Full text of "All The Year Round"

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"The Story of our Lives from Tear to Year" Shakespeaee. 



ALL THE YEAE ROUND. 

& mtMu Souraal. 



CONDUCTED BY 



CHARLES DICKENS. 

WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. 



VOLUME X1Y. 

Eeom July 29, 1865, to Januaky 6, 1866. 
udin#No. 227 toNo. 350. 



LONDON: 
PUBLISHED AT N- 26, WELLINGTON STREET; 

AND BY MESSRS. CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY, 

1866. 



C. WHITIN&'BEATjFOHT HOUSE, STRAND. 



CONTENTS. 



ABERDEEN '. . 

Against the Grain . 

Agriculturists in Scotland 

All the World Akin . 

Alpine Accidents . . 

Alpine Excursions . 

Amateur Finance 56, 87, 110, 

Angling .... 

Arab Thoughts . 

Arcadia, A Serpent in 

Army Promotion 

Army Punishments . 

Army, Recruiting Difficulty 

Army, The Lash 

At Caracas .... 

At La Guaira 

At the Bar 
217, 241, 265, 289, 313, 337, 
409, 433, 457, 4S1, 505, 529, 

Aunts 

Australia, Chinese in 



PAGE 

. 305 
442, 492 

. 469 
. 250 
. 85 
. 135 



468 
115 



. 465 
. 296 
. 464 
. 297 
. 415 
. 400 
. 193 
361, 385 
545, 553 



471 



Bachelor's Strike . 

Back to Scotland 

Banff 

Bangor Ferry .... 

Barings, Founder of the House 
of 

Barnwell, George, The Story of 

Bathing-Woman, The 

Battle-Field, Faces on 

Beautiful Girls . 

Betting Knaves and Fools 

Betting, Low Sportsmen 

Bird-Fancies .... 

Birds, Migration of . 

Boar Hunt in India, A . 

Bouncing Boys .... 

Boys in Modern Times . 

Brompton Consumption Hos- 
pital 

Bubbles of Finance 56, 87, 110 

Bundle of Scotch Notes . 



. 277 

. 420 

397 

322 

273 

12 

355 

60 

493 



442, 
442, 



153 

153 

330 

37 

37 

489 
SOS 
343 



Cameleord, Lord, the Duellist 275 

Canton 15 

Caracas .... 415, 545 
Caracas to Valencia . . . 563 
China, Writings of Mencius . 159 
Chinese City, Life in 15 

Chinese Gambling-Shops . 17 
Chinese in Australia . . .471 
Chinese Paintings ... 17 
Chinese Tea-Shops . .17 

Chinese Thoughts . . .159 

Cholera 250 

Cholera in India . . . 423 
Climbing Mountains . . 135 
Colonel and Mrs. Chutney 186, 210 
Colonial Debt . . . .150 
Colonies, Imports from the . 152 
Colonies, The . . . .150 
Companies, How they are 

Floated . 58, 87, 110, 368, 393 
Concerning Plums and Prunes 9 
Consumption Hospital Patients 

sent to Madeira . . . 489 
Contributors, Hints to . . 200 
Cotton Imports . . . .152 
Culloden Moor . . . .543 
Cutting out Cattle ... 62 



PAGE 

566 
142 
446 
355 
537 



Daddy Dodd . 

Day with Holibut 

Day with the Lord Mayor 

Dead on a Battle-Field . 

Dear Meat and Cheap Fish 

Derby's (Lord), Proposed Por 
trait Exhibition 

Devonshire Life Sixty Years 
Ago 17, 319 

Devonshire Wool Trade . . 319 

Dinner with the Lord Mayor . 450 

Dirt and Disease 

Dish of Poultry .... 

Dog Butcher-Shops in China . 

Drake at Venezuela . 

Dreaming Sharp 

Dublin during the Fenian Ex- 
citement 516 

Dwarfs 377 



Earthquake at Venezuela 

Eels 

Egg-hatching Scheme 
Eggs, Fowls Hatching . 

Elgin 

Elk Poaching in Norway 
England's Colonies . 
Etna Awake 
Every Man's Poison . 
Exeter Sixty Years Ago . 



92 



371 
490 
17 
417 
106 



Faces on a Battle Field . 
Familistery, A Visit to the 
Farmhouse in Scotland . 
Fathers .... 
Fenians, The . . . 
Fenian Trials at Dublin . 
Fever Homes 

Fever, Where it is Hatched 
Few Saturnine Observations 
Field of Forty Footsteps . 
Financial Articles 56, 87,110,2 
Fire Brigade 

Fish, Cultivation of Salmon 
Fishes, Curious Kinds 
Fishing .... 
Fishing for Holibut . 
Foolhardihood . 
Foreign Climbs . 
Foreign Possessions . 
Fowls, Characters of 
French Bachelor's Strike 
French Marriages 
French Plums . 
French Wives . 
Friday, Sailing on . . 
Funeral of Tom Sayers . 



419 
104 

282 
496 
542 
40 
150 
209 
372 
319 

355 
613 
469 
133 
300 
516 
372 
372 
129 
274 
,393 
126 
541 
101 
468 
142 
85 
135 
150 
496 
52 
42 



Gambling Roughs . 

George Barnwell . . 

German Harvest Homo . 

Ghost, A Jump through a 

Ghosts in the Tower 

Girls in Modern Times . 

Gold and Cotton Imports 

Grandfathers and Grandmo- 
thers . . . . .225 

Granite City .... 304 

Guide, The Penny Sporting . 493 

Guildhall, the Lord Mayor's 
Banquet 446 



. 343 

. 495 

442, 493 
. 273 
. 140 
. 140 
. 276 
. 60 
152 



Hale a Million oe Money 
1, 25, 49, 73, 97, 121, 145, 169, 204 
227, 259, 283, 307, 332, 356, 380 
405, 427, 433, 451, 475, 498, 520 
Hanging Criminals Recovered 275 
Harbour of Refuge . .254 
Hardihood and Foolhardihood 85 
Harvest Home in Germany . 140 
Head-Work . . . .201 
Heat and Work. ... 29 
Heat Consumed in Climbing . 32 
Hermit Bob . . i .233 
Hints to Contributors . . 200 
Hobby-Horses . . . .163 
Holibut Fishing . . .142 
Home for Workmen . . .513 
Homes of the Poor . . .372 
Hope Rashleigh ... 65 
Hopeward Bound . . .489 
Hospital, The Brompton . 489 
Hospital Patients for Madeira 489 
Hospitals in Villages . 474 
House and Land Finance and 

Credit Company . . 87, 110 
How the Rio Grande Company 
was Floated . . 58,368,393 

III in a Workhouse . . 176 

In-door Storms . . . .254 

In the Lowlands . . .468 

Indian Leopard Story . . 174 

India, The Cholera in . . 423 

India, Wild-Boar Hunting . 330 

Inn at the Ferry . . .397 

Inn, The Old Tabard . . 117 

Invalid Life in Madeira . . 184 

Inverness . . .544 



Jefeery Hudson 
Jump Through a Ghost 



La Guaira . 
Landlords of the Poor 
Lash in the Army . 
Leopards in India 
Leopard Killing 
Life-Boat Story, A . 
Liffey Theatre, A New Move 
Lightning Struck 
Literary Work . 
Little People 
London in Books 
London, The Romance of 
Lord Mayor's Day . 
Lord Mayor's Feast, The . 
Low Betting-Men . 
Lowlands of Scotland 
Lunch with the Lord Mayor 

Madeira, The Island of . 
Maiden Aunt, The . 
Maids of Merry England 
Mammon, A Dream of 
Meat, Scarcity of 
Mentone .... 
Metropolitan Romance . 
Mexico . 
Military Punishments 
Modern Boys 
Modern Fathers 
Modern French.Marriages 



37S 
140 



400, 545 
. 373 



. 297 

. 174 

. 176 

. 14 

. 252 

. 6 

. 201 

. 376 

. 270 

. 271 

. 446 

. 446 

. 442 

. 468 

. 446 

. 184 

. 84 

. 60 

. 106 

. 537 

. 254 

. 271 

. 78 



37 

135 

42 



IV 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Modem Girls . . .60 
Modern Torture ... 72 
Money Articles 56, 87, 110, 868, 393 
Most Desirable Family Man- 
sion 513 

Mothers 157 

More Scotch Notes . . .421 
Mount Etna Awake . . .209 
Murder, A Strange Discovery 

of 272 

My First Play . . . .305 
My Heart's in the Highlands . 541 

National Poultry Company . 281 
New China . . . .471 
New Move in the Liffey Theatre 252 
Newspaper, The Roughs Guide 492 
Nice and Mentone . . . 254 
North German Harvest Home 140 
Norway, Elk-Shooting . . 40 

Ocean Swells . . . .101 
Officer's Expenses in the Army 464 

Ogre, An 174 

Old Age 226 

Old-Fashioned Fathers . . 133 
Old London . . .270 

Our Aunts 83 

Our Colonies . . . .150 
Our Little Town . . .398 
Our Uncles . . . .108 

Penny Sporting Guide . . 493 
Perpetual Poultry . . .281 
Photographic Portraits . . 91 
Pigeon House Fort, Dublin . 518 
Play, First Visit to a . .305 
Pleasures of Illness . . .560 

Plums 9 

Poaching an Elk ... 40 
Poor, Homes of the . , . 372 
Poor Law Board . . .176 

Portraits 91 

Poultry Company, The . . 281 
Poultry Farming . . 496 
Prince Charles Stuart . . 421 
Procession on Lord Mayor's day 449 
Promotion in the English Army 464 
Promotion in the French Army 464 
Prunes ...... 9 

Puerto Cabello . . .548 

Railway, Starting a . 368, 393 
Recent Lounge in Dublin . 516 
Recruits, Difficulty to Get . 464 
Rich Uncle, The . . .109 
Rigging the Market . . .394 
Rio Grande Railway . 368, 398 
Roughs' Guide . . , .492 
Roughs' Newspaper . . 492 

Royal Poet 562 

Ruins, Resort of the Roughs . 442 

Sailing on Friday . . .343 



PAGE 

Salmon Cultivation . . .537 
St. Mary Overies . . .272 
Sandybay, The Bathing-Wo- 
man of 12 

Sanitary Questions . . . 372 
Saturn, The Planet . . .129 
Sayers, Funeral of . 495 

Scholastic Agency, A . .325 
School, The Two Ushers . . 825 
Scotch Agriculturists . . 469 
Scotch Fathers . . . .158 
Scotch Hospitality . . .470 
Scotch Mothers . . . .158 
Scotch Notes . . .277 
304, 349, 420, 468, 541 
Scotch Preachers . . . 421 
Scotch Railway Conversation . 353 
542 
Scotch Railways . . 353, 542 
Scotch Whisky . . . .470 
Scotland, A Return to . . 277 
Scotland, Education in . . 349 
Scotland, in the Lowlands . 468 
Scotland, The Highlands . 541 
Scotland, The Sabbath in . 422 
Scotland, The Stuart Feeling 

in .... . 421,543 

Scotland, The Town of Banff . 420 

Serpent in Arcadia ... 33 

Seven Dialsr, Betting-Men of . 442 

492 

Sharks 346 

Sign of Five Centuries . . 117 
Sixty Years' Changes . 179, 319 
Small People . . . .376 
Sober Romance .... 19 
Soldiers, How to Ruin . . 297 
Soldiers' Promotion . . .465 
Soldiers' Punishments . . 296 
Southwark, The Old Tabard . 117 
Spain and Mexico ... 78 
Spanish Political Types . . 166 
Spirit Medium, Visit to a .45 
Spirits on their Last Legs . 45 
Sporting Penny Guide . . 492 
Sportsmen, Betting Roughs 442, 492 
Sportsmen of Whitechapel . 442 
Stapleford Grange . . 549 
Starting the Rio Grande Rail- 
way 3G8, 393 

Steam Ship Company. . . 343 

Storms In-doors - . . 254 

Stories : 

A Life-Boat Story ... 14 

A Sober Romance ... 19 

A Tremendous Leap . . 137 

A True Bill . . . .93 

Colonel and Mrs. Chutney 

~ ,, ^ ,, 186,210 

Daddy Dodd . . . .466 

Hermit Bob .... 283 

Hope Rashleigh ... 65 

Stapleford Grange . . 54.9 

Struck by Lightning . . 6 



Sun, The 31 

Swallows, Flight of . . .154 
Swiss Excursions . . 85, 135 

Tabard Inn, Southwark . 117 
Tea-Shops in Canton . . 17 
Theatre, The Real Water Move 253 
Throned upon Thorns . . 78 
Timbs' (Mr.), Romance of Lon- 
don 271 

Tom Sayers's Funeral . . 495 
To Puerto Cabello . . .545 
To Venezuela . 343, 400, 415, 545 
Tower of London, Ghosts in . 276 
Tremendous Leap . . .137 
True Bill, A .... 93 
Two Gentlemen Ushers . . 325 
Tyndall (Professor), upon Heat 29 

Uncles 108 

Up and Down Canton . . 15 
Ushers 325 

Venezuela . 343, 400, 415, 545 
Vestries and the Poor . . 372 
Vestrymen and the Homes of 

the Poor 372 

Village Hospitals . . .474 

Welsh Holidays . . .397 

Welsh Inn 397 

Welsh Pastimes . . .400 
Welsh Town . . . .398 
Whisky in Scotland . . 471 
Whitechapel Cheats . . .442 
Whv we Can't get Recruits . 464 
Wild Boar Hunting in India . 330 
Wild Cattle .... 62 
Will you Take Madeira? . 184 

With the Lord Mayor on his 

Own Day .... 443 
Wool Trade of Devonshire . 319 
Workhouse System . . .176 
Working the Rio Grande Rail- 
way 368, 393 

Workman's Home in France . 573 
Writing for Periodicals . .200 

Zoophytes of Sandybay . 12 



POETRY. 

Autumn Farewell to Drott- 

ningholm . . . .563 

Cry of the Innocents . . 204 

Going to the Bad . . .233 

Heart's Home, The . . .562 

No Followers . . . .276 

Poor Men's Gardens - . 445 

Sayings of Saadi . . .349 

Strength of a Little Flower . 325 

True Golden Age . . .515 



The Extra Christmas Number, DOCTOR MARIGOLD'S PRESCRIPTIONS, will be found at the 

end of the Volume. 



1. To be Taken Immediately . 
II. Not to be Taken at Bed-time 
III. To be Taken at the Dinner-table 
IY. Not to be Taken for Granted 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 
1 



V. To be Taken in Water . 
vi. To be Taken with a Grain of Salt 
VII. To be Taken and Tried . 
viii. To be Taken for Life 



PAGE 

27 
33 
38 
46 



"THE STORY OF OUR LIVES FROM YEAR TO YEAR." Shakespbarf. 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



A WEEKLY JOUKNAI/ 
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES ilcR^I^'-^ 

[ WHICH IS INCORPORATED H U s\^^^D^VT 6 R^tT S. 





N- 327.] 



SATURDAY, JULY 29, 1865. 



'Peice 2d. 



HALF A MILLION 0E MONEY. 

BT THE AUTHOR OF " BARBARA'S HISTORY." 



CHAPTER XXXI. ABOUT SWITZERLAND. 

Your English match-maker is, for the most 
part, a comfortable matron, plump, good natured, 
kindly, with a turn for sentiment and diplomacy. 
She has, " The Etiquette of Courtship and Mar- 
riage " at her fingers' ends ; and gives copies of 
that invaluable little manual to her young 
friends, as soon as they are engaged. When 
the sermon is dull, she amuses herself by reading 
the Solemnization of Matrimony. She delights 
in novels that have a great deal of love in them, 
and thinks Miss Bremer a finer writer than Mr. 
Thackeray. To patch up lovers' quarrels, to 
pave the way for a proposal, to propitiate re- 
luctant guardians, are offices in which her very 
soul rejoices; and, like the death-bed hag in the 
Bride of Lammerrnoor who surveyed all her 
fellow -creatures from a professional point of 
view, seeing " a bonny corpse " in every fine 
young man about that country-side, she beholds 
only bridegrooms and brides elect in the very 
children of her friends, when they come home 
for the holidays. 

Lady Arabella Walkingshaw was an enthu- 
siastic match-maker. She had married off her 
own daughters with brilliant success, and, being 
a real lover of the art of matrimony, delighted 
" to keep her hand in" among the young people 
of her acquaintance. What whist was to Mrs. 
Battle, match-making was to Lady Arabella 
Walkingshaw. " It was her business, her duty, 
what she came into the world to do." She 
went about it scientifically. She had abstruse 
theories with respect to eyes, complexions, ages, 
and christian names ; and even plunged into un- 
known physiological depths on the subject of 
races, genealogies, ties of consanguinity, and 
hereditary characteristics. In short, she con- 
structed hp,r model matches after a private ideal 
of her own. But hers was not altogether a sen- 
timental, nor even a physiological, ideal. She 
was essentially a woman of the world ; and took 
an interest quite as deep, if not deeper, in the 
pairing of fortunes as of faces. To introduce an 
income of ten thousand a year to a dowry of 
fifty thousand pounds, and unite the two sums 
in the bonds (and settlements) of wedlock, was 
to Lady Arabella an enterprise of surpassing in- 



terest. She would play for such a result as 
eagerly and passionately as if her own happiness 
depended on the cards, and the stakes were for 
her own winning. 

With such a hobby kept perpetually saddled 
in the chambers of her imagination, it was not 
surprising that the sight of Saxon Trefalden 
leadmg Miss Hatherton down to dance, should 
have sufficed to send Lady Arabella off at a 
canter. 

" What a charming match that would be !" 
said she to Mrs. Bunyon. Mrs. Bunyon was 
the wife of the handsome Bishop, tall, aristocrat 
tic -looking, and many years his junior. Both 
ladies were standing near their hostess, and she 
was still welcoming the coming guest. 

"Do you think so?" said Mrs. Bunyon, 
doubtfully. " I don't see why." 

" My dear Mrs. Bunyon two such splendid 
fortunes !" 

" The less reason that either should marry for 
money," Replied the Bishop's wife. "Besides, 
look at the difference of age 1" 

"Not more than five years," said Lady 
Arabella. 

"But it would be five years on the wrong 
side. What do you say, Lady Castletowers 
would they make a desirable couple ?" 

"I did not hear the names," replied Lady 
Castletowers, with one of her most gracious 
smiles. 

" We were speaking," said the match-maker, 
" of Miss Hatherton and Mr. Trefalden." 

The smile vanished from Lady Castletowers' 

"I should think it a most injudicious con- 
nexion," she said, coldly. " Mr. Trefalden is a 
mere boy, and has no prestige beyond that of 
wealth." 

" But fortune is position," said Lady Arabella, 
defending her ground inch by inch, and thinking, 
perhaps, of her own marriage. 

"Miss Hatherton has fortune, and may 
therefore aspire to more than fortune in her 
matrimonial choice," replied the Countess, with 
a slightly heightened colour, and dropped the 
conversation. 

Mrs. Bunyon and Lady Arabella exchanged 
glances, and a covert smile. Moving on pre- 
sently with the stream, they passed out of Lady 
Castletowers' hearing, and returned to the sub- 



ject. 



Their united fortunes," pursued Lady 



VOL. XIV. 



327 



2 [July 29, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



Arabella, "would amount to five millions, if 
not more. Only conceive it five millions !" 

"You will meet with no sympathy from 
Lady Castletowers," said the Bishop's wife, 
significantly. 

" Evidently not. Though, if there were really 
a coronet in prospect . . . ." 

" I think there is a coronet in prospect," said 
Mrs. Bunyon. 

Lady Arabella shook her head. 

"No more than there is a crown matrimonial," 
said she. "I am a close observer of young 
people, and I know quite well what direction the 
Earl's inclinations take." 

"Indeed!" 

" He is over head and ears in love with 
Mademoiselle Colonna," said Lady Arabella, 
confidentially. " And has been, for years." 

" Does Lady Castletowers know it ?" 

"I think not." 

"And do you suppose they are secretly en- 
gaged?" 

" Oh dear no ! Mademoiselle Colonna, I be- 
lieve, discourages his attentions greatly to her 
credit." 

" It is a marriage that would be highly dis- 
tasteful to Lady Castletowers," observed Mrs. 
Bunyon. 

"It would break her heart," said Lady 
Arabella. 

" She is ambitious." 

" and poor. Poor as a mouse." 

If Lady Castletowers had not been a Countess, 
a Holme-Pierrepoint, and the daughter of an 
Earl, Lady Arabella Walkingshaw could scarcely 
have forgiven her this fact. She was c&e of that 
large majority who regard poverty as a crime. 

In the mean while, Miss Hatherton had found 
that Saxon could not only dance, but, when the 
first shyness of introduction had worn off, could 
actually talk. So she set herself to draw him 
out, and his naivete amused her excessively. 

" I don't mean to let you hand me to a seat, 
and get rid of me, Mr. Trefalden," she said, 
when the quadrille was over, and the dancers 
were promenading up and down the hall. " You 
must sit down in this quiet little nook, and talk 
to me. I want you to tell me ever so much 
more about Switzerland." 

" I am glad to find any one who cares to hear 
about it,"" said Saxon. "It is a subject of 
which I am never weary." 

"I dare say not. I only wonder how you 
can endure this life of tinsel and glitter after 
the liberty of the mountains. Are you not 
disgusted with the insincere smiles, and polite 
falsehoods of society ?" 

Saxon looked at her with dismay. 

" What do you mean ?" he said. " The world 
has been very kind to me. I never dreamt that 
its smiles were false, or its kindness insincere." 

Miss Hatherton laughed. 

"You'll find it out," she said, "when you've 
lived in it a little longer." 

" I hope not. I should be very unhappy if 
I thought so." 

" Well, then, don't think so. Enjoy your 



illusions as long as you can. I have outlived 
mine long ago ; and I'm sorry for it. But let 
us talk of something pleasanter of Switzerland. 
Have you ever hunted the chamois ?" 

" Hundreds of times." 

"How charming! High up, I suppose, 
among the snows ?" 

" Among the snows, along the edges of 
precipices, across the glaciers wherever the 
chamois could spring, or the foot of the hunter 
follow," replied Saxon, with enthusiasm. 

" That's really dangerous sport, is it not ?" 
asked the heiress. 

" It is less dangerous to the practised moun- 
taineer than to one who is new to the work. But 
there can be no real sport without danger." 

"Why so?" 

"Because sport without danger is mere 
slaughter. The risks ought never to be all on 
the side of a helpless beast." 

"That is just and generous," said Miss 
Hatherton, warmly. 

Saxon blushed, and looked uncomfortable. 

"I have not only been over a glacier, but 
down a crevasse, after a chamois, many a time," 
said he, hurriedly. " I shot one this very spring, 
as he stood upon an ice-ridge, between two 
chasms. I ought not to have done it. I ought 
to have waited till he got to a more open spot ; 
but, having him well within range, 1 brought 
him down. When I reached the spot, however, 
there was my chamois wedged half way down 
a deep, blue, cruel-looking crevasse and I had 
no alternative but to get him out, or leave him." 

" So you cut steps in the ice, as one sees in 
the pictures in the Alpine-club books !" 

"No I simply tied the cord that every 
mountaineer carries, round the stock of my 
rifle fixed the gun firmly across the mouth of 
the chasm and let myself down. Then I tied 
another cord round my chamois, and when I had 
reached the top again, I drew him up after me. 
Nothing is easier. A child can do it, if he is 
used to the ice, and is not afraid. In all glacier 
work, it is only the rash and the timid who are 
in danger." 

" And what other sport do you get ?" asked 
Miss Hatherton. "Are there any eagles about 
the mountains of the Grisons ?" 

" Not so many as there used to be. I have 
not shot more than five or six within these last 
three years ; but I robbed many an eagle's nest 
when I vras a boy. Then, you know, we have 
the steinbok, and in winter, the wolf; and some- 
times we get the chance of a brown bear." 

" Have you ever shot a bear, Mr. Trefalden ?" 
said Miss Hatherton, intensely interested. _ 

"I have shot two," replied Saxon, with a 
flush of boyish pride, " and made sledge-rugs of 
their skins. You have never been in Switzer- 
land ?" 

"Oh yes I have," replied Miss Hatherton; 
" but only in the beaten tracks, and under the 
custody of a courier, like a maniac with a 
keeper." 

" Ah, you really know nothing of the country," 
said Saxon, " nor of the people. The Switzerland 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[July 29, 1865.] 3 



that the Swiss loves, is that wild, free, upper 
region where there are neither roads nor hotels, 
tourists nor guides ; but only dark pine forests 
and open plateaus, the haunt of the marmot, the 
ptarmigan, and the chamois." 

"I never saw but one chamois," said Miss 
Hatherton, " and that was a poor fat melancholy- 
creature in a cage." 

" Of course you never visited Switzerland in 
winter ?" 

"Oh dear no." ( 

" And yet that is the most glorious time of 
all, when the plateaus are all sheeted with snow, 
and the great peaks rise above them like marble 
obelisks, and even the pines stand out white 
against the deep blue sky. It is like a world 
awaiting the creation of colour." 

" What an enthusiast you are," laughed Miss 
Hatherton. 

" I love my country," replied Saxon. 

" You need not tell me that. But what can 
you do in winter, snowed up in those wild 
valleys?" 

" We are not snowed -up. We have sledges ; 
and the deeper the snow lies on the roads and 
passes, the better our sledges fly along. You 
should see the Rheinthal between Chur and 
Thusis, on a bright day in the depth of winter, 
when the sledges flash along in the sunshine, 
and the air is full of the music of the bells." 

"How delightful!" 

" Indeed it is delightful. Then we also skate, 
practise with the rifle, carve wooden toys, and 
attend to the winter work of our farms; and 
sometimes, if there is a wolf or a wild boar about 
the neighbourhood, we have a great hunt by 
torchlight. Winter is the time for Switzerland ! 
Ask any Swiss who is not a townsman, and he 
will tell you the same story." 

" I suppose you mean to go back there some 
dav ?" said Miss Hatherton. 

"Go back!" echoed Saxon. "Why, of 
course I do. It is my own country my 
home!" 

" Then if I were to come some Christmas to 
Chur, would you be very kind to me, and show 
me some of these winter sports ?" 

* That I would !" exclaimed Saxon. " And 
I would buy the loveliest Canadian sledge for 
you that money could purchase ; and you should 
see a boar hunt by torchlight ; and a' Schiitzen 
Test ; and a wrestling-match ; and I would find 
you a young marmot for a pet. Above all, you 
would know my dearest father, and if you loved 
Switzerland for no other reason, you would love 
it for his sake." 

"Your father?" said Miss Hatherton. "I 
had no idea your father was living." 

" He is really my uncle," replied the young 
man; "but my father by adoption. He is a 
Lutheran pastor a miracle of erudition ; but as 
simple as a child, and as pious as an apostle." 

"I hear you are terribly learned yourself, 
Mr. Trefalden," said Miss Hatherton, rising 
abruptly. " But what is this they are going 
to do a waltz ? Do you waltz ?" 

" Try me," replied Saxon, merrily. " It is 



our national dance the only dance I ever 
knew, till I learned these hideous quadrilles a 
few weeks ago." 

In another moment he had encircled the 
heiress's waist with his arm, and was flying 
round the hall with her in those smooth, swift 
circles which no dancers, however good, can 
execute like the Germans and Swiss. Miss 
Hatherton was delighted ; for she valued a good 
partner above all things, and Saxon was the best 
waltzer in the room. 

She would willingly have danced and talked 
with him all the rest of the evening ; for Miss 
Hatherton liked to be amused, and cared very 
little for the remarks of lookers-on; while 
Saxon, pleased with her blunt cordiality, would 
with equal readiness have gone on waltzing, and 
praising a Swiss life, till it was time to hand 
her to her carriage. But this was not to be. 
Lady Castletowers, who, in her quality of 
hostess, always knew what her guests were 
doing, was by no means disposed to permit any 
such proceeding ; so she despatched her son to 
dance with the heiress, and, having sent for 
Saxon, herself handed him over to Miss Colonna 
for the next quadrille. 

By this time the arrivals were over, and the 
departures had begun; and after supper was 
served, the rooms cleared rapidly. By two 
o'clock, all were gone, save those guests who 
remained for the night, and of these there were 
about a dozen. 

Then Viscount and Lady Esher, who had 
brought valet and maid in their suite, retired to 
the stately apartments prepared for their re- 
ception ; and the young men all went down to 
the Earl's smoking-room ; and the Colonnas, 
instead of going to bed like the rest of the 
guests, repaired to the little study in the turret. 
They had much to talk over. Mr. Thompson, 
the liberal member, had brought them informa- 
tion of Garibaldi, and a packet of letters from 
friends in London and Turin ; Miss Hatherton 
and Mr. Walkingshaw had promised contribu- 
tions to the fund ; and Mrs. Bunyon had un- 
dertaken to distribute some addresses, and fill 
up a card, among her friends. With the Eshers 
and Lord Boxhill there was, of course, nothing 
to be done. Like Lady Castletowers, they 
looked upon liberty as a vulgar institution, and 
upon patriots in general as doubtful characters. 

The letters read, and such entries made as 
were necessary, the father and daughter rose to 
say good night. 

" You have done nothing yet, Olimpia," said 
the Italian. " Here is the fourth day already 
gone." 

"I know it." 

" I have talked with him once or twice about 
our country's cause, and he listens willingly ; 
but I have purposely abstained from doing more. 
The work is yours why do you delay it ?" 

" I will not delay it longer," replied Olimpia, 
impatiently ; " I will begin it to-day." 

"He is so rich," said Colonna, "and Italy so 
poor ; and every letter we receive is a prayer 
for help !" 



4 [July 29, 1865.] 



ATT, THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



" You need not urge me. Have I not said to- 
day ? and see, the grey is already in the sky !" 

She bade him good night abruptly, and went 
along the silent corridors to her own room, far 
away. But the grey had paled to white, and 
the white had turned to sunlight, before she 
took the flowers from her hair, or the bracelets 
from her arms, or even seemed to remember 
that it would be well to seek an hour or two of 
sleep. What wonder, then, that when at last 
she threw herself, half dressed, upon the bed, 
her eyes looked worn and hollow, and her cheek 
scarcely less white than the pillow against which 
it was laid ? 

CHAPTER XXXII. HOW SAXON IMPROVED THE 
WEATHERCOCK AT CASTLETOWERS. 

"What the deuce can we do to amuse all 
these people ?" said Lord Castletowers to 
Major Vaughan, as they met on the stairs before 
breakfast, the morning after the party. " The 
Eshers, I know, go early, and my mother will 
take care of the ladies ; but here are six or eight 
men in the house, none of whom are likely to 
leave before night. What is to be done ?" 

" Billiards ?" 

"Well enough for an hour or two; but 
apres ?" 

" We might ride over to Guildford, and beat 
up the quarters of those Eorty-second men who 
were here last night." 

"Impossible. There are only five riding 
horses in the stables, including yours and 
Trefalden's ; and I haven't even guns enough to 
take them out shooting, if there were anything 
to shoot, except rooks which there isn't !" said 
the Earl, in desperation. 

" Then I don't know what we can do, unless 
we put on the gloves; but here comes the 
Arcadian perhaps he can suggest something." 

The Arcadian meant Saxon. This nickname 
had befallen him of late, no one knew how. 
The difficulty was no sooner explained to him, 
than he proposed a way out of it. 

"Let us organise a Yolks-fest in the Swiss 
fashion," said he. " We can shoot at a mark, 
leap, and run foot races ; and invite the ladies 
to award the prizes." 

"A famous ideal" exclaimed the Earl. "The 
very thing for a bright, cool day, like this." 

" We must choose a space of level sward to 
begin with," said the major, "and improvise a 
grand stand for the ladies." 

" And elect an umpire," said Saxon. 

"And look up some prizes," added the Earl. 
" I will give that bronze cup in the library it 
is an antique from Pompeii." 

" And 1, my inlaid pistols," said Saxon. 

" And I. . . . bah, I am such a poor devil," 
said Vaughan. " I possess nothing of any value 
except my sword and my horse." 

" The best riches of a soldier, Major Vaughan," 
said Mademoiselle Colonna. " May I ask why 
this parliament is being held upon the stairs ?" 

She had iust come, unheard, along the car- 
peted corridor, and stood waiting, a few steps 
higher than the trio in consultation. She wore 



a delicate grey dress of some soft material, 
trimmed with black velvet, and a little linen 
collar fastened at the throat by a circular brooch 
of Roman gold. Behind her, fell the folds of a 
crimson curtain; whilst, through the upper- 
most roses of a huge Gothic window that reached 
from nearly the top to the bottom of the great 
oak staircase, a stream of vivid sunshine poured 
down upon her head, so that she stood in the 
midst of it, in her pale, proud beauty, as if 
enclosed in a pillar of light. 

The three men looked up, dazzled, almost 
breathless, as if in presence of some glorified 
apparition ; and for a moment none replied. 

Mademoiselle Colonna, divining, perhaps, with 
her fine womanly instinct, the spell by which 
they were bound, moved a step lower, out of 
the sunshine, and said : 

" All silent ? Nay, then, I fear it is not a 
parliament, but a plot." 

"It i* a plot, signora," replied Vaughan. 
" We are planning some out-of-door sports for 
this afternoon's entertainment. Will you be 
our Queen of Beauty, and graciously condescend 
to distribute the prizes." 

The Earl coloured, and bit his lip. 

"Vaughan's promptitude," said he, "bears 
hardly upon those whose wit, or audacity, is 
less ready at command. I had myself intended 
to solicit this grace at Miss Colonna's hands." 

" The race, my dear fellow, is to the swift, 
and the battle to the strong, in the affairs of 
life," replied Vaughan, carelessly. " But what 
says our sovereign lady ?" 

" That she dares not pledge her royal word 
too hastily. Mine, you know, is not an honorary 
secretaryship ; and I know not what work this 
morning's post may bring for my pen. Besides, I 
must hear what arrangements Lady Castletowers 
may have in contemplation." 

" I don't think my mother will make any that 
shall deprive us of the light of her countenance 
on such an important occasion," said the Earl. 
"But there goes the gong. We must adjourn 
this debate till after breakfast." 

Lady Castletowers was pleased to approve her 
son's scheme, and promised not only to honour 
the course with her presence at half-past two 
o'clock, but to bring with her two young ladies 
who had slept at the house, and were to have been 
driven home early in the morning. These were 
the daughters of a poor clergyman who lived 
about twelve miles off, and, being very young and 
timid, looked up to the stately Countess as though 
she were the queen of heaven. Miss Colonna, 
being urged thereto by Lady Castletowers herself, 
was induced to accept the royal office ; and, al- 
though Viscount and Lady Esher were, of course, 
too magnificent to alter their plans, and drove 
away behind their four horses shortly after 
breakfast, the patronage of the little fete pro- 
mised to be quite brilliant enough to stimulate 
the ambition of the candidates. 

It was a happy thought, and gave ample oc- 
cupation to everybody concerned. There were six 
young men that day at Castletowers besides Sir 
Charles Burgoyne, Major Vaughan, and Saxon 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[July 29, 1865.] 5 



Trefalden. These six were the Hon. Pelham Hay, 
of Baliol College, Oxford; the Hon. Edward Bran- 
don ; Lieutenant Frank Torrington, of theFourth 
Lancers; Mr. Guy Greville, of the Perquisite 
Office; and two brothers named Sydney and 
Robert Pulteney, belonging, as yet, to no place 
or profession whatever. There was not " the 
making" of one really prominent man among the 
whole half-dozen. There was not, perhaps, one 
more than commonly clever man ; but they were, 
for all that, a by no means indifferent specimen 
lot of the stuff of which English gentlemen are 
made. They were all of patrician blood all 
honourable, good-natured, good-looking, manly 
young fellows, who had been brought up to ride, 
speak the truth, and respect the game-laws. 
They dressed perfectly, and tied their cravats to 
admiration. They spoke that conventional 
dialect which passes for good English in good 
society, and expressed themselves with that 
epigrammatic neatness that almost sounds like 
wit, and comes naturally to men who have been 
educated at a great university and finished in a 
crack regiment, a government office, or a Pall- 
Mali club. And they were all dancing men, and 
nearly all members of the Erectheum. Of the 
whole set, the Hon. Edward Brandon was the 
most indifferent specimen of the genus homo ; 
yet even he, though short enough of brain, did 
not want for breeding, and, however poorly off 
for muscle, was not without pluck. 

The whole breakfast-party hailed the scheme 
with enthusiasm, and even Signor Colonna said 
he would go down to see the running. Prizes 
were freely subscribed over the breakfast-table. 
Lady Castletowers promised a curious yataghan 
that had belonged to Lord Byron, and been 
given to her late husband by a member of the 
poet's family ; Signor Colonna offered an Elzevir 
Horace, with the autograph of Filicaja on the 
title-page ; and the competitors united in making 
up a purse of twenty guineas, to be run for in a 
one-mile race, and handed over by the winner to 
Miss Colonna for the Italian fund. As for the 
young men, they despatched their breakfasts 
with the rapidity of schoolboys on a holiday 
morning, and were soon hard at work upon the 
necessary preparations. 

To choose and measure a smooth amphitheatre 
of sward about half a mile from the house, set 
up a winning-post for the racers, a target for 
the marksmen, and a temporary grand stand for 
the spectators, was work enough for more than 
the four hours and a half that lay between ten 
and half-past two ; but these amateur workmen, 
assisted by the village carpenter and his men, as 
well as by all the grooms, gardeners, and odd 
helps that could be got together, worked with so 
good a will that the ground was ready a full hour 
and three-quarters before the time. The grand 
stand alone was a triumph of ingenuity. It 
consisted of a substratum of kitchen tables 
securely lashed together, a carpet and some 
chairs; the whole structure surmounted by a 
canopy formed of a rick-cloth suspended to a 
tree and a couple of tall stakes. 

Having gone once over the course at a " sling- 



trot," just to try the ground, the young men 
returned to the house at one o'clock, furiously 
hungry, and in tremendous spirits. 

Castletowers had ordered luncheon to be pre- 
pared in the smoking-room, and there, laughing, 
talking, eating, and drinking all at once, they 
made out the programme of the games. 

" What shall we begin with ?" said the Earl, 
pencil in hand. u We must end, of course, with 
the one-mile race, and I think we ought to take 
the rifle work first, before running has made our 
hands less steady." 

'* Of course. Rifles first, by all means," re- 
plied three or four voices together. 

" Names, then, if you please. Now, gentle- 
men, who goes in for the bronze cup at eight 
hundred yards ?" 

" On what conditions ?" asked one of the 
lunchers. 

( " The usual conditions. ( Five shots each, at 
eight hundred yards; ordinary Enfield rifle; 
Wimbledon scoring ; that is to say, outer, two ; 
centre, three ; bull's-eye, four." 

" Eight hundred's rather long practice for 
outsiders," said another man, immersed at the 
moment in chicken-pie. 

" If we had small bores, I should put it down 
at a thousand," replied the Earl ; " but there's 
only one in the house." 

The man in the pie was heard to mutter some- 
thing unintelligible about the abundance of great 
bores ; but being instantly choked by his nearest 
neighbour, relapsed into moody silence. In the 
mean while the Earl continued to canvass for 
competitors. 

" Come," said he, "this will never do.^ I 
have only three names yet Burgoyne, Torring- 
ton, and Vaughan. Whom else ? I can't enter 
myself for my own prize, and I must have three 
more names." 

" You may put me down, if you like," said 
Mr. Guy Greville. " I shall be sure to shoot 
somebody ; but it don't signify." 

