In the following lines the poet has endeavoured to reproduce the impressions made upon his mind by the mountain scenery of the Caucasus; scenery which he had visited with such rapture and to which his imagination returned with undiminished delight. It has been our aim to endeavour in our translation to give an echo however feeble and imperfect of the wild and airy freedom of the versification which distinguishes these spirited stanzas. The picture which they contain rough sketchy and unfinished as it may appear bears every mark of being a faithful copy from nature--a study taken on the spot; and will therefore we trust be not unacceptable to our readers as calculated to give an idea not only of the vigorous and rapid _handling_ of the poet's pencil but also of the wild and sublime region--the Switzerland of Russia--which he has here essayed to portray. Of the two furious and picturesque torrents which Púshkin has mentioned in this short poem Térek is certainly too well known to our geographical readers to need any description of its course from the snow-covered peak of Dariál to the Caspian; and the bold comparison in the last stanza will doubtless be found though perhaps somewhat exaggerated not deficient in a kind of fierce Æschylean energy perfectly in character with the violent and thundering course of the torrent itself:-- CAUCASUS. Beneath me the peaks of the Caucasus lie My gaze from the snow-bordered cliff I am bending; From her sun-lighted eyry the Eagle ascending Floats movelessly on in a line with mine eye. I see the young torrent's first leap towards the ocean And the cliff-cradled lawine essay its first motion. Beneath me the clouds in their silentness go The cataract through them in thunder down-dashing Far beneath them bare peaks in the sunny ray flashing Weak moss and dry shrubs I can mark yet below. Dark thickets still lower--green meadows are blooming Where the throstle is singing and reindeer are roaming. Here man too has nested his hut and the flocks On the long grassy slopes in their quiet are feeding And down to the valley the shepherd is speeding Where Arágva gleams out from her wood-crested rocks. And there in his crags the poor robber is hiding And Térek in anger is wrestling and chiding. Like a fierce young Wild Beast how he bellows and raves Like that Beast from his cage when his prey he espieth; 'Gainst the bank like a Wrestler he struggleth and plyeth And licks at the rock with his ravening waves. In vain thou wild River! dumb cliffs are around thee And sternly and grimly their bondage hath bound thee. * * * * * To those who measure the value of a poem less by the pretension and ambitiousness of its form than by the completeness of its execution and the skill with which the leading idea is developed we think that the graceful little production which we are now about to present to the reader will possess very considerable interest. It is it is true no more important a thing than a mere song; but the naturalness and unity of the fundamental thought and the happy employment of what is undoubtedly one of the most effective artifices at the command of the lyric writer--we mean repetition--render the following lines worthy of the universal admiration which they have obtained in the original and may not be devoid of charm in the translation:-- TO * * * Yes! I remember well our meeting When first thou dawnedst on my sight Like some fair phantom past me fleeting Some nymph of purity and light. By weary agonies surrounded 'Mid toil 'mid mean and noisy care Long in mine ear thy soft voice sounded Long dream'd I of thy features fair. Years flew; Fate's blast blew ever stronger Scattering mine early dreams to air And thy soft voice I heard no longer-- No longer saw thy features fair. In exile's silent desolation Slowly dragg'd on the days for me-- Orphan'd of life of inspiration Of tears of love of deity. I woke--once more my heart was beating-- Once more thou dawnedst on my sight Like some fair phantom past me fleeting Some nymph of purity and light. My heart has found its consolation-- All has revived once more for me-- And vanish'd life and inspiration And tears and love and deity. * * * * * The versification of the following little poem is founded on a system which Púshkin seems to have looked upon with peculiar favour as he has employed the same metrical arrangement in by far the largest proportion of his poetical works. So gracefully and so easily indeed has he wielded this metre and with so flexible so delicate and so masterly a hand that we could not refrain from attempting to imitate it in our English version; for we considered that it is impossible to say how much of the peculiar _character_ of a poet's writings depends upon the colouring or rather the _touch_--if we may borrow a phrase from the vocabulary of the critic in painting--of the metre. Undoubtedly a poet is the best judge not only of the kind but of the degree of the effect which he wishes to produce upon his reader; and there may be between the thoughts which he desires to embody and the peculiar harmonies in which he may determine to clothe those thoughts analogies and sympathies too delicate for our grosser ears; or at least if not too subtle and refined for our ears to perceive yet far too delicate for us to define or exactly to appreciate. Moved by this reasoning we have always preferred to follow as nearly as we could the exact versification and even the most minute varieties of tone and metrical accentuation. Inattention to this point is undoubtedly the stumbling-block of translators in general; of the dangerous consequences of such inattention it is not necessary to give any elaborate proof. How much we may ask does not the poetry of Dante for instance lose by being despoiled of that great source of its peculiar effect springing from the employment of the _terza rima_! It is in vain to say that it is enormously difficult to produce the _terza rima_ in English. To translate the ""gran padre Alighier"" into English _worthily_ the _terza rima must_ be employed whatever be the obstacles presented by the dissimilarities existing between the Italian and English languages. THE MOB. ""Procul este profani!"" A Poet o'er his glowing lyre A wild and careless hand had flung. The base cold crowd that nought admire Stood round responseless to his fire With heavy eye and mocking tongue. ""And why so loudly is he singing?"" ('Twas thus that idiot mob replied ) ""His music in our ears is ringing; But whither flows that music's tide? What doth it teach? His art is madness! He moves our soul to joy or sadness. A wayward necromantic spell! Free as the breeze his music floweth But fruitless too as breeze that bloweth What doth it profit Poet tell?"" POET.--Cease idiot cease thy loathsome cant! Day-labourer slave of toil and want! I hate thy babble vain and hollow. Thou art a worm no child of day: Thy god is Profit--thou wouldst weigh By pounds the Belvidere Apollo. Gain--gain alone to thee is sweet. The marble is a god! ... what of it Thou count'st a pie-dish far above it-- A dish wherein to cook thy meat! MOB.--But if thou be'st the Elect of Heaven The gift that God has largely given Thou shouldst then for our good impart To purify thy brother's heart. Yes we are base and vile and hateful Cruel and shameless and ungrateful-- Impotent and heartless tools Slaves and slanderers and fools. Come then if charity doth sway thee Chase from our hearts the viper-brood; However stern we will obey thee; Yes we will listen and be good! POET.--Begone begone! What common feeling Can e'er exist 'twixt ye and me? Go on your souls in vices steeling; The lyre's sweet voice is dumb to ye: Go! foul as reek of charnel-slime In every age in every clime Ye aye have felt and yet ye feel Scourge dungeon halter axe and wheel. Go hearts of sin and heads of trifling From your vile streets so foul and stifling They sweep the dirt--no useless trade! But when their robes with ordure staining Altar and sacrifice disdaining Did e'er your _priests_ ply broom and spade? 'Twas not for life's base agitation That _we_ were born--for gain nor care-- No--we were born for inspiration For love for music and for prayer! * * * * * The ballad entitled ""The Black Shawl"" has obtained a degree of popularity among the author's countrymen for which the slightness of the composition renders it in some measure difficult to account. It may perhaps be explained by the circumstance that the verses are in the original exceedingly well adapted to be sung--one of the highest merits of this class of poetry--for all ancient ballads in every language throughout the world were specifically intended to be sung or chanted; and all modern productions therefore written in imitation of these ancient compositions--the first lispings of the Muse--can only be successful in proportion as they possess the essential and characteristic quality of being capable of being sung. Independently of the highly musical arrangement of the rhythm which in the original distinguishes ""The Black Shawl "" the following verses cannot be denied the merit of relating in a few rapid and energetic measures a simple and striking story of Oriental love vengeance and remorse:-- THE BLACK SHAWL. Like a madman I gaze on a raven-black shawl; Remorse fear and anguish--this heart knows them all. When believing and fond in the spring-time of youth I loved a Greek maiden with tenderest truth. That fair one caress'd me--my life! oh 'twas bright But it set--that fair day--in a hurricane night. One day I had bidden young guests a gay crew When sudden there knock'd at my gate a vile Jew. ""With guests thou art feasting "" he whisperingly said ""And _she_ hath betray'd thee--thy young Grecian maid."" I cursed him and gave him good guerdon of gold And call'd me a slave that was trusty and bold. ""Ho! my charger--my charger!"" we mount we depart And soft pity whisper'd in vain at my heart. On the Greek maiden's threshold in frenzy I stood-- I was faint--and the sun seem'd as darken'd with blood: By the maiden's lone window I listen'd and there I beheld an Armenian caressing the fair. The light darken'd round me--then flash'd my good blade.... The minion ne'er finish'd the kiss that betray'd. On the corse of the minion in fury I danced Then silent and pale at the maiden I glanced. I remember the prayers and the red-bursting stream.... Thus perish'd the maiden--thus perish'd my dream. This raven-black shawl from her dead brow I tore-- On its fold from my dagger I wiped off the gore. The mists of the evening arose and my slave Hurl'd the corses of both in the Danube's dark wave. Since then I kiss never the maid's eyes of light-- Since then I know never the soft joys of night. Like a madman I gaze on the raven-black shawl; Remorse fear and anguish--this heart knows them all! * * * * * The pretty lines which we are now about to offer are rather remarkable as being written in the manner of the ancient national songs of Russia than for any thing very new in the ideas or very striking in the expression. They possess however--at least in the original--a certain charm arising from simplicity and grace. THE ROSE. Where is our rose friends? Tell if ye may! Faded the rose friends The Dawn-child of Day. Ah do not say Such is youth's fleetness! Ah do not say Thus fades life's sweetness! No rather say I mourn thee rose--farewell! Now to the lily-bell Flit we away. * * * * * Among the thousand-and-one compositions in all languages founded upon the sublime theme of the downfall and death of Napoleon there are we think very few which have surpassed in weight of thought in splendour of diction and in grandeur of versification Púshkin's noble lyric upon this subject. The mighty share which Russia had in overthrowing the gigantic power of the greatest of modern conquerors could not fail of affording to a Russian poet a peculiar source of triumphant yet not too exulting inspiration; and Púshkin in that portion of the following ode in which he is led more particularly to allude to the part played by his country in the sublime drama whose catastrophe was the ruin of Bonaparte's blood-cemented empire has given undeniable proof of his possessing that union of magnanimity