" And me," added Pelham Hay. 

" Thanks. Burgoyne, Torrington, Vaughan, 
Greville, Pelham Hay five won't do. I want 
six at least. Come, gentlemen, who will stand 
for number six ?" 

" Why, Trefalden, of course !" exclaimed 
Vaughan. "The Swiss are bom tirailleurs. 
Put his name down." 

" No, no," said Saxon, hastily. " Not this 
time." 

" But, my dear fellow, you are de la pre- 
miere force, are you not ?" asked Castletowers. 

'" I used to shoot well enough when I was 
in practice," said Saxon, with some embarrass- 
ment ; " but I'd rather not compete now." 

The Earl looked surprised ; but was too well 
bred to insist. 

" If you won't," said he, " I must find some 
one who will. Syd. Pultney, I shall enter you 
for my sixth shot, and that settles match number 
one. Gentlemen, the secretary waits to enter 
names for the second rifle match ; the prize for 
which will consist of a magnificent pair of elabo- 
rately ornamented pistols, generously offered by 



6 [July 29, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted fcy 



an honourable competitor who declines to com- 
pete. I do not mention the honourable com- 
petitor's name, because he is a modest young man, 
and given to blushing*. Now, gentlemen, you 
will please to remember that this is a solemn occa- 
sion, and that the eyes of Europe are upon you !" 

And so, rattling on in the gaiety of good 
spirits, the Earl enrolled the second party. 
Next in order came the long jump of eighteen 
feet, for Signor Colonna's Elzevir Horace ; then 
the- race of one hundred yards, for Lady Castle- 
towers' prize ; and, last of all, the one-mile race 
for the twenty-guinea purse, dignified by the 
name of " the Italian Cup," and entered for by 
the whole of the athletes. 

When the programme was fairly made out, 
Castletowers called Saxon aside, and, taking 
him familiarly by the arm, led him into the bil- 
liard-room adjoining. 

" Trefalden," said he, " may I ask you a 
question ?" 

" Twenty, if you like," replied Saxon. 

" No one will do, if you answer it honestly. 
Why don't you put in a shot at either of the 
rifle-matches ?" 
* Saxon looked embarrassed. 

" I'd rather not," he said, after a momentary 
pause. 

"But why ? You must be a good marksman." 

Saxon made no reply. 
# " To tell you the truth," said the Earl, "I'm 
disappointed. I had looked to you for a display 
of skill, and expected something brilliant. I 
think you should have gone into the field, if 
only to maintain the honour of the Swiss rifles." 

Saxon laughed good temperedly. 

* Do you really want your question answered?" 
said he. 

" Of course." 

" Then wait a minute while I fetch my gun." 

He ran out of the room, and presently re- 
appeared outside the window, rifle in hand. 

" Look there," he said, pointing to the roof 
of the stables. " Do you see that weathercock ?" 

It was a gilt cock, like that which Goethe 
used to admire, as a child, on the Ober Main 
Thor at Frankfort ; and was just then shifting 
with the breeze, and flashing in the sunshine 
like a yellow diamond. The Earl tkrew up the 
window and leaned out. 

" I should think so," he replied. " I have 
seen it pretty nearly every day of my life, ever 
since I was born." 

" How far off is it, do you think ?" 

" Well, I hardly know ; perhaps six hundred 
yards. But you can't hit a thing that blazes 
like a comet, and is never still for two seconds 
together." 

" It's an ugly bird," said Saxon, bringing his 
gun to his shoulder. "Don't you think he'd 
look more intelligent if he had an eye in his 
head?" 

The words were no sooner out of his lips 
than he fired. Lord Castletowers snatched up 
his hat, and bounded down upon the sward. 

" You haven't done it ?" he exclaimed. 

" Let us 2-0 and see." 



They had to go round by the front of the 
house, and across the yards, to reach those out- 
buildings over which the vane was placed. 
At about two-thirds of the distance the Earl 
stood still. 

There was a small round hole drilled througli 
precisely that part of the cock's head where his 
eye ought to have been. 

At the sight of his friend's dumb amazement, 
Saxon roared with laughter, like a young giant. 

" There," said he, " I told you it would be an 
improvement. And now you see why I wouldn't 
compete for the cup. We Swiss are always 
shooting, from the time we are old enough to 
carry a gun; and I didn't want to spoil the 
sport for others. It wouldn't have been fair." 



LIGHTNING-STRUCK. 

It is probably owing to the great increase 
of publicity that we have lately heard of so 
many cases of persons struck dead by lightning. 
These sad occurrences, for the most part, take 
place on the Continent, and numerous instances 
are recorded in the continental newspapers of 
buildings damaged, and individuals struck. Even 
in England deaths caused by lightning seem to 
have been more common than formerly. 

Among the most remarkable later cases, 
may be included the following : A woman at 
Hull was struck blind ; another woman, who was 
standing in a room talking to her daughter, was 
struck on the side and leg, the lightning having 
previously passed through an adjoining house, 
and greatly injured both it and a great number 
of articles of furniture. Bell-wires seem to be 
the usual conductors of the fluid from one 
apartment to another. During a recent storm 
it entered a house, and was, by this medium, 
conducted from room to room, rending things to 
pieces as it went, and throwing the mistress 
of the house from a sofa to the floor, who, as 
the account states somewhat needlessly, was 
greatly shaken by it. One young woman was 
struck in a railway carriage, and remained in- 
sensible a considerable time. But the most 
painful case is that of the landlady of the 
Beehive at Digbeth. She was in one of the 
upper rooms of her house when the lightning 
entered it, but, instead of striking her dead, it 
merely scorched her head and the upper part of 
her body deeply, and set her clothes on fire. 
Her husband was the first to enter the room 
where she was lying, and there was still sufficient 
life in her to enable her to recognise him. About 
the same time that this happened, though at a 
place so far distant as Coray, in the department 
of Finisterre, five men, working in a field, were 
struck dead at the same moment, and ten others 
severely injured. 

Within a few days two gendarmes were struck 
dead as they were hastening to get shelter from a 
thunderstorm. They were running to overtake 
a postman, who, like themselves, was looking 
about for shelter, and had just reached him, 
when one of them turned his head towards a 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR R0U1STD. 



[July 29, 1S65.] 7 



woman by the roadside who was tending sheep, 
and said, " Are you not afraid of the lightning? 5 * 
The words were scarcely out of his mouth when 
a broad flash came down upon all four, killing 
the gendarmes, and stunning the postman and 
the woman; but doing them no more serious 
injury. One of the gendarmes was completely 
stripped ; the fluid struck him on the back 
of his head and ran down to his feet, burn- 
ing his clothes to tinder, tearing his boots to 
bits, and driving his spurs and his porte-monnaie 
a distance of several yards. His comrade had 
no external mark beyond a slight wound on the 
under lip. A curious circumstance is recorded 
by the journal which gives the account of their 
burial : One of the gendarmes did not belong 
to the Catholic Church, and therefore was 
buried in unconsecrated ground ; but his com- 
rade, who was interred in the churchyard, was 
laid on its very verge, so that their graves should 
be brought side by side. 

A wonderfully narrow escape from death was 
experienced by a sentinel who was on guard at 
Chatham; his face was scorched, and he was 
quite unable to articulate for upwards of an 
hour. The lightning struck the sword he was 
wearing, perforated a round hole, melted about 
two inches of the edge, and soldered the hilt to 
his bayonet. It also fused the lock of his 
musket and the iron ramrod together. After 
this it wounded his left foot, completely de- 
stroying the upper-leather of his boot. Sentinels 
incur more than the usual risk on account of the 
attraction of the arms they carry. During a 
thunderstorm the best course would be to put 
their muskets in one corner of the sentry-box, and 
themselves as far away from it as the confined 
space will allow, taking care to be a little more 
careful than a certain sentry near Carignan, who 
put his foot so near the butt of his musket that 
it was severely wounded. It was during this same 
storm that the lightning descended on the church 
at Villa di Stellone, killed seven persons, and 
wounded several others, among them the priest, 
who had not the slightest recollection of what 
he had been doing, nor could the people, who 
carried away the dead bodies out of the church, 
remember where they had brought them from. 
This was attributed to the effects of the elec- 
tricity; but it may have been merely the be- 
wilderment produced by the tremendous noise 
of the explosion. 

A curious instance of the effects produced by 
the electric fluid, occurred a week or two since to 
two girls who were on their way to the market at 
Bressuire, with a basket of live fowls slung from 
their respective shoulders. They went chatting 
along, when a few great drops of rain, which came 
pattering down, warned them that a storm was at 
hand. There happened to be an enormous rock 
near, which projected over the road, and beneath 
this they took refuge. Presently, without pre- 
vious warning, they were half stunned by a loud 
report, and simultaneously with the report they 
saw a ball of fire fall into the road a lew paces 
from where they were standing. The only effect 
it produced on them was as though they had 



been violently shaken. As soon as the storm 
had passed over they continued their journey, 
not a little agitated by what they had seen 
and felt. It was not until they reached the 
market that they became aware of the ex- 
ceedingly narrow escape they had had. On 
their baskets being lifted from their shoulders, 
they found that the whole of their fowls had 
been stripped of their feathers in the cleanest 
possible manner. 

A case has just occurred at Hamoir, a com- 
mune in the department of the Ourthe, where 
a shepherd and almost the whole of his flock 
were killed. The accuracy of the facts stated 
are guaranteed by La Meuse. The keeper of 
the flock was Hubert Wera, the son of the 
farmer to whom it belonged. The approach of 
the storm was so evident, that he at once col- 
lected his flock and began moving homeward ; 
but, when he had reached a narrow gorge 
through the mountains, the sheep formed them- 
selves into two groups with their heads pressed 
close together, and would not move a step 
further. Wera thereupon sat down under a 
bush to shelter himself from the storm. His 
brother, finding he did not return, went to look 
for him, and just as he got within sight of him, 
a terrific burst of thunder issued from the 
clouds, such as nobody in the vicinity had ever 
heard before. A frightful spectacle met his view : 
his brother and the whole of his flock had been 
struck by the lightning. It had descended on his 
head, torn the whole of his hair off, ploughed a 
deep furrow on his forehead and down his face and 
chest, stripped off the whole of his clothes, tear- 
ing them to ribands, and all this without shedding 
a drop of his blood. The iron was torn from his 
crook, and the handle was split in two pieces. 
A small metal crucifix he carried was picked up 
nearly twenty yards from his body. The flock 
consisted of one hundred and fifty-two sheep, 
one hundred and twenty -six of which were 
killed ; their wounds being of the most diverse 
form: some having the head cut clean off; 
others having it divided into two equal parts. 
The limbs of some were torn from their bodies; 
every imaginable form of multilation was to be 
seen among them. 

The authorities .of the commune, together 
with the doctor, hastened to the spot ; the latter 
adopting every means at his disposal, such as 
friction and artificial respiration, to restore the 
unfortunate shepherd to life, but all his efforts 
were unavailing. 

They found, on examining the ground, that the 
lightning had descended in a broad sheet : the 
space it covered being about eighty yards in 
length, and sixteen in breadth. A curious cir- 
cumstance attending this event was that al- 
though the misfortune occurred at half-past six 
o'clock on Thursday evening, on Friday morn- 
ing the bodies of the animals were in an ad- 
vanced stage of putrefaction. 

On the Saturday following the event just 
related, two men living at Ferrigny, in the 
Jura, took shelter from a storm beneath a wal- 
nut-tree. An explosion was heard, and the 



8 [July 29, 1866.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUJND. 



[Conducted by 



lightning ran down the tree, striking down the 
two men who had sought shelter beneath its 
branches. One of them was killed on the spot, 
without any other mark being left on his body 
than a slight singeing of the hair at the back 
of his neck. The other was not killed ; but he 
had a burn the whole length of his thigh, and 
a jagged wound on the sole of one of his feet. 

The Journal of the Academy of Sciences, just 
published, contains an account, sent by Dr. 
Chretien, of a youth who was killed by light- 
ning in the presence of his mother and three 
friends who had come to see him ; he being ill 
in bed. They were sitting close together, 
when the lightning burst through the window 
of an adjoining room, scattering the glass 
in all directions ; then forced its way through 
a wall into the bedroom, striking the sick 
youth dead, burning part of the legs of the 
trousers of one of the visitors, wounding the 
leg of another, and bruising and scorching the 
woman's left leg. In another case, a man had 
his watch and monev melted in his pocket, and 
every one of his joints dislocated. But pro- 
bably the most comprehensive instance oc- 
curred at Venice, in the theatre. The au- 
dience may have been about six hundred in 
number, when the electric fluid descended upon 
the theatre in such quantity that it put out the 
lights, killed several persons, scorched others, 
melted earrings, splitting the stones, melted 
watch-cases, snatched a fiddle out of the hands 
of one of the musicians and tore it to splinters, 
fortunately without wounding the owner. 

Though the number of persons killed by a 
single flash of lightning may have been greater, 
there is probably not many instances on record 
of its having covered so great an area as in 
a family at Eastbourne. The coachman and 
butler were outside the house. The former was 
struck dead, and the latter was so much affected 
by the shock, that, without being hardly con- 
scious of what he was doing, he went into the 
house. Here he found his master insensible, 
and, as it turned out, very much hurt on the 
left side. In the pantry he found the footman 
lying dead on the floor ; and a further examina- 
tion of the house showed that the lightning 
had been through all parts of it. Everywhere 
the windows were broken, looking-glasses shat- 
tered, articles of furniture torn to splinters, cor- 
nices and ceilings cracked, bell-wires melted, and 
so forth. The owner's daughter had a wonderful 
escape. The electric stream entered the room 
where she was dressing, and splintered the bed 
she had just left, besides doing other damage. 
It is evident that this was not a case of a small 
stream passing from one object to another, in- 
asmuch as the coachman was struck dead out- 
side the building. But, large as the area was 
over which this extended, it was not equal to that 
at Reichenbach, which town was fired in so many 
places, that the inhabitants had the greatest 
difficulty in escaping into the country, without 
being able to save any part of their goods ; even 
a regiment of cavalry quartered in the town were 
unable to save any portion of their baggage. 



Two women were struck by lightning in a 
bleaching-ground at Kirkaldy ; one of whom was 
sitting on a part of the ground a little higher 
than the rest, holding her infant to her breast. 
The mother was struck dead, and, as she fell 
over, the infant rolled from her arms down the 
hill, but was picked up unhurt. A similar case 
occurred in the Isle of Wight, where a man 
who was riding across Wotton Common with 
his son behind him, was struck dead, together 
with his horse, but the little boy escaped with 
afew bruises caused by the fall. Similar capri- 
ciousness was exhibited at Shields, where a man 
and his wife were both killed, while a person 
sitting between them remained uninjured; at 
the same time a child lying in bed was burnt 
to death, and another much scorched ; the house 
itself being set on fire in several places. The 
death of a woman, and the escape of the infant 
she was holding in her arms, represents a case 
that has occurred several times, but the child 
is not always so fortunate. There was a curious 
record of instantaneous death, produced by 
lightning, found engraved on a tombstone in a 
churchyard in Donegal : " Here are deposited, 
with a design of mingling them with the parent 
earth from which the mortal part came, a mother 
who loved her son to the destruction of his death. 
She clasped him to her bosom with all the joy of 
a parent, the pulse of whose heart beat with 
maternal affection; and in the very moment, 
whilst the gladness of joy danced in the pupil 
of the boy's eyes, and the mother's bosom 
swelled with transport, Death's arrow, in a flash 
of lightning, pierced them both in a vital part, 
and totally dissolving the entrails of the son, 
without injuring his skin, and burning to a 
cinder the liver of the mother, sent them out of 
the world at one and the same moment of time." 

The appearances presented by persons who 
have been killed by lightning differs very much. 
Often, the expression of the countenance after 
death is precisely what it was at the instant 
they were struck, and the body is either with- 
out any external mark, or one that is only 
perceptible on a close examination. Much de- 
pends on the position of the person smitten, and 
on whether the stroke is received direct from 
the atmosphere or through the medium of some 
object. 

The majority of persons struck in the open 
air appear to have received the shock on the 
head, after which it has passed through the 
body and out at the foot, or it has been drawn 
aside by money in the pocket, or by some me- 
tallic object worn beneath the outer clothing. 
This was so with a tailor who was struck 
dead in Whitfield's chapel, Tottenham-court- 
road. He was leaning against the wall, hold- 
ing a child in his arms; he stooped to put 
the child on its feet, and had just resumed his 
position, when the subtle fluid ran down the 
wall, burnt the hair off the side of his head 
nearest to it, melted the studs in the sleeves of 
his shirt, burst the veins over nearly the whole 
of his bod}', and riddled his clothes as though 
he had been a mark for any quantity of small 



Charles DickenB.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[July 29, 1865.] 9 



shot. It would seem, indeed, as though the 
effect of the fluid on the object struck, depended 
very much on the ease with which it can pass 
out of it. Of this we have an example in 
the case of a gentleman who was smitten dead 
while riding, without exhibiting the slightest 
sign of injury on any part of him, and who was, 
to all outward seeming, in a calm and peaceful 
sleep, whereas the horse he was riding had deep 
cuts ploughed into his head and body. A 
haymaker too, who was working in a hayfield 
close by, was struck dead without the slightest 
outward injury, the only indication of the cause 
of death being a small hole burnt in his shirt 
where the fluid had passed. from his body to his 
watch, the case of which was melted. 

In the case of persons seemingly killed by 
lightning, too much haste should not be exhi- 
bited in burial. Not far from where this is 
written, five boys were struck at once, one of 
whom received a severe wound on the right 
leg. They remained perfectly insensible for a 
considerable time, but eventually recovered. A 
man named Locker, who was struck on a down 
he was crossing on his way to Bath, lay there 
completely unable to move for several days, 
though he had the use of his mental faculties 
much of the time. 

Perhaps the most remarkable effect of light- 
ning is that which it has sometimes produced on 
infirm persons. A man named Donaldson, who 
had been deaf for twenty years, was struck by 
lightning and rendered insensible. When he 
recovered his senses it was found that his 
hearing was restored. A clergyman, who had 
been afflicted by palsy, had given up all hope of 
a cure. One night during a thunderstorm the 
lightning entered his room, and gave him a severe 
electric shock. He thought he felt a sensation 
of relief, and next morning he found that this 
was not imaginary, but that he was really cured. 

The invention of lightning-conductors has, no 
doubt, saved a vast number of buildings. We 
no longer hear of large numbers of persons 
killed in buildings at one stroke, as in Sicily, 
where no fewer than eighty-six perished ; and 
where, we may observe in passing, the com- 
mander of Girgenti, in order to break a thick 
cloud which he conceived to be a waterspout, 
had some heavy guns drawn out of the case- 
mates and fired at it ; but, instead of having the 
effect he desired, fire descended from the cloud, 
and for an instant wrapped the pieces in a 
sheet of flame, and left several of the gunners 
dead. Before Sir Snow Harris applied con- 
ductors to ships, the case of a vessel being 
struck was common ; and hardly a year passed 
without the spire of a church being damaged or 
wholly destroyed by lightning. 

A blunt-pointed stick, if used to inscribe 
characters on a looking-glass, leaves no visible 
trace behind; yet if we breathe on it, those 
figures stand out as boldly as though written 
with pen and ink on paper. A trout taken 
from a stream and thrown down by the river- 
side to die, has left marks of its spots on 
the leaves on which it lingered out its life. 



Like effects have been produced by electricity : 
a woman wearing a rosary had an image of the 
beads imprinted on her right breast and side : 
another, wearing a gold chain, had the marks 
of the links burnt on her skin : a man standing 
beneath or beside a tree on which the electric 
fluid descended, had the foliage sketched on his 
chest. 



CONCERNING PLUMS AND PRUNES. 

If the value of fruits could be estimated by 
the metaphorical use we make of their names, 
we should probably hit upon the two extremes 
by instancing the fig and the plum. When we 
say, " A fig for Mr. So-and-so/' we mean that 
we don't care a straw whether that gentleman 
hang or drown. On the other hand, when 
we hear that good Mr. Such-and-such has 
scraped together the sum of one hundred thou- 
sand pounds, we exclaim with respect and 
admiration, "M*i Such-and-such is worth a 
plum!" 

It was not such a golden plum as this that 
little Jack Horner, of good-boy memory, pulled 
out of his Christmas-pie with his thumb. Com- 
mentators seriously doubt whether it were a 
plum at all, suggesting that it might rather be 
dried berry of the Vitis vinifera, videlicet, a 
raisin, falsely called "plum" by unbotanical 
grocers respecting whose plums we may record 
the paradoxical fact, that it is possible to make 
plum-pudding without plums ; namely, by put- 
ting in one plum only. 

The "plum season" gives us an "object 
lesson" on the real nature of the agreeable 
stone-fruit which our forefathers used to write 
" plumb," as if, from its heaviness when indulged 
in too copiously, it had some affinity to leacf. 
There are several parishes called "Plumstead" 
in England ; whether they are more stone-fruity 
than their neighbours, this deponent knoweth 
not. "He had rather have a couple of eggs 
than one plum," is an old Erench proverb, 
meaning, " He is no fool ; he knows what he is 
about, and takes care of his own interest." 
They also say, "He is not gone there after 
plums ;" that is, " He is not there for nothing ; 
he is about some secret business." Moliere 
writes, "If I am grieving, it is not about 
plums." A dark-complexioned person is ironi- 
cally described as being "As fair as a dried 
plum after a couple of washings." 

When the Erench, cut off from colonial 
communication, were ransacking the vegetable 
world for something to sweeten their coffee 
with, their chemists contrived to extract from 
the plum (from the quetsche especially) a 
crystallised sugar which equalled cane-sugar in 
every respect except cheapness. Another plum, 
which grows wild on the mountains of Dauphiny, 
the Briancon plum, or plum of the Alps, yields 
a delicate eating-oil, known as " huile de mar- 
motte," which is more esteemed than olive oil. 
It combines, with great softness, a slight per- 
fume of noyau, which is very agreeable. The 



10 [July 29, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



residue, or oil-cake left after extraction, lias 
been tried to fatten cattle with ; but the prnssic 
acid contained in it renders caution necessary 
regarding the quantity given. Cows have been 
poisoned by it. It may not be amiss to note 
here, that in case of accident from an over-dose 
of bitter almonds, laurel leaf, or other form of 
prussic acid, a weak solution of sulphate of iron 
is an antidote. 

Among the curious names of old sorts of 
plums, we find the Jerusalem plum, or bull's 
eye, very large indeed, brownish purple, and 
more square than round; the bull's heart, or 
Saint Loo plum, one of the very largest, with 
yellow flesh and red skin ; the pigeon's heart, 
black, large, and excellent, late in the season ; 
the transparent plum, large, light-coloured, and 
long: so called because, when held up to the 
sun, the kernel is clearly visible; the cock's 
kidney, small, late, kidney-shaped, and light 
yellow spotted with red. Aldovrandi, who was 
acquainted with everything on earth, mentions 
not only an asses' paradise, but also asses' plums 
(Pruna asinina), formerly so styled on account 
of their cheapness. They are later and larger 
than, but of the same colour as, harvest plums 
(Pruna hordearia). 

Prunum is Latin for plum fruit, prunus 
(substantive feminine) for the plum tree, both 
being derived from irpovvr), the name by which 
Theophrastus mentions it. Prunus is an im- 
portant genus in the class Tcosandria Monogynia 
of the Linnsean system. It belongs to the tribe 
of almond-like plants, which are themselves in- 
cluded in the Rosacea?, or rose-like plants. It 
is composed of trees and shrubs peculiar for the 
most part to the temperate and moderately 
warm regions of the northern hemisphere : a few 
being also found in America, and in tropical 
Asia. Their leaves are simple, alternate, entire, 
or indented with teeth like a saw r . Their 
flowers generally appear very early, while the 
leaves are still but slightly or scarcely deve- 
loped. To the blossom succeeds a fleshy drupe, 
whose stone, not wrinkled (distinguishing it 
from a peach), contains a single seed (sometimes 
twins). 

Linnaeus' s genus plum, therefore, comprises 
the true plums, the apricots, and the cherries, 
of which Tournefort made three distinct 
genera. He even subdivided the latter into 
two ; the cherries proper, and the laurel cherries. 
Jussieu followed Tournefort's example, which 
is sanctioned by modern botanists, less, how- 
ever, on account of the importance of the dis- 
tinctive characters displayed by the three 
groups, than to make scientific language accord 
with popular phraseology. The million are in- 
different about botanical niceties and floral 
anatomy; but they know an apricot from a 
plum, and from a cherry, at a glance. An 
apricot has a downy skin ; a plum has a smooth 
skin powdered with a secretion called "the 
bloom," which is removed by a very slight 
touch, and is sometimes imitated by arrow- 
root. _ A cherry has a smooth 'shining skin, like 
a maiden's lip, and grows on a longer stalk than 



either of the former. There is no cherry with 
the down of an apricot, or the bloom of a 
plum ; and vice versa. The plum differs from 
the others in having fruit green when ripe. 
There is no green ripe apricot or cherry ; but 
there is it makes one's mouth water to name 
it a greengage ; and also a bullace, which acts 
on the imagination like an acid astringent. 

A plum, then, is a drupe, mostly egg-shaped 
or oblong, fleshy, quite smooth, covered with a 
sort of bluish dust, containing a flattened stone 
sharp at both extremities and slightly furrowed 
at the edges. The young leaves of the tree are 
rolled or twisted when they first appear. The 
flowers, solitary or in couples, proceed from 
buds special to themselves, at the same time 
with, or before, the leaves. The wild plum of 
Europe, Prunus spinosa, familiar as the blackthorn 
or sloe-bush, has numerous thorny branches, 
which ramify at almost right angles. Its white 
blossoms appear so early in spring, that Cobbett 
happily styled the stormy time of their appear- 
ance "the blackthorn winter." Its small, blue- 
black, almost globular fruit, is too astringent to 
be eaten, although early frosts slightly soften its 
flavour and develop a sugary principle. In 
that condition, it is certainly employed in 
France (we say nothing of England) to flavour 
and colour wines of inferior quality. The poor 
also make a wretched beverage by fermenting 
crushed sloes in a certain quantity of water. 
The sloe likewise furnishes a very strong vine- 
gar ; frosted sloes, prepared like tamarinds, are 
not a bad substitute for that Indian preserve. 
The bark of the blackthorn is bitter, astringent, 
antifebrile, and is, in fact, the most powerful 
indigenous febrifuge, coming nearer to Peruvian 
bark than any other native succedaneum. Eor 
this purpose, it should be peeled in spring from 
branches of four or five years' growth, and dried 
slowly to be kept for use. It contains sufficient 
tannin to serve for leather-making and for dye- 
ing. An infusion of sloe-leaves gives a humble 
imitation of tea ; the drinker's fancy is at liberty 
to decide whether the bohea or the gunpowder 
flavour be predominant. During the high price 
of the China article, British foliage was liberally 
mixed with it. The wood of the blackthorn is 
hard and durable. Capital walking-sticks are 
made from the vigorous suckers which the bush 
throws up in considerable abundance. A black- 
thorn hedge is efficient, and lasts long with 
proper care, although it be less rapid in growth, 
and less pleasing both in verdure and in 
blossom, than one of white thorn i.e. hawthorn. 
Who would guess that so many uses could be 
drawn from the stunted sloe-bush on which we 
look scornfully as it struggles for life on the 
skirts of a common ? 

The garden plum, Prunus domestica, attains 
the stature of a small tree. Its boughs are 
spreading, without thorns, and covered with a 
greyish skin, whilst the older branches are 
brownish. Its white flowers give birth to a 
drooping fruit, of sweet and slightly perfumed 
savour, and of very diverse form and size. 
While cherries grow on stalks longer than them- 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[July 29, 1SC5.] H 



selves, plums grow on stalks shorter than them- 
selves. The number of the cultivated sorts is 
very considerable ; sufficient, in fact, to have 
been grouped by pomologists into nine grand 
divisions or races. The most esteemed old 
varieties appear to be natives of Asia Minor, of 
the environs of Damascus especially; witness 
the damson i.e. damascene. Their introduc- 
tion to Italy is referred as far back as the time 
of Cato the elder. But several most delicious 
kinds have been raised within quite a recent 
period ; and more, we believe, are only waiting 
to be called forth by horticultural skill. A new 
ambrosial plum would be as satisfactory a result 
by hybridisation as a new dahlia, or even a new 
rose. Brilliant colours, perfect forms, and sweet 
perfumes are charming, but unsubstantial; 
whereas a plum, if it will not fill the stomach, 
will allay thirst and stop a little gap. In the 
central and southern parts of Europe, excellent 
plums may be tasted with juicy, sweet, and 
melting flesh the exact counterparts of which 
are, probably, not to be found in England. As 
an object in view heightens the pleasure of a 
tour, we may suggest the desirability of some- 
body's making a tour of plum discovery. 

The wood of the plum-tree is hard, close- 
grained, handsomely veined, and capable of 
receiving a high polish. Its colour is heightened 
by immersion in lime-water. The plum-tree, 
like the cherry-tree, is liable to gumming from 
wounds ; choice kinds are therefore better pro- 
pagated by budding than by grafting. The 
amateur gardener may bud for himself; any one 
who can bud a rose can bud a plum ; and iadies 
can amuse themselves by performing the opera- 
tion all the more fearlessly, as there are no 
hooked thorns to be battled with. It is a real 
satisfaction, as the writer can testify, to eat 
plums or cherries from a bud one has oneself 
inserted. 

Stocks for budding are obtained either by 
sowing the stones (previously laid in heaps, 
with earth or sand), or by the suckers thrown 
up by old-established trees. Seedlings produce 
much the stronger and longer-lived specimens, 
but of slow growth during the first few years ; 
nurserymen, consequently, often prefer to make 
use of suckers, which come to market more 
rapidly, but which make inferior fruit-trees in 
the long run. The amateur gardener, who can 
afford to wait, will make a point of having none 
but seedling stocks, if for no other reason than 
that plants from suckers give endless plague by 
throwing up numerous suckers themselves, which 
must be removed as fast as they make their 
appearance. Plums wished to be kept dwarf 
may be worked on the sloe; others on the 
mirabelle, the magnum bonum, or any other 
vigorous seedling. The damson is reputed a 
bad stock, though the coarser kinds may be 
budded on it. Erom the middle of July to the 
middle of August is the best time to perform 
the operation, taking advantage of any thunder- 
storm which soaks the earth and causes the sap 
to flow more freely. Common kitchen plums 
as damsons, bullaces, and harvest plums may 



be raised from stones or suckers without the 
trouble and delay of budding. 

A good plum is one of the most wholesome 
and agreeable fruits with which horticultural 
skill has supplied our tables. Its soft and 
sugary flavour is heightened by a delicate aroma, 
which loses nothing by cookery. If its juicy 
flesh contain no great amount of nutriment, it 
is at least easy of digestion. 

The numerous ways in which plums can be 
prepared add considerably to their commercial 
value, and render their culture extremely im- 
portant in certain districts of the Continent. 
They are made into preserves of different kinds, 
both with and without sugar. In the latter 
case, the cooking process is greatly prolonged, 
until the concentration of their natural sugar 
makes the addition of any other unnecessary. 
By fermentation, alcoholic liquors, raki, and 
zwetschenwasser, are obtained from plums. 
Plums also are preserved, like cherries, in 
brandy ; the smaller kinds, . as the mirabelle, 
being preferred. for the making of plum-brandy. 

Dried plums (known here as Erench plums, 
as pruneaux in Erance) are slowly and carefully 
desiccated, in the sunshine and in an oven alter- 
nately. Lately, special ovens and apparatus 
have been contrived, which hasten the operation 
and render it more certain. Dried plums are 
the object of a considerable trade in different 
parts of Erance, particularly in the Touraine 
and the Agenois. In the latter province, the 
grand centre of production is Villeneuve d'Agen, 
and especially the cantons of Clairac and St. 
Livrade ; so that the title " pruneaux d Agen " 
is based on an exactitude. In those localities 
the culture of the plum takes the lead of all 
other husbandry. The varieties principally em- 
ployed for drying are the prune robe de sergeant 
and the prune de roi. The department of the 
Yar, and notably the town of Brignolles, are 
likewise celebrated for the dried plums with 
which they regale all the north of Europe. 

It is a pity that so few things on this earth 
should be perfect. A small tree, of convenient 
height, needing little care, capable of resisting 
our severest winters, which can (if circumstances 
allow it to do so) annually supply a crop of 
luscious fruit, which crop continues to be sup- 
plied by the different varieties in long succession, 
from the beginning of July to the end of No- 
vember, surely approaches perfection as a hardy 
fruit-tree. And yet it is very far from perfect. 
One little peculiarity of its constitution often 
renders all its other good qualities unavailing. 
Its time of flowering is so early, that not un- 
frequently its blossoms are completely cut off 
by frosts, before the leaves have had time to 
come forth and protect them. So early, indeed, 
do they come, that several kinds are worth 
planting (the mirabelles, for instance) merely 
as flowering shrubs, for the sake of the brilliant 
standard of white which they display while all 
around them is bare, leaving any chance of fruit 
entirely out of consideration. 

To obviate the consequences of such early 
blooming, we make wall-trees of choice varieties 



12 [July 29, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



of plum. But even a south wall is an ineffectual 
protection against the heavy hoar-frosts and late 
snow-storms which occasionally occur even in 
May. Morning frosts in June are far from 
rare; but, by that time, the well-developed 
leaves are able to shelter the young fruit. The 
genius of Thomas Rivers invented orchard- 
houses and the plan of growing plum-trees in 
pots a clever contrivance and adaptation espe- 
cially suitable and convenient for small gardens 
and suburban villas. Respecting the results so 
obtained, experience is contradictory : some 
have had decided success, while others complain 
of considerable failure. But it is not illogical 
to hold to the opinion that, if one man has suc- 
ceeded, all men may. 

Perhaps, the true plum orchard, for England, 
may be yet to be invented a sort of adaptive 
Crystal Palace, to be placed, say in February, 
over trees planted in the open ground, with 
Venetian ventilators capable of putting the 
plants almost in the open air during a great 
part of the day, and entirely removable when 
all danger of frost is over. The practical diffi- 
culty lies in this : foliage grown under shelter 
is much more tender than that which expands 
naturally in the open air ; and unless air and 
direct sunshine are very gradually admitted, the 
leaves will be shrivelled, scorched, torn by winds, 
or otherwise sufficiently injured to spoil the 
ripening of the fruit, injure the health of the 
trees, and ultimately kill them, converting the 
plum-paradise into a desert. To those who 
wish to grow plums in large quantities under 
glass, Mr. Rivers suggests a very simple mode 
of culture namely, planting a house with plum- 
bushes or pyramids, and removing them bien- 
nially to check their growth. It is found that, 
after a few years, owing to their being every 
season loaded with fruit, they grow so very 
slowly as not to require removal. 

The earliest plum is the cerisette, of which 
there are red and yellow varieties. It opens 
clean, like the damson, leaving the stone loose 
and free, and is good though wild i.e. self- 
sown, or raised from stones. The mirabelle is 
an early sort of small light-coloured plum, which 
bears abundantly (weather permitting), is quite 
a free-stone, and tolerably sweet. It is excellent 
in jam, having an aromatic flavour, and also as 
a brandy-plum. But the earliest plums are not 
the best. Better are those which, hanging late, 
and protected from flies by muslin bags, become 
blue with bloom, unctuous with sugar, and 
wrinkled with age, but far from ugly. The 
stoneless plum, or Prune sans noyau, is a small 
black heart-shaped curiosity, opening well, with 
no stone but only a kernel. 

If you think of planting an assortment, here 
are a dozen useful plums, pretty nearly as they 
are ready to pass from hand to mouth : 

Early Prolific. Monsieur Hatif, or early 
Orleans, darker in colour than the common 
Orleans. Orleans plum-trees vary greatly in 
the quaftty of their fruit : if possible, taste the 
fruit of the tree from which the plants you 
purchase are budded. Reine Claude de Baray 



native, an excellent variety of greengage. The 
greengage, the queen of piums, when true ; but, 
as tolerably good greengages may be raised from 
stones, many inferior sub-varieties, which would 
be best destroyed, are to be met with in the 
market. As with Orleans plums, endeavour to 
bud greengages yourself from trees of whose 
genuine merit you are sure. Washington, a 
fine _ handsome fruit, deserving more general 
cultivation. Jefferson, which justly excites 
Rivers's enthusiasm. The red magnum bonum, 
an excellent kitchen fruit for families who cut 
and come again. The white magnum bonum, if 
good and true, and well ripened, has hardly its 
superior at dessert, with the sole inconvenience 
that it is apt to tempt you to open your mouth 
ungracefully wide. Reine Claude violette, or 
purple gage, nearly as good as the green, and 
carrying plums into the month of October, 
Coe's golden drop, to be appreciated, has only 
to be seen and tasted. " I have had them in 
muslin bags on the trees, partaking of the 
flavour of those called French plums, but richer 
and more agreeable." St. Martin's quetsche. 
otherwise zwetsche, Erenchified into couetsche, 
a German damson, in high repute for preserves 
and liqueurs. Lastly, the blue Imperatrice, 
which should be allowed to hang on the tree till 
it shrivels. If secured from frost, it may be\ 
kept very late indeed. 

Besides the above, damsons and bullaces (not 
to be despised) will grow almost anywhere, 
even in hedgerows that are not too exposed to 
schoolboys. In an uncooked state, these minor 
and tardy plums scarcely do themselves justice. 
Bullaces bottled, like green gooseberries, are 
valuable for winter tarts; while the house- 
keeper who has either bullace or damson cheese, 
or both, in store, need little envy her who 
parades a slab of guava jelly. 

The gardens of the curious should not be 
without ornamental plum-trees. Mr. Fortune 
has introduced several from China, very charm- 
ing, with semi-double, and also with large 
double blossoms white, flesh-coloured or blush, 
and striped like a carnation. These are hardy, 
bloom very early in mid-winter with a little 
forcing and make as quaint, delightful, flori- 
ferous pot-plants as a lady need wish to have in 
her boudoir. 



THE ZOOPHYTES OE SANDYBAY. 

Sages say there are links between every race 
of created beings. We all know the zoophytes, 
that unite the peculiarities of flower and animal 
life. The bat . half mouse, half bird. The eel : 
at once serpent and fish. The monkey well, 
we won't pursue him ; the present object is to 
treat of one only of these marvellous anomalies, 
the link between fish and woman-kind, the 
bathing-woman. 

To enter fully into the habits of this extra- 
ordinary creature, the scientific inquirer should 
establish his head-quarters, for a whole season, 
by the sea. Say, at Sandybay, on the Wessex 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[July 29, 1865.] 13 



coast. There, from the first of May until late in 
October, many fine specimens may be found. 
What becomes of the zoophytes during the other 
six months: whether they disappear with the 
pins, or migrate with the swallows, has never 
been satisfactorily established. They have been 
seen at intervals, and solitary, as late in the 
year as the commencement of November. They 
appear then, however, to have lost much of 
their habitual liveliness. They move dreamily 
through the water. The voice, formerly shrill, 
and rather harsh, has toned down ; and, indeed, 
these belated specimens bear no more resem- 
blance to the plump noisy animal in its season, 
than does Pepper's ghost of Hamlet's father to 
the stout original he represents. 

The naturalist has, of course, his cabinet of 
treasures ; and though his practised eyes are 
quick to detect a certain value in the many 
specimens before him, he is obliged to content 
himself with selecting only a few of the best 
for preservation. Thus, Nan and her pair of 
daughters are Nos. 1, 2, and 3 in my collection' 
of gems amongst the zoophyte bathing- women. 

Old Nan has a heart ; albeit it beats, in gene- 
ral, calmly enough in her wide bosom. It is not 
the little cares of daily life that can accelerate 
its pace. She has rescued more than one little 
fisher-boy, who, venturing too far into the sea 
in pursuit of a lively crab, would have been 
caught and swallowed by the great tide waves 
had not the brave Nan rushed after him, and 
held him fast until the danger was past : emerg- 
ing after the struggle with the child in her 
arms, scolding, choking, but triumphant. 

If you have time to listen, she will tell you 
of sad scenes on that dangerous coast. Of the 
sands strewed with " wrack," of the long pro- 
cessions formed by the awestruck villagers when 
the unknown drowned were carried up in silence 
to the church. Sometimes their sorrow has 
been for their own people ; and one rough winter 
night a bitter cry arose at midnight, when nine 
fishing-boats were lying wrecked upon the coast, 
and there was scarcely a house in which there 
was not one dead. 

But there was one night fraught with fear- 
ful peril, of which she will not tell you a night 
when the cries of human beings roused the cliff 
birds till they shrieked together ; when a fishing- 
boat, with eight souls on board, in the storm and 
darkness, flew crashing upon the rocks. In a 
moment she parted beneath them, and the men 
were clinging for life to a point where the tide 
must speedily overwhelm them. Their cries 
were heard in heaven and by two only upon 
earth, Nan and her daughter. These two women 
were watching over the safety of their bathing- 
machines. They had drawn them up as high as 
possible, and, each with a lantern fastened to 
her waist, were searching about for driftwood, 
when Fan suddenly cried out, " Mother, did you 
hear that ?" A cry to seaward, faint, but still 
heard above the gale borne to them, indeed, 
upon it reached the ears of both. " It's away 
to the right," said Nan; " who's out to-ni^ht?" 
" There's Trout's boat, with eight," shrieked 



Pan ; " they left at daybreak ; they'll be gone, 
before we can wake the village ; they only cry 
like that in the water." And what followed ? 
The next moment saw them, with their strong 
practised arms running the nearest boat down 
to the sea, and watching their opportunity of 
launching out into the deep. It was not very 
far they had to go : the cries led them to the sea- 
surrounded " danger rock," where eight human 
beings were dying. There was scarcely time to 
save for the tide was advancing nearer and 
nearer the waves rolled one had passed over 
them, and, numbed and hopeless, all would have 
been lost, had the women stayed to rouse the 
town. Brave Nan and her daughter never 
thought " to wake to fame," but they did. Re- 
fusing all recompense, they begged that the 
money subscribed for them might be expended in 
the purchase of a fishing-boat for the rescued men. 

Nan had a younger daughter (No. 3) ; very 
pretty, but in weak health. For once, untrue 
to her mixed nature, Nan wished to bring her 
up to "the land life." 

Poor Nan !' She had no idea of the conven- 
tionalities above high-water mark, and as t6 
bringing up a daughter high and dry, she had 
not the remotest conception how to set about 
it. She consulted a fisherman, who, from being 
afflicted with a complication of disorders, had 
passed much of his time on shore. He recom- 
mended "nets," the making and repairing of 
which he had himself found to be " a healthy, 
easy out-of-door occupation, and leading to much 
cheerful conversation." It was eventually de- 
cided, when Bess was about fifteen, that she 
should continue to wear shoes and stockings, 
and other mysteries of the toilet unknown to 
zoophytes, and be regularly employed by the 
market to meet the boats on their arrival, and 
carry up the fish. 

Bess, was a good, as well as very pretty girl, 
and the " land life " agreeing with her, she grew 
strong and well. The visitors to Sandybay, 
knew her well, and carried off her photograph. 
They took great notice of her, and by many 
kindnesses tried to tempt her to take service 
with them. But Bess was firm in her love of 
Sandybay, and of her zoophyte relations ; she 
was always pleased and grateful, but she was 
never to be tempted away. One day, Bess got 
her feet wet, the tide was flowing fast when as 
usual she went down with her basket to meet 
the boats. The blue waves curled caressingly 
round her little feet. "Come and play with 
us," they seemed to say. The zoophyte blood 
stirred within her, and she began to paddle ! At 
last, into the water rushed Bess, laughing and 
plunging about. Fan, in the distance, with a 
child in her arms, and in the act of giving it the 
salutary, though suffocating dip, stopped short 
"Mother," she cried, "there's Bess in the water!" 
" AM she be coming to us after all !" said Nan, 
with an immense grunt of satisfaction. And 
indeed the morning sun found Bess in full 
costume, en zoophyte. She had cast her basket 
to the winds, and her lot in with the rest of her 
tribe. 



14 [July 29, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



For a season or two, Bess was the delight of 
the bathers. She had taken like a duck to the 
water. She swam, floated, and played in it, like 
a pretty mermaid. The merry little things 
that crowded daily, spade in hand, to the 
beach, waited patiently until Bess was at leisure 
to plunge into the water with them, and would 
plunge with no one else. 

I linger, lovingly, over Bessie's brightest days. 
I saw her often, that last summer, and always in 
the water. Her hair was " goldy," as Nan said ; 
and, tucked up or floating over her shoulders, 
it seemed like a glory about her. She never laid 
her hands to any of the hard zoophyte work. To 
Nan she was always the "little one/' twice 
born ; for, from the day she took to the water, 
she became a new child to her. Thus Bess 
sported all the day and at night, who ever met 
with a zoophyte? And who knows half the 
metamorphoses that go on in darkness, or be- 
neath the moon ? 

One only glimpse have we of the zoophyte 
after dark. The night Nan and her daughter 
were seeking driftwood on the stormy shore, 
and found eight human lives ! 

In a retired sea-side village like Sandybay 
we soon learn the history of its interest and 
affections. The people are too simple to hide 
their emotions. They wear their joys and 
sorows outside with their ribbons, and it is 
impossible to withhold sympathy from either. 
Thus the little town weeps or smiles as one 
human creature. 

There is only one race of beings who are not 
hospitably received at Sandybay, and who are 
altogether regarded as outsiders. These are 
the coast-guard. They are invariably civil, and 
helpful in times of need, but tbey never ob- 
tain the sympathy of the inhabitants. There 
was no smuggling at Sandybay, still the popu- 
lar feeling was constantly against them, and 
they were never regarded as anything better 
than "them spies." Alas! that one of those 
pariahs, perhaps through his objectionable " spy- 
glass," should have lost his heart to the pretty 
Bess. I never knew her family name, neither 
I think did he. Nan's husband was drowned 
a week before Bess was born, and with him 
appears to have been lost also the family 
name ! Neither does it appear to have been 
known how or when Dick Harris prosecuted 
his courtship. She had no telescope, and appa- 
rently she was always in the water. However, 
he found a way, and in or out of the water, 
Dick proposed, and Bess accepted ! 

Then began poor Bess's sorrowful days. 
The fine young sailor was a " spy," and Nan 
and the zoophyte sister looked coldly on the 
lovers. With her disappointed little favourites 
Bess played no more. After dipping them with 
a calm indifference, she would sit idly and sor- 
rowfully upon the rocks, sometimes waist-deep 
in water, the poor zoophyte ! 

But Harris, watching her through his glass, 
took a great resolve. He went in search of 
Nan. Nan, much put out by his unwelcome 
presence, prepared herself valiantly for the 



fight. ',' Nan," said the young sailor, " give 
me Bess, and I'll turn fisherman and live 
amongst you." 

Poor old Nan was taken aback. She was 
prepared for war; but behold the enemy sur- 
rendering at discretion! A bold son-in-law, 
indeed, and one after her own heart! Nan 
clasped her hands together, her hard face 
softened, and her voice shook a little, as she 
said, " Go and take her, Dick Harris, and the 
blessing of the old mother be with ye !" 

The eve of Dick's wedding was a wild De- 
cember night. He was to be married next morn- 
ing; but, in the mean time, he and the men 
were all out upon the beach, drawing up their 
boats, and talking of a ship seen before dark, 
and holding, as they thought, a dangerous 
course. 

While they spoke of it, a flash, like lightning, 
sprang out of the darkness, and in an instant 
more a message of distress and danger boomed 
across the sea. Another flash ! and again the 
imploring gun echoed, like a hundred waves in 
one, among the rocks. The storm was increas- 
ing fearfully. A rocket, fired from the coast- 
guard station, rushed into the air, the strong 
wind carrying it far inland, but it was answered 
by the harsh quick tolling of the life-boat's bell, 
calling the crew hastily together. Dick Harris 
had left the service, but the man to replace him 
had not arrived, and he remained on duty as 
before. He was the first to spring into the 
life-boat. She was quickly manned, and, in a 
few minutes, was gliding down the beach, and 
tossing like a cork upon the crest of the waves. 
A long cheer broke from the assembled crowd 
as the brave crew, bending to their oars, shot out 
into the darkness on their perilous voyage. 

For a long while the lantern on the stern 
was seen at intervals above the waves, but at 
last the keenest sight failed to detect it, and 
silence and anxious waiting succeeded to the 
noise and hurry of the launch. 

Come out with the life-boat! Come away 
into the storm and darkness. It is better than 
gnawing one's heart ashore there with Bessie and 
the rest. To be still is torture when dear lives 
are staked. See how the muscles start from 
the strong arms bared to the shoulder! The 
parted lips and heaving chests have no breath 
to spend in words. The strong excitement 
gives unnatural strength, and the force of their 
united will carries them, like an arrow, on their 
dangerous way. 

Brave hearts, thinking only of the perishing 
ship. In their generous haste the men had for- 
gotten their life-belts. They didn't think they 
would be drowned ; or if they did, they would 
not return. 

The firing has ceased ; the moon is up, misty 
and pale, behind swift flying clouds ; a dark 
object, still far off, is discerned in the direction 
of the dangerous reef. The life-boat is flying 
on, often full of water, but as quickly emptying 
again; the men, drenched to the skin, have 
found breath enough to send a cheer forward 
to the sinking ship, and a faint cry has come 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[July 29, 1865.] 15 



to them from her crowded decks. They are 
in time to save ! Oh that I could end here ! 
Bnt joy and rest have scant place in this dis- 
jointed world, and I can speak of neither 
here, except as represented by the grave. Let 
me hasten to the end, the end that lias no end 
sorrow upon sorrow, like the rolling waves. 
The life-boat neared the wreck, when a wave, 
fiercer than the rest, dashing over the reef, 
filled her and flung her off; but, drawing her 
furiously back, hurled her so violently against 
the wreck, that the side was stove in, and she 
became unmanageable. Some of the men es- 
caped by clinging to the vessel they had risked 
so much to save, and afterwards, with their aid, 
she was floated off and stranded on the shore. 
But two of the gallant life-boat's crew were lost. 
Dick Harris and another. 

I thought these eyes of mine, so old now, could 
weep no more. I thought the old man had out- 
lived his heart, but I see and feel the terrible 
ensuing scene again. How Bess ran into the 
water to meet the life-boat, crowded with the 
saved ; but missed her love ! She never spoke 
nor wept, but her face turned white as death, and 
changed no more, and day and night she waited 
by the sea, until at last he came. The villagers 
tell of it still. How with a wild shriek she threw 
up her arms to heaven, claiming her dead, and, 
plunging waist deep into the waves, fought 
with them for possession of her own. Her 
wild shrieks rang out his death-knell in the 
night. Nan, always near her, helped her to 
carry him to a quiet spot, and, covering him 
reverently with her shawl, ran for help to the 
village, leaving Bess to watch him. Help came, 
but found poor Bessie lying beside her lover, 
a stream of blood flowing from her lips. She did 
not die at once, but her white scared face grew 
thinner day by day. And Dick's grave was 
opened to receive her, according to her wish, 
long before there were any flowers to lay upon it. 

Nan is fading away, pining to follow her 
* goldy-hair." The zoophyte daughter works 
for both, but the light went out of her lonely 
life when her sister died, and she too is weary- 
ing to follow " the little one." 

O sad, sad, Sandybay, so cheerful and so 
pleasant once ! 



UP AND DOWN CANTON. 

Canton is a genuine Chinese city, and one 
of the most extraordinary places in the world. 
There are four American steamers which ply 
between Hong-Kong and Canton. They are 
fast commodious vessels, in fact floating hotels, 
such as ply on the large American rivers. 
The voyage occupies about eight or nine hours. 
Of these, five or six are on the open sea, shel- 
tered mostly under the lee of precipitous bluffs 
and lofty rocky islets ; and the rest, from the 
" Bocca Tigris," up the Canton river. The fog- 
in the winter season lies so dense over the flats 
and extensive swamps bordering the river, that 
steamers have to proceed with great caution, 



going "dead slow," and sounding the steam- 
whistle, while the little fishing-junks, which are 
sure to be scattered by dozens in the way, 
eagerly beat their gongs, to make known their 
whereabout. As the steamer ascends the 
river, a noble stream, some five or six miles 
broad near the mouth, she gets gradually clear 
of the fog. The wide marshy flats, and the 
bold rocks on the left bank, crowned with odd- 
looking Chinese stone batteries, come into view, 
to be succeeded by paddy-fields, sugar-cane cul- 
tivation, orchards, gardens, roa^s, and villages, 
that become, on both banks, more and more 
numerous, until they blend with the vast 
suburbs of Canton. Charming little pagodas, 
and fanciful buildings, painted and carved, the 
residences of mandarins, peep from the shade of 
groves, and every village is surmounted by two 
or more lofty square towers, the nature of 
which puzzles a stranger, until he is told they 
are pawnbrokers' shops. These shops are so 
fashioned for the greater security of the articles 
pledged, because the broker is made heavily 
responsible for their safe keeping. The security 
is meant to be, not only against thieves, but 
also against fire. Half way to Canton, on the 
right, or west bank, is a little English settle- 
ment at the town of Whampo. It consists of 
some ship-chandlers' stores, warehouses, and a 
dock for repairing vessels which discharge their 
cargoes here, being unable to proceed higher up 
the stream. Whampo is, in fact, the seaport 
of Canton, and was a flourishing place as such, 
till Hong-Kong diverted the trade. Erom 
Whampo upward, the river becomes more and 
more crowded with junks and Chinese boats. 
Some of the junks, men-of-war, differ from the 
rest only in being larger, and in having several 
unwieldy guns on their decks, mounted on 
uncouth carriages : in many instances with 
their muzzles not pointed through portholes, but 
grinning over the bulwarks at an angle of forty- 
five degrees, like huge empty bottles. 

When the steamer has slowly and cau- 
tiously threaded her way among these nu- 
merous vessels, and dropped anchor, the rush 
of "tanka-boats" round her is astonishing. 
These are broad bluff craft, something of the 
size and shape of the sampans, but impelled 
chiefly by women: one sweeping, the other 
sculling with a large steering oar. They close 
round the ship in hundreds, yelling, screaming, 
struggling, and fighting for the gangways, till 
every passenger or article of light freight has 
left. The women are warmly and comfortably 
dressed in dark-blue linen shirts and wide 
drawers ; with red and yellow bandanas round 
their heads and faces. They are often young 
and good looking, with bright laughing eyes, 
white teeth, and jolly red cheeks. They are, 
unlike tne " flower-boat" girls, honest and well 
conducted. Their boats are roofed over, with 
snug neat cabins nicely painted, and bedizened 
with flowers, old-fashioned pictures, and looking- 
glasses. A low cushioned bench runs round 
three sides, and the passenger sits down plea- 
santly enough, looking through the entrance, 



16 [July 2a, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



and face to face with the sturdy nymph, who, 
with a "stamp and go," is rowing him along, 
while at the stern, behind his back, another 
lusty Naiad steers him on his way. 

The river divides the great city into two parts ; 
that on the left bank, which is by far the larger, 
being Canton, and the opposite smaller town 
" Honan." On the Honan side, a few European 
gentlemen still live and carry on business, as 
branches of several firms in Hong-Kong; but 
the principal European quarter is a fine level 
plain on the Canton side, presenting to the 
river a revetted wall. A pretty church and 
some handsome houses, including the British 
Consulate, have been already completed within 
the land, which is called the " Shameen." It 
adjoins the portion formerly allotted for the 
Hongs, or warehouses and offices of foreign 
(European) merchants, which were burnt down 
by the Chinese mob before the last war. 

At ten in the morning, one day in the month 
of February, I started from the Honan side, 
under the guidance of a Chinese cicerone, who 
spoke a language somewhat better than the 
gibberish known by the name of "pigeon" 
(business) English, to explore the city of 
Canton. We crossed the river in a tanka-boat, 
and after threading, jostling, and pushing our 
way through swarms of small craft in every 
variety, landed at the custom-house stairs, close 
to a small office in which presides an English 
functionary, in the pay of the Chinese govern- 
ment. The strand is crowded with mean dirty 
hovels, in which, and about the muddy road, 
and on board innumerable boats, packed closely 
along the bank, men, women, and children, 
filthy and ragged, were crowding in swarms. 
We passed a short way up the strand, by some 
large shops, crammed with clothing and ship 
chandlery, and striking inland, traversed an 
open space, scattered with the relics of the 
European Hongs burnt before the last war : (a 
space, by-the-by, which Europeans have alto- 
gether deserted, preferring the "Shameen" 
land, and which the Chinese government appear 
unwilling to resume, so that it remains altoge- 
ther untenanted). We then entered the bazaar, 
or strictly commercial portions of the town. 

The day was unusually sultry for the time of 
year ; the streets (so to call passages of six or 
seven feet width), entirely paved with flag- 
stones, were muddy and greasy from rain that 
had fallen the day before. The air was stag- 
nant from the confinement of closely-packed 
and overhanging houses, and heated by swarms 
of people hurrying to and fro, while an insup- 
portable stench from sewers, neglected drains, 
and putrid fish and flesh, with a horrible odour 
of stale cabbage water, pervaded the suffocating 
atmosphere. I became faint at times, fatigued 
and heated beyond endurance, so that my esti- 
mate of the extent of this enormous labyrinth, 
through which I plodded for four hours before 
I could get a sedan-chair, is one rather of the 
feelings than of the judgment. I walked 
stepping now and then into shops, to examine 
them more closely and rode in a sedan-chair 



up one street and down another, from about 
half-past ten in the morning until four in the 
afternoon, and had to leave unvisited about half 
the bazaar, to get a hasty glimpse of a few 
temples, gardens, and mandarin-houses, before 
dusk. 

The streets are flagged, and about six or 
seven feet broad. They appear to be innu- 
merable, crossing each other at right angles at 
every two or three hundred yards. The houses 
on each side are narrow-fronted, but extending 
considerably to the rear. There are no windows, 
for the centre of each front is open, merely 
consisting of carved and painted frame-work, 
like the proscenium of a theatre, and display- 
ing the contents of the shop on each hand, like 
side-scenes. The back is closed by a large 
panelling, in which figures of gods, men, ani- 
mals, and flowers, are painted, with a vast deal 
of gilding and finery. In short, each shop looks 
like a little theatre. A few houses have upper 
stories, reached by pretty carved and balus- 
traded stairs. And as every article for which 
space can be found, is hung up for display, both 
inside the shop and around its front, the spec- 
tator, as he enters the bazaar, feels as if he 
were diving into an ocean of cloths, silks, flags, 
and flutters. 

My guide was a sharp fellow, who thoroughly 
knew all the sights of Canton. As he had been 
often employed as cicerone by the ship captains, 
he immediately put me down as one of that jolly 
fraternity, frequent intercourse with whom had 
given a slightly nautical twang to his discourse. 
We had not gone far before he addressed me, 
"I say, cappen: you come along o' me and 
see jewellers' shops. Here's first-rate shop 
number one jeweller this chap cappen want to 
buy anything ? Heave along S" The jewel- 
lers' shops were numerous, and I saw many 
very beautiful specimens of carving and fili- 
gree-work. Some of the shops sold articles of 
European design, others ministered only to the 
native beauty and fashion of Canton. These 
contained many articles of considerable beauty 
and real taste. The most notable were the 
"bird's feather ornaments," which consist of 
gold or gilt head combs, brooches, earrings, and 
the like, on which are firmly fixed, with glue, 
strips of the bright blue feathers of the kingfisher 
(Halcyon Smyrnensis), cut into small patterns, 
through which the gold ground appears: the 
whole effect being exactly like that of enamel- 
work. The kingfisher is not, I think, found in 
China, but is imported in great numbers from 
Burmah and India. I asked the price of one 
skin lying on the counter, and was told half 
a dollar (two shillings and threepence). The 
bird was probably procured in India for three- 
halfpence. Ivory shops are in great number, 
but the Chinese ivory yields, in my opinion, to 
that of the Japanese. I went into several 
porcelain shops, and saw in each ten or a 
dozen languid-looking youths painting away, 
slowly and laboriously, at leaves, flowers, insects, 
and so forth, on plates. Each lad had a small bowl 
of one colour, and when he had painted in all 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[July 29, 1865.] 17 



the parts of the design intended to be of that 
colour, he passed the plate on to his neighbour, 
who added his colour, and so on all round the 
room till the pattern was completely coloured. 
The result is stiff and mechanical. There is 
no attempt at artistic effect, nothing like the 
beautiful pictures painted in the factories at 
Worcester or Dresden. Dyers and weavers 
are numerous. The silk shops are the finest 
in the bazaar, but their contents are exces- 
sively dear, and are not very good. Indeed, 
the Canton silks are considered by the Chinese 
themselves to be inferior to those made in 
the northern provinces of the empire. I have 
seen silk dresses and pieces from Pekin, brought 
into India via Nepaul, of a quality which I was 
assured by a competent judge could not be 
procured at Canton. This was five-and-twenty 
years ago, and it is possible that our present 
widely different connexion with China may 
have introduced a better article into Shanghae, 
which is so near Pekin. But the Chinese were 
very jealous formerly about exporting their 
finest silks, and those I allude to were brought 
by the members of a mission, sent every three 
years with a tribute from Kathmandoo to the 
Emperor of China, as a friendly return present 
from the emperor to the Rajah of Nepaul. 

Tiie Chinese shopkeepers are fat comfortable- 
looking fellows, with pleasant, good-humoured 
faces. They showed me their curiosities very 
willingly, and none the less courteously ex- 
changed a smiling "chin-chin" with me, if I 
left the shop without purchasing anything. 

Tea-shops are numberless. They are piled up 
with chests such as we see in England, and with 
open baskets of coarse and inferior tea for the 
poor. The cheapest kind is made in thin round 
cakes or large wafers, strung upon slips of bam- 
boo. It partially dissolves in hot water, and is 
flavoured with salt by those who drink it. Of 
this form of brick tea I have never seen any 
mention in the books published by travellers. 

There are poulterers' shops, with fowls roasted 
and raw ; and there are vegetable sellers' stalls, 
and fish in baskets, dead and not over-fresh, or 
alive in large tubs of water. They were all of the 
carp family, including rehoos, m'irgals, and kutlas, 
so familiarly known in India, also several species 
of the siluroids, called vulgarly " catfish." The 
fish brought from the sea are salted and sun- 
dried, and, with strong aid from immense fes- 
toons of sharks' fins, set up a stench that it is 
not easy to walk through. 

After inspecting shops and elbowing and 
being elbowed in the crowd till afternoon, 
when I was ready to drop with heat and 
fatigue, my pilot steered me to a small square, 
flagged with stone, on which the sun shone 
fiercely. He called it "Beggars' -square," and 
told me that all the destitute and aban- 
doned sick in the city, crawled, if they could, 
to this spot, because those who died there 
received burial at the expense of govern- 
ment. While he spoke, my eyes were fixed 
upon some heaps of dirty tattered clothes on 
the ground, which presently began to move, 



and I discovered to my horror three miserable 
creatures, lean and covered with odious filth, 
lying in different stages of their last agony, on 
the bare stones, exposed to the burning rays of 
the sun. They came here to die, and no one 
heeded them, or gave them a drop of water, 
or a morsel of food, or even a little shelter 
from the noontide glare. I had seen shocking 
things of this sort in India, but nothing so hor- 
rible. To ensure a climax of disgusts, my guide 
led me straight to a dog butcher's shop, 
where several of the nasty fat oily carcases 
of those animals were hanging for sale. 
They had not been flayed, but dangled there 
with their smooth shining skins, which had 
been scalded and scraped clean of hair, so that 
at first I took them for sucking-pigs. There 
were joints of dog, ready roasted, on the 
counter, and in the back of the shop were several 
cages in which live dogs were quietly sitting, 
lolling their tongues out, and appearing very un- 
concerned. I saw several cats also, in cages, 
looking very demure ; and moreover I saw cus- 
tomers, decorous and substantial-looking house- 
holders, inspect and feel the dogs and cats, 
and buy those which they deemed fittest for the 
table. The cats did not like being handled, and 
mewed loudly. " What cappen think o' that ?" 
said my guide. " Cappen s'pose never eat dog ? 
dog very good, very fat, very soft. Oh, num- 
ber one dinner is dog!" "And are cats as 
good?" I asked. "Oh, Chinaman chowchow 
everything. Chowchow plenty cat. Chinaman 
nasty beast, I think, cappen, eh ?" My cicerone 
had been so long mixed up with European and 
American ship captains and missionaries, that 
he had learnt to suit his ideas to his company, 
if his ideas had not actually undergone great 
modification, as is the case in India with those 
educated natives of the present day known to 
us as specimens of " Young Bengal." 

Before quitting the bazaar, I was ushered 
into two gambling-shops. These are licensed 
by the Chinese government, the owners paying 
a considerable tax. Both were tolerably full of 
players, and in both the same kind of game 
was being played a simple one enough, if I 
understood it. A player staked a pile of cash, or 
dollars ; the croupier staked a similar one ; and 
then another member of the establishment 
dipped his hand into a bag and drew out a 
handful of counters : if they were in even 
fours, the bank won ; if they were uneven, the 
player won, and the croupier's stake was duly 
handed over to him rather ruefully, it struck 
me, by the banker, who sat on the counter raised 
above the rest. This game appears about as 
intrinsically entertaining as pulling straws ; but 
I may have overlooked or misunderstood parts 
of it of a more intellectual nature. In the first 
house I visited, the players were of the lower 
class, and the stakes were copper cash. One man, 
quite a youth, left the room evidently cleaned 
out : his look revealed it, and I suppose he went 
away to the opium shop, the usual consolation 
of a Chinaman under the circumstances. As we 
entered the second gambling-house, my guide 



18 [July 29, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



informed me, u This rich house. Number one 
fellow play here mandarin chap." And truly 
I saw in the room goodly piles of dollars 
heaped up before a better-dressed assembly. 
The game appeared to be the same, and money 
changed hands rapidly. I "chin-chinned" to 
the banker and to the company, and was civilly 
allowed to look on. The room led through a 
filigreed doorway to another apartment, where 
cakes, loaves, tea, and pipes, were spread out, 
and where long-tailed gentlemen were lounging 
and discussing the news of the day. 

Being in want of cash, and having only dollar 
notes with me, I asked my guide what I should 
do? He straightway led me to a money- 
changer's, where I was at once furnished with 
change for my notes, at par. As this was an 
unusual accommodation, I asked the reason of 
such generosity, and was informed that the 
dollars given me were all light, and that the 
changer would obtain full weight dollars for the 
notes by-and-by. I was assured, however, that 
in all the shops the dollars I had received would 
be received at the full value ; and this I found 
to be the case. All the time I was in the money- 
changer's, I saw three or four people telling, ex- 
amining, and stamping dollars. So defaced 
and mutilated does the coin become by bearing 
the " chop" or mark of every banker or dealer 
into whose possession it passes, that it as nearly 
as possible returns to that state of bullion which 
the Chinaman prefers to minted coin. As it was, 
the only small change I could procure for a dollar 
was in fragments of silver : in the weighing out 
of which I was of course at the mercy of the 
shopman. 

A chair having been with great difficulty 
procured for me, and another for my guide, we 
were about emerging from the bazaar, when I 
had the honour of meeting a mandarin and suite. 
My bearers had just time to squeeze into the 
entrance of a side-alley, when the cavalcade 
was down upon us. Eunny looking soldiers, 
with spears and muskets indiscriminately, musi- 
ciansand drummers or tom-tom beaters, and an 
amazing figure in red and gold apparel of a 
loose flapping cut, with a sword in his hand, 
mounted upon an inexcusable pony a Chinese 
Rosinante. In the centre of this cortege the 
mandarin was borne along, a placid fat digni- 
tary, in a richly embroidered purple velvet and 
golden dress, seated in a gaudy sedan. 

It was a great relief to emerge from the 
crowded bazaar, pass through the gateway in 
the massive pity wall, and proceed through com- 
paratively airy lanes to one or two Chinese 
gentlemen's houses and gardens, which my 
guide most unceremoniously entered, marshal- 
ling me in without a word of introduction or 
apology, and making me feel rather ashamed 
of myself. These dwellings, as well as the joss- 
houses or temples, have been so often described, 
that I will not inflict them again on the reader. 
Not the slightest objection was raised by the 
priests to my exploring every part of the 
temples, the vergers showing the altars, the 
various images, the cloisters, and refectories, 



with great alacrity, and extending their hands 
afterwards for a fee. The only undescribed fact 
connected with these worthies, which I was in- 
formed of, is, that they sell their finger-nails to 
any foreigner desirous of purchasing such curi- 
osities. These nails are suffered to grow uncut, 
and attain a length of three or four inches, 
looking remarkably ' unlike finger-nails, and 
forming curiosities much coveted, said my 
guide, by foreign gentlemen and "cappens." 
Among other religious edifices, I visited a 
Mahomedan temple, a singular jumble of Islam- 
ism and Buddhism. Extracts from the Koran 
wore an odd appearance emblazoned on Chinese 
architecture. There were no priests visible here ; 
only children and begging old women. 

Want of time prevented my visiting the 
camp or barracks of the Chinese soldiers, 
on the heights outside the eastern suburbs of 
the town. A large garden, attached to a temple 
on the Honan side, was the only other object I 
had time that day to inspect. The garden was 
principally stocked with orange-trees, also loquats 
and lychees, hundreds of which were on sale for 
the benefitof the good fathers, who are supported 
by the produce of the garden and the contribu- 
tions of the piously disposed. On each side of 
the centre walk, beyond a little dirty pond, 
was a shed, with shelves, on which were 
ranged pots containing the ashes of the priests 
(" priests' bones," my guide irreverently called 
them) ; their bodies, after decease, undergoing 
incremation in an adjoining pit. Names, ages, 
and dates of decease are duly preserved, cut into 
slabs of stone on the concave face of a semi- 
circular screen of masonry in the garden. 
Before leaving the garden I was not a little 
surprised by the appearance of a veritable 
magpie, identical, as it seemed to me, with our 
British bird, that I had not seen for many 
years. 

After guiding me safely to my quarters for 
so labyrinthine is every part of Canton and 
Honan, that it would be hopeless to attempt to 
find one's way alone my pilot left me and de- 
parted to his own home, which was, he told me, 
on the Canton side. The language he spoke is, 
as may be gathered from the specimens here 
given, not the ordinary " pigeon English" of 
Chinese servants : a style of gibberish which it 
is lamentable to think has become the ordinary 
channel of communication with all Chinamen. 
These sharp and intelligent people would soon 
learn to speak and understand better English 
than such sentences as, " You go top-side 
and catchee one piecee book" " You tell those 
two piecee cooly go chowchow, and come back 
chopchop." (Go up-stairs and fetch a book 
Tell those two coolies to go to their dinner, and 
return quickly). The good effects of the tuition 
afforded by schoolmasters and missionaries in 
China are much marred by the jargon used con- 
ventionally, with irrational adherence to defect 
in all ordinary transactions of business, by 
masters and mistresses in intercourse with their 
servants, and by commercial men with their 
native assistants. 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[July 29, 1865.] 19 



About seven hours' run, in one of the Ameri- 
can steamers before mentioned, carries the 
passenger from Canton to Macao. The mouth 
of the river is cleared in four hours, and the 
rest of the voyage is over an open sea, which, 
with a fresh southerly breeze, is rather rough for 
a flat-bottomed steamer s the islands to eastward, 
though numerous, being too remote to check 
the swell of the Chinese ocean. After running 
for about an hour along the bold rocky pe- 
ninsula, at the point of which Macao is built, 
the steamer rounds in, and, entering a partially 
land-locked harbour between the town and 
some rocky islets to its south, anchors in smooth 
water. The town has a quaint picturesque 
look. Its old-fashioned houses extend to the 
water's edge. They are all of stone or 
brick, covering the face of the bold coast : the 
heights of which are crowned by castles, forts, 
batteries, and convents, from whose ancient 
walls the last rays of a setting sun were fading 
as we entered the harbour. The inhabitants are 
entirely Portuguese, Chinese, and a breed be- 
tween the two. The jealousy of the Portuguese 
government effectually excludes foreigners from 
settling ; a miserable policy, by which trade is 
almost extinct, the revenue being derived chiefly 
from licensing of gambling-houses. In front of 
the house of the governor I saw a guard of 
soldiers. They were able-bodied, smart-looking 
young fellows, in neat blue uniforms, detailed 
from a regiment in the fort. These soldiers, 
and a few half-castes, looking like our office 
keranies in India, together with some strangely- 
dressed females, in appearance half aya, half 
sister of charity, were all that I saw of the 
Portuguese community. The non-military Por- 
tuguese looked jaded and lazy, almost every 
man with a cheroot in his mouth. The town, 
indeed, struck me as a very "Castle of Indo- 
lence." 



A SOBER ROMANCE. 

I. MAY MORNING- IN LONDON. 

A slight shower, fretful and quick as the 
anger of a coquette, had just washed the pave- 
ment till it had become shining as a huge look- 
ing-glass. The slates and tiles on millions of 
house-roofs were glistening like gold. In soli- 
tary puddles the London sparrows were flashing 
and pruning themselves as if they were dressing 
or a party, while in the quieter alleys the 
London boys were making little cocked-hat 
boats of paper, and launching them on the brim- 
ming gutters with all the hope and enjoyment 
of future Colum buses. Butcher-boys in blue, 
excited by the reappearance of sunshine, dashed 
down hot streets with their horned trays on 
their shoulders, as if their customers would die 
of starvation if the joint were three minutes late. 
The cabs, which the shower had sent flying to and 
fro, had passed away into the suburbs, or had 
relapsed to the quietude of their customary rank 
and stand. The cascades of ribbons in the 
milliners' windows, now attired for the dav, 



streamed with gay colours, brighter than ever 
in the restored sunbeams that shot in through 
cracks of the striped awnings. The crowd, 
gathering courage, began again to collect round 
the Italian boy with the performing monkey by 
the railings of St. Paul's. Again the coster- 
monger steered his cart, full of flowering gera- 
niums and pinks, hopefully between the Jugger- 
naut Pickford vans and the ponderous West-end 
omnibuses. Above Bow church a great field of 
pure blue sky floated between the rolling icebergs 
of white cumulus clouds, like a huge imperial 
banner, for, the blue being in the minority, the 
white seemed sky and the blue cloud. 

It had just struck twelve by St. Paul's a fact 
which the clock of that church insisted on with 
sluggish emphasis when the Colchester coach, 
on its way to Lad-lane, dashed through the 
eastward concourse of drays, cabs, vans, and 
carts, and drew up suddenly at the corner of 
St. Margaret-lane, which, as every citizen of 
London knows, is close to the old George the 
Second's church of St. Margaret-Moses. 

The coachman drew up his four bays smartly 
and with an air, rejoiced to have got through 
his journey ; and the guard, to keep up the 
spirit of the thing, gave a jovial flourish on his 
horn, just to let people know the Colchester 
coach was no common coach, but a real high- 
flyer, and no two words about it. 

The guard got down and tumbled a plain 
corded box out of the boot, and then a bundle 
tied up in a red and yellow handkerchief, and 
then, looking up at a pretty modest fresh- 
looking country girl, who sat contentedly next 
the coachman, holding a great tuft of May 
blossom, called out : 

" Now then, Susan, my love, here you are ! 
Take care how you get down ; I'll catch you. 
Don't hurry, my girl, but look alive !" 

iC dear ! guard, am I there, then, and is this 
Margaret-lane ?" said the prepossessing young 
woman, wishing the coachman good-by, and 
getting nimbly and modestly down, aided by the 
robust arms of the gallant guard. 

" No. 16 it is, my dear. Good-by, Susan," 
cried the coachman; " I'll tell mother to-morrow 
you got all safe. Jem '11 run with the box. Look 
alive, Jem! Peacock wants her oats. You'll find 
us at the Swan-with-Two-Necks. Whist ! my 
beauties ! Hey there, Peacock, gently !" Crick, 
crack. 

Poor Susan ! She gave a tearful stare at the 
receding coach, as if it were the last link that 
bound her to Colchester, and then turned and 
followed the guard up the dingy and narrow 
lane, where her new master resided. I refer to 
Mr. Josiah Dobb, grocer, wholesale and retail, 
and for thirty years churchwarden of the wealthy 
parish of St. Margaret-Moses. 

" Put a good heart on it, Susan, gal," said the 
guard, as he shook hands with his charge. " It 
always seems strange a bit at first in a new 
place ; but Mr. Dobbs is a kind old fellow as 
ever breathed, though they say he does hold on 
to the money. Good-by, Susan God bless 'ee. 
Be a good girl you'll soon shake down. If I 



20 [July 29, 1SG5.J 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



can bring up a parcel for you from Colchester 
now and then, why I will. Good-by, my 
dear." 

II. THE ARRIVAL. 

Susan Smithers was a shrewd ingenuous 
sturdy girl, with some honest sense and courage 
about her; but she felt rather shy and uncom- 
fortable when she stood at the windowof the large 
dingy wholesale and retail shop, and saw the 
crane, like a huge gibbet, impending over her 
head in a threatening and mysterious way. She 
could observe the bustle and stir inside the 
shop, where sprightly gentlemen, adorned with 
white neckcloths (for such was Mr. Dobbs's 
humour), weighed and packed pounds of tea, 
tins of cocoa, and parcels of coffee ; where the 
sugar-chopper sounded unceasingly, and orders 
were shouted to the apprentices, as if the place 
were a ship, and a storm was looming in sight. 
She waited a moment or two, looking. 

But common sense is a plant that grows just 
as well in the village as the town, and Susan, 
being a quick resolute prompt girl, was not 
going to waste her time standing outside ; so 
she walked in, and seeing a young man with 
large whiskers and an imposing appearance 
stooping in front of the counter, and read- 
ing the direction on her box, she asked him 
if that was Mr. Dobbs's, and requested him to 
be kind enough to tell her the way down to 
Mr. Dobbs's kitchen. The imposing young 
man instantly turned pilot, and with a good- 
natured smile, returning that given him by 
Susan in mute reply, was entering into the full 
spirit of the occasion, when, from the left-hand 
side of the shop, at the further end, there 
stepped down from a high enclosed desk, that 
looked partly like a madman's cell, and still 
more like a pulpit, a tall thin old gentleman, 
who wore a pigtail (my story dates some twenty 
years back), a blue coat with bright brass but- 
tons, a yellow marsala waistcoat with a scarlet 
one underneath (only the edge showing), and a 
frilled shirt-front, and nankeen trousers. He 
was the very pink of neatness and precision, was 
this old gentleman, and his neatness and trim- 
ness made him seem quite alert and young. 
His face was of a pale nankeen colour, like the 
part of his dress already glanced at, but then it 
was clear in tone, and about the cheeks healthy 
blood showed through it. This pleasant old 
gentleman held a pen in one hand, and jostled 
his great bunch of large gold watch-seals with 
the other, as he came up to Susan's pilot. 