and patriotism which is not the meanest characteristic of elevated genius. While the poet gives full way to the triumphant feelings so naturally inspired by the exploits of Russian valour and by the patient fortitude of Russian policy he wisely and nobly abstains on indulging in any of those outbursts of gratified revenge and national hatred which deform the pages of almost all--poets and even historians--who have written on this colossal subject. NAPOLEON. The wondrous destiny is ended The mighty light is quench'd and dead; In storm and darkness hath descended Napoleon's sun so bright and dread. The captive King hath burst his prison-- The petted child of Victory; And for the Exile hath arisen The dawning of Posterity. O thou of whose immortal story Earth aye the memory shall keep Now 'neath the shadow of thy glory Rest rest amid the lonely deep! A grave sublime ... nor nobler ever Couldst thou have found ... for o'er thine urn The Nations' hate is quench'd for ever And Glory's beacon-ray shall burn. There was a time thine eagles tower'd Resistless o'er the humbled world; There was a time the empires cower'd Before the bolt thy hand had hurl'd: The standards thy proud will obeying Flapp'd wrath and woe on every wind-- A few short years and thou wert laying Thine iron yoke on human kind. * * * * * And France on glories vain and hollow Had fixed her frenzy-glance of flame-- Forgot sublimer hopes to follow Thee Conqueror thee--her dazzling shame! Thy legions' swords with blood were drunken-- All sank before thine echoing tread; And Europe fell--for sleep was sunken The sleep of death--upon her head. * * * * * Thou mightst have judged us but thou wouldst not! What dimm'd thy reason's piercing light That Russian hearts thou understoodst not From thine heroic spirit's height? Moscow's immortal conflagration Foreseeing not thou deem'dst that we Would kneel for peace a conquer'd nation-- Thou knew'st the Russ ... too late for thee! Up Russia! Queen of hundred battles Remember now thine ancient right! * * * * * Blaze Moscow!--Far shall shine thy light! Lo! other times are dawning o'er us: Be blotted out our short disgrace! Swell Russia swell the battle chorus! War! is the watchword of our race! Lo! how the baffled leader seizeth With fetter'd hands his Iron Crown-- A dread abyss his spirit freezeth! Down down he goes to ruin down! And Europe's armaments are driven Like mist along the blood-stain'd snow-- That snow shall melt 'neath summer's heaven With the last footstep of the foe. 'Twas a wild storm of fear and wonder When Europe woke and burst her chain; The accursed race like scatter'd thunder After the tyrant fled amain. And Nemesis a doom hath spoken The Mighty hears that doom with dread: The wrongs thou'st done shall now be wroken Tyrant upon thy guilty head! Thou shalt redeem thy usurpation Thy long career of war and crime In exile's eating desolation Beneath a far and stranger clime. And oft the midnight sail shall wander By that lone isle thy prison-place And oft a stranger there shall ponder And o'er that stone a pardon trace Where mused the Exile oft recalling The well-known clang of sword and lance The yells Night's icy ear appalling; His own blue sky--the sky of France; Where in his loneliness forgetting His broken sword his ruin'd throne With bitter grief with vain regretting On his fair Boy he mused alone. But shame and curses without number Upon that reptile head be laid Whose insults now shall vex the slumber Of him--that sad discrowned shade! No! for his trump the signal sounded Her glorious race when Russia ran; His hand 'mid strife and battle founded Eternal liberty for man! * * * * * The next specimen for which we have to request the indulgence of our readers is a little composition of a very different and much less ambitious character. The idea is simple enough and not we think entirely devoid of originality--the primary object of every translator in the selection of the subjects on which he is to exercise his dexterity. THE STORM. See on yon rock a maiden's form Far o'er the wave a white robe flashing Around before the blackening storm On the loud beach the billows dashing; Along the waves now red now pale The lightning-glare incessant gleameth; Whirling and fluttering in the gale The snowy robe incessant streameth; Fair is that sea in blackening storm And fair that sky with lightnings riven But fairer far that maiden form Than wave or flash or stormy heaven! * * * * * We now come to one of the most remarkable lyric productions of our Poet's genius the ""General;"" and in order that our readers may be enabled to understand and appreciate this exquisite little poem we shall preface it with a few remarks of an explanatory character; as the _details_ at least of the events upon which it is founded may not be so generally known in England as they are in Russia. Our English readers however are doubtless sufficiently familiar with the history of the great campaign of the year 1812 which led to the burning of Moscow and to the consequent annihilation of the mighty army which Napoleon led to perish in the snows of Russia to remember one remarkable episode connected with that most important campaign. They remember that one of the Russian armies was placed under the command of Field-marshal Barclay de Tolly a general descended from an ancient Scottish family which had been settled for some generations in Russia but who was in every respect to be considered as a native Russian being born a subject of the Tsar and having during a long life of service in the Russian army gradually reached the highest military rank and acquired a well-earned and universal reputation as an able strategist and a brave man. The mode of operations determined on at the beginning of this most momentous struggle and persevered in throughout by the Russians with a patience and steadiness no less admirable than the wisdom of the combinations on which they were founded was a purely defensive system of tactics. The event amply demonstrated the soundness of the principles upon which those operations were based; for while Napoleon was gradually attracted into the interior of the country by armies which perpetually retired before him without giving him the opportunity of coming to a general action the autumn was gradually passing away and the flames of Moscow only served to light up for the French army the beginning of their hopeless retreat through a country now totally laid waste and covered with the snows of a Russian winter. This mode of operations however was by no means likely to please the population of Russia infuriated by the long unaccustomed presence of a hostile army within their sacred frontier and worked up by all the circumstances of the invasion to the highest pitch of patriotic enthusiasm. Unable to appreciate the value of what must have appeared to them a timid and pusillanimous policy they overwhelmed Barclay de Tolly with violent accusations of cowardice and even of treachery; rendered the more plausible to the mind of the ignorant by the circumstance of their object being a foreigner--or at least of foreign blood. So violent ultimately became these accusations that although the Field-marshal continued to enjoy the highest confidence and esteem of his sovereign it was found expedient to allow him to resign the chief command in which he was succeeded by Kutúzoff. Barclay de Tolly during the greater part of the campaign fought as a simple general of division in which character (as Púshkin describes) he took part in the great battle of Borodíno. Barclay must still be considered as one of those distinguished persons to whose memory justice has never been entirely done; and to do this justice was Púshkin's generous task in the noble lines which follow these remarks. No traveller has ever visited the winter palace of St Petersburg without having been struck with the celebrated ""Hall of Marshals "" which forms one of its most imposing features. In this magnificent room are placed the portraits (chiefly painted by Dawe an English artist who passed the greater part of his life in Russia) of the Russian generals who figured in that great campaign; and among them is to be found of course the ""counterfeit presentment"" of Barclay de Tolly painted as the field-marshals are in every case in this gallery of portraits at full length. With respect to the versification of this and several other poems which we have selected the English reader will not perhaps at first remark that it is nothing more than the measure used by old Drayton in the _Polyolbion_ and one in which a great deal of the earlier English poetry is written. It is very favourite measure of our Russian poet who has however increased in some degree its difficulty for an English versifier by introducing a great number of double terminations. It will be found indeed that these double rhymes are as numerous as the single or monosyllabic ones. THE GENERAL. In the Tsar's palace stands a hall right nobly builded; Its walls are neither carved nor velvet-hung nor gilded Nor here beneath the glass doth pearl or diamond glow; But wheresoe'er ye look around above below The quick-eyed Painter's hand now bold now softly tender From his free pencil here hath shed a magic splendour. Here are no village nymphs no dewy forest-glades No fauns with giddy cups no snowy-bosom'd maids No hunting-scene no dance; but cloaks and plumes and sabres And faces sternly still and dark with hero-labours. The Painter's art hath here in glittering crowd portray'd The chiefs who Russia's line to victory array'd; Chiefs in that great Campaign attired in fadeless glory Of the year Twelve that aye shall live in Russian story. Here oft in musing mood my silent footstep strays Before these well-known forms I love to stop and gaze And dream I hear their voice 'mid battle-thunder ringing. Some of them are no more; and some with faces flinging Upon the canvass still Youth's fresh and rosy bloom Are wrinkled now and old and bending to the tomb The laurel-wreathed brow. But chiefly One doth win me 'Mid the stern throng. With new thoughts swelling in me Before that One I stand and cannot lightly brook To take mine eye from him. And still the more I look The more within my breast is bitterness awaked. He's painted at full length. His brow austere and naked Shines like a fleshless skull and on it ye may mark A mighty weight of woe. Around him--all is dark; Behind a tented field. Tranquil and stern he raises His mournful eye and with contemptuous calmness gazes. Be't that the artist here embodied his own thought When on the canvass thus the lineaments he caught Or guided and inspired by some unknown Possession-- I know not: Dawe has drawn the man with this expression. Unhappy chief! Alas thy cup was full of gall; Unto a foreign land thou sacrificedst all. The savage mob's dull glance of hate thou calmly balkedst With thy great thoughts alone and silently thou walkedst; The people could not brook thy foreign-sounding name Pursued thee with its yell and piled thy head with shame And by thy very hand though saved from ill and danger Mock'd at thy sacred age--thou hoary-headed stranger! And even _he_ whose soul could read thy noble heart To please that idiot mob blamed thee with cruel art.... And long with patient faith defying doubt and terror Thou heldest on unmoved spite of a people's error; And e'er thy race was run wert forced at last to yield The well-earned laurel-wreath of many a bloody field Fame power and deep-thought plans; and with thy sword beside thee Within a regiment's ranks alone obscure to hide thee And there a veteran chief like some young sentinel When first upon his ear rings the ball's whistling knell Thou rushedst 'mid the fire a warrior's death desiring-- In vain!-- * * * * * O men! O wretched race! O worthy tears and laughter! Priests of the moment's god ne'er thinking of hereafter! How oft among ye men! a mighty one is seen Whom the blind age pursues with insults mad and mean But gazing on whose face some future generation Shall feel as I do now regret and admiration! SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS; BEING A SEQUEL TO THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER. PART II. The Oxford visions of which some have been given were but anticipations necessary to illustrate the glimpse opened of childhood (as being its reaction.) In this SECOND part returning from that anticipation I retrace an abstract of my boyish and youthful days so far as they furnished or exposed the germs of later experiences in worlds more shadowy. Upon me as upon others scattered thinly by tens and twenties over every thousand years fell too powerfully and too early the vision of life. The horror of life mixed itself already in earliest youth with the heavenly sweetness of life; that grief which one in a hundred has sensibility enough to gather from the sad retrospect of life in its closing stage for me shed its dews as a prelibation upon the fountains of life whilst yet sparkling to the morning sun. I saw from afar and from before what I was to see from behind. Is this the description of an early youth passed in the shades of gloom? No but of a youth passed in the divinest happiness. And if the reader has (which so few have) the passion without which there is no reading of the legend and superscription upon man's brow if he is not (as most are) deafer than the grave to every _deep_ note that sighs upwards from the Delphic caves of human life he will know that the rapture of life (or any thing which by approach can merit that name) does not arise unless as perfect music arises--music of Mozart or Beethoven--by the confluence of the mighty and terrific discords with the subtle concords. Not by contrast or as reciprocal foils do these elements act which is the feeble conception of many but by union. They are the sexual forces in music: ""male and female created he them;"" and these mighty antagonists do not put forth their hostilities by repulsion but by deepest attraction. As ""in to-day already walks to-morrow "" so in the past experience of a youthful life may be seen dimly the future. The collisions with alien interests or hostile views of a child boy or very young man so insulated as each of these is sure to be --those aspects of opposition which such a person _can_ occupy are limited by the exceedingly few and trivial lines of connexion along which he is able to radiate any essential influence whatever upon the fortunes or happiness of others. Circumstances may magnify his importance for the moment; but after all any cable which he carries out upon other vessels is easily slipped upon a feud arising. Far otherwise is the state of relations connecting an adult or responsible man with the circles around him as life advances. The network of these relations is a thousand times more intricate the jarring of these intricate relations a thousand times more frequent and the vibrations a thousand times harsher which these jarrings diffuse. This truth is felt beforehand misgivingly and in troubled vision by a young man who stands upon the threshold of manhood. One earliest instinct of fear and horror would darken his spirit if it could be revealed to itself and self-questioned at the moment of birth: a second instinct of the sane nature would again pollute that tremulous mirror if the moment were as punctually marked as physical birth is marked which dismisses him finally upon the tides of absolute self-control. A dark ocean would seem the total expanse of life from the first: but far darker and more appalling would seem that interior and second chamber of the ocean which called him away for ever on the direct accountability of others. Dreadful would be the morning which should say--""Be thou a human child incarnate;"" but more dreadful the morning which should say--""Bear thou henceforth the sceptre of thy self-dominion through life and the passion of life!"" Yes dreadful would be both: but without a basis of the dreadful there is no perfect rapture. It is a part through the sorrow of life growing out of its events that this basis of awe and solemn darkness slowly accumulates. _That_ I have illustrated. But as life expands it is more through the _strife_ which besets us strife from conflicting opinions positions passions interests that the funereal ground settles and deposits itself which sends upward the dark lustrous brilliancy through the jewel of life--else revealing a pale and superficial glitter. Either the human being must suffer and struggle as the price of a more searching vision or his gaze must be shallow and without intellectual revelation. Through accident it was in part and where through no accident but my own nature not through features of it at all painful to recollect that constantly in early life (that is from boyish days until eighteen when by going to Oxford practically I became my own master) I was engaged in duels of fierce continual struggle with some person or body of persons that sought like the Roman _retiarius_ to throw a net of deadly coercion or constraint over the undoubted rights of my natural freedom. The steady rebellion upon my part in one-half was a mere human reaction of justifiable indignation; but in the other half it was the struggle of a conscientious nature--disdaining to feel it as any mere right or discretional privilege--no feeling it as the noblest of duties to resist though it should be mortally those that would have enslaved me and to retort scorn upon those that would have put my head below their feet. Too much even in later life I have perceived in men that pass for good men a disposition to degrade (and if possible to degrade through self-degradation) those in whom unwillingly they feel any weight of oppression to themselves by commanding qualities of intellect or character. They respect you: they are compelled to do so: and they hate to do so. Next therefore they seek to throw off the sense of this oppression and to take vengeance for it by co-operating with any unhappy accidents in your life to inflict a sense of humiliation upon you and (if possible) to force you into becoming a consenting party to that humiliation. Oh wherefore is it that those who presume to call themselves the ""friends"" of this man or that woman are so often those above all others whom in the hour of death that man or woman is most likely to salute with the valediction--Would God I had never seen your face? In citing one or two cases of these early struggles I have chiefly in view the effect of these upon my subsequent visions under the reign of opium. And this indulgent reflection should accompany the mature reader through all such records of boyish inexperience. A good tempered-man who is also acquainted with the world will easily evade without needing any artifice of servile obsequiousness those quarrels which an upright simplicity jealous of its own rights and unpractised in the science of worldly address cannot always evade without some loss of self-respect. Suavity in this manner may it is true be reconciled with firmness in the matter; but not easily by a young person who wants all the appropriate resources of knowledge of adroit and guarded language for making his good temper available. Men are protected from insult and wrong not merely by their own skill but also in the absence of any skill at all by the general spirit of forbearance to which society has trained all those whom they are likely to meet. But boys meeting with no such forbearance or training in other boys must sometimes be thrown upon feuds in the ratio of their own firmness much more than in the ratio of any natural proneness to quarrel. Such a subject however will be best illustrated by a sketch or two of my own principal feuds. The first but merely transient and playful nor worth noticing at all but for its subsequent resurrection under other and awful colouring in my dreams grew out of an imaginary slight as I viewed it put upon me by one of my guardia
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s. I had four guardians: and the one of these who had the most knowledge and talent of the whole a banker living about a hundred miles from my home had invited me when eleven years old to his house. His eldest daughter perhaps a year younger than myself wore at that time upon her very lovely face the most angelic expression of character and temper that I have almost ever seen. Naturally I fell in love with her. It seems absurd to say so; and the more so because two children more absolutely innocent than we were cannot be imagined neither of us having ever been at any school;--but the simple truth is that in the most chivalrous sense I was in love with her. And the proof that I was so showed itself in three separate modes: I kissed her glove on any rare occasion when I found it lying on a table; secondly I looked out for some excuse to be jealous of her; and thirdly I did my very best to get up a quarrel. What I wanted the quarrel for was the luxury of a reconciliation; a hill cannot be had you know without going to the expense of a valley. And though I hated the very thought of a moment's difference with so truly gentle a girl yet how but through such a purgatory could one win the paradise of her returning smiles? All this however came to nothing; and simply because she positively would _not_ quarrel. And the jealousy fell through because there was no decent subject for such a passion unless it had settled upon an old music-master whom lunacy itself could not adopt as a rival. The quarrel meantime which never prospered with the daughter silently kindled on my part towards the father. His offence was this. At dinner I naturally placed myself by the side of M. and it gave me great pleasure to touch her hand at intervals. As M. was my cousin though twice or even three times removed I did not feel taking too great a liberty in this little act of tenderness. No matter if three thousand times removed I said my cousin is my cousin: nor had I ever very much designed to conceal the act; or if so rather on her account than my own. One evening however papa observed my manoeuvre. Did he seem displeased? Not at all: he even condescended to smile. But the next day he placed M. on the side opposite to myself. In one respect this was really an improvement; because it gave me a better view of my cousin's sweet countenance. But then there was the loss of the hand to be considered and secondly there was the affront. It was clear that vengeance must be had. Now there was but one thing in this world that I could do even decently: but _that_ I could do admirably. This was writing Latin hexameters. Juvenal though it was not very much of him that I had then read seemed to me a divine model. The inspiration of wrath spoke through him as through a Hebrew prophet. The same inspiration spoke now in me. _Facit indignatio versum_ said Juvenal. And it must be owned that Indignation has never made such good verses since as she did in that day. But still even to me this agile passion proved a Muse of genial inspiration for a couple of paragraphs: and one line I will mention as worthy to have taken its place in Juvenal himself. I say this without scruple having not a shadow of vanity nor on the other hand a shadow of false modesty connected with such boyish accomplishments. The poem opened thus-- ""Te nimis austerum; sacrae qui foedera mensae Diruis insector Satyrae reboante flagello."" But the line which I insist upon as of Roman strength was the closing one of the next sentence. The general effect of the sentiment was--that my clamorous wrath should make its way even into ears that were past hearing: ""----mea saeva querela Auribus insidet ceratis auribus etsi Non audituris hybernâ nocte procellam."" The power however which inflated my verse soon collapsed; having been soothed from the very first by finding--that except in this one instance at the dinner-table which probably had been viewed as an indecorum no further restraint of any kind whatever was meditated upon my intercourse with M. Besides it was too painful to lock up good verses in one's own solitary breast. Yet how could I shock the sweet filial heart of my cousin by a fierce lampoon or _stylites_ against her father had Latin even figured amongst her accomplishments? Then it occurred to me that the verses might be shown to the father. But was there not something treacherous in