" Mr. Tompkins," he said, " mind that that 
tea goes off to Edwards's people this evening. 
They have written again about it. But who is 
this ? Are you the new servant ?" 

Susan dropped a pretty curtsey, and said, 
mildly but firmly, that she believed she was. 

The old gentleman gave her a long keen look 
from under his thick grey eyebrows : a parental 
custom-house officer's sort of look : and said, 
" Be a good girl it's not a heavy place. Mr. 

Tompkins, take down What's your name, 

my dear, eh?" 



" Susan Smithers, if you please, sir." (A 
second curtsey.) 

" And I do please. Take down Susan, Mr. 
Tompkins, to Mrs. Thompson, and tell her to 
make her comfortable." 

" What a nice old gentleman!" said Susan, 
as she followed her nimble and good-natured 
pilot down the dark back stairs. 

"Yes, he is a good old party. That's our 
governor." 

" dear me ! What, is that Mr.Dobbs ? Well, 
he has a pleasant way with him." 

" Yes, that's the governor, no mistake about 
it." 

Susan was very warmly received by her old 
widow aunt, Mr. Dobbs's housekeeper for thirty 
years. The worthy woman was very busy 
preparing dinner, and was up to her eyes in 
potatoes, which she peeled and tossed into a pan 
of water as quickly as though she were doing it 
for a wager. In a very few minutes, Susan, 
like a good smart willing girl as she was, had 
taken off her bonnet, and washed her face and 
hands, put on a clean apron, and was ready to 
chop parsley and finish the potatoes. 

" Susan's a good sort," thought the old lady 
to herself. " She'll do. She'll be as good as gold 
to me. And how neat and handy she is, and a 
tidy looking girl too !" 

Together over the potatoes, which one by one 
splashed into the great yellow pan, the old 
aunt and her niece chatted over Colchester 
friends. 

"And how is Jane Turner? And is Miss 
Charlotte married yet ? How's brother's rheu- 
matism ?" and so on. To all of which queries 
Susan answered sensibly and sharply. All of a 
sudden she darted at her bundle that had been 
placed on a chair near the window. 

" O, dear aunt, what a stupid forgetful thing 
I've been all this time, to forget I brought 
up some clover turfs for the lark you're so 
fond of." 

w 0, how very kind, Susan, to think of poor 
Dicky ! And they are nice and fresh. O, 
they do remind one of the country, they do." 

"Let me sprinkle them, aunt, with some 
water, and give Dicky one now." 

" Do, my dear, while I get the meat down, 
for master always dines at five, and I haven't 
too much time, Susy." 

" Where is Dicky, aunt ?" 

" Why there, dear, by the back door. I put 
him there to let him have as much air as 
possible." 

Susan tripped to the back door, and there, in a 
light green cage, found the lark : no longer bright 
and quick as when sent from Colchester, but 
dingy, ruffled, and almost tailless, and with eyes 
that had now become knowing, yet spiritless. 
It was hopping on a dusty little door-mat bit of 
withered turf, and was thrusting its little grace- 
ful brown head, feverishly and restlessly, like 
Sterne's starling, through the sooty wires of its 
prison. 

A sudden sense of the confinement and 
sordidness of London city life gloomed down for 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[July 29, 1BC5.] 21 



a moment over the mind of the country girl, 
still untamed by cellar-kitchens, late hours, 
over-work, and want of exercise. But she cast it 
aside in a moment, as she would have done an 
evil thought, and laughed to kill any care or 
sorrow that hovered near. 

Susan's aunt, worthy old Mrs. Thompson, 
turned to look at her* niece, resting for a mo- 
ment on the dresser the neat fillet of veal that 
she was about to thrust into a cradle spit. 

" That's a good-hearted girl, I'm sure," she 
thought to herself. " She'll be a comfort to me 
as I go down the hill. I always found as young 
people as loves the poor dumb creatures turn 
out well, and wicey-wersy." 

In the mean time, Susan was out there in the 
little well shaft of an area, busy arranging the turf 
in the cage, which, sprinkled under the pump, 
now lifted its green blades and purple tufts of 
flowers that smelt of honey, and seemed to bring 
a certain portion of sunshine with them into that 
extremely " shady" place. The bird, bustling 
about in his little meadow, had already gathered 
new life from that pleasant reminiscence of 
freedom and the country. First, he merely darted 
to and fro, quick as a rat, and thrust his head in 
and out of the bars, like the immortal starling 
aforesaid; but presently darting to the roof, 
as if with the fullest intention of beating out 
its brains, the, poor little exile from the blue 
air and white wandering clouds, failing in that 
attempt, poured forth in grateful gladness a 
little hurricane of innocent and tender music. 

" Dicky is so pleased," said Susan, tripping 
back and kissing her aunt on the back of her 
neck, as she stooped over the encaged veal. 
" And now to tell me what sort of an old gen- 
tleman master is. Shall I be servant enough ? 
It is such a grand house, aunty." 

Mrs. Thompson sat down with the fillet of 
veal reposing on her lap as if it were a child, and 
discoursed : 

"He is a very kind, upright gentleman, is 
Mr. Dobbs, Susan, and it is a very respectable, 
comfortable place for them as choose to make it 
so. And the young men in the shop, especially 
Mr. Tompkins the foreman, are most well-be- 
haved. A little noisy and mischievous the 
younger ones, but such is life. It's a place, 
Susan, to be proud of, as I have found these 
thirty year as I've lived in the parish of St. 
Margaret-Moses." 

The veal began to turn a most delicious 
light-brown, and to weep tears of fat over 
its own inevitable fate. At sight of these 
savoury symptoms, Mrs. Thompson took down 
from a nail near the clock, an old black bonnet 
with strings never meant to tie. " I must just 
run over to Mrs. Peacock's for a moment and 
get some parsley for garnish ; watch the meat, 
there's a dear, till I return. I want to ask her 
how her husband is, for he's bad with the rheu- 
matic fever, poor dear soul. I shan't be long. 
I shall be back by four. Master always comes 
down at half-past four to wash his hands for 
dinner, and he's as regular as clockwork. Then 
he goes out to take a quiet turn in Drapers' 



Gardens or Old Jewry, to give him an appetite, 
and just as the clock strikes five you'll hear 
him knock. Good-by, dear; mind the basting, 
for that's a perfect pictur that fillet of weal is, 
though I say it as shouldn't say it. It does look 
rather dark, but I won't take my umbrella, be- 
cause the shop is only just over the corner of 
our lane. Bless me, how that dear bird do sing ! 
It's very nice, but it don't go through your head 
like a canary do." 

With such good-natured chatter the faithful 
old automaton, ignorant of all country pleasures, 
and heedless of the joys of liberty, toddled up- 
stairs on her kind errand. The front door 
slammed behind her. 



III. THE AVATAR. 

Is there in all the world any object so pleasant 
to the eye or to the mind (to see, that is, or to 
contemplate) as a fresh pure girl absorbed in a 
day-dream, lost in rosy clouds of the illimitable 
future, aping the toiling thinker, yet merely 
playing with the kaleidoscope of the young ima- 
gination ? 

How could I hope to sketch those simple 
day-dreams of Susan's ? How could I convey 
to the minds of others her glimpses of 
thatched roofs overrun with roses; of kind 
old faces watching for the postman ; of green 
lanes and tranquil churches, with the yew, 
which no centuries of sunshine can enliven, 
looking in wistfully at the windows; the 
murkier but still luminous scenes from London 
streets, across which passed processions of 
cheerful fresh-coloured young men adorned with 
white neckcloths, headed by smiling Mr. Tomp- 
kins ? All these motley visions a cuckoo-clock 
broke up by its warning clamour. 

Susah looked up as guiltily at the niddlety- 
noddlety bird bowing furiously from the clock, 
as if a policeman had suddenly entered and 
accused her of some theft. It was striking 
four o'clock, and Aunt Thompson would b.e 
back directly. Fortunately for Susan (every- 
thing seemed to go well on this lucky day) ; 
the joint had not burnt; it had gone twirling 
steadily and methodically on, resigned to its 
fate, and quite at home by this time with mis- 
fortune ; it was browning and roasting equably 
and well over the bright clean hearth, basted 
with its own juice, a patient victim to the fierce 
white heat of a rejoicing and victorious fire. 
If there were a brownie who watched over 
the kitchen of No. 16, St. Margaret-lane, that 
brownie had been there during Susan's day- 
dream, attending to the browning of that fillet 
of veal. 

The domestic fairies had been as busy as 
crickets, stirring round the potatoes, and blow- 
ing out chance angry puffs of gas which the 
evil principles sent to scorch the untended fillet. 

Ten minutes past four, and Mrs. Thompson 
not back ! No wonder ; for look, a quick fret- 
ful shower was speckling against the windows. 
The good old lady had been caught, no doubt, 
by the rain, and kept under shelter. 



22 [July 29, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



Now, it would never do, Susan thought, for 
aunt to come back and find her an idle good-for- 
nothing thing, sitting staring at the fire ; so she 
darted up, and, uncording her box, got out some 
patchwork that she was finishing for home, 
and, taking it to the window, from whence 
she could see the fire, and where the plate- 
warmer did not interrupt her view, she sat 
down on a chair and bent herself diligently at 
her work. i 

There was no sound but the click and jolt of 
the spit, the fall of an occasional coal against 
the edge of the dripping-pan, and now and then a 
little voice-performance from the lark in the 
outer area. 

On the whitewashed wall, close to the window, 
and a little to the left hand of where Susan sat 
merrily at work, there hung a little square look- 
ing-glass. All at once, as Susan's eyes glanced 
upwards from her work (for her chair was turned 
round almost facing the window), she saw 
upon its surface the reflexion of the clock- 
face, the hands of which pointed to half-past 
four. 

" Why, good gracious, what is aunt doing !" 
thought Susan. " We dine at five, and at half- 
past four master comes down to wash his hands 
before he goes his walk. dear, O dear, the 
veal will be spoiled ! Where is aunt ?" 

Then, with one look at the veal, which was 
bearing its fiery martyrdom with good-natured 
equanimity, she resumed her work again with 
somewhat restless and troubled haste. When, 
five minutes later, her eyes rose once more to 
the looking-glass (not from vanity, but by mere 
accident), she almost screamed, for she saw in 
it the reflexion of a tall neatly-dressed old 
gentleman in a blue coat and brass buttons, who 
stood at the foot of the stairs and just within 
the shadow of the doorway, his eyes bent upon 
her. 

Now, Mr. Dobbs did not turn off to the left 
and go into the scullery to wash his hands at 
the tap, as he might have been expected to do, 
but he came slowly up to the window without 
speaking. 

Susan's heart beat nineteen to the dozen. 
Was he going to scold her aunt for being out at 
such a critical time ? No ; he did not speak, 
but walked to the fire, looked at the veal, 
hemmed twice, coughed, and then returned to 
Susan's chair. The second time, he stooped, 
and lifted her hand with a grave politeness. 

" Susan," he said, " will you accept me as a 
husband ? There, don't flurry yourself ! I will 
come down again in ten minutes and hear your 
answer. Good-by till then." And up-stairs he 
went. 

While Susan still sat there, red as a damask 
rose, trembling, confused, astonished, frightened, 
the front door creaked, and down came Mrs. 
Thompson, all in a flurry. 

"O, Susan! I've been kept by a poor crea- 
ture as I saw fall in a fit just by St. Mar- 
garet-Moses. I and Mrs. Jones got him to 
the door of the milkman's at the corner, and 
undid his shirt-collar and waistcoat to give him 



air, and what should we find under his waist- 
coat but a large placard, on which was written, 
' Don't bleed me ; give me brandy-and-water ;' 
which we did, and just as he had taken it up 
came a policeman, and said he was a rogue, and 
had soap in his mouth to make it look like 
foam ; and just then the rascal gets up, leaps over 
a truck, and runs off, and Mrs. Jones " 

But Susan, unable to bear the delay any 
longer, burst out with her story : to which her 
aunt listened with staring eyes, uplifted hands, 
and open mouth. 

" It was Mr. Tompkins, depend upon it, my 
dear." 

"No, aunt, it was master it was indeed. 
I knew him, because he spoke to me in the shop 
when I came in. O, dear aunt, he'll be down 
directly ! What shall I do ?" 

** Do, dear ? Do whatever your own heart 
tells you to do. Think of your father and 
mother, and what you gain and what you sacri- 
fice. O dear me, I hope master is not going 
mad. I'll leave you, dear, and shut myself in 
the area out of hearing, and you must call me 
when he's gone. Lawks, I do think I hear him 
coming. Mind you say yes or no, or he'll be 
angry." 

Solomon himself could not have given wiser 
counsel. The good old body scuffled off to a 
retired corner of the coal-hole, and Susan, 
blushing and tremulous, settled again, or pre- 
tended to settle, to her work. 

In that swift moment what thousands of 
kind, and generous, and self-denying thoughts 
shot like express trains through Susan's little 
head ! Poor father, mother getting old, William 
Brown her old sweetheart that wild sailor 
who had ceased to write to her, and who was 
now lying at Quebec, too late repentant, crip- 
pled and penniless, sick, and perhaps dying. 
With Mr. Dobbs's .fortune, what fairy dreams 
of good she might realise. 

A voice she knew, from behind her chair, 
said: 

" Susan, will you have me for a husband ?" 

She hardly knew how to answer, but, drop- 
ping her patchwork, she answered naively, in a 
low but firm voice : 

" Yes, sir, if you please." 

Then there came a calm kiss upon her fore- 
head, and a hand clasped hers. 

" You shall never repent that word, Susan," 
said Mr. Dobbs. "I will be good and true. 
You must do no more work in this place; 
remember, you are to be my wife. Good-by, 
dearest." 

When Susan dared to look round, he was 
gone. But it was no dream, for there was the 
Slay -bough she had brought from Colchester 
blooming in the great blue jug over the mantel- 
piece. 

Susan ran and dragged Aunt Thompson out 
of the coal-cellar, and told her all : not boast- 
ingly, nor pertly, nor vainly, but with quiet 
modest satisfaction; for, after all, she well 
knew her heart would never break forth into 
such flower as it had once done, and the good 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR EOUND. 



[July 29, 1865.] 23 



fortune was still too recent and too over- 
whelming. 

How can so feeble a narrator as T, pretend to 
describe the way in which Aunt Thompson re- 
ceived the news ; how she first turned tricolor 
with surprise, then purple with delight, then 
hysterical with joy ; how she sat down and 
rocked in her chair, and then laughed and then 
cried ! As I am not writing fiction, why should 
I dilate on these obvious things ? 

The affair was kept secret for a week by Mr. 
Dobbs's wish and Aunt Thompson's advice : the 
only bad result of which secresy was, that it 
destroyed the happiness of two aspiring men 
Mr. Tompkins, and the gay rattling honest guard 
of the Colchester coach : both of whom proposed 
to Susan within the week, and both of whom 
were rejected. 

IV. THE MAREIAGE. 

Never had the important beadle of the im- 
portant parish of St. Margaret-Moses seen such 
a marriage. There were ninety-four charity boys 
and girls, with white satin favours on their left 
arms. There was bell-ringing, almost Bedlamic 
in its persistent and rejoicing jangle. There was 
a parish dinner, at which Mr. Tompkins mourn- 
fully presided, looking down between an avenue 
of twelve white ties. The chimney of No. 16 for 
a whole week smoked, and then for two whole 
days the fire-engines could not be kept from the 
house; and as for the ramonneur-men, their 
brushes waved in St. Margaret-lane as Birnam 
Wood when it came marching down on the 
doomed castle of Macbeth. No Pickford van 
came to Margaret-lane but the drivers were 
feasted on good beef and ale, so lavishly did the 
bridegroom's hospitality inundate and flood all 
that came near that locality ; at one time, in- 
deed, it was all Mr. Tompkins could do to 
prevent the twelve frantic young men in 
white ties from rushing into Cheapside, and 
offering jugs of beer to passing hackney-coach- 
men. 

Mr. Dobbs had chosen a wife late in life ; he 
had chosen a young wife from a dangerous and 
foolish impulse, and dared the radical publican 
at the The.ee Malt Shovels in Seething-lane ; 
but the radical publican was wrong, as parish 
and other politicians have indeed been known 
to be more than once. Mr. Dobbs had chosen 
late and chosen hastily, but he had chosen with 
the swift unerring instinct of a shrewd old 
brain and an old but still unchilled heart. 
He had dived into the great shoal-begirt 
sea of matrimony, and found a pearl of 
pearls. 

He affected no hurricane of passion, no sighs 
no ceaseless vows and brittle protestations 
he loved calmly, respectfully, almost pater- 
nally ; but he loved (though he was a grocer) 
as faithfully as your finest impossible lover in 
fiction. He did not flatter Susan, or weary her 
with servile adoration, but he showed her by a 
thousand ceaseless quiet attentions how much 
he loved her. When she told him of Mr. Tomp- 



kins's proposal, and thought it would be better 
he left (though she thought him a kind-hearted, 
industrious fellow), Mr. Dobbs would not hear 
of such a thing. 

" No, Susan," he said ; " there's no jealousy, 
not a grain, in me. I love you too well. And 
even if you never learned to love me, I know 
very well that you would love no other man, 
my darling ?" 

A night or two after the wedding, when Susan 
and Aunt Thompson were chatting alone on a 
seat in pleasant Drapers' Gardens, Aunt Thomp- 
son, foolishly enough, began to cry as if her 
heart was going to break. 

" Why, dear aunty, aunty, what is the 
matter ?" said Susan, fondling and kissing her 
good old cheek. 

" I'm afraid, dear I've been thinking I'm 
afraid that now you are married, and are rich 
and rolling in money, the beauty and wonder of 
all St. Margaret-Moses which you was the 
very last Sunday as ever was you'll be getting 
ashamed of poor old aunt, and be sending me 
off, for fear your new friends should think me 
ignorant, and not fit for parlour visitors, and 
out of place, and oh!" (Here Niobe be- 
came a mere drinking fountain to the Missis- 
sippi of the good old creature's grief.) 

How tenderly and softly Susan comforted 
Aunt Thompson, and kissed her, and pulled off 
her gloves, and patted her hands, and hugged 
her waist, and assured her that if the Bank of 
England got so full with dear Mr. Dobbs's 
money that they actually refused to take in 
any more of it for fear of a financial apoplexy, 
still even in that contingency she (Susan) would 
love and cherish her old aunt, who had been the 
cause of all her good fortune, and had enabled 
her to help poor William, and perhaps save his 
life! 

V. LAST SCENE OP ALL. 

In the second year of Susan's marriage she 
gave birth to a son, much to the delight of the 
whole parish of St. Margaret-Moses, and to the 
special joy of Aunt Thompson and her crony 
Mrs. Jones, now the pew-opener. Nine years 
after the marriage, old Aunt Thompson died, 
and eleven years after the marriage, Mr. Dobbs 
died. 

They were both buried in the black quiet 
little churchyard of St. Margaret-Moses. No 
pleasant trees cast wavering shadows upon their 
tombstones, but mignonette bloomed sweet 
close at hand, and sunshine came and glanced 
across the sooty boughs of the solitary plane- 
tree, and little melancholy precocious sparrows 
chirped their embryo music, and little rosy faces 
looked at the graves from between the rusty 
rails, and little voices prattled of " dood Mr. 
Dobbs," and of " dood Mrs. Thompson." And 
those words were better than sham poems and 
the lying flowers that often fall on grander 
coffins. 

One afternoon, two years later, Mr. Tompkins, 
now rather corpulent and slightly bald, blurted 
out a proposal of marriage to the rich and still 



24 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[July 29, 1S65.] 



pretty widow of the millionnaire of Margaret- 
lane. 

"No, Mr. Tompkins," said Susan, "I value you 
for your probity and your industry, and still more 
for your fidelity and attachment to my dear hus- 
band. Nor am I indifferent to this last stronger 
proof of your regard to myself personally ; but 
I shall never marry again. I shall devote the 
rest of my life to directing the education of my 
dear boy. Hereafter I shall perhaps find an 
opportunity of showing how much I value your 
services. 'For the present, good-by. Forget 
what you have just said to me, and let it be as 
if it had never been said." 

Mr. Tompkins rose, and was struggling with 
the back of his chair in oratorical agony, when 
the door burst open, and in rushed Master 
Harry Dobbs, who had been helping the servant 
to pack his trunk for Eton. 

"Ma," he said, "how many collars am I to 
take ? There are only three dozen here." 

" My dear Harry, Mr. Tompkins is talking 
business. I'll be with you directly." 

One bright afternoon, in the June of the 
same year, that eminent law lord, Lord Cante- 
lupe, whose eldest son was married the other 
day to the second daughter of the Marquis de 
Champignon, reined up the two bays that drew 
his barouche, at the door of Mrs. Dobbs, 16, 
St. Margaret-lane. 

The bell was rung. Mrs. Dobbs was at home. 
Now r , Lord Cantelupe had been an old friend of 
Mr. Dobbs, and was surprised to find the hall 
or rather dim passage, for it was no more lum- 
bered with boxes, and rolls of carpet, and cases 
of pictures. These he stopped to survey in an 
alarmed manner through a gold-framed double 
eye-glass. 

"Egad!" he said to himself, "I was only 
just in time to snap the widow. My usual luck. 
Now for it." 

In twenty minutes more, the accomplished and 
gifted orator had, with all an old wary man of 
the world's sagacity and blandness, laid down 
an impromptu carpet of verbal rose-leaves, upon 
which he had figuratively thrown himself, and 
prostrated himself, his oratory, his ermine, and 
his house in Park-row, at the feet of the pretty 
widow. 

An interval of silence ensued, as when one 
goes down in a diving-bell. Then, came a violent 
pricking in the legal ears of the accomplished 
orator. These remarkable and astounding words 
struck his noble tympanum : 

" My lord, you were such a kind friend to my 
dear husband, and have been so kind to me since 
his death, that it gives me pain to refuse the 



honour so generously proffered me, but I shall 
never marry again. I shall devote the rest of 
my life to the education of my boy Harry. I 
should not wish the world to impute mercenary 
motives to any man who took me for his wife. 
I leave this house to-morrow. I have given 
half the business to my excellent foreman, and 
have taken a house at Slough, to be near my 
boy's school." 

" Egad," said Lord Cantelupe, as he got into 
his carriage, and squeezed together (in a half 
petulant, half melancholy way) the two portions 
of his eye-glass : " no verdict in the world ever 
knocked me over half as much. Yet, by George, 
I don't know now that I won't have another 
try. What could she mean about merce- 



nary 



P 



The noble and learned lord has not yet won 
Mrs. Dobbs, Harry is a capital fellow, 'and 
the business at No. 16, Margaret-lane, flourishes 
bravely under the auspices of Tompkins. 

My story has, I know, been absurdly simple. 
No intrusive husband topplqd down a well, no 
bigamy nor trigamy, no poisoned sandwich. It 
has only been a plain unadorned narrative of 
self-denial, and of a heart that bloomed 

In the winter of its age, like Glastonbury thorn. 

It has breathed only quiet fidelity, and unobtru- 
sive affection, and sober romance. 



NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS, 

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Now publishing, Part XV., price Is., of 

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London: Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly. 



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A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
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WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. 



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HALF A MILLION OF MONEY. 

BY THE AUTHOR OF "BARBARA'S HISTORY." 



CHAPTER XXXIII. THE RIFLE MATCH. 

At half-past two, an open carriage drove up 
to the ground, and four ladies alighted. They 
were received by Lord Castletowers, handed to 
their seats, and presented with written pro- 
grammes of the games. Miss Colonna was 
installed in the central arm-chair, which, being 
placed a little in advance of the other seats 
and dignified with a footstool, was styled, mag- 
niloquently, the Throne. Scarcely had they 
taken their places, when two more carriages 
appeared upon the scene, the first of which con- 
tained Lady Arabella Walkingshaw and Miss 
Hatherton, and the second, Mrs. Cadogan, the 
wife of the Sedgebrook vicar, and her two 
daughters. The latter, hearing down in the 
village what was doing in the park, had come 
over to see the sports; but Lady Arabella's 
visit was made.in exclusive pursuance of her own 
little game, and bore no kind of reference to any 
game that might be set on foot by other people. 
She was, therefore, rather put out than other- 
wise when, instead of finding Lady Castletowers 
at home, she was informed that " my lady was 
gone across the park to see the gentlemen race, 
and had left word, if any friends called at the 
house, that there would be seats for them, if 
they liked to follow." Miss Hatherton, how- 
ever, was delighted. 

" It's perfectly charming," said she, as they 
turned down the drive leading to that part of 
the park indicated by the servant. " You can- 
not think how pleased I am, Lady Arabella !" 

" Well, my dear, then I am pleased too," re- 
plied Lady Arabella, benevolently. 

"There's nothing I enjoy so much as contests 
of this kind," Miss Hatherton went on to say. 
"Boat-races, horse-races, reviews, anything, so 
long as skill, strength, or speed is in question. 
Why, I haven't missed a Derby-day for the last 
five years ; and as for the Roman Carnival, the 
only thing I care for in it is the horse-race. I'm 
always sorry the Jews don't run instead. It 
would be so much more amusing." 

" You droll creature !" said Lady Arabella, 
with a faint smile. " I wonder if Mr. Trefalden 
will take part in these games ?" 

" Of course he will and win all before him. 
He's as fleet as a chamois, depend on it." 



" I hope they won't fire," said Lady Arabella, 
with a little lady-like shudder. 

" And I hope, above all things, that they will. 
But then, you know, dear Lady Arabella, I have 
no nerves. Why, this is delightful there's 
quite a crowd!" 

And so there was. News is contagious, and 
propagates itself as mysteriously as the potato 
disease. The whole neighbourhood had already 
heard, somehow or another, of what was doing 
at the park ; and every farmer, gamekeeper, and 
idle fellow about the place, was on the ground 
long before the hour appointed. As for the 
women and children, nothing short of Polygamy 
could account for their numbers. 

"Lady Arabella Walkingshaw and Miss 
Hatherton !" said Lord Castletowers, hastening 
to the carriage door as they drove up. " This is 
indeed a happy accident. You have been to the 
house, I suppose, to call upon my mother." 

" We have ; but with no idea that we were 
coming to a a fete of this kind," replied Lady 
Arabella, somewhat at a loss for the most ap- 
propriate word, and exchanging bows and 
gracious smiles with the ladies on the platform. 

"Why did you not tell us about it last 
evening, you sly man ?" asked Miss Hatherton. 

"Because I then knew no more about it than 
yourself," replied the Earl. " It is an impro- 
visation." 

" And what are you going to do r" 

" A little of everything rifle-shooting, leap- 
ing, running ; but you shall have a programme 
presently, and if you will alight, I can give you 
seats beside my mother." 

With this he gave his arm to Lady Arabella, 
and conducted both ladies to the place of 
honour. 

" But where are the competitors ?" said Miss 
Hatherton, when the due greetings had been 
exchanged, and they had taken their seats ; " and 
above all, where's my friend, the noble savage P" 

"Trefalden? Oh, he's in our tent, out 
yonder. This affair was his idea entirely." 

" And an admirable idea too. But he'll beat 
you, you know." 

" He would, if he came forward," replied the 
Earl ; " but he declines to compete." 

" Declines to compete !" echoed the heiress. 

" Yes for everything except the last race 
and that we all go in for." 

" I never heard of such a thing !" exclaimed 
Miss Hatherton, indignantly. "Why, it's as if 



VOL. XIV. 



328 



26 [August 5, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



the favourite was withdrawn at the last moment 
from the Derby and I, too, who had intended to 
back him to any extent ! I declare I was never 
more disappointed in my life. What's his 
motive ?" 

"He said he was out of practice," replied 
Castletowers, hesitatingly. 

"Nonsense. That wasn't his real motive. 
He knew nobody else would have a chance, and 
he was too generous to carry off all the 
honours." 

" Do you really think so ?" said Miss Colonna, 
suddenly. She had listened to the conversation 
till now, without taking part in it. 

" I do, indeed. What does Lord Castletowers 
say ?" 

" I say that Miss Hatherton is right ; and I 
know her to be right. Trefalden could write his 
name in bullets on that target, if he chose but 
he won't." 

Miss Hatherton turned to Miss Colonna in a 
glow of enthusiasm. 

" That's true nobleness !" she exclaimed. 

"Indeed it is," said Castletowers. "He's 
the finest fellow I have ever known, savage or 
civilised." 

But Miss Colonna said nothing. 

"I wish you'd bring him this way, Lord 
Castletowers," said the heiress. " I like talking 
to him he amuses me immensely." 

" You shall have him by-and-by," laughed the 
Earl ; " but he is our judge in the rifle-matches, 
and can't be spared at present. Excuse me 
another carriage full of ladies. I am master of 
the ceremonies." 

And with this he ran off to receive the 
Cadogans. 

The appointed hour being overpast, _ the 
ladies expectant, and the audience consider- 
able, it was decided that they should begin. 

Lord Castletowers was seen to cross the 
course, and enter the cricketing tent at the 
further end, whence he presently emerged with 
his cartridge-box belted on, and his rifle in 
his hand. He was followed by five others, 
similarly equipped. Saxon Trefalden, in his 
quality as judge, took up a safe position to 
the right of the target. Miss Hatherton sur- 
veyed them through her opera-glass as they 
came over the ground and placed themselves 
about a dozen yards off with their backs to the 
stand. 

" Dear me ! they are very near us," said Lady 
Arabella, with that pretty timidity that is 
less charming at eight-and-forty than at 
eighteen. " I hope it is not dangerous." 

"Don't be alarmed, my dear friend," said 
Miss Hatherton. " Gentlemen don't generally 
fire behind their own backs. So, Major Yaughan 
begins and a very good shot, too very near 
the bull's eye. Who is that remarkably hand- 
some fair man to the right ?" 

The question was addressed to Miss Colonna ; 
but it received no reply. Olimpia heard the 
words, as she heard the report of the first rifle, 
without attaching any import to the sound, just 
as her eyes were fixed upon the target, but saw 



nothing. She was absorbed in thought very 
painful thought, as it would seem, by the strange 
hard way in which her lips were drawn together, 
and her fingers were mechanically twisting and 
tearing the programme which they held. 

Miss Hatherton turned to repeat the inquiry; 
but, seeing the expression on Olimpia's face, re- 
mained silent. It was an expression that startled 
her, andpuzzled her as much as it startled her. 
An expression such as one sees but seldom in 
the course of an ordinary life ; neither wholly 
resolute, nor hopeless, nor defiant ; but a blend- 
ing, perhaps, of all three, with something else 
that might have been compunction or despair. 

Curiosity so far prevailed, that for some three 
or four seconds Miss Hatherton continued to 
stare at Olimpia instead of watching the com- 
petitors, and thus, to her infinite mortification, 
lost the thread of the firing. Of course, none of 
the ladies on the platform could help her. They 
saw the riflemen, and they saw the marks on the 
target ; but not one among them had the dim- 
mest idea of the order in which those marks had 
been dealt, or of the hands that had bestowed 
them. The appointed number of rounds, how- 
ever, having been fired out, the question was set 
at rest by the announcement that Sir Charles 
Burgoyne had carried off the .first prize. Sir 
Charles Burgoyne sauntered up accordingly to 
the front of the platform, and received the cup 
from Miss Colonna's hand with the best-bred 
indifference in the world. 

" You don't share my passion for these con- 
tests, Miss Colonna," said the heiress, in the 
pause that ensued between the first and second 
match. The strange look had vanished from 
Olimpia's face long since ; but Miss Hatherton 
could not forget it would have given some- 
thing to fathom it. 

" Indeed you mistake. I think them very in- 
teresting," replied Olimpia. 

"But of course they cannot have so much 
interest for you as for me. Your sympathies 
are bound up in a great cause, and you must 
have fewer small emotions on hand." 

"Perhaps," said Olimpia, with a forced 
smile. 

" No bad news from Italy, I hope ?" 

" The news at present," replied Olimpia, " is 
neither bad nor good. It is a season of anxious 
suspense for all whose hearts are in the cause." 

" You look anxious," said Miss Hatherton, 
kindly, but inquisitively. " I thought just now 
I never saw a face look so anxious as yours. 
You didn't seem to remark the firing at all." 

A crimson tide rushed to Olimpia's face, 
flooded it, and ebbed away, leaving her paler 
than before. 

"I am quite strong enough," she replied, 
coldly, " to sustain such cares as fall to my lot." 

The competitors for the second rifle-match 
were now on the ground, and the conversation 
dropped. There were but four this time 
Lord Castletowers, Sir Charles Burgoyne, Major 
Vaughan, and Lieutenant Torrington. Having 
five shots each, they fired alternately, one shot at 
| a time, in their order as they stood Yaughan 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR HOUND. 



[August 5, 18G5.] 2i 



first, Torrington second, Castletowers third, and 
Burgoyne fourth. It became evident, after the 
first two rounds, that Vaughan, although a good 
marksman, was inferior to both Castletowers 
and Burgoyne, and that Torrington was nowhere. 
Miss Hatherton and Miss Colonna were the 
only two ladies who could follow the shots, or 
understand the scoring; and this they did with 
a degree of interest quite incomprehensible to 
the rest. As the end drew near, and it became 
evident that the victory lay between Burgoyne 
and the Earl, Miss Hatherton's excitement be- 
came intense. 

" Ten to one on Lord Castletowers," she ex- 
claimed. "See how cool he is! See how 
steadily he brings up his gun ten to one, 

gloves or guineas Will nobody take me? 

In the white, I vow, and all but in the very 
centre ! Beat that, Sir Charles, if you can !" 

" He will not beat it," said Olimpia, in a low, 
earnest voice. 

Miss Hatherton glanced at her again; but 
scarcely for a second. She was too deeply in- 
terested in the next shot to care much about 
anything else just then. But she saw Olimpia's 
parted lips, and the outlooking light in her eyes, 
and thought of both afterwards. 

Up to this point, Lord Castletowers had 
scored four three times, and three twice, making 
a total of eighteen. Sir Charles had scored four 
twice, and three twice, making a total of four- 
teen. The next shot would be his fifth, and 
last. If he hit the bull's eye, it would be a 
drawn game between Castletowers and himself, 
and they would have to try again for the victory ; 
but if he scored anything less than four, the 
Earl must win. 

There was a moment of suspense. Sir Charles 
brought up his gun very slowly, took aim twice 
before he fired, and delivered an excellent shot 
just on, the line dividing the bull's eye from the 
centre ring. He had lost by the sixteenth of 
an inch. 

The spectators round the ropes set up a faint 
respectful shout in their squire's honour; the 
non-competitors rushed up to the target ; and 
Saxon, too well pleased to care for the moment 
whether Burgoyne heard him or not, shook his 
friend by both hands, exclaiming : 

"I am so glad, Castletowers so heartily 
glad ! I did wish you to win those pistols 1" 

Olimpia's smile was cold and indifferent 
enough when the Earl presented himself to re- 
ceive his prize; but Miss Hatherton's sharp 
eyes saw that her hand trembled. 

CHAPTER XXXIV. A GUEEDON. 

The long jump was jumped, and the hundred 
yards race was run Mr. Guy Greville winning 
the first by four inches, and Major Yaughan 
the second by four yards. Only the great race 
remained to be contested. In the mean while, 
half an hour was allowed for rest and refresh- 
ments. The gentlemen thronged to the plat- 
form in a mongrel costume compounded of 
flannel trousers, cricketing-shoes, parti-coloured 
Jerseys, and overcoats of various descriptions ; 



in firing, 



so that they looked like cricketing men below 
and boating men above. Servants glided 
solemnly about with Madeira and biscuits. The 
ladies congratulated the victors, and the victors 
congratulated each other. The spectators out- 
side the ropes strolled about respectfully, and 
did a little subdued betting among themselves ; 
and the conversation on the platform was broken 
up into coteries. One of these consisted of 
Lady Arabella Walkingshaw, Lady Castletowers, 
and her son. 

" Vaughan ran well, didn't he ?" said the 
Earl. " I thought at one moment that Greville 
would have distanced him ; but Yaughan had 
the most wind, and steady did it." 

"You would do well, Gervase, to reserve 
your sporting phraseology for your male friends," 
said Lady Castletowers, coldly. " You forget 
that ladies do not appreciate its full point and 
vigour." 

" I beg your pardon, my dear mother ; but it 
comes so naturally when sport is the topic of 
conversation," replied her son. " I hope you 
are amused, Lady Arabella ?" 

" Oh yes, thank you when you don't fire." 
There is, at all events, nothing undignified 

observed the Countess. 
I hope you do not think our athletic games 
undignified, mother ?" said the Earl. 

"tor gentlemen, certainly. For boys, or 
peasants, not at all." 

" But a gentleman has as many and as good 
muscles as a peasant. A gentleman values 
strength and speed as much, and sometimes 
more, than he values Greek and Latin; but, 
like Greek and Latin, strength and speed must 
be kept up by frequent exercise." 

" I have no wish to argue the question," said 
Lady Castletowers. " It is enough that I set a 
higher value on skill than force, and that it 
gives me no gratification to see half a dozen 
gentlemen racing round a piece of sward for the 
entertainment of a mob of gamekeepers and 
ploughmen." 

" Nay for our own entertainment and yours, 
dearest mother," replied the young man, gently. 
" We have never yet shut our park gates on 
these good people ; but their presence goes for 
nothing in what we do to-day." 

He spoke very deferentially, but with a faint 
flush of annoyance on his face, and passed on to 
where Miss Hatherton was chatting with Saxon 
Trefalden. 

" It will be a long time," she said, " before I 
can forgive you for my disappointment of this 
morning. And I know I am right. You could 
have beaten everybody at everything, if you had 
pleased. It was an absurd piece of Quixotism, 
and I am very angry with you for it. There 
don't attempt to deny it. " Lord Castletowers 
has confessed, and it is of no use for you to plead 
not guilty." 

" Lord Castletowers never saw me leap a foot 
or run a yard in his life," said Saxon, em- 
phatically. " He knows nothing of what I can, 
or cannot do." 

" I am here to answer for myself," said the 



28 [August 5, 1S05.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



Earl, laying his hand on his friend's shoulder. 
"And I do know that you can put a bullet 
through a shifting weathercock at five hundred 
yards." 

u A mere trick !" 

"Not so. Skill is no more to be confounded 
with trickery than pocket-picking with legerde- 
main. I am of Miss Hatherton's opinion, and 
am certain you could have beaten us all round 
if you had chosen to take the trouble." 

"You will find out your mistake presently, 
when you have all left me in the rear," said 
Saxon, a little impatiently; "I would recom- 
mend no one to bet upon me." 

"I mean to bet upon you, Mr. Trefalden," 
said Miss Hatherton. 

" Pray don't ; you will be sure to lose your 
money." 

"I don't believe it ; or if T do, I shall call 
upon you to pay my debts, for I shall be certain 
you have lagged behind on purpose." 

At this moment one or two of the others 
came up, and the conversation turned upon the 
preceding contests. 

"Mr. Trefalden," said Miss Colonna, "will 
you be kind enough to tell me how many times 
you have to make the circuit of the ground, in 
this one-mile race ? " 

Miss Colonna's chair stood next to Miss 
Hatherton's, but was placed about half a foot in 
advance, by right of her prerogative. As she 
turned to address him, Saxon dropped out of 
the heiress's coterie, and, moving round by the 
back of her chair, replied : 

" Exactly six times, mademoiselle." 