gaining a man's approbation under a mask to a satire upon himself? Or would he have always understood me? For one person a year after took the _sacrae mensae_ (by which I had meant the sanctities of hospitality) to mean the sacramental table. And on consideration I began to suspect that many people would pronounce myself the party who had violated the holy ties of hospitality which are equally binding on guest as on host. Indolence which sometimes comes in aid of good impulses as well as bad favoured these relenting thoughts; the society of M. did still more to wean me from further efforts of satire: and finally my Latin poem remained a _torso_. But upon the whole my guardian had a narrow escape of descending to posterity in a disadvantageous light had he rolled down to it through my hexameters. Here was a case of merely playful feud. But the same talent of Latin verses soon after connected me with a real feud that harassed my mind more than would be supposed and precisely by this agency viz. that it arrayed one set of feelings against another. It divided my mind as by domestic feud against itself. About a year after returning from the visit to my guardian's and when I must have been nearly completing my twelfth year I was sent to a great public school. Every man has reason to rejoice who enjoys so great an advantage. I condemned and _do_ condemn the practice of sometimes sending out into such stormy exposures those who are as yet too young too dependent on female gentleness and endowed with sensibilities too exquisite. But at nine or ten the masculine energies of the character are beginning to be developed: or if not no discipline will better aid in their developement than the bracing intercourse of a great English classical school. Even the selfish are forced into accommodating themselves to a public standard of generosity and the effeminate into conforming to a rule of manliness. I was myself at two public schools; and I think with gratitude of the benefit which I reaped from both; as also I think with gratitude of the upright guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so effectually. But the small private schools which I witnessed for brief periods containing thirty to forty boys were models of ignoble manners as respected some part of the juniors and of favouritism amongst the masters. Nowhere is the sublimity of public justice so broadly exemplified as in an English school. There is not in the universe such an areopagus for fair play and abhorrence of all crooked ways as an English mob or one of the English time-honoured public schools. But my own first introduction to such an establishment was under peculiar and contradictory circumstances. When my ""rating "" or graduation in the school was to be settled naturally my altitude (to speak astronomically) was taken by the proficiency in Greek. But I could then barely construe books so easy as the Greek Testament and the Iliad. This was considered quite well enough for my age; but still it caused me to be placed three steps below the highest rank in the school. Within one week however my talent for Latin verses which had by this time gathered strength and expansion became known. I was honoured as never was man or boy since Mordecai the Jew. Not properly belonging to the flock of the head master but to the leading section of the second I was now weekly paraded for distinction at the supreme tribunal of the school; out of which at first grew nothing but a sunshine of approbation delightful to my heart still brooding upon solitude. Within six weeks this had changed. The approbation indeed continued and the public testimony of it. Neither would there in the ordinary course have been any painful reaction from jealousy or fretful resistance to the soundness of my pretensions; since it was sufficiently known to some of my schoolfellows that I who had no male relatives but military men and those in India could not have benefited by any clandestine aid. But unhappily the head master was at that time dissatisfied with some points in the progress of his head form; and as it soon appeared was continually throwing in their teeth the brilliancy of my verses at twelve by comparison with theirs at seventeen eighteen and nineteen. I had observed him sometimes pointing to myself; and was perplexed at seeing the gesture followed by gloomy looks and what French reporters call ""sensation "" in these young men whom naturally I viewed with awe as my leaders boys that were called young men men that were reading Sophocles--(a name that carried with it the sound of something seraphic to my ears)--and who never had vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself. The day was come however when all that would be changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in the public playgrounds and delivering a blow on my shoulder which was not intended to hurt me but as a mere formula of introduction asked me ""What the d--l I meant by bolting out of the course and annoying other people in that manner? Were other people to have no rest for me and my verses which after all were horribly bad?"" There might have been some difficulty in returning an answer to this address but none was required. I was briefly admonished to see that I wrote worse for the future or else----At this _aposiopesis_ I looked enquiringly at the speaker and he filled up the chasm by saying that he would ""annihilate"" me. Could any person fail to be aghast at such a demand? I was to write worse than my own standard which by his account of my verses must be difficult; and I was to write worse than himself which might be impossible. My feelings revolted it may be supposed against so arrogant a demand unless it had been far otherwise expressed; and on the next occasion for sending up verses so far from attending to the orders issued I double-shotted my guns; double applause descended on myself; but I remarked with some awe though not repenting of what I had done that double confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies. Amongst them loomed out in the distance my ""annihilating"" friend who shook his huge fist at me but with something like a grim smile about his eyes. He took an early opportunity of paying his respects to me--saying ""You little devil do you call this writing your worst?"" ""No "" I replied; ""I call it writing my best."" The annihilator as it turned out was really a good-natured young man; but he soon went off to Cambridge; and with the rest or some of them I continued to wage war for nearly a year. And yet for a word spoken with kindness I would have resigned the peacock's feather in my cap as the merest of baubles. Undoubtedly praise sounded sweet in my ears also. But _that_ was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions that were connected with mortification to others. And even if I could have got over _that_ the eternal feud fretted and tormented my nature. Love that once in childhood had been so mere a necessity to me _that_ had long been a mere reflected ray from a departed sunset. But peace and freedom from strife if love were no longer possible (as so rarely it is in this world ) was the absolute necessity of my heart. To contend with somebody was still my fate; how to escape the contention I could not see; and yet for itself and the deadly passions into which it forced me I hated and loathed it more than death. It added to the distraction and internal feud of my own mind--that I could not _altogether_ condemn the upper boys. I was made a handle of humiliation to them. And in the mean time if I had an advantage in one accomplishment which is all a matter of accident or peculiar taste and feeling they on the other hand had a great advantage over me in the more elaborate difficulties of Greek and of choral Greek poetry. I could not altogether wonder at their hatred of myself. Yet still as they had chosen to adopt this mode of conflict with me I did not feel that I had any choice but to resist. The contest was terminated for me by my removal from the school in consequence of a very threatening illness affecting my head; but it lasted nearly a year; and it did not close before several amongst my public enemies had become my private friends. They were much older but they invited me to the houses of their friends and showed me a respect which deeply affected me--this respect having more reference apparently to the firmness I had exhibited than to the splendour of my verses. And indeed these had rather drooped from a natural accident; several persons of my own class had formed the practice of asking me to write verses for _them_. I could not refuse. But as the subjects given out were the same for all of us it was not possible to take so many crops off the ground without starving the quality of all. Two years and a half from this time I was again at a public school of ancient foundation. Now I was myself one of the three who formed the highest class. Now I myself was familiar with Sophocles who once had been so shadowy a name in my ear. But strange to say now in my sixteenth year I cared nothing at all for the glory of Latin verse. All the business of school was slight and trivial in my eyes. Costing me not an effort it could not engage any part of my attention; that was now swallowed up altogether by the literature of my native land. I still reverenced the Grecian drama as always I must. But else I cared little then for classical pursuits. A deeper spell had mastered me; and I lived only in those bowers where deeper passions spoke. Here however it was that began another and more important struggle. I was drawing near to seventeen and in a year after _that_ would arrive the usual time for going to Oxford. To Oxford my guardians made no objection; and they readily agreed to make the allowance then universally regarded as the _minimum_ for an Oxford student viz. £200 per annum. But they insisted as a previous condition that I should make a positive and definitive choice of a profession. Now I was well aware that if I _did_ make such a choice no law existed nor could any obligation be created through deeds or signature by which I could finally be compelled into keeping my engagement. But this evasion did not suit me. Here again I felt indignantly that the principle of the attempt was unjust. The object was certainly to do me service by saving money since if I selected the bar as my profession it was contended by some persons (misinformed however ) that not Oxford but a special pleader's office would be my proper destination; but I cared not for arguments of that sort. Oxford I was determined to make my home; and also to bear my future course utterly untrammeled by promises that I might repent. Soon came the catastrophe of this struggle. A little before my seventeenth birthday I walked off one lovely summer morning to North Wales--rambled there for months--and finally under some obscure hopes of raising money on my personal security I went up to London. Now I was in my eighteenth year; and during this period it was that I passed through that trial of severe distress of which I gave some account in my former Confessions. Having a motive however for glancing backwards briefly at that period in the present series I will do so at this point. I saw in one journal an insinuation that the incidents in the _preliminary_ narrative were possibly without foundation. To such an expression of mere gratuitous malignity as it happened to be supported by no one argument except a remark apparently absurd but certainly false I did not condescend to answer. In reality the possibility had never occurred to me that any person of judgment would seriously suspect me of taking liberties with that part of the work since though no one of the parties concerned but myself stood in so central a position to the circumstances as to be acquainted with _all_ of them many were acquainted with each separate section of the memoir. Relays of witnesses might have been summoned to mount guard as it were upon the accuracy of each particular in the whole succession of incidents; and some of these people had an interest more or less strong in exposing any deviation from the strictest _letter_ of