" Will you come round to this side, Mr. Tre- 
falden ?" said Olimpia, in a low tone ; " I have 
something to say to you." 

Not without some vague sense of surprise, the 
young man passed on behind the second chair, and 
presented himself at Miss Colonna's left hand. 

"You are really going to contest this one- 
mile race, are you not ?" she asked. 

"I have entered my name with the rest," 
replied Saxon. 

" Then you mean, of course, to win if you 
can?" 

Saxon looked embarrassed. 

" I have entered my name," he said, " but I 
am not sure that I shall run, for all that. 
Somebody must act as judge ; and I prefer not 
to race if I can help it." 

"But I particularly prefer that you should 
race, Mr. Trefalden," said Olimpia, dropping 
her voice to a still lower key ; " I want you to 
win me that purse of twenty guineas for my 
dear Italy." 

"It will be yours, and Italy's, mademoiselle, 
whoever wins it." 

"I know that, Mr. Trefalden." 

" Then what difference can it make whether 
I, or another, carry off the prize ?" said Saxon, 
wonderingly. 

" It does make a difference," replied Olimpia, 
lifting her eyes suddenly to his. 

Saxon felt fluttered, without knowing why. 

"What difference?" faltered he. 



"Must I tell you?" 
" If if you please." 
"Will you promise to win for me, if I do tell 



you 



?" 



" I don't know I will try." 

" I ask no more than that. If you really try, 
I am confident of victory. Well then, I want 
you to win because I suppose, because I am 
a woman ; and all women are capricious." 

Saxon looked puzzled. 

" I don't think you are capricious," he said. 

"Do you not? Then I am afraid that is 
because you are a man ; and all men are vain. 
There is a pair of maxims for you." 

" Maxims for which I can discover no appli- 
cation," replied Saxon, laughingly. " Why 
should I be accused of vanity because I refuse 
to believe that Mademoiselle Colonna is guilty 
of caprice ?" 

" I am afraid you are very dull to-day, Mr. 
Trefalden, or very subtle." 

" I know I am not subtle," said Saxon ; " but 
I must be dreadfully duli." 

"If your feet do not outstrip your appre- 
hension, you will scarcely win the cup. What 
bell is that ? " _ 

"It's the signal for assembling," replied 
Saxon; "I must go now; and you have not 
told me, after all." 

" But you have promised me that you will 
try." 

"No, no my promise was conditional on 
your explanation." 

"But have I not told you that women are 
capricious ?" 

"What of that?" 

"We sometimes value a cowslip from one 
hand more than a rose from another ; and 
and perhaps I am so capricious as to prefer the 
Italian prize from yours. Hark ! there is the 



second bell ! Now, 



and bring me back the 



purse. 

The tone in which this was said the gesture, 
half persuasive, half imperious the dazzling 
smile by which it was accompanied, were more 
than enough to turn an older head than Saxon 
Trefalden's. He stammered something, he 
scarcely knew what ; and his heart leaped, he 
scarcely knew why. 

"If you do not go at once," said Miss 
Colonna, " you will be too late. Shall I give 
you my glove for a favour ? Be a true knight, 
and deserve it." 

Breathless, intoxicated, the young man pressed 
the glove furtively to his lips, thrust it into his 
bosom, leaped down upon the course, and flew 
to take his place among the runners. He felt 
as if his feet were clad in the winged sandals of 
Hermes ; as if his head touched the clouds, and 
the very air were sunshine. It was delightful, 
this sense of exaltation and rapture and 
quite new. 

Not so, however, felt Olimpia Colonna. 
Saxon had no sooner leaped from the platform, 
than the colour died out suddenly from her face, 
and the smile from her lips. She leaned back 
in her chair with a look of intense pain and 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 5, 1S65.J 29 



weariness, and sighed heavily. There were 
three persons observing her ; but her thoughts 
were very bitter at that moment, and she 
was quite unconscious of their scrutiny. Those 
persons were Lady Castletowers ; Signor 
Colonna, who had but just arrived, and was 
leaning on the back of her chair; and Miss 
Hatherton and neither the look of pain, nor 
the sigh, was lost on either of them. 



HEAT AND WORK.* 

In his treatise, Heat considered as a mode of 
Motion, Professor Tyndall shows that heat is ex- 
pended whenever work is done. After demon- 
strating by experiment that, where mechanical 
force is expended, heat is produced, he brings 
before us the converse experiment, and shows 
us the consumption of heat in mechanical work. 

He exhibits to his audience a strong vessel 
filled with compressed air. It has been so 
compressed for some hours, in order that the 
temperature of the air within the vessel may 
be the same as that' of the air in the room 
without. At that moment, then, the inner air 
was pressing against the sides of the vessel; 
and, if he opened the tap, a portion of the 
air would rush violently out of the vessel. 
The word "rush," however, but vaguely ex- 
presses the true state of things. The air which 
issues, is driven out by the air behind it ; this 
latter accomplishes the work of urging forward 
the stream 1 of air. And what will be the condi- 
tion of the working air during this process ? It 
will be chilled, it performs mechanical work ; 
and the only agent it can call upon to perform 
it, is the heat which it possesses, and to which 
the elastic force with which it presses against 
the sides of the vessel, is entirely due. A portion 
of this heat will be consumed, and the air will 
be chilled. It is so, on carrying out the experi- 
ment. The tap is turned, and the current of 
air from the vessel is allowed to strike against 
the face of the thermo-electric pile the most 
delicate and demonstrative of thermometers. The 
magnetic needle instantly responds, declaring 
that the pile has been chilledhy the current of air. 
The effect is different when air is urged from 
the nozzle of a common bellows against the pile. 
In the last experiment, the mechanical work of 
urging the air forward was performed by the air 
itself, and a portion of its heat was consumed in 
the effort. In the case of the bellows, it is the 
experimenter's muscles which perform the work. 
He raises the upper board of the bellows, and 
the air rushes in ; he presses the boards with a 
certain force, and the air rushes out. The ex- 
pelled air, striking the face of the pile, has its 
motion stopped ; and an amount of heat equiva- 
lent to the destruction of this motion is instantly 
generated. When a current of air is directed 
with the bellows against the pile, the motion of 
the needle shows that the face of the pile has, in 
this instance, been warmed by the air. 

Again : to prove the chilling effect of work 



* See Is Heat Motion ? page 534 in the last volume. 



done, even by so slightly-built a labourer as gas, 
the Professor takes a bottle of soda-water, which 
is shown to be a trifle warmer than the pile. He 
cuts the string which holds the cork, and it is 
driven out by the elastic force of the carbonic 
acid gas. The gas performs work ; in so doing, 
it consumes heat ; and the deflection of the 
needle produced by the bottle shows that it has 
become colder. A simple detail of daily life, 
an operation with which every child is familiar, 
allows the lecturer to illustrate principles from 
which all material phenomena flow. That it is 
not the expansion, but the work, which pro- 
duces the chill, is proved by allowing compressed 
air, from one vessel, to pass into another from 
which the air has been exhausted. No work 
having to be done, there is no change of 
temperature. Mere rarefaction, therefore, is 
not of itself sufficient to produce a lowering 
of the mean temperature of a mass of air. 
It was, and still is, a current notion that the 
mere expansion of a gas produces refrigeration, 
no matter how that expansion may be effected. 
The coldness of the higher atmospheric regions 
was accounted for by reference to the expan- 
sion of the air. But the refrigeration which ac- 
companies expansion is really due to the con- 
sumption of heat in the performance of work. 
Where no work is performed, there is no abso- 
lute refrigeration. The simple experiment of 
allowing a leaden ball to fall from the ceiling to 
the floor, shows that heat is generated by the 
sudden stoppage of the motion.- This affords an 
opportunity of telling how the "mechanical 
equivalent" of heat has been calculated. 

It is found that the quantity of heat which 
would raise one pound of water one degree Fah- 
renheit in temperature, is exactly equal to what 
would be generated if a pound weight, after 
having fallen through a height of seven hundred 
and seventy-two feet, had its moving force 
destroyed by collision with the earth. Con- 
versely, the amount of heat necessary to raise 
a pound of water one degree in temperature, 
would, if all applied mechanically, be competent 
to raise a pound weight seven hundred and 
seventy-two feet high ; or, it would raise seven 
hundred and seventy-two pounds, one foot high. 
The term " foot-pound" has therefore been in- 
troduced to express in a convenient way the 
lifting of one pound to the height of a foot. 
Thus, the quantity of heat necessary to raise 
the temperature of a pound of water one degree 
Fahrenheit being taken as a standard, seven 
hundred and seventy-two foot-pounds constitute 
what is called the mechanical equivalent of heat. 
For every stroke of work done by the steam- 
engine, for every pound that it lifts, and for 
every wheel that it sets in motion, an equivalent 
quantity of heat disappears. A ton of coal 
furnishes by its combustion a certain definite 
amount of heat. Let this quantity of coal be 
applied to work a steam-engine ; and let all the 
heat communicated to the machine and the con- 
denser, and all the heat lost by radiation and 
by contact with the air, be collected ; it will 
fall short of the quantity produced by the simple 



30 [August 5, 1S65.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted bv 



combustion of the ton of coal, by an amount 
exactly equivalent to the work performed. Sup- 
pose that work to consist in lifting a weight of 
seven thousand seven hundred and twenty 
pounds a foot high ; the heat produced by the 
coal would fall short of its maximum by a 
quantity just sufficient to warm a pound of 
water ten degrees Fahrenheit. In an elaborate 
series of experiments, executed with extra- 
ordinary assiduity and on a grand scale by M. 
Him, a civil engineer at Colmar, this theoretic 
deduction has been reduced to fact. 

In earthly, and we may add in planetary, 
affairs, the sun is the great worker who keeps 
the whole business of life and action going. It 
has been asserted that there is no life in certain 
planets. A few years ago, Dr. Whewell wrote 
a book to prove that the more distant planets 
of our system are uninhabitable. Applying the 
law of inverse squares to their distances from 
the sun, the diminution of temperature was 
found to be so great as to preclude the possi- 
bility of human life in the more remote members 
of the solar system. But not to mention the 
hazardous task of attempting to prove a nega- 
tive the influence of an atmospheric envelope 
was overlooked in those calculations. The 
omission vitiates the whole argument. It is 
perfectly possible to find an atmosphere which 
would act the part of a barb to the solar rays, 
permitting their entrance towards the planet, 
but preventing their withdrawal. For example, 
Professor Tyndall tells us, a layer of air only 
two inches in thickness, and saturated with the 
vapour of sulphuric ether, would offer very 
little resistance to the passage of the solar rays, 
but would cut off fully thirty-five per cent of 
the planetary radiation. It would require no 
inordinate thickening of the layer of vapour to 
double this absorption ; and it is evident that, 
with a protecting envelope which permits heat 
to enter but prevents its escape, a comfortable 
temperature might be obtained on the surface 
of our most distant planet. 

It is the presence of a protective atmosphere 
that renders the earth itself habitable; and 
in regions where it is so modified by the ab- 
sence of aqueous vapour as to lose its pro- 
tective power, man cannot live. One cause 
of the coldness of high mountain-tops, is their 
being lifted beyond the protection of the layer 
of moist air which lies close to the earth. The 
withdrawal of sunshine from any region over 
which the atmosphere is dry, must be followed 
by quick refrigeration. The moon would be 
rendered entirely uninhabitable by beings like 
ourselves, through the operation of this single 
cause. With a radiation uninterrupted by 
aqueous vapour, the difference between her 
monthly maxima and minima of temperature 
must be enormous. The winters of Thibet are 
almost unendurable, from the same cause. 
Humboldt dwelt upon the "frigorific power" of 
the central portions of the Asiatic continent, 
and controverted the idea that it w r as to be 
explained by. reference to their elevation ; there 
being vast expanses of country, not much above 



the sea level, with an exceedingly low tempera- 
ture. He did not seem to be aware of this one 
most important cause which contributes to the 
observed result. The absence of the sun at 
night causes powerful refrigeration when the 
air is dry. The removal, for a single summer 
night, of the aqueous vapour from the atmo- 
sphere which covers England, would be attended 
by the destruction of every plant which a 
freezing temperature could kill. In Sahara, 
where " the soil is fire and the wind is flame/' the 
refrigeration at night is often painful to bear. 
Ice has been formed in this region at night. 
In Australia also, the diurnal range of tempera- 
ture is very great, amounting, commonly, to 
between forty and fifty degrees. In short, it 
may be safely predicted that, wherever the air 
is dry, the daily thermometric range will be great. 
This, however, is quite different from saying that 
where the aiicisclear, the thermometric range will 
be great. Great clearness as to light is perfectly 
compatible with great opacity as to heat. The 
atmosphere may be charged with aqueous 
vapour, while a deep blue sky is overhead ; and 
on such occasions the terrestrial radiation would, 
notwithstanding the * clearness," be intercepted. 
It is consequently impossible for any one on 
earth to be sure that the distant planets are 
uninhabitable, and that the sun cannot be to 
them, as to us, a vivifyer as well as a worker. 

Years ago, Sir John Herschel wrote : *' The 
sun's rays are the ultimate source of almost 
every motion which takes place on the surface 
of the earth. By its heat are produced all 
winds, and those disturbances in the electrical 
equilibrium of the atmosphere which give rise 
to the phenomena of lightning, and probably 
also to terrestrial magnetism and the Aurora. 
By their vivifying action vegetables are enabled 
to draw support from inorganic matter, and 
become in their turn the support of animals and 
man, and the source of those deposits of 
dynamical efficiency which are laid up for human 
use in our coal strata. By them the waters of 
the sea are made to circulate in vapour through 
the air, and irrigate the land, producing springs 
and rivers. By them are produced all dis- 
turbances of the chemical equilibrium of the ele- 
ments of nature; which, by a series of compo- 
sitions and decompositions, originate new pro- 
ducts and a transfer of materials." 

Professor Tyndall applies the new philosophy 
to illustrate and expand Herschel's proposition. 
He reminds us that late discoveries have taught 
that winds and rivers have their definite thermal 
values; and that, in order to produce their 
motion, an equivalent amount of solar heat has 
been consumed. While they exist as winds and 
rivers, the heat expended in producing thein has 
ceased to exist as heat, being converted into 
mechanical motion; but when that motion is 
arrested, the heat which produced it is restored. 
A river, in descending from an elevation of 
seven thousand seven hundred and twenty feet, 
generates an amount of heat competent to 
augment its own temperature ten degrees 
Fahrenheit. This amount of heat has been ab- 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 5, 1SC3.] 3]. 



stracted from the sun, in order to lift the matter 
of the river to the elevation from which it falls. 

As long as the river continues on the heights, 
whether in the solid form as a glacier, or in the 
liquid form as a lake, the heat expended by the 
sun in lifting it has disappeared from the 
universe. It has been consumed in the act of 
lifting. But, at the moment when the river starts 
upon its downward course, and encounters the 
resistance of its bed, the heat expended in its 
elevation begins to be restored. 

The mental eye can follow the emission of heat 
from its source, the sun, through the ether, as 
vibratory motion, to the ocean, where it ceases to 
be vibration, taking " the potential form" among 
the molecules of aqueous vapour ; and also to 
the mountain-top, where the heat absorbed in 
vaporisation is given out in condensation, while 
that expended by the sun in lifting the water to 
that elevation is still unrestored. This we find 
paid back, to the last unit, by the friction along 
the river's bed ; at the bottom of the cascades 
where the plunge of the torrent is suddenly 
arrested ; in the warmth of the machinery turned 
by the river ; in the spark from the millstone ; 
beneath the crusher of the miner ; in the Alpine 
saw-mill ; in the milk-churn of the chalet ; in the 
supports of the cradle rocking the mountaineer's 
baby to sleep by water-power. All these forms 
of mechanical motion are simply the parcelling 
out of an amount of calorific motion derived 
originally from the sun. At each point at which 
the mechanical motion is destroyed or dimi- 
nished, it is the sun's heat which is restored. . 

There are other motions and other energies 
whose relations are not so obvious. Trees and 
vegetables grow upon the earth ; when burned 
they give rise to heat, from which immense 
quantities of mechanical energy are derived. 
What is the source of this energy ? 

To answer the question, Professor Tyndall 
shows his audience (or his readers) some iron 
rust, which they can plainly see, produced by 
the falling together of the atoms of iron and 
oxygen, and also some transparent carbonic acid 
gas, which they cannot see, formed by the union 
of carbon and oxygen. The atoms, thus respec- 
tively united, resemble a weight that has fallen 
from a height and is lying on the ground. But 
exactly as the weight can be wound up again 
and prepared for another fall, even so those 
atoms can be wound up, separated from each 
other, and enabled to repeat the process of com- 
bination. In the building up of plants, carbonic 
acid is the material from which the carbon of 
the plant is derived, while water is the sub- 
stance from which it obtains its hydrogen. The 
solar beam winds up the weight ; it is the agent 
which severs the atoms, setting the oxygen free, 
and allowing the carbon and the hydrogen to 
aggregate in woody fibre. It is at the expense 
of the solar light that the chemical decomposi- 
tion takes place. Without the sun, the reduc- 
tion of the carbonic acid and water cannot be 
effected; and, in this act, an amount of solar 
energy is consumed, exactly equivalent to the 
molecular work done. 



If the sun's rays fall upon a surface of sand, 
the sand is heated, and finally radiates away as 
much heat as it receives. But let the same 
beams fall upon a forest ; the quantity of heat 
then given back is less than that received, for a 
portion of the sunbeams is invested in the build- 
ing of the trees. It is not the shade alone 
which renders the forest cool ; heat is absorbed 
and appropriated, as well as intercepted by the 
leaves and* branches as they grow. 

Combustion is the reversal of this process ; 
and all the energy invested in a plant reappears 
as heat when the plant is burned. Ignite a bit 
of cotton; it bursts into flame. The oxygen 
again unites with its carbon, and an amount of 
heat is given out, equal to that originally sacri- 
ficed by the sun to form the bit of cotton. So 
also as regards the " deposits of dynamical 
efficiency" laid up in our coal strata ; they are 
simply the sun's rays in a " potential form." 
We dig from our pits, annually, eighty-four 
millions of tons of coal, the mechanical equiva- 
lent of which, is of almost fabulous vastness. 
The combustion of a single pound of coal in one 
minute, is equal to the work of three hundred 
horses for the same time. It would require one 
hundred and eight millions of horses, working 
day and night with unimpaired strength for a 
year, to perform an amount of work equivalent 
to the energy which the sun of the Carboniferous 
epoch invested in one year's produce of our 
coal-pits. Dean Swift made an egregious 
blunder when he ridiculed the philosopher of 
the Flying Island who searched for the sun- 
beams hidden in cucumbers. 

The further we pursue this subject, the Pro- 
fessor here remarks, the more its interest and 
wonder grow upon us. He had already shown 
how a sun may be produced by the mere exercise 
of gravitating force ; that, by the collision of 
cold dark planetary masses, the light and heat of 
our central orb, and also of the fixed stars, may 
be obtained. But here we find the physical 
powers, derived or derivable from the action of 
gravity upon dead matter, introducing them- 
selves at the root of the question of vitality. 
We find in solar light and heat, the very main- 
spring of vegetable life. Nor can we halt at the 
vegetable world ; for the sun, mediately or im- 
mediately, is the source of all animal life. Some 
animals feed directly on plants, others feed on 
their herbivorous fellow-creatures ; but all in 
the long run derive life and energy from the 
vegetable world; all, therefore, as Helmholtz 
has remarked, may trace their lineage to the 
sun. In the animal body, the carbon and_ hy- 
drogen of the vegetable are again brought into 
contact with the oxygen from which they had 
been divorced, and which is now supplied by the 
lungs. Reunion takes place, and animal heat is 
the result. Save as regards intensity, there is 
no difference between the combustion that thus 
goes on within us, and that of an ordinary fire. 
The products of combustion are in both cases 
the same carbonic acid and water. 

Looking then at the physics of the question, 
we see that the formation of a vegetable is a pro- 



32 [August 5, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



cess of winding up, while the formation of an 
animal is a process of running down. This is 
the rhythm of nature as applied to animal and 
vegetable life. Plants are the economisers, ani- 
mals are the spendthrifts, of vital energy de- 
rived from the sun. 

Measured by human standards, writes Dr. 
Mayer, the sun is an inexhaustible source of 
physical energy. This is the continually wound- 
up spring which is the cause of all terrestrial 
activity. The vast amount of force sent by the 
earth into space in the form of wave motion 
(radiation) would soon bring its surface to the 
temperature of death. But the light of the 
sun is an incessant compensation. It is the 
sun's light, converted into heat, which sets our 
atmosphere in motion, which raises the water 
into clouds, and thus causes the rivers to flow. 
The heat developed by friction in the wheels of 
our wind and water mills, was sent from the sun 
to the earth in the form of vibratory motion. 

Nature stores up the light which streams 
earthward from the sun converting the most 
volatile of all powers into a rigid form, and 
thus preserving it for her purposes by means 
of plants. The vegetable world constitutes the 
reservoir in which the fugitive solar rays are 
fixed, suitably deposited, and rendered ready for 
useful application. With this process the exist- 
ence of the human race is inseparably con- 
nected. The physical force collected by plants 
becomes the property of another class of crea- 
tures of animals. The living animal com- 
bines combustible substances belonging to the 
vegetable world, and causes them to reunite 
with the oxygen of the atmosphere. Parallel 
to this process, runs the work done by animals, 
which is the end and aim of animal existence. 

The question is naturally asked, Has not the 
human will, power to create strength, energy, 
and endurance? Look at the different con- 
duct of different individuals, under difficulties, 
whether moral or physical. Look at two men 
upon a rriountain-side, with equal health and 
bodily strength. The one will sink and fail ; 
the other, with determined effort, scales the 
summit. Has not volition, in this case at least, 
a creative power, a faculty of calling up force out 
of nothing that is, out of no material source ? 

As a climber ascends a mountain, heat dis- 
appears from his body; the same statement 
applies to animals performing work. For every 
pound raised by a steam-engine, an equiva- 
lent quantity of its heat disappears ; for every 
step the climber ascends, an amount of heat, 
equivalent jointly to his own weight and the 
height to which it is raised, is lost to his body. 
It would appear to follow from this, that the 
body ought to grow colder in the act of climb- 
ing or working; whereas universal experience 
proves it to grow warmer. The solution of the 
seemiug contradiction is found in the fact, that 
when the muscles are exerted, augmented res- 
piration and increased chemical action set in. 
The bellows which urge oxygen into the fire 
within are more briskly blown ; and thus, though 
heat actually disappears as we climb, the loss is 



more than compensated by the increased acti- 
vity of the chemical processes. Nevertheless, 
if our frame be heated by bodily exercise, we 
must not forget that it is at the expense of our 
stock of fuel. Physically considered, the law 
that rules the operations of the steam-engine 
rules the operations of the climber. The strong 
will can draw largely upon the physical energy 
furnished by the food; but it can create nothing. 
The function of the will is to apply and direct, 
not to create. The proof lies in the need of rest, 
and in the prostration often felt after unusual 
effort, even when successful. 

When we augment the temperature of the 
body by labour, a portion only of the excess of 
heat generated is applied to the performance of 
the work. Suppose a certain amount of food to 
be oxidised, or burnt, in the body of a man in a 
state of repose ; the quantity of heat produced 
in the process is exactly that which we should 
obtain from the direct combustion of the food 
in an ordinary fire. But, suppose the oxidation 
of the food to take place 1 while the man is per- 
forming work ; the neat then generated in the 
body falls short of that which could be obtained 
fro in direct combustion. An amount of heat is 
missing, equivalent to the work done. Sup- 
posing the work to consist in the development of 
heat by friction, then the amount of heat thus 
generated outside of the man's body, would be 
exactly that which was wanting within the body, 
to make the heat there generated equal to that 
produced by direct combustion. 

It is easy (by means of the " mechanical equi- 
valent") to determine the amount of heat con- 
sumed by a mountaineer in lifting his ow T n body to 
any elevation. The Professor may his shadow 
never grow less ! when lightly clad, weighs one 
hundred and forty pounds. What is the amount 
of heat consumed, in his case, in climbing from 
the sea level to the top of Mont Blanc ? 

The height of the mountain is fifteen thou- 
sand seven hundred and seventy-four feet; for 
every pound of his body raised to a height of 
seven hundred and seventy-two feet, a quantity 
of heat is consumed, sufficient to raise the tem- 
perature of a pound of water one degree Pahr. 
Consequently, on climbing to a height of fifteen 
thousand seven hundred and seventy-four feet, 
or about twenty and a half times seven hundred 
and seventy-two feet, he consumes an amount of 
heat sufficient to raise the temperature of one 
hundred and forty pounds of water, twenty and a 
half degrees Pahr. If, on the other hand, he 
could seat himself on the top of the mountain 
and perform a glissade down to the sea level, 
the quantity of heat generated by the descent 
would be precisely equal to that consumed in 
the ascent. 

Measured by one's feelings, the amount of 
exertion necessary to reach the top of Mont 
Blanc is very great. Still, the energy which 
performs this feat would be derived from the 
combustion of some two ounces of carbon. In 
the case of an excellent steam-engine, about one- 
tenth of the heat employed is converted into 
work ; the remaining nine-tenths being wasted in 



diaries Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 5, 1S65.] 33 



the air, the condenser, &c. In the case of an 
active mountaineer, as much as one-fifth of the 
heat due to the oxidation of his food may be 
converted into work : hence, as a working 
machine, the animal body does much more 
than the steam-engine. We see, however, that 
the engine and the animal derive, or may derive, 
these powers from the self-same source. We 
can work an engine by the direct combustion 
of the substances we employ as food ; and if 
our stomachs were so constituted as to digest 
coal, we should, as Helmholfz has remarked, be 
able to derive our energy from it. The grand 
point permanent throughout all these considera- 
tions is, that nothing new is created. 

We can make no movement which is not ac- 
counted for by the contemporaneous extinction 
of some other movement. And, howsoever com- 
plicated the motions of animals may be, whatso- 
ever may be the change which the molecules of 
our food undergo within our bodies, the wlrole 
energy of animal life consists in the falling of 
the atoms of carbon and hydrogen and ni- 
trogen, from the high level they occupy in 
the food, to the low level they occupy when 
they quit the body. But, what has enabled the 
carbon and the hydrogen to fall? What first 
raised them to the level which rendered the fall 
possible ? We have already learned that it is 
the sun. It is at his cost, that animal heat is 
produced and animal motion accomplished. Not 
only, then, is the sun chilled, that we may have 
our fires, but he is likewise chilled that we may 
have our powers of locomotion. 

We can raise water by mechanical means 
to a high level; that water, in descending by 
its own gravity, may be made to assume a 
variety of forms, and to perform various kinds 
of mechanical work. It may be made to fall in 
cascades, rise in fountains, twirl in the most 
complicated eddies, or flow along a uniform 
bed. It may, moreover, be employed to turn 
wheels, wield hammers, grind corn, or drive 
piles. -Now, there is no power created by the 
water during its descent. All the energy which 
it exhibits is merely the parcelling out and dis- 
tributing of the original energy which raised it 
up on high. 

Thus, also, as regards the complex motions of 
a clock or a watch ; they are entirely derived 
from the energy of the hand which winds it up. 
Thus, also, the singing of the little Swiss bird 
in the International Exhibition of 1862; the 
quivering of its artificial organs, the vibrations 
of the air which struck the ear as melody, the 
flutter of its little wings, and all other motions 
of the pretty automaton ; were simply derived 
from the force by which it was wound up. 

The matter of our bodies is that of inorganic 
nature. There is no substance in the animal 
tissues which is not primarily derived from the 
rocks, the water, and the air. Are the forces 
of organic matter, then, different in kind from 
those of inorganic? All the philosophy of the 
present day tends to negative the question ; and 
to show that it is the directing and compound- 
ing, in the organic world, of forces equally be- 



longing to the inorganic, that constitutes the 
mystery and miracle of vitality. 

Still, though the progress and development 
of science may seem unlimited, there is a region 
apparently beyond her reach. Given the nature 
of a disturbance, in water, air, or ether, we can 
infer, from the properties of the medium, how 
its particles will be affected. In all this, we deal 
with physical laws, and the mind runs along the 
line which connects the phenomena from be- 
ginning to end. But, when we endeavour to pass 
by a similar process from the region of physics to 
that of thought, we meet a problem transcending 
any conceivable expansion of the powers we 
now possess. Thus, though the territory of 
science is wide, it has its limits, from which 
we look with vacant gaze into the region be- 
yond ; and having thus exhausted physics, and 
reached its very rim, the real mystery yet looms 
beyond us. 



A SERPENT IN ARCADIA. 

Your honourable disclosures, Sir, awarded to 
my unveiling of a Snake in a Arena (it was you 
as assisted me to that title of my dubious 
Cousin) incite me to offer you a second appeal 
under circumstances which ensued to myself 
and another, after our expatriation from a lordly 
mansion, where if halcyon Peace was not always 
found (as the song says) Perquisites largely 
acrued* 

Shortly after that mutual demolition, made 
public in a precedent story Me and Miss 
Mary, like our first parents when cast afloat on 
Egypt's desert, united our hopes and hearts. 
Prudent the scheme might not be conceded 
but prudence is wintry comfort to loving ones 
that bleed in company not to mention united 
parties being two in the same bark, unless op- 
posing tempests diverges them. 

Though united me to Miss Maryit was 
agreed that the nuptial tie should be adjourned 
in promulgation. The most nourished plan may 
eventuate to grief, if secresy does not preside. 
Her Majesty, I have heard my former Lord say, 
if once a thousand times, would yield the 
brightest jewel in her possession, rather than 
express what she is machinating against other 
royal sovereigns which discretion precludes 
naming. And if those who long may reign over 
us, can only thus make good their projections 
what are their lowly subjects to defend them 
with, in case Curiosity leads the van ? 

There is classes, Sir, you will admit, which 
when they come down on us, finds the most 
robust nerves not too much for the task of parry- 
ing. And that Mings, he is such. Blighted 
by the thunder which had emanated from most 
of the aristocractic families in our connextion, 
and baffled in attempts to elicit new openings, 
he was compelled to abandon his photographi- 
caty as a medium of subsistence, and to attack 



* See An Area Sneak, page 282, in the last 
volume. 



34 [August 5, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



new channels of life. It was like him to seek 
the sinews from one he had perjured so deeply 
as myself and partner. But the boldness among 
them of his order, is a bottomless pit. 

I should calmly prelude, Sir, by stating, that 
when me and Miss Mary no longer, united our 
hands and hopes, discussions as to our path 
naturally rose on the horizon. Candour would 
forbid my denying that she has a sweet taste in 
the milliners' business, as many a head-dress 
from her hands associated with names of French 
origin could testify, did her previous lady's 
wardrobe speak sincerely of former days. We 
sat on the subject ; and alive to what is perma- 
nent in fashions and what is momentary, "Mary," 
said I, "Bonnets is what all English females, 
actuated by the pure dictates of their sex, must 
subscribe to." Mr. Schmalz the courier, at 
whom my Lord has flung his boots one hundred 
times if once (as Mr. Clover, the butler of other 
days, will authenticate in your venerable organ 
of opinion if required), has mentioned that in 
foreign parts, parties wear shawls and veils, and 
sometimes go as bare as a fan and a flower, by 
way of covering for the hair of nature and art ; 
but were these to be converted into examples ? 
Forbid it old English truth, and modesty and 
decoration. Sir ! as I am sure you will admit, 
who never allow the language of our born enemies 
to pollute your own fashionable and sweetly po- 
pular fictions ! 

And thus it was agreed among us to organise 
a Bonnet Emporium in an Arcade, which, not 
being an Area Sneak, I do not publish its name. 
But the deference of the promulgation of our 
nuptial tie having been decided on, analogous 
consequences ensued. It is more genteeler to 
present bonnets on a plate, as executed by Ma- 
demoiselle Mireille than as Mrs. Wignett. Be- 
cause every heart in your native home will 
subscribe to the fact, that maiden names at- 
tracts, however attesting be the flight of Time. 
View our theatres, honoured Sir, and consider 
what is requisite there ! And excuses was co- 
gent in our peculiar case, owing to the course 
which our chart of operations had agreed on itself 
to take. It was of consequence that my antece- 
dents should repose in the background, out of de- 
ference to prosperity in our conjoint undertaking. 
Well, our Emporium was taken in the Arcade 
private residence being in other parts and a 
heinous expense having been incurred in a fron- 
tispiece of plate-glass, which displayed the off- 
spring of my partner's taste, aided by a Made- 
myselle from Paris (of whom I regret you will 
have further to hear). She was complimented 
by all the jealousy of the vicinity so superior 
was the style of our articles exposed. I was 
backwards and forwards, under the guise of a 
casual person ; having entered into engagements 
with several of the Exhibition people. Painting 
gentlemen are sadly short of models to attract ; 
and a careless poetical cultivation of beard, now 
emancipated from the thraldom of service, im- 
parted a new aspect to that of other days. So that 
in my own sphere I was not seldom in request 
and will say that the pictures which was ani 



mated by my presence attracted crowds in 
Trafalgar Square (more of which if time and 
diffidence permit at a future juncture). My 
partner, too, observed that when I was back- 
wards and forwards mostly sitting at the 
Arcade, as a casual purchaser, and difficult to 
please those hours was the briskest as re- 
garded custom; sometimes to the amount of 
plenteous ladies. Shops not frequented by gen- 
tlemen are little thought of among the fair sex. 

Judge, then, Sir, of my feelings, when one 
day, coming backwards and forwards as usual, 
a little stiff with standing to Mr. Peeks, as 
Sappho's youngest son, on the occasion of the 
latter being struck with lightning 1 finds, as 
bold as brass, in instillation where I should have 
been the party, whom your bolt bursting from 
its cloud judiciously entitled a snake my down- 
cast cousin. Mings ! ! ! Seedy indeed, he looked 
so much so as to be disservient to the Em- 
porium ; but no customers was present. Made- 
myselle taking her meals up-stairs. Aud if 
I was ever glad that those French females are 
long and greedy over their food, I was glad 
thensince Mings, I hoped, was only a passing 
call, and I was determined to pur vent it as 
such. But a match for a snake, what un- 
armed mortal can be ? 

" Timothy," said Mings, springing up from 
my chair, so loud that half the Arcade could 
hear it. " This is your game, is it ? I thought 
so, when I saw Mademysel Mireille, though she 
wouldn't own it. woman ! woman !" 

" Mings," said I, " after the ruin you have 
wrought, be polite if you cannot be anything 
solider. My wife and I are one." And T pulled 
up the look of a Spartan, which I had been re- 
quested to assume by Mr. Eager, when intent 
on his great picture of Tiberius, in his ruins, 
sitting on the domains of Carthage. 

" Your wife /" and Mings he laughed like 
the serpent as he is. " Your wife ! Come, you 
old Timothy, let us look into this. If so be you 
are married, let us know why it is you are like the 
ostrich that conceals its crest in the burning 
strand of the Desert ? We used to be in one 
boat, and if so, why so no more ? Is this to 
be a secret among three, or two ? And by the 
way, if you have half-a-crown about you, hand 
it over. I came out without change." 

Who could have parried this? and yet if 
daggers could have struck an individual to his 
culpable heart, they was in my eyes, as I handed 
over the silver to Mings. He endured as callous 
as an icicle. 

" Well," says he, " Cousin Timothy, if this is 
a secret marriage of yours, I do not see why I 
should not be best man after the fact." 

" Mings," says I, " beware what you do, and 
consider your end. In this abode, no more 
Tancreds reside for traitors to photographicate. 
YVe have parted, let it be once for all !" 
And as I looked at the door, I looked at it 
expressively, recollecting what had passed 
when Mr. Bonerville was getting up his pic- 
ture of the Bride of Lammermoor, in which 
I was accountable for the heko's posture. 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR KOUJSTD. 



[August 5, 1865.] 35 



But such as hini takes no hints : delicacy 
being emitted in their composition. " Timothy," 
says Mings, as loud as before, " photography and 
I have parted. I am now an organ of public 
opinion secretary to an influentious paper." 

I shook, Sir, as I heard my Cousin's appeal ; 
knowing, by yourself, what those who rule them 
papers are equal to do, or to undo and supposing 
from his imperiousness, that he was connected 
somewhere. Who knew but with Punch ? My 
partner and me had often in our maiden days 
talked Punch over as a salubrious influence on 
the haughty classes of this world. 

It proved not Punch, however, Sir. " I dare 
say, Timothy," said Mings, sticking his thumbs 
in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, and crossing 
his legs for the entire afternoon, " that, reader 
though you are not, you may have heard speak 
of the Orb of Fashion. I am one of the princi- 
pal writers, and it proves you sadly in arrears of 
the world, that I don't see it lying about here ; 
though of course it is a cut above the Arcade." 

"Mings," says I, in unfeigned unaccpiaintance- 
ship and yet who would be behindhand in 
duty to one's order, when reflections was cast 
on our neighbourhood ? " Our copy goes, in- 
stantaneous we have finished it, to Lady Maria : 
because my Lady will read no paragrams save 
those of my wife's marking." 

"Timothy," was his answer, the serpent, 
he knew as well as I did, that I had never set 
eyes on any of their Orbs : " Timothy, if so be, 
yours is to act the part of a true relation : and 
I am glad to make it up with you. Then if you 
have another half-crown about you, it will be 
five shillings, and such is even money." 

Sir, weakness, when knavery assails, has been, 
alas ! too deeply my motto, and that ex- 
tortionists takes cruel advantage of it, the sad 
sequel shall disclose. Besides, I heard Made- 
mazelle coming down; and he was not that 
aspect of person one likes to be seen lending 
money to. So I had not time to weigh, and I 
said, imparting the second loan, " There, Mings, 
good day." 

" Good day !" says Mings, " I've not begun 
yet ! and it was only for your advantage, and not 
the Orb's, that I called to consult you on a 
matter of business." 

I see I was in for it, and felt the labyrinth 
round my neck ; and he saw I saw, and I saw 
he saw and was alive to the labyrinth, by the 
twinkle of his eye. If a customer had come in, 
M'ho knows what might have been diverted? 
" Madmysel," said I to our assistant, who at the 
juncture descended, " perhaps you'll go up for 
a quarter of an hour. There are them tuberoses 
to look to. Private business predominates." 

Madmysel Claire did not like dismission, 
Trench females being curious, and Mings having 
fixed her with his glass in a manner suggestional 
of vanity, against which no female heart is proof. 

" Madmysel !" says Mings, with a little laugh, 
when she had ascended. " Come, I say, is she 
married too ? and if married, what's her name ?" 

"Mings," said I, "jocularity may trespass 
beyond the brink. My wife's assistant all our 



assistants up-stairs" (the phib injured nobody), 
"are unmarried; thus leaving them more at 
liberty to indulge exclusive energies on the 
bonnets. And so, on the spot, before we are 
interrupted, about business. If you have any 
proposial to propose, propose it sincerely." 

" Proposial ! I believe you ! " and the in- 
sidious laugh of the hyaena was repeated. 
"What a thing for your Emporium {Mademoiselle 
Mireille's, I should say) to be promoted in the 
Orb of Fashion ! the sole depot in the Arcade 
which can hail that proud distinction. Come, 
Timothy, since Peace it is to be, shall I open 
our columns to your interests {Mademoiselle 
Mireille's, I should say ?) Since Mrs. Wignett 
would not attune with the expectations of our 
aristocratic subscribers." 

I own I was snared, Sir, never having seen or 
heard of the Orb of Eashion till that juncture : 
yet knowing how proud the power the Press can 
wield, as indeed, Sir, who elucidates like yourself? 

"Mings," said I, "do you mean handsome 
reciprocation ; and not as before, when your im- 
prudence drove myself and partner from our 
anchors in a lordly home, to embark in these 
precarious seas ? How about my wife's Empo- 
rium and the Orbit of Eashion ?" 

" Timothy," says he, " suspicion has been too 
much your forte. Beware now ! Was we to 
talk in our Orb of Mrs. Wignett's bonnet-shop 
in the Arcade, would Lady Maria read the para- 
graphs of Madmysel Mireille's marking ?" 

The serpent ! But I felt that his sarcasms 
(alive to the screen I had erected) bore a core 
of truth in them ; and that we were at his mercy. 
And the Orb of Eashion who knew ? might 
one day, in its galaxy among the fair, rival the 
Times. "Mings," I said, "if there is talk to 
be of my wife's Emporium in the Orb of Eashion, 
what are your views ? State them in an above- 
board and graceful manner. Of course" (for I 
struggled to the last, Sir, to assert my indepen- 
dence), "the Orb will pay handsomely for in- 
formation ?" 

" Pay !" roared Mings, bursting out into such 
a cataract of derision that the vicinity was 
alarmed, and two opposites and a casual customer 
came rushing in, inquiring was some one in 
spasms ; and down came Madmysel Claire, ex- 
pecting also a paroxysm. Scenes has always 
been my bane : and Mings, the cockatrice, knew 
it, and that I wished to cut this catastrophe 
short, so he said in my ear, " Timothy, give me 
some dinner somewhere, and we'll soon square 
matters all round, over a glass of wine." 

I was too thankful to extricate, with a view 
to peace and customers, to have made any head 
against Mings, had he insisted on tea and supper 
no less than dinner. At the Yellow Posts, on 
that lurid and fatal day of the compract, he cost 
me fifteen shillings, besides the five he had pro- 
cured out of me. On the whole, a sovereign. 

Nor did he let we two part till it was settled 
that Mings was to be on our free list of Bonnets, 
so long as his Organ of Opinion devoted itself 
once a fortnight to the interests of the Emporium, 
by awarding it a prominentia! place in the annals 



36 [August 5, 1S05.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



of establishments repaired to by fair and noble 
clients of the higher classes. Shylock, Sir, did 
not imply a bargain more ruthless ; but I yielded: 
since to* the power of the Press I have been 
always implicitly dismissive; and thus I humbly 
trust that your electric beam will make that in- 
sidious blighter of hopes by false expedients 
wither a second time (as at Belshazzar's Feast), be 
the glare of his prosperity ever so transcendent. 

For some weeks, almost up to the point of a 
quarter, the halcyon Peace presided ; and the 
Orb and the Emporium moved in intimate harmo- 
niousness. Mings, he is not much of a author, and 
in Epithets of Taste, he was for ever coming 
backwards and forwards, pretending that Milli- 
nery was alien to his horizon, and applying copi- 
ously to Madmysel Claire for exactitude in terms. 
Our assistant was more down than up-stairs ; 
just then, circumstances, which crown matrimo- 
nial life, making it expedient for my wife to re- 
frain from extraneous publicity ; and so, to dis- 
tract curiosity, it was denounced in the Arcade, 
and advertised in the Orb of Fashion, that the 
extensiveness of the Emporium, also to establish 
foreign agents, would necessiate Madmyselle 
Mireille to repair to Paris ; Madmyselle Claire 
(and our assistants up-stairs) conducting the 
business during her departure. The advantages 
taken of this attitude of events by yonder black 
and twining serpent, would baffle a catalogue. 
It was not solely being backwards and forwards 
for epithets ; but at meal-times on every possible 
occasion. The tea and muffins he drank would 
fill a volume ; and did the muffins fail to be 
fresh, Mings began to look gloomy, and state 
that the Orb of Fashion had been strictured on 
by malignant opponents, for showing indis- 
cretional favours to this Emporium. Other 
Arcades, to hear him talk, was pressing in their 
advancements on his pen. How little could I 
dream that his Orb was verging on its last legs. 
Just then, secure as the Mariner of the Sea, who 
lies becalmed above a couch of coral, I was con- 
centrating on Hamlet for Mr. Titiens Pink's 
great picture ; so that you, Sir, who have seen it, 
and therefore have admitted as you must, that 
here was no milk-and-water Royal Dane, such 
as foreign versions have deluded old England's 
metropolis to subscribe in, must be equal the 
same, aware that the fire of frenzy luminating 
and sparkling from my eyes, was no easy mood 
to assume for hours at a sitting, on five morn- 
ings out of six (and sometimes, to be candid, on 
Sunday afternoons), especially on the part of 
one, whose criterion of character has always 
been confessed to be amenity. 

I say, Sir, I dreamed delusively, that the al- 
liance was sound, and the Orb and the Emporium 
flourishing like twin sisters of the soul. My 
wife, Sir, she was more early awake to the mys- 
teries veiled by the curtain of serpentine auda- 
city. But this I subscribed to the irritability 
of her predicament; and did she protest against 
such a profusion of visitations and objection 
respecting muffins, on the part of Mings, alert 
to pacify, M Mary," I would say, " recollect how 
our joint interests, aided by them papers, is 



flourishing, and the proud position of the Em- 
porium, especially since our recent inventions." 

For the Emporium had been copious and fer- 
tile. I will only name three, to each of which 
the disquisitions in the Orb of Fashion, Mings 
declared, had caused the palm of success to fall. 
The sweet hat, decked with primroses and 
other artless weeds, fit for the use of the young ; 
but which was seized with such ardour, that 
there was eight middle-aged gentlewomen wear- 
ing spectacles, in the Emporium at once, mu- 
tually pushing, and using rude terms, in order 
to secure the first choice. The strong-minded 
vade-mecum, destined for those lonely tourists 
of the sex, to whom self-protection is more ap- 
posite than absorption by male flatteries. This, 
too, had its hour, mostly among the dissenting 
classes ; Quakers, even, who, as my wife used 
to say, must be sick of confinement to dreary 
coal-boxes. The royal non-pareil, which her 
Gracious Majesty had expressed she had never 
seen anything to compare with it. Two days 
after that sentence was promulgated in the Orb, 
the Emporium was inundated by a commission 
from Hull and other districts ; and six cases was 
despatched within the week. Madmysel Claire, 
because of the stress, included she was obliged to 
stand out for double salary ; which being de- 
murred, she declared her plan of writing a letter 
to the Orb, also to the Society for Cruelty to 
Animals. (I have since had cause to ascertain 
that her rapacious course was prompted by that 
adder in male form.) Loth as is every generous 
heart to succumb, be the crisis ever so impendent, 
caution and my wife's prospects kicked the beam. 
We acceded, and Madmysel Claire received her 
ill-gotten gains. It may have been a mercy that 
the run on the royal non-pareil sunk into the 
sand as rapidly as it had originated. 

What boots it ? Prospects smiled ; and who 
but a snake such as he, could enter into the 
yawning volcano beneath our feet ? It now 
was but a week, when my wife's departure to 
Paris (which in reality Paddington) was to 
take place, and she and Madmysel Claire had 
invariable preliminaries to operate, during this 
period of my partner's abstinence, when our 
assistant was to take the ruling part. 

" Timothy," said my wife, at the close of one 
of their committees in union. " Flesh and blood 
can stand such no longer. The Emporium will 
crumble unless rescued ; and as I know you 
are a poor chicken-hearted creature, I have 
written to him to tell him to desist. Pillaged 
I, and the child that is unborn, will not be; 
whatever their Orbs may say and do." 

" Mary," -was my reply, " don't excite hyste- 
rics, which is of serious importance as you are. 
Pillagers cannot exist in the Arcade during 
three beadles parade it, as you are aware, till 
closing time." 

"Timothy," she broke out (of late her temper 
had been more boisterous than elegant), " if you 
are a goose, out with it like a man ! And you 
are a goose or you would have defended your 
lawful wife against the pillagement of that 
speedy and ill-conditioned sponge that beau- 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Augnst 5, 1865.] 37 | 



tiful cousin of yours. Unless you arc in league, 
and this looks fearfully like it." 

" If you scream, Mary," says I, " we shall have 
the neighbours in, and reality will be disclosed." 
She adopted my hint, because she felt its value, 
and dropped her tone. But this was what she 
proceeded, so far as tears would let her, and the 
story did look grasping to an amount of alarm. 

It was the invicious acts by which that 
smooth-faced viper, Mings, had availed himself 
of our compact with a vengeance ! During the 
past three months, by hook or by crook, he had 
extracted (the free list as presumption) Bonnets 
from the Emporium to the tune of two a week, 
in addition to all he had partaken of at our cost 
grog not having been touched on in the above, 
when business hours was over, and we would 
assume our two cigars, and interchange on sub- 
jectsof art and aristocracy. What had Mings done 
with the bonnets, which had been the victims of 
his predatory covetousness ? What, indeed ? 

" And you have writ," I faltered to my wife, 
?' to Mings, enjoining future temperance ?" 

" I believe you, Timothy," said she " and 
his feet in our tea and muffins he won't set 
again soon. Upwards of thirty pounds' worth 
of good bonnets gone, as if any of their Orbs 
merited such a plunder." And on this, though 
my partner had reduced her voice prudentially, 
Nature and Vexation triumphed. She went off on 
the spot ; and to bring her to, and to get her to 
our home, unseen, unsuspected, and the whole cir- 
cumstances undreamed-of by envious eyes, that 
is always lurking what secrets they can pick 
up, was a task to distance giant nerve. It was 
effectuated though ; but if my hair that night had 
turned white, as Cleopatra's did while wooing 
the asp, on the eve of execution, what mortal 
could have found it improper ? 

The bolt was shot, however. Ominous silence 
pervaded all. Mings and the Emporium were 
two : and as coincidental, I should say, that, 
during that very week, the Orb of "Fashion flut- 
tered to the close of its existence, and its spirit 
took wing to some other sphere. 

I avoided coping with the familiar haunts for 
a few days because Mings, I knew, was equal to 
the production of any sensation, gain and revenge 
being his sole object. A riot in the Arcade would 
not have conduced to the predominance we had 
ever maintained. Then, for that week, the 
onerous duties of my separate profession one 
hour a butterfly gay deceiver of the Court of 
Spain the next a melancholy Eaust brooding 
over the crucibles on his anvil was absorbing : 
not to speak of home vicissitudes, possibly to be 
ascribed to past reserves of reality. Eor many 
days, ere our boy entered this mortal hemi- 
sphere, she was ailing and low; and if ever 
female was actuated by jealousy on that, or any 
similarly posthumous occasion, my wife was. 
To soothe cost me many anxious moments of 
care; and retrospections of lighter days of 
fancy and freedom, now exiled for ever. 

But when the hour of danger was past, since 
not a syllable had been breathed from the Em- 
porium, and as Mings, that cruellest of croco- 



diles, had not turned up (quenched for ever was 
my hopes, by recent disruptions), I wended my 
way tliither to the familiar place of dear hopes 
and recollections, one Tuesday evening. I 
thought the officials glared scornfully as I 
passed, and this was borne out by the public 
sarcasmatic expression of the vicinity. My 
heart drooped. When a storm is a-going to 
descend, some parties, especially them of a deli- 
cate cast, is acquainted beforehand. 

I reached the beloved precincts. The spells 
of decease pervaded them. The shutters was 
up. No light, no sound, no bonnets. On the 
exterior side was a placard, thus : 

AC A R D. Mrs. Wignett's Business 
being interrupted by her Confinement, the 
lovers of Real Bonnets are directed to the Par- 
thenion of French and Female Taste, No. 17, seven 
doors lower down on the opposite side. The Par- 
thenion is conducted by Mademoiselle Claire, the 
primum mobile of Mrs. "VVignett's establishment. 

Mrs. Wignett's friends will be glad to hear that 
her recovery is proceeding most salubriously. 

And so myself and partner were shut up a 
second time by that Mings. 



BOUNCING BOYS. 

What clever fellows the rising generation of 
boys ought to be when they grow up ! What 
splendid opportunities they are having com- 
pared to those which fell in the way of the boys 
of the last age ! The familiar playthings of the 
boys of to-day are the applications of arts and 
sciences, which the last generation scarcely 
dreamed of, and which the most thoughtful 
men of the time spent their whole lives, and 
sometimes broke their hearts, in the endeavour 
to fathom and discover. All these problems 
of science and art, then so hopelessly meshed 
and knotted, the boys of this day can unloose 
familiar as the laces of their Balmoral boots 
I will not say garters, for in these advanced and 
elastic times such adjuncts of dress have be- 
come obsolete, even for the purposes of meta- 
phor. The Shakespeare of the future will not 
have such simple things as garters to deal with 
when he wishes to show how easily some ac- 
complished modern can unloose the Gordian 
knot. Henceforth, Puck and his girdle will be 
a fool to the Atlantic telegraph. But as to 
these modern boys boys who are born, 
christened, breeche^ and married, and set up 
in life all in a trice ! those boys take away my 
breath. I wonder sometimes if they can pos- 
sibly be of the same genus as the boys with 
whom I associated when I myself was a boy. 
I paid a visit lately to a gentleman in the 
country, and ingoing over the house to view its 
lions I was shown into a room where my host's 
boys printed a weekly newspaper^/* their own 
amusement I There were all the appliances of a 
printing-office: cases, galleys, rules, imposing 
stones, and presses ; and two young gentlemen, 
whose united ages, probably, did not amount to 
flve-and-twenty, were so far familiar with their 



38 [August 5, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND, 



[Conducted by 



use as to be able, unaided, to compose and print 
a weekly sheet containing news and articles of 
their own writing ! I thought of my play-room 
and what it contained. I had a vision of a penny 
top, a popgun roughly made from a branch of 
alder-tree, a kite composed of a halfpenny cane 
and a sheet of brown paper, a worsted ball 
wound upon an old barrel bung, and a teetotum. 

Again ; the other evening 1 went to a party, 
and I had scarcely entered the house when my 
host's two boys carried me off into the garden 
to take my photograph. One, quite a little 
fellow, posed me in the chair, instructed me to 
look at a certain spot, and warned me of that 
principle of the convex lens which has a ten- 
dency to enlarge feet and hands which are 
placed too much in advance of the rest of the 
body. The other boy, meanwhile, was in a dark 
room, playing with subtle chemicals, of whose 
nature and properties his grandfather the emi- 
nent chemist had never even dreamed. In less 
than five minutes these two youngsters had used 
one of the closest secrets of nature to fix my 
image- on a piece of glass. It was as easy a feat 
for them as it was for me to lift up my top, while 
spinning, in a spoon or in the hollow of my hand. 

I had another vision: Of a party at home, 
when I, as a boy, the age of that juvenile pho- 
tographer, was considered rather a bore, and 
was only permitted to bother the guests for 
half an hour or so after dinner. It was not 
supposed that I had any entertaining powers 
whatever. The guests, in the goodness of their 
nature, would kindly endeavour to entertain 
me, by giving me an apple, and perhaps telling 
me a pretty little story, all in simple words of 
one syllable. After which I was carefully sent 
to bed before supper. But these modern boys : 
they bring you their newspaper to look at; 
they photograph you, they play the accompani- 
ments to your songs, they astonish your weak 
mind with the magnesium light, they sit up to 
supper, they tell you the latest news by tele- 
gram in fact, they entertain you. When I was 
a boy, my stock of play literature consisted of 
some half-dozen sixpenny books, such as Jack 
the Giant Killer, Puss in Boots, the History of 
Cock Robin, and an abridgment of the Arabian 
Nights. I remember that I kept them locked 
up in a deal box, and was exceedingly chary of 
lending them, or even letting any one look at 
them. But boys now-a-days take in their 
monthly and weekly magazines, correspond with 
the editor, answer riddles and rebuses, contri- 
bute puzzles and engage in chess tournaments 
by correspondence ; nay, they club subscriptions 
to Mudie's, and read all the new sensation 
novels as they appear. I see some square- 
capped boys, of not more than fourteen years, 
going to school every morning reading their 
penny newspapers. I have no doubt whatever 
that they read the law and police reports under 
their desks when they ought to be learning 
their lessons. Boys and hobbedehoys used to 
be a nuisance, because they were lumpy, and 
awkward, and uninteresting ; and because they 
were too young to share in the conversation of 
grown-up people. But now-a-days, if boys are 



voted a nuisance at all which they will not 
tamely permit it is because they are too clever 
by half, and know a great deal too much. 

Inwardly and outwardly the British boy has 
undergone a great change. Everything about him 
is in an advanced state. His mind is manly and 
so are his clothes. Your modern infant grows 
so fast that you never can catch him in jackets. 
When he emerges from his swaddling-clothes, 
he slips through your fingers, and vaults into a 
tailed coat. He casts aside his feeding-bottle, 
and his pap-spoon, to clap a cigar or a meer- 
schaum-pipe in his mouth. 

The modern youth forces his whiskers, as the 
modern market-gardener forces his asparagus. 
He has no pause for lay-down collars of the old 
patterns, nor for a round cap with a tassel, such 
as the boys of the Own Book used to wear. He 
is a new pattern of boy altogether. Look at 
the frontispiece of an old Treasury of Knowledge, 
and see what the British boy was. There is his 
papa also of a pattern peculiar to the period 
seated at a table with a terrestrial globe, a 
retort, a pair of compasses, and a heap of books 
at his elbow, allegorical of the entire tree of 
knowledge and the whole circle of the sciences. 
You will observe that his papa wears a high- 
collared coat, a very short waistcoat, and tightly- 
fitting trousers, which, when your paint-box is 
at hand, you are irresistibly tempted to colour 
yellow. Your idea of that papa is, that he has 
always been a papa, and that his whole mission 
on earth is to teach the use of the globes to 
his son with rigid paternal severity; just as 
your idea of the boy is that he was born a boy 
like that, and for no other purpose on earth but 
to be taught the use of the globes and overawed 
by his papa. Look at that boy. His outline 
is composed of a series of curves curves for 
his cheeks, curves for his arms, curves for his 
legs, as if his papa had constructed him with 
the pair of compasses. He is the good old- 
fashioned sort of boy, who was fond of pudding, 
who over-ate himself when he went out visiting, 
who robbed orchards, who had all the com- 
plaints of infancy in rapid succession, and never 
missed one on any account ; who carried gun- 
powder in his pocket, who was always in mis- 
chief, and who, as regarded his most honourable 
curve, seemed to be specially adapted and cut 
out for chastisement. When I look at the por- 
traits of that boy of a past age, I can quite 
understand how the schoolmasters of the period 
could not keep their hands off him. The whole 
physical development of him was a standing 
invitation to the cane. 

If schoolmasters don't flog now, it is not 
because they have lost faith in the virtues of 
birch, but because the modern boy is morally 
and physically repulsive to the cane. Those 
inviting curves of his have been smoothed 
down; his jackets have assumed tails. He 
wears gloves also, and is thus armed against 
correction at all points. Intellectually, too, 
how could you think of administering flagella- 
tion to a boy who writes, edits, prints, and 
publishes a newspaper, or be guilty of the out- 
rage of boxing the ears of a boy who is versed 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 5, 1865.] 39 



in the properties of nitrate of silver, and knows 
how to decompose the light of the sun? 

I repeat, that these boys, when they grow up, 
ought to be very clever fellows. If there are 
any new discoveries to be made, any more 
secrets to' be wrested from Nature, those boys 
ought to be able to accomplish the work with- 
out difficulty. They have at their fingers' ends, 
settled and defined, all those important ele- 
mentary principles which their fathers and grand- 
fathers had to test and settle and define before 
they went any further. The foundation has been 
laid for them; they have but to build the super- 
structure ; and effect novelty by varying the plan. 

I think it possible, however, that the intel- 
lectual growth of the modern boy may be a little 
too rapid, and that, like trees which grow 
quickly, his timber may be rather too soft for 
the solid purposes of life's carpentry. Diffi- 
culties are so smoothed for him, and he is set 
out in life so well provided with all the neces- 
saries for the journey, that it may be feared he 
will have too little occasion to exert himself. In 
the generation which is passing away, some of 
the most remarkable men of their time were the 
architects of their own fortunes. The temples 
of fame and honour which they built for them- 
selves they built from the very foundations. 
They began single-handed, with a pick and a 
spade, to dig out the stubborn ground before they 
proceeded to lay the bricks. But the sons of 
these men come to their architecture with white 
kid gloves on, and lay fancy foundation-stones 
with silver trowels. Suppose the edifice were to 
be completely destroyed, would they be fit to 
dig and carry bricks as their fathers did before 
them ? I don't say there is any lack of energy 
or pluck (I use the word, though I detest it) 
about the rising generation. Those qualities 
are as inherent and as well cultivated in English- 
men as ever they were ; but I do fancy that there 
is a growing disposition to exercise them more 
for ornamental than useful purposes. 

The middle class of the present generation is 
much better off than the middle class that pre- 
ceded it. Half a century ago the parents of the 
middle class were nobodies : it was the sous who 
struggled and made their way and raised them- 
selves. But now the important persons are the 
parents ; the sons merely inherit the silver spoon. 
They are born with it in their mouths, and they 
go on supping their turtle soup with it as com- 
placently as if they had won it for themselves 
more so. Tradesmen and tradesmen's sons act as 
if their business were entailed like an earl's estate, 
as if there were a law of primogeniture for iron- 
mongery and tea dealing. I have now in my eye 
half a dozen tradesmen's sons, who, as soon as 
they arrived at the supposed years of discretion, 
were immediately set up with a house, a wife, a 
horse, a plate basket, and an account at a 
banker's. I meet them occasionally in first- 
class dining-rooms, where they fare sumptuously 
every day, and eat turtle and drink champagne 
as by right. The inquiry I wish pursued 
is this : Is the rising generation of the middle 
class, with this education and these habits, likely 
to sustain its substantial character and position ? 



Is there not some danger to them of the hard 
working class below, rearing an active, energetic, 
well-educated progeny, which will sooner or later 
step forward and push the present middle classes 
from their stools ? 

I will not pursue this branch of the inquiry 
further, but leave it to those who may have a 
wider experience to assist their philosophy. I 
prefer to turn to the intellectual aspects and 
influences of our modern youth. In one respect 
the boy of to-day is much better educated than 
the boy of yesterday. Schools have improved 
of late years, and the system of teaching is 
generally more intelligent and rational. Parrot- 
ing from books has gone out of fashion, and 
boys are taught to understand the meaning of 
the words they utter. While Greek and Latin 
still maintain their place in the curriculum, 
more attention is paid to modern languages, 
and almost every boy at a good commercial 
school now learns Erench and German. The 
use of the globes is no longer such a profound 
depth of learning as it was in the old days. 
Chemistry takes its place, and the retort of the 
frontispiece is warranted by reality. But with 
all the advantages of an intelligent and compre- 
hensive system of education, the modern boy is 
at a disadvantage in respect of certain other 
matters of very great importance. I refer to 
the softening and civilising influence of the 
belles lettres, the " artes," as the well-known 
Latin aphorism has it. I am afraid the modern 
boy is not sufficiently brought under this in- 
fluence. Not that he does not read enough, 
for he reads perhaps too much ; but he does not 
read the right thing. Question one of those 
very clever boys who print newspapers and 
take photographs, and you will most probably 
find that while he is well up in the periodical 
literature of the day, the magazines and journals, 
and the novels of the hour, he has never read 
the Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe. Boys, 
now-a-days, do not begin with sixpenny editions 
of Jack the Giant Killer. < They skip that 
innocent and delightful starting-point in litera- 
ture, and vault over many intermediate stages 
besides. I find well-educated young men of 
twenty who have never read the Waverley 
Novels, who know nothing of the glorious 
romance of Ivanhoe, save what they have 
gathered from a parody in some so-called comic 
publication, or a burlesque at the theatres. I 
once knew a popular author, all of the present 
time, who had never read the Vicar of Wakefield. 
Our young men also skip the poets. There was 
a time when parents and guardians had to com- 
plain that their sons and wards were Shakespeare 
mad, and wasted their time in declaiming plays ; 
there was a time, not long gone, when Byron 
and Shelley had to be hid away from impres- 
sionable youths who were too much given to 
poetry. But, now-a-days, Shakespeare and 
Byron and the rest of the English classics lie with 
dust an incli thick upon them. 

It is not likely that I am going to run 
down the literature of the day. It is, on the 
whole, better literature of its kind than 
has ever before been produced, and we have 



40 [Augusta, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



authors and poets among us who are worthy 
to be mentioned with any who have gone 
before them. Bat we have too much, fact, and 
too little fancy ; too much mere Railway-art of 
literature, and too little respect for a work of 
Art. Every man who has learned Greek and 
Latin, and made himself acquainted with 
heathen mythology, is sensible though per- 
haps he can scarcely explain how of possess- 
ing an intellectual power derived from those 
branches of study. So, a similar power, a similar 
cultivation of the intellect and the understand- 
ing, is derived from an early acquaintance with 
fairy tales, with romances of chivalry, and with 
those pure and simple works of fiction such as 
Goldsmith's Vicar, which have been exemplars 
to all the greatest of the modern writers. It is 
not, perhaps, a good thing to frighten children 
with ghosts ; but it is not altogether a good sign 
when children wake in the night to explain on 
scientific principles the moving shadow which 
their nurse has taken for a beneficent Fairy. Give 
children printing-presses, retorts, and chemicals, 
to play with, by all means ; but don't let them 
skip the Arabian Nights. Let them wear out 
at least one jacket. Let us have had experience 
of Blue Beard, when we come to have a beard 
of our own. Let us have known a talking 
wolf, through Little Red Riding Hood, as well 
as the speechless wolf in the Zoological Gardens. 
The last navigator will be none the worse for 
having believed in Sindbad the Sailor ; and I 
wager a thousand pounds to a shilling that my 
dear Professor Owen has had faith in the Roc. 



POACHING AN ELK. 

There are few of us who like shooting and 
have not at some time of our lives "done a 
little bit of poaching." Of course I refer to 
gentlemanly poaching. I am a J.P. now, and 
of course, Justly Particular. Still I have done 
one or two things of the sort one might be had 
up for, even since I have sustained magisterial 
honours. Eor instance, one night I made one 
of a party netting partridges, using the identical 
net, which had been taken a week before from 
a poacher who was caught in the fact, and to 
whom I gave three weeks' hard labour. But, let 
me add, I used the net on my own land, and with 
my own keepers, for I wished to settle the point 
whether a "well-bushed" field really offered 
any impediments to netting, and found that 
it got so inextricably hampered, that the 
partridges were safe. 

But it is not of my peccadilloes at home 
that I am about to make confession. I fear 
there is scarce a country in Europe wherein I 
have not infringed the game laws ; and, if the 
heinousness of the crime bears any direct pro- 
portion to the size of the animal unlawfully 
slain, I have been a poacher of the very utmost 
magnitude. Eor I have been, I confess it, an elk 
poacher, and an elk is an animal standing some 
seventeen or eighteen hands high, and weighing 
a good bit more than half a ton. 

I was spending the summer in Norway. It 



was the year ('fifty-eight) of that terribly hot 
summer when the sheep died by scores in the 
parks, and became roast mutton as they lay upon 
the grass : so you may imagine what it was m 
a country where the sun was almost, as hot at 
midnight as at noon. It was getting towards the 
end of July, and I was looking forward to the 
first of August with all the zest of an old grouse 
shooter. One day a young Norwegian student 
happened to put up at the same "station" 
where I was staying. He, too, was going to 
spend his vacation on the Ejelds, but disdain- 
ing such small fry as grouse and ptarmigan, 
soared at red-deer, reindeer, and elk. It was to 
our mutual interests. I, for instance, had a good 
stock of English powder, an unlimited supply 
of "Bristol bird's eye," and a brace of first-rate 
setters. He would not only be an agreeable 
companion, but would act as my interpreter. 

A few remarks on the law relating to the 
preservation of elk are due in this place. It 
runs thus: "Any one shooting an elk before 
August 1st, or after October 31st, is liable to a 
penalty of forty dollars, half of which goes to 
the informer, and half to the poor-box of the 
district." Doubtless, in some respects, an ex- 
cellent provision, as in a wild country like 
Norway, with its boundless forests and trackless 
Ejelds, it would be a sheer impossibility for any 
native game preserver to keep such a staff of 
employes as to render the poacher's avocation 
at all dangerous. By offering a bribe to the 
informer, the government hit on an ingenious 
and inexpensive scheme for the promotion of its 
object. But now mark the weak side ! Say 
that the eatable portion of an elk weighs 
800 lbs. In the matter of food therefore, alone, 
there will be a tolerable supply of meat through 
the winter. Then there is the hide, and 
the antlers, into the bargain. On the lowest 
computation, an elk is well worth thirty dollars. 
It is easy enough, therefore, for two persons to 
conspire against an elk, and while one of them 
does the poaching, his comrade acts as informer, 
and, by recovering half the penalty, both profit by 
the transaction. 

We had just arrived at our quarters, after 
a long and dusty journey across the Dovre 
mountains. The house at which we put up Jay 
on the borders of a large lake of surpassing 
loveliness. It looked so temptingly cool that 
we determined to enjoy the luxury of a bath, 
before going in to sup upon a dish of fresh 
caught char, which was in course of preparation. 
Never was bath more refreshing ; and certainly 
never was tobacco more fragrant than when we 
laid down afterwards on the grass to be soothed 
by it. All was still; the lake as smooth as a 
looking-glass, and the sun just setting behind a 
snow-capped mountain in the distance. But 
the silence suddenly was broken by the sound of 
distant voices, and the splash of oars ; and in a 
few minutes we could plainly discern two boats 
emerging from under the dark shadow of some 
rocky hills on the other side, apparently racing 
against each other. I pulled out my " binocular," 
and soon discovered what I should have taken 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 5, 18C5.] 41 



to be a large bough floating on the water about 
half a mile ahead of the boats, only that it was 
moving almost as quickly as the boats were. 
But Hans soon enlightened me, and with a sprink- 
ling of genuine Norwegian ejaculations, which 
would look rather profane if translated literally, 
pronounced that the bough was an elk, and that 
the boats were in pursuit of it. 

"Now shall we see a bit of fun; each boat 
belongs to a different farmery " (so he always 
called a farm-house), " and if one of them shoots 
the elk you will see such a race as never was! " 

"But why shouldn't we try and bag him, 
Hans? We have our rifles. He is coming 
straight towards us ; and I would gladly give ten 
pounds to shoot an elk. Down Carlo ! Don ! 
down sir," and we all hid ourselves behind a 
large rock. " You would give ten pounds ? 
Good ! " I heard Hans soliloquise, but took 
no notice at the time of his remark. 

Meanwhile, the animal was rapidly approach- 
ing, evidently unconscious of any danger in the 
front. Nearer and nearer he came, straining 
every nerve to distance his pursuers. The 
shouts and gesticulations of the men in the 
b^ats, each trying to outstrip the other, and the 
anxiety of the elk to reach the shore, were quite 
equalled by my intense fear lest the boats should 
get the first shot. 

"Now look you," whispered Hans, "he is 
making for yon point ; he will stop half a second 
to shake the water off him directly he is on land. 
That is your time ! " 

" Good r 

The elk was now about a hundred yards off 
land. The leading boat was not more than a 
hundred and fifty jards behind; and two of the 
men in the bows were already standing up, rifle 
in hand, to let fly the moment the animal set foot 
on land. There was no time to be lost. 

" Now look ! he can feel the bottom." 

The next moment I sent a bullet in behind 
the shoulder at forty yards, and the huge animal 
rolled over in the shallow water, splashing and 
struggling in the agonies of death. Quick as 
thought we rushed down to the spot, and dragged 
our quarry out of the water. 

Meanwhile, the first boat had reached the shore, 
and we were soon surrounded by half a dozen 
savage-looking fellows, who, to judge from the 
way in which they spat and swung their arms 
about and shouted (one of them cried with 
passion), were cursing us by all the Scandinavian 
Gods. Presently the other boat came up, and 
there were now at least a dozen spectators, all 
of whom seemed to be in a furious state of excite- 
ment. This was rather alarming, and I turned 
round to speak to Hans to ask him what we had 
best do, when, to my horror, I could not see him 
anywhere. "Where had he gone ? He was close 
by me not a minute ago. 

"Cowardly brute," I muttered, "to leave me 
among such a lot of savages," who, to judge by 
their looks, seemed ready to kill me. However, 
he was gone, that was certain, and I had only 
myself to rely on. Calling Don and Carlo 
close to me, who did not at ail approve of the 



presence of so many strangers, I determined to 
take it coolly ; and, quietly lighting my pipe, 
proceeded to flay my elk. 

Whether it was that my friends thought me 
and the dogs dangerous, or whether my coolness 
puzzled them, I know not ; but after staring at 
me a long while, for they found it was useless 
to talk to me, and after they had ejected the 
most prodigious quantity of saliva conceivable, 
they went off in sullen silence, and rowed back 
over the lake. 

" Good ! " I thought ; " and now they have 
gone, I dare say Hans will crawl out of his hiding- 
place." I felt convinced he had sneaked some- 
where under cover. " Hans ! Hans !" I shouted. 

Sure enough I heard his voice some distance 
off, and in a couple of minutes he appeared, out 
of breath and in a tremendous heat. 

" It's all right," he began. 

" All right ! Yes ! I dare say you are all right. 
But to go and leave a fellow in the lurch like 
that ! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. 
Why, it's a wonder I'm not murdered and stiff." 

" I've only been to the * Foged ' (magistrate) 
and laid an information against you for having 
shot the elk. It's all right!" replied Hans, 
smiling. 

This was too much! I might have looked 
over his desertion, but to go and turn informer 
was cowardice of the most unpardonable kind ! 

Hans all the time had been laughing with 
delight ; but, seeing that I was seriously angry, 
asked me to listen to what he had to say. 

" Go on, sir," I said, in a dignified manner. 

" Now, my good friend, did you not see one 
of the men slink off directly the boat came 
ashore ?" I shook my head negatively. 

" But I did ! So "that's your game, is it ? 
Two can play at that, thought I. For you see he 
was off to the Foged to lay information against 
us. Now, I can't afford to pay twenty dollars 
if you can. Besides, as I am a candidate of 
theology, I didn't want to see my name in all 
the papers as a poacher. So I ran up to the 
' station,' borrowed the man's pony, and set off, 
full gallop, to the Foged' s house. Before I had 
gone half way, I saw my friend running along in 
the same direction as hard as he could. He did 
not recognise me till I came alongside, when, 
pulling off my hat, I shouted, c Shall I give your 
compliments to the Foged.' He knew me then, 
and seeing the game was up, turned back. So 
I rode on, and told the Foged how that you had 
shot an elk, and how that I was very angry 
about it, and thought it my duty to lay an in- 
formation against you." 

And Hans enlightened me as to the law re- 
lating to elk which I have already mentioned, 
and of which I was then ignorant. 

" My best Hans," said I, " I beg your pardon, 
but I really thought you were a humbug !" 

" Of course you did. The Foged will be here 
directly, so I must play my part. Don't be 
angry if I abuse you soundly." 

Before long, up came the said functionary, 
looking quite as important as I do on bench 
days, and began to write down the deposi- 



42 [August 5, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR BOUND. 



[Conducted by 



tions. Hans played his part admirably, and 
was even complimented by the worthy old 
magistrate for his conduct, when he gave him as 
a reward half of the forty dollars which I 
handed over. Then, having once secured his 
reward, with consummate ability he began to 
find extenuating circumstances for me " that 
I was an Englishman, unconscious of the law, 
&c." till at last we all three became excellent 
friends, and, at a wink from Hans, 1 asked them 
both to come up to the house and sup with me. 
They accepted readily, and under the influence 
of a stiff glass of hot grog with, and a good 
London cigar, the old Eoged's heart relented so 
far, that he actually offered to remit the fine. Of 
course I refused, and begged him to distribute 
it amongst the poor, only asking him not to let 
my name figure in the paper. 



MODERN FRENCH MARRIAGES. 

French laws and customs respecting mar- 
riage, although they cannot erase and obliterate 
the natural distinction of sex, confer complete 
equality and fraternity. A Frenchwoman is 
not only a wife at bed and board, she is also ^ a 
partner in business and a joint proprietor, with- 
out whose consultation and consent no important 
step can be taken. She knows when a bill is 
due, as well as, or better than, her husband. She 
can consent to, or forbid, her children's mar- 
riage. She never sinks her maiden name, but 
attaches it to that of her spouse in a form very 
little differing from that of commercial asso- 
ciations. Mr. White starts a concern with Mr. 
Black ; they announce their joint undertaking 
as White and Black. M. White married to 
Mdlle. Black, are known to the world as 
White-Black. A hyphen, or an and, makes 
all the difference. The same kind of fraternity 
also frequently occurs quite as a matter of 
course, existing in the nature of things in the 
talk talked, in the books read, in the songs 
listened to, and in the double meanings laughed 
at jointly by a Erenchman and his wife. 

But while the laws of property and marriage 
do all they can to rivet the chains of matrimony, 
there are other influences which work in an 
opposite direction. Thus, moments of repulsion 
are sure to occur between a girl firmly grounded 
in a religion of rituals, scrupulous of small ob- 
servances, and looking no further, and a man 
who believes few religious dogmas, or, if he 
admits their spirit, will not be fettered by their 
letter. But above every other cause likely to 
prove the germ of future estrangement, is the 
way in which Erench matches are made. 

Many of the Erench themselves are far from 
being satisfied on this head, and have even the 
boldness to quote with approbation the advan- 
tages offered by the English system as far as 
happiness is concerned. Some acknowledge it 
in theory, and would, if they could, reconcile 
two opposites interest and disinterestedness. 
As they cannot, the sacrifice required by disin- 
terestedness proves much too hard to be accom- 



plished. Like the young man in Scripture, they 
risk their chance of heaven rather than give up 
large possessions. The amount of recent litera- 
ture relating to marriage, shows the heaving 
of the popular mind. We have The Dramas 
of Marriage, by Benjamin Gastneau; The 
Manufacture of Marriages, by Paul Feval; 
The Marriages of To-day, by Philibert Aude- 
brand; and The Marriages of Paris, by Ed- 
mond About. Among all these matrimonial 
lucubrations, we greatly prefer M. Tbevenin's 
" Marriage in the Ninteenth Century, as it is, 
and as it ought to be," which is at the same time 
serious, sensible, and pleasant. 

Erench society, according to M. Thevenin, 
distinguishes two sorts of marriages ; one called 
" of reason," the other " of inclination." An 
excellent treatise might be written on the re- 
spectable words which, in every age, society has 
employed to designate, or rather to screen, the 
ugliest realities. Every day we hear swindlers 
talk of honour, fanatics of moderation, poltroons 
of courage. In the wars of nations, both sides 
fight in the name of justice, right, and humanity. 
Marriage is not exempt from the same reproach. 
To call one sort of marriage "a marriage of 
reason," is to beg the question, close all debate, 
and condemn marriages of any other sort. It 
is the old story of one-half of the human race 
despising the prejudices of the other half, while 
religiously adhering to their own. What right 
have certain marriages to assume to themselves 
the sole and exclusive patronage of reason ? 

By " marriages of reason " is generally under- 
stood marriages concluded under the following 
conditions, varying in form according to the 
position of the contracting parties, but exactly 
the same in principle : equality of fortune, po- 
sition, and social relations. Any infraction of 
the rule is certain ruin. 