the truth had it been in their power to do so. It is now twenty-two years since I saw the objection here alluded to; and in saying that I did not condescend to notice it the reader must not find any reason for taxing me with a blamable haughtiness. But every man is entitled to be haughty when his veracity is impeached; and still more when it is impeached by a dishonest objection or if not _that_ by an objection which argues a carelessness of attention almost amounting to dishonesty in a case where it was meant to sustain an imputation of falsehood. Let a man read carelessly if he will but not where he is meaning to use his reading for a purpose of wounding another man's honour. Having thus by twenty-two years' silence sufficiently expressed my contempt for the slander [19] I now feel myself at liberty to draw it into notice for the sake _inter alia_ of showing in how rash a spirit malignity often works. In the preliminary account of certain boyish adventures which had exposed me to suffering of a kind not commonly incident to persons in my station of life and leaving behind a temptation to the use of opium under certain arrears of weakness I had occasion to notice a disreputable attorney in London who showed me some attentions partly on my own account as a boy of some expectations but much more with the purpose of fastening his professional grappling-hooks upon the young Earl of A----t my former companion and my present correspondent. This man's house was slightly described and with more minuteness I had exposed some interesting traits in his household economy. A question therefore naturally arose in several people's curiosity--Where was this house situated? and the more so because I had pointed a renewed attention to it by saying that on that very evening (viz. the evening on which that particular page of the Confessions was written ) I had visited the street looked up at the windows and instead of the gloomy desolation reigning there when myself and a little girl were the sole nightly tenants sleeping in fact (poor freezing creatures that we both were) on the floor of the attorney's law-chamber and making a pillow out of his infernal parchments I had seen with pleasure the evidences of comfort respectability and domestic animation in the lights and stir prevailing through different stories of the house. Upon this the upright critic told his readers that I had described the house as standing in Oxford Street and then appealed to their own knowledge of that street whether such a house could be _so_ situated. Why not--he neglected to tell us. The houses at the east end of Oxford Street are certainly of too small an order to meet my account of the attorney's house; but why should it be at the east end? Oxford Street is a mile and a quarter long and being built continuously on both sides finds room for houses of _many_ classes. Meantime it happens that although the true house was most obscurely indicated _any_ house whatever in Oxford Street was most luminously excluded. In all the immensity of London there was but one single street that could be challenged by an attentive reader of the Confessions as peremptorily _not_ the street of the attorney's house--and _that_ one was Oxford Street; for in speaking of my own renewed acquaintance with the outside of this house I used some expression implying that in order to make such a visit of reconnoissance I had turned _aside_ from Oxford Street. The matter is a perfect trifle in itself but it is no trifle in a question affecting a writer's accuracy. If in a thing so absolutely impossible to be forgotten as the true situation of a house painfully memorable to a man's feelings from being the scene of boyish distresses the most exquisite--nights passed in the misery of cold and hunger preying upon him both night and day in a degree which very many would not have survived --he when retracing his schoolboy annals could have shown indecision even far more dreaded inaccuracy in identifying the house not one syllable after _that_ which he could have said on any other subject would have won any confidence or deserved any from a judicious reader. I may now mention--the Herod being dead whose persecutions I had reason to fear--that the house in question stands in Greek Street on the west and is the house on that side nearest to Soho-Square but without looking into the Square. This it was hardly safe to mention at the date of the published Confessions. It was my private opinion indeed that there were probably twenty-five chances to one in favour of my friend the attorney having been by that time hanged. But then this argued inversely; one chance to twenty-five that my friend might be _un_hanged and knocking about the streets of London; in which case it would have been a perfect god-send to him that here lay an opening (of _my_ contrivance not _his_) for requesting the opinion of a jury on the amount of _solatium_ due to his wounded feelings in an action on the passage in the Confessions. To have indicated even the street would have been enough. Because there could surely be but one such Grecian in Greek Street or but one that realized the other conditions of the unknown quantity. There was also a separate danger not absolutely so laughable as it sounds. Me there was little chance that the attorney should meet; but my book he might easily have met (supposing always that the warrant of _Sus. per coll._ had not yet on _his_ account travelled down to Newgate.) For he was literary; admired literature; and as a lawyer he wrote on some subjects fluently; Might he not publish _his_ Confessions? Or which would be worse a supplement to mine--printed so as exactly to match? In which case I should have had the same affliction that Gibbon the historian dreaded so much; viz. that of seeing a refutation of himself and his own answer to the refutation all bound up in one and the same self-combating volume. Besides he would have cross-examined me before the public in Old Bailey style; no story the most straightforward that ever was told could be sure to stand _that_. And my readers might be left in a state of painful doubt whether _he_ might not after all have been a model of suffering innocence--I (to say the kindest thing possible) plagued with the natural treacheries of a schoolboy's memory. In taking leave of this case and the remembrances connected with it let me say that although really believing in the probability of the attorney's having at least found his way to Australia I had no satisfaction in thinking of that result. I knew my friend to be the very perfection of a scamp. And in the running account between us (I mean in the ordinary sense as to money ) the balance could not be in _his_ favour; since I on receiving a sum of money (considerable in the eyes of us both ) had transferred pretty nearly the whole of it to _him_ for the purpose ostensibly held out to me (but of course a hoax) of purchasing certain law ""stamps;"" for he was then pursuing a diplomatic correspondence with various Jews who lent money to young heirs in some trifling proportion on my own insignificant account but much more truly on the account of Lord A----t my young friend. On the other side he had given to me simply the reliques of his breakfast-table which itself was hardly more than a relique. But in this he was not to blame. He could not give to me what he had not for himself nor sometimes for the poor starving child whom I now suppose to have been his illegitimate daughter. So desperate was the running fight yard-arm to yard-arm which he maintained with creditors fierce as famine and hungry as the grave; so deep also was his horror (I know not for which of the various reasons supposable) against falling into a prison that he seldom ventured to sleep twice successively in the same house. That expense of itself must have pressed heavily in London where you pay half-a-crown at least for a bed that would cost only a shilling in the provinces. In the midst of his knaveries and what were even more shocking to my remembrance his confidential discoveries in his rambling conversations of knavish _designs_ (not always pecuniary ) there was a light of wandering misery in his eye at times which affected me afterwards at intervals when I recalled it in the radiant happiness of nineteen and amidst the solemn tranquillities of Oxford. That of itself was interesting; the man was worse by far than he had been meant to be; he had not the mind that reconciles itself to evil. Besides he respected scholarship which appeared by the deference he generally showed to myself then about seventeen; he had an interest in literature; _that_ argues something good; and was pleased at any time or even cheerful when I turned the conversation upon books; nay he seemed touched with emotion when I quoted some sentiment noble and impassioned from one of the great poets and would ask me to repeat it. He would have been a man of memorable energy and for good purposes had it not been for his agony of conflict with pecuniary embarrassments. These probably had commenced in some fatal compliance with temptation arising out of funds confided to him by a client. Perhaps he had gained fifty guineas for a moment of necessity and had sacrificed for that trifle _only_ the serenity and the comfort of a life. Feelings of relenting kindness it was not in my nature to refuse in such a case; and I wished to * * * But I never succeeded in tracing his steps through the wilderness of London until some years back when I ascertained that he was dead. Generally speaking the few people whom I have disliked in this world were flourishing people of good repute. Whereas the knaves whom I have known one and all and by no means few I think of with pleasure and kindness. Heavens! when I look back to the sufferings which I have witnessed or heard of even from this one brief London experience I say if life could throw open its long suits of chambers to our eyes from some station _beforehand_ if from some secret stand we could look _by anticipation_ along its vast corridors and aside into the recesses opening upon them from either hand halls of tragedy or chambers of retribution simply in that small wing and no more of the great caravanserai which we ourselves shall haunt simply in that narrow tract of time and no more where we ourselves shall range and confining our gaze to those and no others for whom personally we shall be interested what a recoil we should suffer of horror in our estimate of life! What if those sudden catastrophes or those inexpiable afflictions which _have_ already descended upon the people within my own knowledge and almost below my own eyes all of them now gone past and some long past had been thrown open before me as a secret exhibition when first I and they stood within the vestibule of morning hopes; when the calamities themselves had hardly begun to gather in their elements of possibility and when some of the parties to them were as yet no more than infants! The past viewed not _as_ the past but by a spectator who steps back ten years deeper into the rear in order that he may regard it as a future; the calamity of 1840 contemplated from the station of 1830--the doom that rang the knell of happiness viewed from a point of time when as yet it was neither feared nor would even have been intelligible--the name that killed in 1843 which in 1835 would have struck no vibration upon the heart--the portrait that on the day of her Majesty's coronation would have been admired by you with a pure disinterested admiration but which if seen to-day would draw forth an involuntary groan--cases such as these are strangely moving for all who add deep thoughtfulness to deep sensibility. As the hastiest of improvisations accept--fair reader (for you it is that will chiefly feel such an invocation of the past)--three or four illustrations from my own experience. Who is this distinguished-looking young woman with her eyes drooping and the shadow of a dreadful shock yet fresh upon every feature? Who is the elderly lady with her eyes flashing fire? Who is the downcast child of sixteen? What is that torn paper lying at their feet? Who is the writer? Whom does the paper concern? Ah! if she if the central figure in the group--twenty-two at the moment when she is revealed to us--could on her happy birth-day at sweet seventeen have seen the image of herself five years onwards just as _we_ see it now would she have prayed for life as for an absolute blessing? or would she not have prayed to be taken from the evil to come--to be taken away one evening at least before this day's sun arose? It is true she still wears a look of gentle pride and a relic of that noble smile which belongs to _her_ that suffers an injury which many times over she would have died sooner than inflict. Womanly pride refuses itself before witnesses to the total prostration of the blow; but for all _that_ you may see that she longs to be left alone and that her tears will flow without restraint when she is so. This room is her pretty boudoir in which till to-night--poor thing!--she has been glad and happy. There stands her miniature conservatory and there expands her miniature library; as we circumnavigators of literature are apt (you know) to regard all female libraries in the light of miniatures. None of these will ever rekindle a smile on _her_ face; and there beyond is her music which only of all that she possesses will now become dearer to her than ever; but not as once to feed a self-mocked pensiveness or to cheat a half-visionary sadness. She will be sad indeed. But she is one of those that will suffer in silence. Nobody will ever detect _her_ failing in any point of duty or querulously seeking the support in others which she can find for herself in this solitary room. Droop she will not in the sight of men; and for all beyond nobody has any concern with _that_ except God. You shall hear what becomes of her before we take our departure; but now let me tell you what has happened. In the main outline I am sure you guess already without aid of mine for we leaden-eyed men in such cases see nothing by comparison with you our quick-witted sisters. That haughty-looking lady with the Roman cast of features who must once have been strikingly handsome--an Agrippina even yet in a favourable presentation--is the younger lady's aunt. She it is rumoured once sustained in her younger days some injury of that same cruel nature which has this day assailed her niece and ever since she has worn an air of disdain not altogether unsupported by real dignity towards men. This aunt it was that tore the letter which lies upon the floor. It deserved to be torn; and yet she that had the best right to do so would _not_ have torn it. That letter was an elaborate attempt on the part of an accomplished young man to release himself from sacred engagements. What need was there to argue the case of _such_ engagements? Could it have been requisite with pure female dignity to plead any thing or do more than _look_ an indisposition to fulfil them? The aunt is now moving towards the door which I am glad to see; and she is followed by that pale timid girl of sixteen a cousin who feels the case profoundly but is too young and shy to offer an intellectual sympathy. One only person in this world there is who _could_ to-night have been a supporting friend to our young sufferer and _that_ is her dear loving twin-sister that for eighteen years read and wrote thought and sang slept and breathed with the dividing-door open for ever between their bedrooms and never once a separation between their hearts; but she is in a far distant land. Who else is there at her call? Except God nobody. Her aunt had somewhat sternly admonished her though still with a relenting in her eye as she glanced aside at the expression in her niece's face that she must ""call pride to her assistance."" Ay true; but pride though a strong ally in public is apt in private to turn as treacherous as the worst of those against whom she is invoked. How could it be dreamed by a person of sense th
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t a brilliant young man of merits various and eminent in spite of his baseness to whom for nearly two years this young woman had given her whole confiding love might be dismissed from a heart like hers on the earliest summons of pride simply because she herself had been dismissed from _his_ or seemed to have been dismissed on a summons of mercenary calculation? Look! now that she is relieved from the weight of an unconfidential presence she has sat for two hours with her head buried in her hands. At last she rises to look for something. A thought has struck her; and taking a little golden key which hangs by a chain within her bosom she searches for something locked up amongst her few jewels. What is it? It is a Bible exquisitely illuminated with a letter attached by some pretty silken artifice to the blank leaves at the end. This letter is a beautiful record wisely and pathetically composed of maternal anxiety still burning strong in death and yearning when all objects beside were fast fading from _her_ eyes after one parting act of communion with the twin darlings of her heart. Both were thirteen years old within a week or two as on the night before her death they sat weeping by the bedside of their mother and hanging on her lips now for farewell whispers and now for farewell kisses. They both knew that as her strength had permitted during the latter month of her life she had thrown the last anguish of love in her beseeching heart into a letter of counsel to themselves. Through this of which each sister had a copy she trusted long to converse with her orphans. And the last promise which she had entreated on this evening from both was--that in either of two contingencies they would review her counsels and the passages to which she pointed their attention in the Scriptures; namely first in the event of any calamity that for one sister or for both should overspread their paths with total darkness; and secondly in the event of life flowing in too profound a stream of prosperity so as to threaten them with an alienation of interest from all spiritual objects. She had not concealed that of these two extreme cases she would prefer for her own children the first. And now had that case arrived indeed which she in spirit had desired to meet. Nine years ago just as the silvery voice of a dial in the dying lady's bedroom was striking nine upon a summer evening had the last visual ray streamed from her seeking eyes upon her orphan twins after which throughout the night she had slept away into heaven. Now again had come a summer evening memorable for unhappiness; now again the daughter thought of those dying lights of love which streamed at sunset from the closing eyes of her mother; again and just as she went back in thought to this image the same silvery voice of the dial sounded nine o'clock. Again she remembered her mother's dying request; again her own tear-hallowed promise--and with her heart in her mother's grave she now rose to fulfil it. Here then when this solemn recurrence to a testamentary counsel has ceased to be a mere office of duty towards the departed having taken the shape of a consolation for herself let us pause. * * * * * Now fair companion in this exploring voyage of inquest into hidden scenes or forgotten scenes of human life--perhaps it might be instructive to direct our glasses upon the false perfidious lover. It might. But do not let us do so. We might like him better or pity him more than either of us would desire. His name and memory have long since dropped out of every body's thoughts. Of prosperity and (what is more important) of internal peace he is reputed to have had no gleam from the moment when he betrayed his faith and in one day threw away the jewel of good conscience and ""a pearl richer than all his tribe."" But however that may be it is certain that finally he became a wreck; and of any _hopeless_ wreck it is painful to talk--much more so when through him others also became wrecks. Shall we then after an interval of nearly two years has passed over the young lady in the boudoir look in again upon _her_? You hesitate fair friend: and I myself hesitate. For in fact she also has become a wreck; and it would grieve us both to see her altered. At the end of twenty-one months she retains hardly a vestige of resemblance to the fine young woman we saw on that unhappy evening with her aunt and cousin. On consideration therefore let us do this. We will direct our glasses to her room at a point of time about six weeks further on. Suppose this time gone; suppose her now dressed for her grave and placed in her coffin. The advantage of that is--that though no change can restore the ravages of the past yet (as often is found to happen with young persons) the expression has revived from her girlish years. The child-like aspect has revolved and settled back upon her features. The wasting away of the flesh is less apparent in the face; and one might imagine that in this sweet marble countenance was seen the very same upon which eleven years ago her mother's darkening eyes had lingered to the last until clouds had swallowed up the vision of her beloved _twins_. Yet if that were in part a fancy this at least is no fancy--that not only much of a child-like truth and simplicity has reinstated itself in the temple of her now reposing features but also that tranquillity and perfect peace such as are appropriate to eternity; but which from the _living_ countenance had taken their flight for ever on that memorable evening when we looked in upon the impassioned group--upon the towering and denouncing aunt the sympathizing but silent cousin the poor blighted niece and the wicked letter lying in fragments at their feet. Cloud that hast revealed to us this young creature and her blighted hopes close up again. And now a few years later not more than four or five give back to us the latest arrears of the changes which thou concealest within thy draperies. Once more ""open sesame!"" and show us a third generation. Behold a lawn islanded with thickets. How perfect is the verdure--how rich the blossoming shrubberies that screen with verdurous walls from the possibility of intrusion whilst by their own wandering line of distribution they shape and umbrageously embay what one might call lawny saloons and vestibules--sylvan galleries and closets. Some of these recesses which unlink themselves as fluently as snakes and unexpectedly as the shyest nooks watery cells and crypts amongst the shores of a forest-lake being formed by the mere caprices and ramblings of the luxuriant shrubs are so small and so quiet that one might fancy them meant for _boudoirs_. Here is one that in a less fickle climate would make the loveliest of studies for a writer of breathings from some solitary heart or of _suspiria_ from some impassioned memory! And opening from one angle of this embowered study issues a little narrow corridor that after almost wheeling back upon itself in its playful mazes finally widens into a little circular chamber; out of which there is no exit (except back again by the entrance ) small or great; so that adjacent to his study the writer would command how sweet a bed-room permitting him to lie the summer through gazing all night long at the burning host of heaven. How silent _that_ would be at the noon of summer nights how grave-like in its quiet! And yet need there be asked a stillness or a silence more profound than is felt at this present noon of day? One reason for such peculiar repose over and above the tranquil character of the day and the distance of the place from high-roads is the outer zone of woods which almost on every quarter invests the shrubberies--swathing them (as one may express it ) belting them and overlooking them from a varying distance of two and three furlongs so as oftentimes to keep the winds at a distance. But however caused and supported the silence of these fanciful lawns and lawny chambers is oftentimes oppressive in the depth of summer to people unfamiliar with solitudes either mountainous or sylvan; and many would be apt to suppose that the villa to which these pretty shrubberies form the chief dependencies must be untenanted. But that is not the case. The house is inhabited and by its own legal mistress--the proprietress of the