Marriage, for these algebrists of the human 
heart, is an equation whose terms must be on 
both sides identical. Unfortunately, the un- 
known quantity thence resulting, often upsets 
their wisest and wariest calculations. How 
can we expect it to be otherwise, when we re- 
member the means employed to make sure of 
the equilibrium which is declared indispensable 
between the two belligerents ? For the parties, 
who are to become man and wife, begin by 
making mutual war. 

The strategy of the matrimonial campaign is 
this : A young man, getting on for thirty, tired 
of a single life, without parents, or expecting 
soon to lose them, exercising a profession whose 
seriousness is more suited to a family man than 
to a bachelor, or possessing a handsome com- 
petency of which a wife alone can do the honours 
this young man desires to marry. In his 
more or less extended circle of acquaintance, 
he does not know a single girl whose outward 
charms have made much impression on him, or 
whose fortune is large enough to tempt him; 
nevertheless, he wishes to get married. He 
confides his intentions to two or three friends. 
Oh ! mon Dieu, he will not be over-particular. 
Provided the young lady belong to a well-con- 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAK ROUND. 



[August 5, 1865.] 43 



sidered family, in a social position equal or 
superior to his own; provided that a similar 
concordance exist between their fortunes, and 
finally, if possible, that the person herself be 
not altogether repulsive, he will require nothing 
more. Be she tall or short, fat or lean, fair or 
dark, well-educated or ignorant, gentle or cross- 
grained, healthy or sickly, it is all one to him. 
Equality of fortune and position are the two 
grand items ; all the rest are accessories. 

The friends, then, are on the look-out ; they 
soon discover a score of marriageable girls. The 
postulant has no other difficulty than that of 
making his selection. A fete, a ball, a call, a 
dinner, a simple meeting brought about by a 
third party, bring the two enemies face to face. 
The word " enemies" is not employed by chance. 

When two armies, or two diplomatists, have 
met, what is their first, their only care ? Of 
course, to obtain the best possible conditions at 
the expense of the adverse party. And what 
means do they employ to accomplish that end ? 
They conceal their forces and their lowest terms, 
which they only allow to appear when all is over. 
In all the matrimonial negotiations whence mar- 
riages of reason result, matters are conducted 
exactly as they are by diplomatists. Both of 
them, suitor and maid, paint not, perhaps, their 
faces, although the least said about that the 
better ; but their looks, their words, their at- 
titude, endeavouring to adorn themselves with 
moral and physical advantages, of which closer 
intimacy will show that they are utterly devoid. 

What does it signify ? A good opportunity 
offers itself ; no time is to be lost in striking 
the bargain. Nobody can live on love and 
spring water. Money in the funds, farms in 
Normandy, vineyards in the Cote d'Or, a notary's 
office with plenty of clients, are precious things 
of the very first importance. If, by-the-by, the 
house becomes unbearable, the fortune with its 
little additions can be divided into two equal 
shares, and all will go on smoothly again. 

The young couple, then, are brought together ; 
the combat is about to begin ; for an hour or 
two, the suitor, without coming forward or com- 
promising himself, is able to scrutinise with his 
eyes the person proposed to him as his wife. If 
the eyes are satisfied and little caution is to 
be expected in an eye ready to be pleased it 
is possible, amidst the confusion of a crowd, by 
means of a polka, to obtain the favour of a few 
minutes' tete-a-tete. 

All goes well. The young man, enamoured 
with his partner's charms, returns to the com- 
mon friend, and says, " I have no objection to 
conclude the match. But I must have two 
hundred thousand francs ; you know that sum 
is indispensable." 

"Yes, my dear fellow; but no one is com- 
pelled to perform impossibilities. We can give 
only a hundred and fifty thousand." 

" Show me, then, another pearl out of your 
stock of jewellery." 

* Easy enough. Did you remark, sitting by 
the side of your rejected fair one, a very dark- 
complexioned girl r 1 



"Yes ; and the least in the world awry." 

"She has two hundred and fifty thousand 
francs !" 

"If she will accept me, the business is settled." 

Eresh presentation, fresh dissimulation. Dur- 
ing a month, three times a week, for two hours 
at a sitting, the lover pays his respects to his 
affianced bride. On the day when, hand in 
hand, they swear before God and man to take 
each other for husband and wife, they have been 
twenty-four hours in each other's company, and 
that in the presence of witnesses. 

Unhappy creatures ! They have not had the 
time even to think of what they are doing. Eor 
a month their thoughts have been occupied with 
everything excepting marriage. The young 
man has been meditating solely how he will 
employ the dowry ; the young lady has been 
considering the items of her "corbeille" or 
wedding presents. But if a dowry and a 
corbeille are things not to be despised, it is 
difficult to believe that they alone constitute the 
whole of marriage. And yet, that is what is 
called a marriage of reason ! 

"All the proprieties have been observed," 
stupidly say their worldly acquaintances. " They 
are perfectly assorted ! Ah ! they will make a 
happy couple !" 

Wait a bit, good people. When the funds 
have dropped, and the corbeille is worn out, you 
will see if the proprieties, all the proprieties, 
have been observed if the couple be so 
admirably matched. 

Fatigued witli the constraint which they had 
imposed on themselves at the outset (a constraint 
observed by all polite strangers who happen to be 
thrown together by chance), they feel that they 
can no longer support the dissimulation of their 
real characters; and having no further ap- 
pearances to keep up the one for the sake of 
the dowry, the other for the corbeille they 
reveal their true selves with an energy pro- 
portionate to the difficulty they had in maintain- 
ing the compression. Then, surely, is the time, 
if ever, to invoke the reason which was so 
loudly talked of as presiding at the marriage. 
Then is the time to compliment them on their 
prudence, and their respect for propriety. What 
a delightful household, what an admirably- 
assorted couple, have sprung up out of this 
marriage of reason ! 

Monsieur, who was a little saint, a docile 
slave, while fingering the cash, suddenly feels 
his despotic instincts struggling in his bosom 
stronger than ever. He assumes the tone of a 
master towards the person one look from whom, 
so lately, either overclouded or irradiated his 
forehead, and the tyrant bickers at the slightest 
outlay made by the woman for whose corbeille 
nothing was fine enough, nothing dear enough. 

And the young wife ? Do you, by chance, 
imagine that she does not perform her part in 
this new modulation of the conjugal duet? 
She, so white, so gentle, so angelical, so smiling 
beneath her wreath of orange-flowers, has 
become yellow, dry, waspish, angular. Mounted 
on her pedestal of two hundred and fifty thou- 



4i [August 5, 18G5.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



sand francs, she holds that she purchased, not a 
brutal despot, but a complaisant follower. 
Madame, to go to a charity-sermon, exacts the 
support of monsieur's arm, -whose tendencies 
lie entirely turf- wards. At night, the one is 
attracted to a ball, while the other cannot abstain 
from his club. So that the marriage of reason 
(whose sweets have lasted about as long as 
spring-tide flowers) ends, ninety times out of 
a hundred, in a separation not of hearts ; for 
that organ has never been consulted, and had 
never formed part of the portion on either side. 
And note well that this is a match made under 
avowable circumstances ; there are others that 
may be stigmatised as shameful, although placed 
under the patronage of reason. Take one as 
a sample of the rest. 

It was a young notary. The son of artisans 
in easy circumstances, he dreamt, as the summit 
of grandeur, of nothing less than an office in a 
chef-lieu d'arrondissement, a town honoured by 
the residence of a sous-prefet. Three hundred 
a year (seven or eight thousand francs), after 
twenty years' labour, was all his ambition ; and 
everything promised that he would obtain his 
object. 

He had been in business three years, and half 
the cost of his place was already paid. (Notaries' 
"studies" are purchased, like commissions in 
the British army.) As a not ill-looking fellow, 
and esteemed in the exercise of his legal func- 
tions, he might, according to local custom, 
aspire to a dowry of fifty thousand francs, with 
twice as much in expectation. He was, in 
short, the man who had the best opportunities 
in the neighbourhood for making what is called 
a marriage of reason without doing violence to 
his own inclinations. He could pick and choose 
among lots of girls possessing all the qualifi- 
cations required in that class of society ; namely, 
a decent fortune, sufficient education to know 
that there is no railway between Dover and 
Calais, enougli piano-playing to scratch off a 
polka, taste enough to avoid wearing a green 
hat with a blue dress, a knowledge of pickling 
and preserving, the capability to shear wool off 
an egg-shell, and the sense (in spite of a love of 
finery) to prefer an acre of land to a cashmere 
shawl, with the habit of attending church merely 
for decorum's sake. In other respects, brought 
up in the most complete submissiveness, purity, 
and ignorance. Assuredly, for matrimonial 
speculators, it was the beau ideal of a chance. 

Well would you believe it? this smart 
little notary, who, as the saying is, had only to 
stoop to gather the fairest flower, cast his eyes 
on a girl older than himself, scarcely three feet 
high, idiotic, subject to St. Yitus's dance, and 
superlatively hysterical. True, she was an only 
child ; and nobody, -except the notaries of the 
neighbourhood, could state the exact figure of 
the paternal fortune. The most moderate esti- 
mate put it at fifteen hundred thousand francs. 
That was the bait. 

After many a cautious feeler to ascertain 
whether he were likely to suit, the bold young 
notary was admitted into the fortress. The 



father who, for form's sake, had made some 
slight^ resistance, decided at length to conclude 
an alliance which, at one stroke, had the double 
advantage of ridding him of a heavy burden, and 
of giving him a son-in-law capable of managing 
his numerous affairs. 

Tor the consideration of five hundred thousand 
francs, in the shape of dowry, the notary, who 
sold his office, swore at the altar to ensure the 
happiness of a woman whom he could not look 
at without disgust, and so contracted a marriage 
which his fellow-townsmen qualified, not indeed 
as a marriage of reason the term did not ex- 
press sufficient approval but as a marriage 
" de haute raison," of high reason ! 

What admirable devotion ! Was it not a 
sacrifice of self to link himself for life to so 
abject a creature, and to devote his abilities and 
acquirements to the service of his opulent father- 
in-law ? True, the five hundred thousand francs 
were regarded as a sop of consolation no; 
not that as the reward of his cleverness. 

That match gave rise to heaps of envy. But 
although the story is historical, it finishes 
exactly like a tale. Tor events which is a pity 
sometimes take the liberty of occurring as 
novel-writers would make them occur. There 
was a final chastisement. After two years' 
married life, the idiotic dwarf, who gained 
strength by accidents that kill ordinary women, 
buried for good and all her hard-working and 
expectant husband, who died therefore without 
touching the fortune for which he had sold him- 
self body and soul. Providence does not seem 
to favour marriages of such excessively high 
reason. 

Keeping to the strict sense of the words, the 
union termed a marriage of inclination would be 
one in which reason is set aside, despised, 
trodden under foot. Nay, the word "inclina- 
tion" is too timid and gentle to express the 
meaning of those who apply it to this kind of 
marriage. They would imply blind passion ; 
something worse, perhaps. They will be greatly 
astonished at being told : " Your marriage of 
reason is an act of folly, since you have con- 
verted it into a commercial contract. Its true 
name is a money-match. No one denies that the 
voice of reason ought to be invoked, and listened 
to, in concluding a marriage ; but reason, really 
worthy of the name, requires other conditions 
besides the equalities laid down as bases. 
Ruminate La Bruyere's skit. * If you choose to 
commit a folly, and marry for a passing whim, 
you will espouse Melite, who is young, pretty, 
well-conducted, economical, whom you love, 
and who loves you, who has a smaller fortune 
than iEgine, whom they want you to marry, 
and who, with a rich dower, will bring you a 
rich disposition to spend it, and all your 
worldly goods besides.' " 

In fact, what will it profit me to marry a 
woman who is more or less rich, if, for many 
graveand inevitable reasons, I cannot livehappily 
with her? Far better to remain poor and 
single ; I shall at least preserve that inestimable 
treasure commonly called liberty. I shall not 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 5, 1865.] 45 



then be obliged, in order to regain a small 
fraction of it, to give the lie to all my engage- 
ments, and to violate my most sacred vows. 
Looking marriage bravely in the face, to give a 
definition of it, we need not hesitate to say that 
matrimony ought to be an improvement in the 
condition of both the parties. 

If marriage ought to be an amelioration, what 
are the requisites for augmenting the well-being 
of a man and a woman isolated in celibacy ? In 
the first place, the companion chosen for life, 
ought to enjoy perfect health. Men or women 
who, from interested motives, take to themselves 
ailing or decrepid partners, commit an act which, 
if general, would entail the degradation of future 
generations. Is that reasonable ? Is it even 
natural ? 

After health, come character and disposition, 
which greatly depend on education, habit, and 
the social medium in which the early years of 
life have been spent. It is certain that a girl 
brought up as a recluse, in the practice of almost 
monastic habits, will be ill disposed for an abrupt 
transition from her accustomed solitude to the 
activity of a large industrial enterprise. In like 
manner, the girl who has acquired a taste for 
travelling, will with difficulty yield to the exi- 
gencies of a sedentary life. There ought there- 
fore at least to be some analogy between the 
past and the future, to prevent the suddenness of 
the contrast from turning out a stumbling-stone 
for the future spouses. As to the money ques- 
tion, no one says that it ought to be neglected ; 
but certainly it ought to yield the precedence to 
physical and moral considerations. 

Swedenborg has discoursed at length on the 
mysterious and almost invincible predestination 
of human attachments. Every soul, he asserts, 
and everybody, living and suffering in this valley 
of tears, has a sister or a brother, to which the 
laws of physical and moral attraction are con- 
stantly tending to unite it. In proof whereof 
he cites the sudden and inexplicable sympathy 
which breaks out, at first sight, between two 
persons who did not even suspect each other's 
existence. 

No one will deny that, in married life, one 
ought to try to love the woman one marries. 
Well; before our heart is opened to her, our 
eyes have been already smitten. By what ? 
There's the mystery ! Evidently beauty is a 
powerful stimulant of love ; but do we not daily 
behold men captivated by women whom the 
majority of their male friends consider plain ? 
This fascination is therefore owing to some 
secret cause which we obey without knowing 
what it is a mysterious attraction which can- 
not lead us astray, if we will only follow it. 
Inclination is the daughter of sight ; she is the 
offspring of an innate sympathy, inexplicable 
perhaps, but certainly indisputable. Conse- 
quently, the man who marries the woman who 
pleases him, is nearer to the truth than he who 
beholds his future bride only through the de- 
ceptive prism of her cash-box. 

When a man is charmed by a woman, and 
excites in her a reciprocal feeling, there are a 



thousand ways which the strictest morality can- 
not blame, and which prudery only would dare 
to condemn, of studying and becoming ac- 
quainted with the temper and habits of that 
woman. If, after due inquiry, the inclination 
still subsists, it is clear that there is compati- 
bility of temper between them. In this respect, 
at any rate, the marriage of fools has an advan- 
tage over the marriage of sages. As to pecu- 
niary considerations, it is needless to mention 
them at this point of the argument. The man 
who is reasonable enough not to marry a wife 
until he has previously loved and studied her, 
will be perfectly capable of deciding a question 
in which his own personal interest is concerned 
From all which, M. Thevenin concludes that 
a marriage of reason is an act of folly which 
can only turn out well by great good luck ; 
whilst a marriage of inclination is the only rea- 
sonable one, when the future couple have pru- 
dence enough to put between the birth of their 
inclination and the conclusion of their union an 
interval long enough to assure them that their 
affection is likely to resist time and its perfidious 
revelations. 



SPIRITS ON THEIR LAST LEGS. 

When rogues fall out, says the proverb, 
honest men come by their due. So, when 
tricksters begin to abuse each other, the poor 
dupes they have gulled come to their senses. 

This is the crisis at which spiritualism has 
arrived. Mr. Home, who for a long time 
held undisputed possession of the spiritual 
field, has lately stigmatised the Davenports as 
"unmitigated humbugs," and the friends of the 
Davenports retort, through the medium of the 
Spiritual Times (price twopence weekly, adver- 
tisements two shillings a line), that Mr. Home 
is so notoriously jealous of every medium but 
himself, that he is utterly disqualified for pass- 
ing a judgment upon any medium whatever, or 
himself into the bargain. Mr. Home has worked 
his entertainment out ; the Brothers Davenport 
have been exposed, and denounced even by Mr. 
Home himself, and their mysteries have been left 
in the hands of a few obscure ignorant men and 
women, who find seance-holding more profitable, 
more pleasant, and much easier work, than the 
shoemaking, or bonnet-building, which is their 
proper vocation. In fact, spirit-rapping has 
come down to the level of fortune-telling, with 
this difference, that the rappers have a weekly 
organ through which to communicate their 
names and addresses to the public; while the 
old woman with the dirty pack of cards is obliged 
to prowl about areas, or trust to her private 
and confidential connexion with the servaut- 
maids. 

A little while ago the spirits demanded half 
a sovereign at the doors ; now they are willing 
to perform first and make the collection after- 
wards, " leaving it entirely to you," and thank- 
fully receiving the smallest donations. This 
is even a degree lower than the practice of the 



46 [August 5, 1S65.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



gentleman who gave an exhibition of rope-tying 
on Epsom Downs on the Derby Day, but who 
declined to begin until we had " chucked in 
another fourpence to make up two bob." I am 
bound to say, however, that the performance 
was worth the money. The fellow tied and 
untied himself with as much security, ease, 
and celerity, as I ever saw exhibited by the 
Davenports. And he did it all in the sight of 
his audience, without hiding himself in a cabi- 
net, or going behind a screen. 

The readers of this journal have heard a good 
deal about the spirits in their over-proof con- 
dition at the Hanover-square and other select 
rooms. Let me now give them a taste of the 
spirits, under-proof and very much reduced, in 
dirty little parlours in Holloway, and dingy back 
shops in the neighbourhood of Holborn. 

I received an invitation to visit two celebrated 
mediums, who stood towards eacli other in the 
earthly relation of man and wife. I set out about 
two o'clock on a bright summer's afternoon, in 
company of a distinguished friend, for a certain 
rendezvous in the Kentish-town-road. We had 
not far to go, but the elaborate simplification of 
the numbers of the Kentish-town-road by the 
Board of Works (that body being then engaged in 
ranging the even numbers on one side of the way 
and the odd numbers on the other), rendered the 
finding of the rendezvous a matter of considerable 
difficulty. The lady at the stay-shop assured us 
that Mr. Ferguson did not lodge there ; but she 
would be most happy to guide us to where he 
did lodge, if in her power. "What was Mr. 
"Ferguson ?" How were we to answer ? How 
were we to describe the gentleman? As a 
medium, or as a dealer in spirits? Medium 
conveyed nothing to the staymaking mind, and 
the mention of spirits suggested the public- 
house. How many unlicensed houses in the 
Kentish-town-road we called at, inquiring for 
spirits, I don't know ; but before we dis- 
covered the lodgement of Mr. Ferguson (at 
a chemist's), we had become objects of much 
w r onder and some suspicion to the road gene- 
rally. 

At last Mr. Ferguson did lodge here. We 
found him in the chemist's back parlour, sur- 
rounded by the implements of amateur photo- 
graphy, and an odour of collodion. He was 
not the medium himself; but the medium was 
a friend of his, and he would be happy to take 
us to his house, which was in Holloway. Before 
leading the way, Mr. Ferguson took us in hand 
like so many photographic plates, and prepared 
us for receiving impressions. He and his friend 
the medium had once been materialists ; but cir- 
cumstances had occurred at a table one even- 
ing, which had served to convince them that 
there was more in heaven and earth than was 
dreamt of in their philosophy. Since then, 
Mr. Ferguson had seen wonderful manifesta- 
tions from the spirit-world, and he had no 
doubt that we would see wonderful things that 
day, if we approached the subject in a candid 
spirit. With this exhortation we started for 
Holloway. 



We had trusted implicitly to the topographical 
knowledge of our guide, 'the amateur photo- 
grapher, but we found, at Holloway, that we 
had been leaning upon a broken reed. All he 
could do was to point to a dead wall, and say : 
" My belief is, that if we could go through 
this wall we should come upon the house 
directly." This was so obviously the weak- 
minded excuse of a fatuously foolish person, 
that it drew forth from us a muttered trio of 
maledictions upon our guide's head. In case 
this should meet his eye, I will not say what 
names we called him ; but they were not com- 
plimentary. 

There w r as nothing for it but to make in- 
quiries, which, as our guide did not even know 
the name of the street in which the medium 
lived, was like taking an observation at sea in a 
pitch-dark night. As the medium and his wife 
arc in the habit of advertising themselves every 
week in the Spiritual Times, I shall not betray 
any confidence if I mention that their name is 
Wallace. We asked for Wallace, spiritualists, at 
the police station. They were, to their honour 
be it said, not known to the police. We asked 
at public-houses, and, equally to their credit, they 
were not known there. At length we were in- 
formed that Mr. Wallace lived at number fourteen 
in a certain street. We called there, and, in an- 
swer to our summons, there came to the door a 
gentleman in high-lows and corduroys, with a 
wisp of bird's-eye round his neck : no coat 
or waistcoat, and jury braces rigged with twine. 
He was wiping his mouth with the back of his 
hand, which indicated that we had disturbed him 
at dinner. Was he Mr. Wallace? He was. 
Was he in the spiritual line ? But it was need- 
less to ask. Mr. Wallace, of number fourteen, 
was obviously a philosopher of the peripatetic 
order, devoting himself to fish or vegetables, ac- 
cording to the season. I fancy that when Mr. 
Wallace, of number fourteen, saw four individuals 
standing on his door-step, he was seized with a 
qualm of conscience about beating his donkey, 
and had a terrible thought of the Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We 
were almost in despair, when, on turning into 
the next street, we espied the postman. Here 
was a chance at length our last and only 
chance. 

" Did he know a Mr. Wallace living there- 
abouts ?" 

"Wallace Wallace." This in a thoughtful 
and recollecting manner. 

We assisted the postman's mental process 
by mentioning Mr. Wallace's profession spi- 
ritualism. The word brought the scattered 
rays of the postal intelligence into focus. 

" Oh yes ; there was a Mr. Wallace living in 
the next street, at number forty-seven; to be 
sure, he was connected with religion, and re- 
ceived a great many letters." 

I made a small bet that this was not the 
Wallace we were in search of and lost. 

The house was semi-detached, and the walls, 
which had been last plastered probably about 
forty years ago, were dirt-begrimed and cracked. 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



I [August 5, 1865.] 47 



The neglected piece of ground in front should 
have been overrun with grass, but none grew 
there. The door stood in a gloomy little corner 
at the side, and close by there grew a strange- 
looking tree, suggestive of upas and deadly 
nightshade. 

Mr. Ferguson, very fussy and very anxious, 
giving our mental plates another sensitive bath 
as he leads the way, ushers us into a dingy 
little parlour, the prominent articles in which 
are two round tables, one large and the other 
small, the latter with one leg and three feet. 
Mr. Ferguson tells us amazing stories about the 
large table. How, on several occasions, it was 
by spiritual agency lifted up nearly to the ceil- 
ing, and how he, Mr. F., got on the top of 
it, and could not bring it to the ground. We 
were introduced to the male medium. He was 
a tall man with a big bulging forehead, bushy 
eyebrows, a weak quivering mouth, and a pair 
of large watery dreamy-looking eyes. He was 
dressed in a swallow-tailed black coat, and his 
general appearance indicated the jobbing shoe- 
maker who would preach in the Parks on Sun- 
day afternoon if the police would let him, and 
who, if he were not permitted to preach, would 
be sure to find some other way of giving vent to 
his egotism and his dangerous little bit of learn- 
ing. He was the kind of man who takes up with 
Voltaire and Tom Paine who, under certain 
other circumstances, would be attracted by the 
purest Evangelism, by Puseyism, Mormonism, 
or any other ism a man whose mind is as soft 
and impressionable as putty, and whose nerves 
are as weakly strung as a spider's web. Recog- 
nising a remarkably pulpy man of this type, I 
could give him credit for believing anything. I 
will candidly admit that he did not give me the 
idea of a trickster. 

There was no sign of preparation about the 
humble little room, and I was abundantly con- 
vinced that there was no preparation. We were 
asked which table we would like to operate 
upon, the large or the small one. We were 
quite indifferent, and the choice being left to 
the medium, he chose the small table. Six of 
us, including the medium, sat down at it in a 
circle, and placed our hands on its surface. 
Thus we sat for fully five minutes, and nothing 
came of it. The medium said he had never 
known the spirits so backward. We sat for 
another five minutes without any result, when 
suddenly the door opened softly, and the me- 
dium's wife stole into the room. She took a 
seat on a chair near the door at some distance 
from the table. Mrs. Wallace presented a very 
striking contrast to her husband. She had a 
sharp cunning look, with a lively twinkle in her 
small dark eyes, indicating a strong sense of 
humour. At last we had a manifestation. The 
spirits did not rap and the table did not tilt, 
but the medium's hand began to waggle about 
in a sort of frenzy. " What was that ?" we asked. 
" Oh, that was a sperrit moving him." " Could 
he see the spirit?" "Yes, he could see the 
sperrit." " And what did the spirit indicate ?" 
" The sperrit indicated that he was to write." 



Mr. Ferguson here brought forward a sheet 
of foolscap and a pencil, and the medium pre- 
pared to write. But it was a hand with St. 
Vitus's dance. After much staggering about 
the paper, the hand succeeded in writing 
a few words in very irregular characters. 
The medium said he could not make out 
every word that the spirit had written, but 
the purport of the communication was, that 
she was to come to the table. She? There 
could be no dispute about the person referred 
to; for there was only one she present. Ac- 
cordingly, Mrs. Wallace (having, as I noticed, 
previously wiped her fingers with a handker- 
chief) came to the table. Still no raps, nor 
tilts, but presently Mr. Wallace's hand in another 
fit, moving backward and forward, and appa- 
rently sweeping crumbs into my lap. (N.B. 
I had just assured Mr. Wallace that T had never 
before assisted at an exhibition of spiritualism 
in this form.) "What did the agitated hand 
mean by sweeping imaginary crumbs into my 
lap ?" It meant that Mrs. Wallace was to come 
and sit by me. "How did he know that?" 
" The sperrit told him so, and he knew by ex- 
perience how the sperrit indicated particular 
things." " Oh," we said. Mrs. Wallace came 
and sat by me. She wiped her hands again 
before putting them on the table. Presently 
the table creaked. That was not sperrits, Mr. 
Wallace said : it was merely the creaking of the 
table, and he warned us not to be too ready to 
accept false signs. Presently a rap of another 
kind was heard. It was a dull sound like the 
rap of a knuckle on a solid piece of wood. Thai; 
was declared to be a sperrit. Mr. Wallace 
proceeded to address the sperrit in mild and 
persuasive accents. " Now, friend ; if you are 
ready to communicate with us, you will please 
to give three raps for yes ;' and two raps for 
c no.' Is it your wish to communicate with us ? 
Give me a hanser." The spirit understood 
Mr. Wallace's dialect, and gave him a hanser 
with one rap, then another, and at length, after 
some delay, a third. 

While these raps were being made, I noticed 
quite distinctly and visibly (without the possi- 
bility of making any mistake about the matter) 
that Mrs. Wallace was vigorously using the 
muscles of her fingers to move the table. When 
I had seen her in this way produce several raps, 
I came to a tacit understanding with her by 
wiping my fingers with my poeket-handkerchiei'. 
She saw me do this, and it was a masonic sign 
by which she recognised a medium of her own 
class. By exerting the tips of my fingers on 
the surface of the table, I found I could produce 
the raps that were recognised as the communi- 
cations of spirits. I will explain at once how it 
is done, so that any one may test the matter for 
himself. By pushing the tips of your fingers 
backward and forward you give to the table 
an imperceptible motion which moves the foot 
on the floor. It is this slight slip on the floor 
that sounds through the boards and produces 
the raps. There was a rapid succession of 
knocks produced by Mrs. Wallace (not by me), 



48 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 5, 1865.] 



and then the male medium addressed the spirits 
thus : " Now, don't all knock at once, but be 
patient, and speak one at a time ; you'll all have 
your turn." The spirits, thus rebuked, retired 
all but one, who was very willing to answer 
questions, but unfortunately always answered 
wrong. This spirit could not be persuaded to 
give a plain straightforward answer ; but would 
go gabbling on with any number of knocks when 
he was required to give only two or three. On 
trying to bring this spirit under control, I found 
that the table slipped too readily, and that it 
was difficult to stop the raps at the required 
number. The medium tried another modus. 
Addressing the loquacious spirit, he said, " Will 
you hanser questions by tipping the table- 
three tips for yes, and two tips for no." The 
table tipped three times, signifying that it would 
hanser the questions. I distinctly saw Mrs. 
Wallace tip the table by drawing it towards her 
with her fingers. I stopped her at will ; and I 
noticed that she could only tip the table when 
it was balanced upon two feet. _ When she 
wished to vary the direction in which the table 
was required to tip, she moved the table round 
either to the right or the left. The spirits 
answered readily with the tips ; but oddly 
enough, they were always wrong. I never saw 
guess-work so uniformly a failure. 

A more miserable, wretched, stupid, weak- 
minded imposture, it never has been my fate to 
see. I think Mrs. Wallace was sensible of her 
failure to impress us with the tapping, for it 
seemed in a sort of desperation that she resorted 
to the hand manifestation. W r hile her hand 
was dancing St. Yitus's dance, she snuffled and 
soffed, and appeared to be in a fit. Some one 
making a funny remark while she was in the 
midst of this performance, she burst into a 
laugh in spite of herself, and St. Vitus left her 
instanter. 

For the extraordinary scene that followed, I 
am in no way responsible. I was not privy to 
the design, and I was as much astonished and 
perplexed as the mediums themselves. One of 
the party asked a question with solemnity 
and anxiety. Mrs. Wallace, in the usual man- 
ner, tipped the table three times, and (this 
I will grant), with my assistance, sent it spinning 
into the questioner's lap. Hereupon the gentle- 
man covered his face with his hands, sobbed, 
howled, kicked over the tables and chairs, 
seized the medium by the collar, dragged him 
to the ground, and there rolled over and over 
with him, apparently in a struggle to the death. 
All this time and the gentleman manifested 
during full five minutes Mr. Ferguson was ad- 
juring the spirit, by all sorts of sacred names, to 
" come out of this man." But the spirit did not 
come out of this man until every article of furni- 
ture in the room had been upset, and until Mr. 
Ferguson's shins had been well kicked, and the 
male medium nearly strangled. What was the 
object of this manifestation I don't know, 
unless it was to add force to the verdict which 



we unanimously passed upon the performance 
of "Mr. and Mrs. Wallace, the celebrated 
mediums," which was, that their so-called spi- 
ritualism was an impudent, barefaced imposture, 
clumsy in the last degree, and audaciously blas- 
phemous. ^ We accompanied this finding with 
a honorarium of two shillings a head, making in 
all sixteen shillings. Not a bad afternoon's wage 
for such work. 

That Mrs. Wallace practised the imposture 
knowing it to be an imposture, I am cer- 
tain. I am not so sure about her hus- 
band. I am inclined to think that he believed 
in it to some extent; that he was in some 
measure the dupe of his wife ; but that he 
was not unwilling to practise trickery himself 
when what he believed to be spiritual influence 
failed. 

I made an appointment to witness a seance 
conducted by another famous medium ; but on 
arriving at the place of meeting, I encountered 
my old friends, Mr. and Mrs. Wallace. The 
other famous medium, it was said, had reasons 
for not keeping the appointment, and had sent 
Mr. and Mrs. Wallace as substitutes, that a 
stroke of business might not be lost to the 
fraternity. This is organisation, I suppose. 
The second seance with the Wallaces was even 
more stupid than the first. They could do 
nothing but tilt the table, and when I asked 
(mentally) if Mr. Wallace was a humbug, the 
spirit tilted yes ; and again tilted yes when I 
asked if Mrs. Wallace was not the greater hum- 
bug of the two. It occurred to me to inquire 
how these people could so constantly subject 
themselves to exposure, and persist in a foolish 
exhibition which I and others there present 
had already denounced. I had a full answer to 
this when I made a motion of leaving without 
paying. Both mediums stopped in the middle 
of their conjurations, and looked round at me 
with an unmistakable demand for money. Which 
is the root of all evil. 



NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS, 

In Monthly Parts, uniform with the Original Editions of 

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Now publishing, Part XVI., price Is., of 

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ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 

A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. 



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BY THE AUTIIOR OF " BARBARA'S HISTORY." 



CHAPTER XXXV. BRAVO, ANTINOUS ! 

The two Pulteneys stayed out, the one to act 
as judge, the other as timekeeper; and the 
timekeeper was to give the starting signal by 
firing a pistol. 

In the meanwhile, the eight competitors were 
ranged side by side, close nnder the ladies' plat- 
form, with the sleeves of their Jerseys rolled up 
above the elbows, their arms drawn close to 
their bodies, and their clenched fists pressed 
against their chests all lithe and eager-looking, 
like a pack of greyhounds. Of these, the two 
tallest and fairest were Saxon Trefalden and Sir 
Charles Burgoyne. Sir Charles was the hand- 
somer man ; but Saxon was a shade the taller, 
and something more than a shade broader across 
the shoulders. Well might Miss Hatherton 
call him the golden-haired Antinous ; only that 
he was Antinous on a grander scale than the 
famous Antinous of the Capitol Antinous with 
herculean possibilities of strength and speed. 

With the exception of Lord Castletowers, 
whose Jersey was of a creamy white, just the 
tint of his flannel trousers, the young men were 
each distinguished by the colours of their shirts. 
Saxon's was striped pink and white ; Burgoyne' s 
light blue and white; Vaughan's mauve and 
white ; and so on. 

All was ready. The course was clear; the 
spectators silent; the competitors drawn up, 
and waiting. Suddenly, the timekeeper threw 
up his hand, and fired in the air. At the same 
instant, as if shot from his pistol, the eight run- 
ners sprang forward, and the race began. 

They had no sooner started than Saxon took 
the lead, running lightly and steadily, with his 
head well up, and his curls dancing in the sun. 
He was obviously putting but little labour into 
his running, and yet, at the first three or four 
bounds, he had gained a good ten feet on his 
companions. Next in order came Castletowers, 
Vaughan, and Burgoyne, almost level with each 
other ; and close after them, Edward Brandon, 
whose slightness of make and length of limb 
enabled him to run tolerably well for a short 
distance ; but whose want of real physique in- 
variably knocked him up at the end of' the first 
three hundred yards. Torrington, Greville, and 
Pelham Hay brought up the rear. In this order 



they ran the first round. At the second turn, 
however, just as they neared the ladies' plat- 
form, Castletowers made a rush to the front, 
and passed Saxon by some three or four feet. 
At the same instant, Vaughan and Burgoyne 
perceptibly increased their pace, widening the 
space between themselves and the four last at 
every stride. 

And now Brandon, who had for some seconds 
begun to show symptoms of distress, came sud- 
denly to a stand-still ; and, being passed by those 
in the rear, fell, pale and panting, to the earth. 

In the mean while, Saxon had in no wise 
quickened his pace, nor attempted to regain his 
lead; but kept on at precisely the same rate 
throughout the whole of the second round. 
Just as they were beginning the third, however, 
and at the very point where Castletowers had 
made his rush, Saxon, without any apparent 
effort, bounded ahead, and again left his friend 
some three yards behind. 

Torrington, Greville, and Hay now dropped 
out of the ranks, one by one, and gave up the 
contest ; leaving only Saxon and Castletowers, 
Vaughan and Burgoyne, in the race. Presently 
the two latter went down, but were on their 
feet again in the twinkling of an eye, and 
flying on as before. 

At the fourth round, Castletowers brought 
himself up abreast with Saxon. At the fifth, 
Burgoyne gave in, and Vaughan flagged obvi- 
ously ; but" Castletowers again dashed forward, 
and again secured the lead. 

A subdued murmur, that broke now and then 
into a cheer, ran round the course. Every eye 
was riveted upon the runners. Every head 
turned as they turned, and was outstretched to 
follow them. The ladies rose on the platform, 
and watched them through their glasses. There 
were only three now a white shirt, a pink 
shirt, and a mauve ; but white and pink divided 
the suffrages of the lookers-on, and nobody 
cared a straw for mauve. 

Again the circuit was nearly completed, and 
they were approaching the stand. The next 
round would be the sixth and last. The interest 
of the moment became intense. The murmur 
swelled again, and became a shout hats were 
waved, handkerchiefs fluttered even Lady Cas- 
tletowers leaned forward with a glow of real ex- 
citement on her face. 

On they came the Earl first, in his white 
Jersey, pale as marble, breathing in short heavy 



VOL. XIV. 



329 



50 [August 12, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR EOUtfD. 



[Conducted by 



gasps, lips quivering, brows closely knitted, 
keeping up his lead gallantly, but keeping it by 
dint of sheer pluck and nervous energy. Saxon 
next a little flushed, but light of foot and 
self-possessed as ever, as fresh apparently as 
when he first started, and capable of running 
on at the same steady rate for any number of 
miles that might be set before him. Vaughan 
last coming up very heavily, and full twenty 
yards in the rear. 

"Good Heavens!" cried Miss Hatherton, 
half beside herself with impatience, " how can 
he let Lord Castletowers keep the lead ?" 

" Because he cannot help it," said Olimpia, 
scornfully triumphant. She had forgotten that 
Saxon was her chosen knight, and all her sym- 
pathies were with the Earl. 

" Absurd ! he has but to put out a little more 
speed and he must win. The Earl is nearly . . . 
There ! there ! did I not tell you so ? Bravo, 
Antinous !" 

They passed the platform; and as they 
passed, Saxon looked up with an ardent smile, 
waved his hand to Olimpia, threw up his head 
like a young war-horse, bounded forward as if 
the wings were really on his feet, and passed 
the Earl as easily as a man on horseback passes 
a man on foot. Till this moment the race, 
earnest enough for the rest, had been mere 
play to him. Till this moment he had not at- 
tempted to put out his speed, or show what 
he cpuld do. Now he flashed past the 
astonished spectators like a meteor. His feet 
seemed scarcely to touch the turf, his body 
seemed as if borne upon the air. A great roar 
of admiration burst from the crowd ; and in the 
midst of the roar, before Lord Castletowers had 
got over a third of the distance, Saxon had 
made the sixth round, and passed the winning- 
post by several feet. 

" Won by a hundred and eighty yards," said 
Pulteney, timekeeper. "Last round thirty- 
one seconds and a half. By Jove, Sir, though 
I've seen it myself, I can scarcely believe it !" 

Saxon laughed joyously. 

" I could have done it almost as easily," said 
he, " if it had been up-hill all the way." 

And what did Olimpia Colonna ' say to her 
chosen knight, when he received the prize from 
her hands, only to lay it the next moment at 
her feet ? Doubtless she remembered in good 
time that Saxon was her chosen knight, and 
forgot how disloyally her sympathies had 
strayed from him in the race. Doubtless her 
greeting had in it something poisonously sweet, 
subtle, intoxicating to judge, at least, by the 
light in his face, as he bowed and turned away. 

CHAPTER XXXVI. ELTON HOUSE, KENSINGTON. 

Mr. Abel Keckwitch, with William Tre- 
falden's private address in his pocket-book, felt 
much as Adrian the Fourth may have felt with 
haughty Barbarossa prostrate at his feet. He 
took it for granted that there was some dark 
secret at the bottom of his master's daily life. 
He knew quite well that a practical man like 



William Trefalden would never take the trouble 
to surround himself with mystery unless he had 
something to hide, and to that something Abel 
Keckwitch believed he now possessed the key. 
It never occurred to him that William Trefal- 
den might possibly object to let such loquacious 
stones as copying clerks prate of his where- 
abouts, for other than criminal reasons. If 
such an idea had been suggested to him, he 
would have laughed it to scorn. So, to do him 
justice, w r ould Mr. Kidd. Both the detective 
and the lawyer's clerk were too familiar with 
the dark side of human nature to believe for a 
moment that systematic mystery meant any- 
thing less than undiscovered crime. 