whole domain; and not at all a silent mistress but as noisy as most little ladies of five years old for that is her age. Now and just as we are speaking you may hear her little joyous clamour as she issues from the house. This way she comes bounding like a fawn; and soon she rushes into the little recess which I pointed out as a proper study for any man who should be weaving the deep harmonies of memorial _suspiria_. But I fancy that she will soon dispossess it of that character for her _suspiria_ are not many at this stage of her life. Now she comes dancing into sight; and you see that if she keeps the promise of her infancy she will be an interesting creature to the eye in after life. In other respects also she is an engaging child--loving natural and wild as any one of her neighbours for some miles round; viz. leverets squirrels and ring-doves. But what will surprise you most is--that although a child of pure English blood she speaks very little English; but more Bengalee than perhaps you will find it convenient to construe. That is her Ayah who comes up from behind at a pace so different from her youthful mistress's. But if their paces are different in other things they agree most cordially; and dearly they love each other. In reality the child has passed her whole life in the arms of this ayah. She remembers nothing elder than _her_; eldest of things is the ayah in her eyes; and if the ayah should insist on her worshipping herself as the goddess Railroadina or Steamboatina that made England and the sea and Bengal it is certain that the little thing would do so asking no question but this--whether kissing would do for worshipping. Every evening at nine o'clock as the ayah sits by the little creature lying awake in bed the silvery tongue of a dial tolls the hour. Reader you know who she is. She is the granddaughter of her that faded away about sunset in gazing at her twin orphans. Her name is Grace. And she is the niece of that elder and once happy Grace who spent so much of her happiness in this very room but whom in her utter desolation we saw in the boudoir with the torn letter at her feet. She is the daughter of that other sister wife to a military officer who died abroad. Little Grace never saw her grandmama nor her lovely aunt that was her namesake nor consciously her mama. She was born six months after the death of the elder Grace; and her mother saw her only through the mists of mortal suffering which carried her off three weeks after the birth of her daughter. This view was taken several years ago; and since then the younger Grace in her turn is under a cloud of affliction. But she is still under eighteen; and of her there may be hopes. Seeing such things in so short a space of years for the grandmother died at thirty-two we say--Death we can face: but knowing as some of us do what is human life which of us is it that without shuddering could (if consciously we were summoned) face the hour of birth? FOOTNOTES: [19] Being constantly almost an absentee from London and very often from other great cities so as to command oftentimes no favourable opportunities for overlooking the great mass of public journals it is possible enough that other slanders of the same tenor may have existed. I speak of what met my own eye or was accidentally reported to me--but in fact all of us are exposed to this evil of calumnies lurking unseen--for no degree of energy and no excess of disposable time would enable any one man to exercise this sort of vigilant police over _all_ journals. Better therefore tranquilly to leave all such malice to confound itself. NORTHERN LIGHTS. ""It was on a bright July morning that I found myself whirled away by railroad from Berlin 'that great ostrich egg in the sand ' which the sun of civilization is said to have hatched."" In these words and with this somewhat far-fetched simile does a German tourist Edward Boas by name commence his narrative of a recent pilgrimage to the far north. Undeterred by the disadvantageous accounts given of those regions by a traveller who had shortly before visited them and unseduced by the allurements of more southerly climes he boldly sets forth to breast the mountains and brave the blasts of Scandinavia and to form his own judgment of the country and its inhabitants. Almost however before putting foot on Scandinavian ground Mr Boas who as a traveller is decidedly of the gossiping and inquisitive class fills three chapters with all manner of pleasant chatter about himself and his feelings and his fancies and the travelling companions he meets with. His liveliness and versatility and a certain bantering satirical vein in which he occasionally indulges would have caused us to take his work had we met with it in an English translation for the production of a French rather than a German pen. Leaving the railway at Angermunde our traveller continues his journey by the mail in which he has two companions; a lady ""with an arm like ivory "" about whom he seems more than half inclined to build up a little episodical romance and a young man from the neighbouring town of Pasewalk ""on whose thick lips "" we are informed ""the genius of stupidity seemed to have established its throne."" This youth expressed his great regret that the good old customs of Germany had become obsolete and expatiated on the necessity of striving to restore them. ""Those were fine times "" he said ""when nobles made war on their own account burned down the villages and drove the cattle of the peasants on each other's territory. To themselves personally however they did no harm; and if by chance Ritter Jobst fell into the hands of Ritter Kurt the latter would say 'Ritter Jobst you are my prisoner on parole and must pay me a ransom of five hundred thalers.' And thereupon they passed their time right joyously together drinking and hunting the livelong day. But Ritter Jobst wrote to his seneschal that by fair means or foul he must squeeze the five hundred thalers out of his subjects who were in duty bound to pay to enable their gracious lord to return home again. Those were the times "" concluded the young Pasewalker ""and of such times should I like to witness the return."" Now Mr Boas considerably disapproved of these aspirations after the days of the robber knights and he accordingly to avoid hearing any more of them took a nap in his corner which helped him on nearly to Stralsund. ""This city "" he says ""has acquired an undeserved renown through Wallenstein's famous vow 'to have it though it were hung from heaven by chains.' This puts me in mind of the trick of a reviewer who by enormous and exaggerated praise induces us to read the stupid literary production of some dear friend of his own. We take up the book with great expectations and find it--trash. It is easy to see that Stralsund was founded by a set of dirty fish-dealers. Clumsy gable-ended houses streets narrow and crooked a wretched pavement--such is the city. A small road along the shore encumbered with timber old casks filth and rubbish--such is the quay."" In this uninteresting place Mr Boas is compelled to pass eight-and-forty hours waiting for a steamer. He fills up the time with a little dissertation on Swedish and Pomeranian dialects and with a comical legend about a greedy monk who bartered his soul to the devil for a platter of lampreys. By a stratagem of the abbot's Satan was outwitted; and taking himself off in a great rage he dropped the lampreys in the lake of Madue near Stargard where to this day they are found in as great perfection as in the lakes of Italy and Switzerland. This peculiarity however might be accounted for otherwise than by infernal means for Frederick the Great was equally successful in introducing the sturgeon of the Wolga into Pomeranian waters where it is still to be met with. A day's sail brings our traveller to the port of Ystad where he receives his first impressions of Sweden which are decidedly favourable. At sunrise the next morning he goes on board the steamer Svithiod bound from Lubeck to Stockholm. At the same time with himself are shipped three wandering Tyrolese musicians who are proceeding northwards to give the Scandinavians a taste of their mountain melodies and two or three hundred pigs all pickled; the pigs that is to say. He finds on board a numerous and agreeable society of which and of the passage he gives a graphic description. ""The ship's bell rang to summon us to breakfast. There is a certain epic copiousness about a Swedish _frukost_. On first getting up in the morning it is customary to take a _Kop caffe med skorpor_ a cup of coffee and a biscuit and in something less than two hours later one sits down to a most abundant meal. This commences with a _sup_ that is to say a glass of carraway or aniseed brandy; then come tea bread and butter ham sausage cheese and beer; and the whole winds up with a warm _Kötträtt_ a beefsteak or cutlet."" Truly a solid and savoury repast. Whilst discussing it in the cabin of the Svithiod Mr Boas makes acquaintance with his fellow-voyagers. ""At the top of the table sat our captain a jovial pleasant man. He was very attentive to the passengers had a prompt and friendly answer to every question; in short he was a Swede all over. Near him were placed the families of two clergymen in whose charge was also travelling a young Swedish countess a charming innocent-looking child whose large dark eyes seemed destined at no very distant period to give more than one heartache. Beside them was a tall man plainly dressed and of military appearance. This was Count S---- (Schwerin probably ) a descendant of that friend and lieutenant of Frederick the Great who on the 6th May 1757 purchased with his life the victory of Prague. He was returning from the hay-harvest on those estates which had belonged to his valiant forefather whose heirs had long been kept out of them for lack of certain documents. But Frederick William III. said 'Right is right though wax and parchment be not there to prove it;' and he restored to the family their property which is worth half-a-million. ""The Count's neighbour was Fru Nyberg a Swedish poetess who writes under the name of Euphrosyne. In Germany nobody troubles himself about the 'Dikter af Euphrosyne ' but every educated Swede knows them and their authoress. The latter may once have been handsome but wrinkles have now crept in where roses formerly bloomed. Euphrosyne was born in 1785--authoresses purchase their fame dearly enough at the price of having their age put down in every lexicon. A black tulle cap with flame-coloured ribands covered her head; round her neck she wore a string of large amber beads a gold watch-chain and a velvet riband from which her eyeglass was suspended. She was quiet and retiring spoke little and passed the greater portion of the day in the cabin. Fru Nyberg was returning from Paris and had with her a young lady of distinguished family Emily Holmberg by name. This young person possesses a splendid musical talent; her compositions are remarkable for charming originality and are so much the more prized that the muse of Harmony has hitherto been but niggard of her gifts to the sons and daughters of Sweden. There was something particularly delicate and fairy-like in the whole appearance of this maiden whose long curls floated round her transparent white temples while her soft dove-like eyes had a sweet and slightly melancholy expression. ""Next to Miss Holmberg there sat a handsome young man in a sort of loose caftan of green velvet. His name was Baron R---- and he was a descendant of the man who cast lots with Ankarström and Horn which of them should kill the King. He had formerly been one of the most noted lions and _viveurs_ of Stockholm but had latterly taken to himself a beautiful wife and had become a more settled character; though his exuberant spirits and love of enjoyment still remained and rendered him the gayest and most agreeable of travelling companions. Nagel the celebrated violin player and his lively little wife were also among the passengers. They were returning from America where he had been exchanging his silvery notes against good gold coin. Nagel is a Jew by birth a most accomplished man speaking seven languages with equal elegance and much esteemed in the musical circles of Stockholm."" A young Swedish woman named Maria whose affecting little history Mr Boas learns and tells us--an Englishman--""a thorough Englishman who as long as he was eating had no eyes or ears for any thing else "" and a French _commis voyageur_ travelling to get orders for coloured papers champagne and silk goods completed the list of all those of the party who were any way worthy of mention. The Frenchman Monsieur Robineau by name had a little ugly face nearly hidden by an enormous beard wore a red cap upon his head and looked altogether like a bandy-legged brownie or gnome. The scene at daybreak the next morning is described with some humour. ""A dull twilight reigned in the cabin the lamp was burning low and threatening to go out the first glimmer of day was stealing in through the windows and the Englishman had struck a light in order to shave himself. From each berth some different description of noise was issuing; the Lubecker was snoring loudly Baron R---- was twanging a guitar Monsieur Robineau singing a barcarole and every body was calling out as loud as he could for something or other. Karl the steward was rushing up and down the cabin so confused by the fifty different demands addressed to him that he knew not how to comply with any one of them. ""'Karl clean my boots!' ""'Ja Herr.' ""'Karl some warm water and a towel.' ""'Ja Herr.' ""'_Amis la matinée est belle! Sur le rivage assemblez-vouz!_--Karl the coffee!--_conduis ta barque avec prudence! Pêcheur parle bas!_ ... Karl the coffee!' ""'Ja Herr.' ""'Karl my carpet-bag!' ""'Karl are you deaf? Did you not hear me ask for warm water?' ""'Ja Herr.' ""'_Jette tes filets en silence! Pêcheur parle bas!_--Coffee coffee coffee!--_Le roi des mers ne t'échappera pas!_' ""'Ja Herr.' ""'Karl look at these boots! You must clean them again.' ""'No you must first find my carpet-bag.' ""'Karl you good-for-nothing fellow if you do not bring me the water immediately I will complain to the captain.' ""'_Pêcheur parle bas! Conduis ta barque avec prudence!_ ... Karl the coffee or by my beard I will have you impaled as soon as I am Emperor of Turkey!' ""'Ja Herr! Ja Herr! Ja Herr!'"" Aided by the various talents and eccentricities of the passengers by the grimaces of the Frenchman and the songs of the Tyrolese minstrels the time passed pleasantly enough; till on the morning of the third day after leaving Ystad the Svithiod was at the entrance of Lake Maeler opposite the fortress of Waxholm which presents more of a picturesque than of an imposing appearance. ""It consists of a few loopholed parapets and ramparts and of a strong round tower of grey stone looking very romantic but not very formidable and nevertheless entirely commanding the narrow passage. A sentry wrapped in his cloak stood upon the wall and hailed us through a speaking-trumpet. At the very moment that the captain was about to answer another steamer came round a bend of the channel meeting the Svithiod point-blank. The sentinel impatiently repeated his summons and for a moment there appeared to be some danger of our either running foul of the other boat or getting a shot in our hull from the fort. They do not understand joking at Waxholm as was learned a short time since to his cost by the commander of the Russian steamer Ischora who did not reply when summoned. Hastily furnishing the required information to the castle our captain shouted out the needful orders to his crew and we passed on in safety. ""The steamer which we now met bore the Swedish flag and was conveying the Crown Prince Oscar (the grandson of a lawyer and a silk-mercer) and his wife to Germany. They had left Stockholm in the night time to avoid all public ceremony and formality. A crowd of artillerymen now lined the walls of Waxholm to give the usual salute and we could hear the booming of the guns long after we were out of sight of ship and fort. In another hour I obtained my first view of Stockholm."" Stockholm the Venice of the North has been thought by many travellers to present a more striking _coup-d'oeil_ than any other European capital Constantinople excepted. Built upon seven islands formed by inlets of the sea and the Maeler Lake it spreads over a surface very large in proportion to the number of its houses and inhabitants and exhibits a singular mixture of streets squares and churches with rock wood and water. The ground on which it stands is uneven and in many places declivitous; the different parts of the city are connected by bridges and on every side is seen the fresh green foliage of the north. The natural canals which intersect Stockholm are of great depth and ships of large burden are enabled to penetrate into the very heart of the town. The general style of building offers little to admire; the houses being for the most part flat-fronted monotonous and graceless without any species of architectural decoration to relieve their inelegant uniformity. It is the position of the city the air of lightness given to it by the water which traverses it in every direction and the life and movement of the port that form its chief recommendations. In their architectural ideas the Swedes appear to be entirely utilitarian disdainful of ornament; and if a house of more modern and tasteful build with windows of a handsome size cornices and entablatures is here and there to be met with it is almost certain to have been erected by Germans or some other foreigners. The royal palace of which the first stone was laid in the reign of Charles XII. is a well-conceived and finely executed work; some of the churches are also worthy of notice; but most of the public buildings derive their chief interest like the squares and market-places from their antiquity or from historical associations connected with them. Few cities offer richer stores to the lovers of the romance of history than does the capital of Sweden. One edifice alone the Ritterhaus--literally the House of Knights or Lords--in which the Swedish nobility were wont to hold their Diets would furnish subject-matter for a score of romances. Not a door nor a window scarce a stone in the building but tells of some sanguinary feud or fierce insurrection of the populace in the troublous days of Sweden. From floor to ceiling of the great hall in which the Diet held its sittings hang the coats of arms of Swedish counts barons and noblemen. A solemn gloomy light pervades the apartment and unites with the grave black-blue coverings of the seats and balustrades to convey the idea that this is no arena for showy shallow orators but a place in which stern truth and naked reality have been wont to prevail. The chair of Gustavus Vasa of inlaid ivory and covered with purple velvet stands in this room. Mr Boas the pages of whose book are thickly strewn with legends and historical anecdotes many of them interesting devotes a chapter to the Ritterhaus and its annals. One tragical history connected with that building appears worthy of extraction: ""One of the chief favourites of Gustavus III. was Count Armfelt a young man of illustrious family and of unusual mental and personal accomplishments. At an early age he entered the royal guards and proved during the war with Russia that his courage in the field fully equalled his more courtierlike merits. He rapidly ascended in military grade and finally the king appointed him governor of Stockholm and named him President of the Council of Regency which in case of his death was to govern Sweden during the minority of the heir to the throne. Shortly after these dignities had been conferred upon Armfelt occurred the famous masquerade and the assassination of Gustavus. ""Upon this event happening a written will of the king's was produced of more recent date than the appointment of the Count and according to which the guardianship of the Prince Royal was to devolve upon Duke Karl Sundermanland the brother of Gustavus. This was a weak sensual and vindictive prince of limited capacity and easily led by flattery and deceit. He belonged to a secret society of which Baron Reuterholm was grand-master. A couple of mysterious and well-managed apparitions were sufficient to terrify the duke and render him ductile as wax. The most implicit submission was required of him and soon the crafty Reuterholm got the royal authority entirely into his own hands. There was discontent and murmuring amongst the true friends of the royal family but Reuterholm's spies were ubiquitous and a frowning brow or dissatisfied look was punished as a crime. Amongst others Count Armfelt who took no pains to conceal his indignation at the scandalous proceedings of those in power was stripped of his offices and ordered to set out immediately as ambassador to Naples. ""This command fell like a thunderbolt upon the head of the Count whom every public and private consideration combined to retain in Stockholm. Loath as he was to leave his country an undisputed prey to the knaves into whose hands it had fallen he was perhaps still more unwilling to abandon one beloved being to the snares and dangers of a sensual and corrupt court. ""It was on a September evening of the year 1792 and the light of the moon fell cold and clear upon the white houses of Stockholm though the streets that intersected their masses were plunged in deep shadow when a man muffled in a cloak and evidently desirous of avoiding observation was seen making his way hastily through the darkest and least frequented lanes of that city. Stopping at last he knocked thrice against a window-shutter; an adjacent door was opened at the signal and he passed through a corridor into a cheerful and well-lighted apartment. Throwing off his cloak he received and returned the affectionate greeting of a beautiful woman who advanced with outstretched hand to meet him. The stranger was Count Armfelt--the lady Miss Rudenskjöld--the most charming of the court beauties of the day. The colour left her cheek when she perceived the uneasiness of her lover; but when he told her of the orders he had received her head sank upon his breast and her large blue eyes swam in tears. Recovering however from this momentary depression she vowed to remain ever true to her country and her love. The Count echoed the vow and a kiss sealed the compact. The following morning a ship sailed from Stockholm bearing the new ambassador to Naples. ""Scarcely had Armfelt departed when Duke Karl began to persecute Miss Rudenskjöld with his addresses. At first he endeavoured by attention and flatteries to win her favour; but her avoidance of his advances and society increased the violence of his passion until at last he spoke his wishes with brutal frankness. With maidenly pride and dignity the lady repelled his suit and severely stigmatized his insolence. Foaming with rage the duke left her presence and from that moment his love was exchanged for a deadly hatred. ""Baron Reuterholm had witnessed with pleasure the growth of the regent's passion for the beautiful Miss Rudenskjöld; for he knew that the more pursuits Duke Karl had to occupy and amuse him the more undivided would be his own sway. It was with great dissatisfaction therefore that he received an account of the contemptuous manner in which the proud girl had treated her royal admirer. The latter insisted upon revenge full and complete revenge and Reuterholm promised that he should have it. Miss Rudenskjöld's life was so blameless and her conduct in every respect so correct that it seemed impossible to invent any charge against her; but Reuterholm set spies to work and spies will always discover something. They found out that she kept up a regular correspondence with Count Armfelt. Their letters were opened and evidence found in them of a plan to declare the young prince of age or at least to abstract Duke Karl from the corrupting influence of Reuterholm. The angry feelings entertained by the latter personage towards Miss Rudenskjöld were increased tenfold by this discovery and he immediately had her thrown into prison. She was brought to trial before a tribunal composed of creatures of the b
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