So Abel Keckwitch took his master's address 
home with him, fairly written out in Mr. Nico- 
demus Kidd's clear business hand, and exulted 
therein. He was in no haste to act upon the 
information folded up in that little slip of paper. 
It was not in his nature to be in haste about 
anything, least of all about so sweet a dish as 
revenge. It must be prepared slowly, tasted a 
morsel at a time, and made to last as long as 
possible. Above all, it must be carefully con- 
sidered beforehand from every point of view, 
and be spoiled by no blunder at starting. So 
he copied the address into his common-place 
book, committed it to memory, pondered over 
it, gloated over it, and fed his imagination on 
it for days before he proceeded to take any 
fresh steps in the matter. 

" ELTON HOUSE, KENSINGTON." 

Such was the address given to him by Mr. 
Nicodemus Kidd. " Elton House, Kensington ;" 
not a word more not a word less. It was an 
address that told nothing suggested nothing. 
"Elton Yilla" would have bespoken a neat, 
stuccoed anachronism in the Grseco-Gothic style; 
" Elton Lodge," a prim modern residence, with 
gardens, gates, and a carriage-drive; "Elton 
Cottage," an unassuming little place, shrinking 
back from the high road, in a screen of lilacs 
and laburnums; but "Elton House" repre- 
sented none of these to the mind's eye. " Elton 
House" might be ancient or modern, large or 
small, a cockney palace, or a relic of the old 
court days. There was nothing in its name to 
assist conjecture in any way. Thus, again, the 
very suburb was perplexing. Of all districts 
round about London, there is none so diverse 
in its characteristics as Kensington none so 
old in part, so new in part ; so stately here, so 
squalid there ; so of the country countrified in 
one direction, so of the town towny in another. 
Elton House might partake of any of these 
conditions for aught that one could gather from 
its name. 

In short, Mr. Abel Keckwitch turned the 
address over in his mind much as some people 
turn their letters over, stimulating their curi- 
osity instead of gratifying it, and spelling out 
the motto on the seal, instead of breaking it. 

At length he resolved to go over to Kensing- 
ton and reconnoitre the ground. Having come 
to this determination one Saturday afternoon 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 12, 1865.] 51 



(on which day, when practicable, Mr. Trefalden 
dismissed his clerks at five o'clock), Abel Keck- 
witch pushed forward with his work; closed 
the office precisely as St. Dunstan's clock was 
striking; and, instead of trudging, as usual, 
direct to Pentonville, turned his face westward, 
and hailed the first Hammersmith omnibus that 
came by. 

It was a lovely afternoon; warm, sunny, 
summerlike. Mr. Trefalden's head clerk knew 
that the Park trees were in all the beauty of 
their early leafage, and that the air bejond 
Charing-Cross would be delicious ; and he was 
sorely tempted to take a seat on the roof. But 
prudence prevailed. To risk observation would 
be to imperil the very end for which he was 
working; so, with a sigh, he gave up the air 
and the sunshine, and took an inside place next 
the door. 

The omnibus soon filled, and, once closely 
packed, rattled merrily on, till it drew up for 
the customary five minutes' rest at the White 
Horse Cellar. Then, of course, came the well- 
known newsvendor with the evening papers; 
and the traditionary old lady who has always 
been waiting for the last three-quarters of an 
hour ; and the conductor's vain appeal to the 
gallantry of gentlemen who will not go outside 
to oblige a lady would prefer,. in fact, to see 
a dozen ladies boiled first. 

This interlude played out, the omnibus rat- 
tled on again to the corner of Sloane-street, 
where several passengers alighted; and thence 
proceeded at a sober, leisurely rate along the 
Kensington-road, with the green, broad Park 
lying all along to the right, and row after row 
of stately terraces to the left. 

" Put me down, conductor," said Mr. Keck- 
witch, "at the first turning beyond Elton 
House." 

He had weighed every word of this apparently 
simple sentence, and purposely waited till the 
omnibus was less crowded, before delivering it. 
He knew that the Kensington-road, taken from 
the point where Knightsbridge is supposed to 
end, up to that other point where Hammersmith 
is supposed to begin, covers a fair three miles 
of ground ; and he wanted to be set down as 
near as possible to the spot of which he was in 
search. But then it was essential that he 
should not seem to be looking for Elton House, 
or going to Elton House, or inquiring about 
Elton House in any way; so he worded his 
little speech with an ingenuity that was quite 
masterly as far as it went. 

" Elton House, sir ?" said the conductor. 
" Don't know it. What's the name of the 
street?" 

Mr. Keckwitch took a letter from his pocket, 
and affected to look for the address. 

" Ah !" he replied, refolding it with a dis- 
appointed air, " that I cannot tell you. My 
directions only say, 'the first turning beyond 
Elton House.' I am a stranger to this part of 
London, myself." 

The conductor scratched his ear, looked 
puzzled, and applied to the driver. 



" 'Arry," said he. " Know Elton House ?" 
" Elton House?" repeated the driver. " Can't 
say I do." 

" I think I have heard the name," observed 
a young man on the box. 

" I'm sure I've seen it somewhere," said 
another on the roof. 

And this was all the information to be had 
on the subject. 

Mr. Keckwitch's ingenious artifice had failed. 
Elton House was evidently not to be found 
without inquiry therefore inquiry must be 
made. It was annoying, but there was no help 
for it. Just as he had made up his mind to 
this alternative, the omnibus reached Kensing- 
ton-gate, and the conductor put the same ques- 
tion to the toll-taker that he had put to the 
driver. 

" Davy know Elton House?" 
The toll-taker a shaggy fellow, with a fur 
cap on his head and a straw in his mouth- 
pointed with his thumb over his shoulder, and 
replied, 

* Somewhere down by Slade's-lane, beyond 
the westry." 

On hearing which, Mr. Keckwitch's counte- 
nance brightened, and he requested to be set 
down at Slade's-lane, wherever that might be. 

Slade's-lane proved to be a narrow, winding, 
irregular by-street, leading out from the high 
road, and opening at the further end upon fields 
and market-gardens. There were houses on 
only one side; and on the other, high walls, 
with tree-tops peeping over, and here and there 
a side-door. 

The dwellings in Slade's-lane were of different 
degrees of smallness ; scarcely two of the same 
height; and all approached by little slips of 
front garden, more or less cultivated. There 
were lodgings to let, evidences of humble trades, 
and children playing about the gardens and 
door-steps of most of them. Altogether, a 
more unlikely spot for William Trefalden to 
reside in could scarcely have been selected. 

Having alighted from the omnibus at the top 
of this street, Mr. Keckwitch, after a hurried 
glance to left and right, chose the wall side, and 
walked very composedly along, taking rapid 
note of each door that he passed, but looking 
as stolid and unobservant as possible. 

The side-doors were mostly painted of a dull 
green, with white numerals, and were evidently 
mere garden entrances to houses facing in an 
opposite direction. 

All at once, just at that point where the lane 
made a sudden bend to the right and turned off 
towards the market gardens, Mr. Keckwitch 
found himself under the shadow of a wall con- 
siderably higher than therest, and close against 
a gateway flanked by a couple of stone pillars. 
This gate occupied exactly the corner where 
the road turned, so that it blunted the angle, as 
it were, and commanded the lane in both di- 
rections. It was a wooden gate old, pon- 
derous, and studded with iron bosses, just wide 
enough, apparently, for a carriage to drive 
through, and many feet higher than it was wide. 



52 [August 12, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



In it was a small wicket door. The stone 
pillars were time - stained and battered, and 
looked as if they might have stood there since 
the days when William of Orange brought his 
Dutch court to Kensington. In one of them 
was a plain brass bell-handle. On both were 
painted, in faded and half illegible letters, the 
words, "Elton House." 



THE BACHELORS' STRIKE. 

To render modern French marriages what 
they ought to be marriages of inclination, 
instead of hard-bargained money matches* M. 
Thevenin proposes a no less sweeping measure 
than the abolition of the marriage-portion. 

He allows that the importance of a dowry is 
not a matter of to-day. We know the number 
of camels, oxen, sheep, and servants, which 
Jacob received as Rebecca's portion. The 
dowry, therefore, is no new institution ; but its 
antique origin, according to our author, adds 
nothing to its moral value. No man with a 
proper sense of his own dignity, can allow it to 
reckon amongst the considerations which deter- 
mine his marrying. The male sex, who assume 
to take the lead, would sink wonderfully in the 
good opinion entertained of them by the weaker 
sex, if ladies only reflected seriously on the dis- 
reputable side of mercantile marriages. 

Remembering the profound respect for money 
in which we are trained by society, what defe- 
rence can a woman have for a husband who de- 
rives his own position and supremacy solely 
from the dowry she brings him? Wealthy 
heiresses, full of pretensions justified by uni- 
versal prejudice, are in general wantonly capri- 
cious and insupportable as wives. The wise 
man, therefore, will shout from the house-tops, 
" It is shameful to sell your independence and 
dignity, to risk your happiness and honour, for 
a money payment, however handsome. Marry 
to be happy, and not to be rich. If you can 
combine riches with happiness, there is no harm 
done; it is so much the better. But never 
forget the proverb, 'A contented mind is far 
before wealth.' Put no faith in opulent couples 
who jingle their money to stifle their remorse j 
enjoy yourself as well as you can, until it please 
Providence to send you an income; but never, 
never, buy it at the expense of tranquillity, hap- 
piness, dignity, and conscience. 

" Some time ago, they played at the Gymnase 
a piece called ' Un beau Mariage,' ' A capital 
Match,' by Emile Augier. Try to see it or to 
read it. You will there behold the galley-slave's 
life led by an honest young fellow, whose only 
crime was believing in the generosity of a great 
lady whose richly-portioned daughter he had 
married. At the fourth or fifth act, the much- 
despised husband has acquired, by his talent, a 
high position. The noble mother-in-law then 
runs after him, and reads her recantation. It 



* See Modern French Marriages, page 42 of 
the present volume. 



is a sad reality. Moral marriage should never 
be a speculation." 

It is wonderful that those who most stand 
up for the dowry, do not remark that it is the 
principal if not the only cause of the diminution 
of marriages. At the present day, luxury has 
made such strides, that many people and they 
deserve no pity for their folly prefer super- 
fluities to necessaries. Consequently, many an 
heiress, who was considered rich some years 
ago, is now despised by speculators as virtually 
portionless. The idea is perfectly logical. If 
the young lady, by her luxurious tastes, her 
expensive habits, threaten to absorb the interest 
of her portion, what benefit will the husband 
derive from the capital on which he had reckoned 
to better his position ? 

In this state of things, a wife is a burden 
instead of a helpmate. How, in fact, is it to be 
expected that a girl brought up in silk and lace 
should make a good housekeeper, a frugal com- 
panion, a profitable partner? Her coquettish 
instincts stupidly developed by her parents, 
who considered them a means of establishing 
her and relieving themselves cause her to be- 
hold in marriage nothing more than an easj 
method of exchanging lace for feathers, and 
flowers for diamonds. Their education is so 
null, not to say worse, that wealthy women do 
not even suspect that marriage may convert 
them into mothers of families, and that serious 
duties are incumbent on them. They only see 
an opportunity of seizing the liberty after which 
they sigh, of satisfying their whims, in defiance 
of a master-slave, who is liberally paid if they 
vouchsafe hirn a smile, and overpaid if they 
allow him to share their extravagances. As 
matters go at present, portioned marriage is a 
luxury which none but opulent financiers dare 
indulge in. Many a little citizen's daughter, 
with a dowry of a hundred thousand francs, 
assumes, as a thing of course, the right of 
spending ten thousand francs a year. 

One would say, to see the manner in w T hich 
Paris girls are brought up now-o'-days, that 
they were all either millionnaires, or destined 
for the seraglio. " Housewife, or courtisane," 
said Proudhon, coarsely, " there is no possible 
medium." What are they taught in their board- 
ing-schools ? Unhappily, it is only a traditional 
pleasantry to suppose that they learn to make 
pickles and preserves. They are taught to be- 
dizen themselves, to claw the piano in deplorable 
style, to sit a horse like a monkey on a camel's 
back. They cannot even embroider, like the 
ancient chatelaines, who, during the Crusades, 
made tapestry which is now the delight of 
modern antiquaries. Eor their mother's fete- 
day, they buy a ready-worked something, of 
which they fill in the ground. They murder 
one of Strauss's waltzes, if they can manage to 
read the notes ; but they don't know the ABC 
of the inside of a house. Puppets of parade, 
they would exhaust the sands of Pactolus in 
ruinous fancies and futile caprices; and yet 
these damsels are astonished if the men are 
anxious about the amount of their dowrv. M. 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 12, 1SG5.] 53 



Thevenin declares that he had rather turn fakir, 
and pass his whole life in contemplation, than 
espouse one of these empty, stupid, proud, and 
pretentious women, who believe themselves 
musicians because they can get through a polka, 
distinguished because they are draped with a 
cashmere, and well-born because they don't 
know the price of butter ! 

Who would believe that, in this respect, the 
Erench ought to take example by the people 
reputed the most mercantile on the face of the 
earth ? The English, those pitiless dealers in 
Bibles, cotton, and opium ! The English, whom 
we (the Erench) justly regard so attached to 
material interests ; these English strip off their 
usual character when the choice of a companion 
is in question. A clever writer (M. Perdonnet), 
while sketching George Stephenson's biography, 
observes : " Many people will consider that he 
fell in love in a perilous, uncalculating, very 
bold, and very rash way. In fact, he was 
smitten by two bright eyes which did not 
possess a single penny." 

" This is a crime with us," is M. Thevenin' s 
comment. " Love, in Erance, as Benjamin 
Constant has said, is no more than a juxtapo- 
sition; and one of the causes of England's 
superiority over Erance, is that, with our neigh- 
bours, marriage is considered as a happy and 
agreeable association destined to soften, by 
sharing them, the burdens of life. With us, 
on the contrary, it is a cash affair. Marriages 
of inclination are so superior to money matches, 
that it would be puerile to insist upon the point. 
Every man who has the sentiment of individu- 
ality, understands it thoroughly. A man and a 
woman united by love are millionnaires without 
knowing it ; they have the strength and the 
riches of the heart." 

The Abbe Bautain has written, in his.Ma- 
riage du Jour, " Eor a man of right feeling, it 
must always be a shame and a self-reproach to 
owe his elevation and his existence to having 
caught the affections of a wealthy girl." It is 
the dowry, therefore, which is the grand stum- 
bling-stone of matrimony. Ear from being the 
principal consideration, it should be held as an 
accessory, to be kept quite in the background ; 
mid to be obliged to insist oh so evident a fact, 
is the severest criticism it is possible to inflict. 
If the heart is not the first and only thing to be 
consulted in matrimony, let us have the courage 
to say so, and to call by some name other than 
" marriage" commercial associations regulated 
by debit and credit. That a woman possesses 
a respectable cash-box, is no reason for turning 
one's back on her; but the cash-box should 
never be admitted as an argument in her favour : 
especially as " women with portions are mostly 
spendthrifts, while portionless women are given 
to saving." 

Touching the matrimonial dispositions conse- 
quent on this state of things, and at present 
current in the capital of Erance, M. Edmond 
About humorously relates what a country 
friend, whom w T e will call M. Vigneron, saw 
and heard during a recent visit to the metropo- 



lis. This friend is a plain and simple family 
man, who had lived in Paris during his youth, 
but who now goes to bed with the cocks and 
hens, is fully occupied from morning till night, 
and sleeps soundly from night till morning. 
He is a great admirer of the fair sex, and an 
in-door Don Quixote to redress their wrongs. 
He is indignant when he sees a good-hearted 
girl playing wallflower at a provincial ball, and 
is disgusted that old maids should have been left 
unmarried because they were not rich enough 
to buy husbands. Yet this philanthropist re- 
turned rejoicing in the wonderful news of the 
Bachelors' Strike. The Parisiens have resolved 
that^ at no price whatever, wrill they contract 
matrimony with the Parisiennes ! 

The conspiracy assumed its now formidable 
proportions at the close of a ball given by his 
chum and college friend, Leon S. The evening, 
without exaggeration, had been delightful, for 
a ball at the close of the season. Vigneron 
counted more than forty really pretty women, 
married or single; and it is not very easy to 
distinguish them, for they all wear the same 
style of dress, and talk in the same way, as 
near as may be. You have nothing but the 
diamonds to go by. But many dames in good 
society leave their diamonds at home in the 
month of May. The young men were very 
brisk and active ; they had not that foundered 
look which you remark in them at the finish of 
the carnival. Spring-time had freshened up 
their spirits, exactly as it was freshening the 
sap in the trees. 

With one or two exceptions, all the guests 
remained till morning, and their appetite ex- 
ceeded the stock of provisions laid in by the 
maitre d'hotel. The public had to be divided 
into three separate batches, while they sent out 
to wake up the nearest restaurant. Vigneron 
made one of the final series, together with his 
entertainer, Leon, and nine or ten intrepid 
dancers, who cut and came again with equal 
vigour. As for himself, his appetite is rustic, 
even when he happens to be in Paris ; whether 
he sleep, or whether he wake, it goes to bed at 
eight o'clock, and all the cannon of the Inva- 
lides would not rouse it. He remained, never- 
theless, at Leon's entreaties, being the only 
friend of his youth he now has left. He had 
seven or eight, equally intimate, when he (Leon) 
married in 1850. Madame sent them about 
their business, one after the other; this one 
because his cravat was badly tied, another be- 
cause he was not sufficiently pious, a third be- 
cause he had married a too unpretending wife, 
and a fourth because he did not like Gounod's 
music. A Parisien chooses his friends himself ; 
but his wife revises the list, striking them out 
sometimes to the very last. 

When the third series had sweetened their 
coffee and lighted their cigars, the conversation 
grew animated, as will happen after plenty of 
champagne. Vigneron, who had taken nothing 
but a cup of tea, contributed his share by some 
profound reflections on the secret harmonies 
which connect the institution of marriage with 



54* [August 12,1805.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



the season of spring. An immense roar of 
laughter was his reward ; he found that he had 
unconsciously strayed into a wasps' -nest of 
hardened and slightly-tipsy bachelors. When 
a man tumbles into the water, his first movement 
is to seize a branch. Vigneron snatched at 
Leon, as one of his own sort, calling on him to 
testify to the truth. 

Leon shook his head, and said, " My good 
old fellow, you have seen here to-night a tole- 
rable number of pretty girls ?" 

" Enormous." 

u Not so many as that. But there were 
seven or eight who may pass for handsome, 
belonging to honourable families, well educated 
in the best schools or convents, who are not 
deficient either in health, intellect, or grace, 
and yet who, in spite of those advantages, have 
been dragged through all the ball-rooms of 
Paris without finding a man to marry them !" 

" What !" exclaimed Vigneron. " Has hu- 
man avarice made such awful progress as that ? 
Are we fallen so low that, for want of a little 
cash " 

" Stop ! You are going to waste your breath 
on a fine bit of declamation. The vile metal, 
is it not? Simple-minded man of the fields! 
It is not the vile metal which is wanting. 
They are handsomely portioned, those turtle- 
doves ! If they were not, things would work 
smoothly of themselves, and my observation 
would be common-place and pointless. But 
they have portions, in ready cash. The poorest 
of the seven has eighty thousand francs paid in 
at the notary's ; the richest has four hundred 
thousand in " obligations " on the Railway du 
Nord; the five others may be represented by a 
sliding scale between those two figures. And 
yet no man I mean none of the men whom 
they could accept will have anything to do with 
them or their money. An obstinate refusal is 
offered to these tempting little personages, aud 
to these dowries which would make provincial 
suitors open wide both their eyes and their 
mouth. What do you think of it ?" 

" I think that you are making game of me, 
and that your treatment is not what it should 
be towards a friend who ought to have been in 
bed six hours ago." 

"Ask these gentlemen. They will all tell < 
you, with a single voice, that mine is not the 
only house in which the same phenomenon is 
manifested. Everywhere it is the same story ; 
make a tour through the salons of Paris, and 
you will see. You country-folk, when you see 
a girl with two hundred thousand francs wearing 
the crown of St. Catharine, become distrustful, 
suspect hidden faults, and say to yourselves that 
there is something underneath the surface. You 
inquire whether her parents have not figured 
at the assizes, whether the lady be not epileptic, 
or have been too familiar with one of her young 
cousins. In Paris, my lad, nobody is now sur- 
prised to meet with single women of five-and- 
twenty. It is well known that they and their 
dowry have run up to seed, because the men 
will have nothing to say to them." 



"But why not?" w 

" Ask these gentlemen ! You have before 
you a whole batch of bachelors. I am married. 
If I were to plead the cause of celibacy, I should 
appear to grumble at my lot, and to find fault 
with somebody, which is far from my intention 
and thought." 

A baby of eighteen, who smoked a big cigar 
while he coaxed his hopes of a moustache, 
addressed the company, and coolly said, " Word 
of honour, my dear monsieur, your innocence 
surprises me. Daddy Thibautode, the author 
of my being, left me a hundred thousand francs 
a year. A young man like me, settled on the 
pave of Paris, cannot do with a centime less. 
1 spend half of it on my stable ; and yet I have 
only three race-horses, or, strictly speaking, two 
and a half. The rest allows me to be loved, at 
second hand, for my own sake, as amant de 
cosur, by the flower of the world of crinoline. 
Yesterday I was friends with Nana, whom I 
shall leave to-morrow for Tata, unless the azure 
breeze of fancy wafts me into Zaza's lap. I shall 
not ruin myself, never fear ! I know my arith- 
metic, and that is all I ever learnt at school. I 
expect to go on quietly in that w^ay, to the end 
of my life, after the example of several vene- 
rable gentlemen who now adorn the Boulevard. 
Confess that I should be the biggest of simple- 
tons to share this modest income with an every- 
day prude and a heap of little Thibautodes, who 
would not afford me the slightest amusement." 
Poor honest Vigneron was deeply disgusted 
with this precocious mannikin, rotten before he 
was ripe, and was setting to work to give him 
a lesson ; but his speech was put down with so 
unanimous a groan, that eloquence to that effect 
was superfluous. When the row subsided, a 
handsome fellow of five-and-thirty took up the 
discourse, and said : 

" Don't believe, monsieur, that stupid selfish- 
ness and a taste for easy pleasures are the sole 
reasons which deter us from marrying. I am 
neither a selfish nor an idle man. I have worked 
for my own living all my life, and my only 
regret is that I cannot work for a family. But 
consider my position, and tell me what you 
would do in my place. I have raised myself, 
not without difficulty, to an appointment of 
twelve thousand francs a year. My income 

suffices to maintain me. If " 

"One moment," Vigneron interposed. "Marry 
a wife who will bring you as much. That is 
the way to make comfortable establishments." 

" In the country, perhaps ; in Paris, no. 
You are not aware, monsieur, what Paris has 
become within the last few years. A wife who 
brought me twelve thousand francs a year, 
w r ould add more to my expenses than to my 
income. In the first place, she would expect to 
spend, herself, in dress, furniture, dinner-giving, 
show, the full interest of her capital. I should 
be well off if she abstained from trenching upon 
my own earnings. The position which I 
occupy opens to her the doors of a certain class 
of society ; by what reason should I be able to 
persuade her not to enter it ? She would 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR KOUND. 



[August 12, 1865.] 55 



answer, without hesitation, ' I married you for 
that, monsieur, and for nothing else.' If I take 
her there, she will discover, as soon as she has 
crossed the threshold, that she is not so well 
dressed as Madame So-and-so. She will not 
perhaps insist on my giving her as many 
diamonds as she beholds sparkling on other 
ladies ; but, by way of compensation, she will 
require to be got up by the most fashionable 
dressmaker going. Do you know the average 
cost of a ball to the husband of the most 
reasonable wife ? Three hundred francs ! 
Manage that with an income of two thousand 
francs per month. I say nothing about children ; 
with only one son, we should be in poverty. And 
he, poor little wretch ! What should we have to 
leave him, except our debts ? In the country, re- 
spectable people almost always save ; because, in 
the country, they live for themselves. In Paris, 
honest people almost all run into debt, because 
they are obliged to live for others. I am not 
talking of the single man, who has the right to 
be a philosopher ; but the married man is the 
slave of a slave. He belongs to his wife, who 
belongs to vanity." 

" Monsieur," said Vigneron, warmly protest- 
ing against so sweeping an accusation, " there 
are sensible women to be found even in Paris." 

The gentleman smiled politely, and con- 
descendingly replied, "Yes, monsieur; I am 
acquainted with more than one. I even believe 
that in general women are more reasonable than 
men. In the first place, they are more temperate, 
and abstain from the poisons which trouble the 
brain. You will find sensible women amongst the 
common people innocent victims of the public- 
house ; amongst the small shopkeepers, who 
lay aside sou by sou, to meet a bill or pay their 
rent. You will find them in a higher sphere 
amongst all women of a certain age, who have 
passed five-and-forty, and who own it. These 
latter have received a more solid education than 
the animated dolls manufactured now ; they 
have had time for reading, and have acquired 
the habit of thinking. They dwell on a moral 
elevation, in which the riot of the Boulevards, 
the bottles broken at * la Marche,' and the 
chansons of Mademoiselle Therese, awake no 
echo." 

"Ah !" murmured Yigrieron, with increasing 
interest. " The folly which I blame only rages 
in a special medium, within a sort of ring fence, 
in which several thousand women of unequal 
rank, fortune, and beauty, are perpetually striv- 
ing to eclipse each other. This medium, in 
which our lot unfortunately is cast, is what is 
called, par excellence, 'the world.' The girls 
who danced here to-night are girls of the world; 
and marry on the sole condition of becoming 
w r omen of the world. Now the obligation to 
find lodgings, carriages, dress, and ornaments 
for a woman of the world, hot in the pursuit of 
worldly steeple-chases, entails at present such 
an amount of outlay that an intelligent bachelor 
will look twice before he incurs it." 

" But, monsieur," pleaded Vigneron, "there 
is no pleasure without pain. Happiness costs a 



little dearer in Paris than it does in the pro- 
vinces ; but it is consequently all the more 
highly relished." 

At this, another speaker, a man of forty, 
went off like a rocket. " Happiness !" he 
shouted. " Of what sort of happiness are you 
speaking, if you please ? I am a widower, and 
I give you my solemn promise that you won't 
catch me at that phase of happiness again. I 
did not regard money in the least. My fortune 
is only too considerable, for all the good I ever 
got out of it. From all quarters I had offers of 
marriage portions. I said, No. Since I have 
the means of marrying the woman who pleases 
me, I will take a poor one, and she will thank 
me for it. I therefore married a parvenue. I 
raised to my own position one of those poor 
desolate creatures who hawk about a forced 
smile, a melancholy bait at which nobody bites. 
I did bite. There was a family. I provided 
for the family." 

" Doubtless you had your reward." 
" They proved to me, figures in hand, that to 
produce mademoiselle and bring her forth into 
the light of day, they had got into debt a hun- 
dred thousand francs. I paid it. I had then 
only to pocket my happiness, and walk away 
with it. A pretty joke! My wife, so long as 
she was not my wife, agreed with me on every 
point. The day after the wedding, she drew up 
her head as stiff as a rattlesnake. She unmasked 
a whole battery of stupidities, old and new, 
ready to fire at my poor common sense. She 
had a creed of her own, principles of her own, a . 
confessor of her own, a literature and a phar- 
macopeia of her own, with a whole battalion of 
female friends of her own, which never, thank 
Heaven, have been mine. My tastes are simple ; 
hers were quite the contrary. My father left 
me a name of which I am proud, and a title for 
which I do not care a straw. One belongs to 
one's epoch ; my wife belonged to hers. The 
right to call herself c marquise' was too much 
for her poor weak head. She dragged my coat 
of arms out of its retreat, to stick it on the 
panels of my carriage, on my plate, linen, carpets, 
furniture. I only wonder she did not clap it on 
my back. She was born Dupont in the male 
line, and Mathieu in the female. Take care, 
therefore, how you marry a ' bourgeoise' out of 
love for simplicity ! After two years of the 
most disunited union that ever fettered a well- 
meaning man, I was neither master nor servant 
in my own house. My wife, backed by half a 
dozen dear friends, had usurped everything. 
They gave slander-parties at my expense, at 
home and abroad. Every Saturday, seven 
Christian mouths confessed my iniquities to a 
worthy Jesuit. Thoroughly worn out, I escaped 
by the door; and I ask you, Monsieur the 
Moralist, what you would have done in my 
place ? My wife was not a woman, but some- 
thing hollow, endowed with locomotion, warm, 
restless, and overstocked with nerves ; a foun- 
tain of tears, an orchestra of cries, a catapult of 
convulsions, a galvanic pile. And all her friends 
(I have only reckoned six, but they might be a 



56 [August 12, 1865.3 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



dozen) were as like her as one drop of acid is 
like another. My wife is dead Heaven be 
praised ! but the others survive, and they have 
their imitators. The world of Paris lies before 
them ; mav my guardian angel keep me out of 
their way !" 

Every guest applauded this tirade; whence 
Vigneron concluded that they all agreed with 
the orator. And though he had hitherto preached 
the holy cause of matrimony, he could not help 
admitting that the Parisian bachelors had some 
little reason for their strike. M. About, how- 
ever, says : " Suitors of Paris, strike if you 
please ; but don't try to draw us into the move- 
ment ! We are country people, and contrive to 
find the wives we require, because we take the 
trouble to fashion them ourselves. I wish you 
may hit upon the same happy method." 

But, whether as a joke or a real fact, the 
Publicite newspaper of Marseilles reports that 
the matrimonial strike is gaining ground in 
France. " Six thousand single men, from twenty 
to forty years of age, met on the common of 
Belle-de-Mai, and there, hand in hand, swore 
not to think of marrying until fresh orders ; 
that is, until a radical change has taken place 
in our young ladies' ways and doings. No more 
ruinous dress ; no more coquetry ; no more ex- 
pensive idleness ; but a return to economical 
and homely life, to conduct becoming mothers 
of families and the habits of modest wives. Such 
are the terms laid down. Therefore, let the fair 
sex in France take warning ; the matter is more 
serious than they fancy." 

Still, a few advertisements, quite recently in- 
serted, prove that the universal nation has not 
taken vows of celibacy. Samples are given, 
with true initials and address, to enable our 
readers to judge and act for themselves, entirely 
on their own responsibility. 

Marriage. A Monsieur desires to unite him- 
self to a young lady with either small or con- 
siderable fortune. Write, Post Restante, Paris. 
V. A. S. 

Notice to Families. A young foreigner, a 
very suitable match, and in the receipt of an 
income of fifteen thousand francs, desires to 
marry a young lady from seventeen to twenty 
years of age, pretty, well educated, and belong- 
ing to an honourable family. Write and send 
portrait to M. Leon Rehana, Poste Restante, 
Paris. 

Three hundred single women or widows to 
marry, in every position of fortune. M. Bour- 
rillon, secret intermediary of families, 24, Rue 
de Rivoli, receives visits every Tuesday, Thurs- 
day, and Saturday, from two till five. 

A Mr. of fifty-two years, income eight thou- 
sand francs, desires to marry suitably. X. Jan., 
Poste Restante, Paris. 

A Monsieur of forty years, income ten thou- 
sand francs, would unite himself to a single lady 
or widow of from twenty-five to thirty-five 
years, possessing from fifty to one hundred 
thousand francs dowry. M. M., post paid, Poste 
Restante, Paris. 

Serious Marriage. A public functionary, of 



irreproachable conduct, single, thirty-one years 
of age, appointments two thousand four hundred 
francs, very agreeable employment, taking little 
time, and allowing him to engage in other occu- 
pations, possessed of six thousand francs savings, 
desires to espouse a young lady of respectable 
family, with a portion, or an eligible little esta- 
blishment in Paris. Honourability is the first 
requisite. Write, pre paid, Poste Restante, to 
the initials K. R. S. 



AMATEUR FINANCE. 

IN THREE PARTS. PART I. 

"Is it possible to live upon a hundred and 
fifty pounds a year ?" 

This was the question I put to myself 
one morning while occupied with my after- 
breakfast pipe. I had just sold out of the 
army, and my commission had been disposed of 
for the regulation price of eighteen hundred 
pounds (for I was captain in an infantry 
regiment), plus eight hundred pounds " above 
regulation," which my successor, being a 
wealthy man and very ambitious of promotion, 
had given me, as an inducement to leave the 
service. This was the sum total of my worldly 
riches two thousand six hundred pounds ; but 
per contra, as the ledgers say, I owed some little 
money : the after-crop of a not very large quan- 
tity of debt seed, which I had sown with pretty 
steady perseverance, during my ten years of 
military life. To make a long story short, 
when I had settled with every one, had squared 
matters with all my creditors, and had invested 
my balance both securely and at a very favourable 
rate of interest, my annual income, I found, 
would come within a few shillings of one hun- 
dred and fifty pounds. 

Now, there are very different ways of inter- 
preting the meaning of the verb, to live. With 
some people it means the wherewith to keep a 
house over your head, feed and clothe yourself 
and family, and pay your way as you go along. 
To others, a town mansion, a country house, a 
carriage, horses, grooms, footmen, and women 
servants, are included in the actual necessaries of 
life : to say nothing of an autumnal trip to the 
Continent, fox-hunting in the winter, and parties 
every night, during the London season. I have 
known a country clergyman live respectably, 
bring up a large family of children, pay his way 
honestly, and put by something for a rainy day, 
on five hundred pounds a year. I have also 
known bachelors with five thousand per annum, 
who were always in pecuniary difficulties. 
With me, "to live," meant to have comfortable 
lodgings in London ; to be able to dine well at 
"The Rag," whenever I was not invited. out ; 
to have the wherewith to go to this or that 
friend's shooting-box in the autumn; to run over 
for two or three weeks to Paris, in the spring, 
and to Homburg, when so inclined; to have 
money in moderation in my pocket whenever 
I wanted it; in short, not to deny myself 
anything in reason, for want of funds. Could 
this be done for a hundred and fifty pounds a 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAE HOUND. 



[August 12, 1S65.] 57' 



year? Certainly not. My tailor's bill alone 
would absorb more than a third of that sum, and 
for " sundries," pocket money, and dinner, I re- 
quired, without any undue extravagance, at 
least a pound a day. It was very clear, there- 
fore, that, after the fashion which men of the 
world call life, my existence would be nought 
but utter misery unless I could spend at least five 
hundred a year. The problem to solve, therefore, 
was, how could my income be increased from one 
hundred and fifty to five hundred per annum ? 

I belong to that numerous class of English 
gentlemen, who, not being brought up to any 
particular calling or profession, can do little or 
nothing towards earning even dry bread, far less 
bread and cheese. It is true, I had been for 
some ten years in the army ; but soldiering can- 
not be called a trade, or, if it be one, I certainly 
bad not so learned the trade as to make it of 
any use to me in after life. To me as to hun- 
dreds of young men the service had been but 
a gentlemanly way of passing my time. The 
rudiments of drill 1 knew as well as most men ; I 
could command my company on parade without 
making mistakes, even when the said company 
was acting as skirmishers at an Aldershott re- 
view, under the eyes of old Pennefather. The de- 
tails about paying, clothing, feeding, and lodging 
the men, I left to my colour sergeant ; still, I 
was sufficiently acquainted with the rules and 
regulations of the army, to be able to check him 
when anything went wrong. In short, I was a 
fair average regimental officer of the post-Cri- 
mean school. 

It might have been possible for me to get a 
county police appointment, but it would have 
greatly interfered with my schemes of future 
enjoyment. 

"Why not turn speculator ?" said my friend 
Vernon of the Guards, one night in the smoking- 
room of his club, after I had been his guest at 
dinner in that comfortable establishment, and 
had propounded my difficulties to him : " Why 
not become one of your regular City fellows, and 
turn speculator ? They have always lots of 
money, and don't seem to work very hard for it. 
Their chief business I know two or three of 
them seems to be to go into the city every 
day at about eleven o'clock with an umbrella, 
and walk back at about four. It is not very 
hard work, and I am sure you would make 
money, as well as have plenty of time to enjoy 
yourself when you get back to the West-end." 

"Why not turn speculator?" He might 
as well have asked me why not turn cardinal, or 
Baptist preacher, or surgical lecturer. To have 
plenty of money I was by no means loth to walk in 
the City every day with an umbrella, and remain 
there from eleven to four. But what to do when 
1 got there how or where to find the money, or 
in what way was I to make it ? It was not 
possible so I reasoned with myself that there 
could be, somewhere east of Temple-bar, a 
society or an individual that paid gentlemanly- 
looking men a certain large weekly salary for 
walking into the City every day with um- 
brellas under their arms. Still, in some re- 



spects, now that I thought of it, Vernon was 
right. I myself knew several individuals who 
had not been brought up to business, but who 
had now turned " speculators," or " City 
fellows ;" who had no offices of their own ; who 
walked every day to the east with umbrellas 
under their arms ; and who seemed to make a 
handsome living, or at least enough to keep 
themselves handsomely. The difficulty with 
me was, where to begin to learn, or how to find 
out, the real nature of the business or work per- 
formed by a " City fellow." 

Belonging to our club the Army and Navy, 
otherwise the " Rag" before mentioned there 
was a gentleman who, although he was always 
called " Captain" by the waiters, had certainly no 
claim to that title, seeing that he had been only 
twelve months in the army, and that it was more 
than twenty years since he had sold out as a 
cornet. Smithson that was his name had, 
when a boy at school, conceived the idea that 
he would like to be a soldier, and had tormented 
every one belonging to, or connected with, his 
family, until he got his name put down for a 
commission. In those days candidates for the 
army had no examination to pass before enter- 
ing the service, or I fear Smithson would 
have had a poor chance of ever wearing a red 
coat. As it was, he obtained what he w r anted, 
but not until he was upwards of twenty years 
old. at which age he was gazetted to a heavy 
dragoon regiment. Coming up to London with 
his father, getting himself measured for scarlet 
coats the heavies of those anti-tunic days wore 
tail-coats fitted with helmet, "let in" with 
chargers, buckled with sword, put into overalls ; 
hampered with regulation spurs, and made the 
general victim of outfitters, tailors, military ac- 
coutrement-makers, and horse-dealers, was pretty 
good fun, and Smithson liked it well enough. Even 
when he went down to join his corps at 
Birmingham, and found himself master of a 
barrack-room neatly furnished by his outfitter, 
with a tall heavy dragoon servant, who called him 
" sir" every moment, wore his shirts, drank his 
private store of brandy, and smoked his cigars, 
Smithson was far from being unhappy. To 
dine at mess, and be able to call for wine, 
luncheon, or anything else he wanted (or 
thought he wanted), was an immense plea- 
sure to this young "plunger;" likewise to put 
on his undress uniform, and ride or walk 
through the streets, " showing off." But soon 
there came a change. The rules and regula- 
tions of the service required that Smithson 
should go through the ordinary course of riding- 
school drill, and he was ordered to put 
himself under the directions of the riding- 
master : a crabbed old officer, who had risen from 
the ranks, who never dined at mess, who had 
nine children, small pay, and a wife who was the 
dread of the regimental sergeant-major himself. 

To riding-school, then, Smithson had to go, 
and to commence his torments was ordered to 
mount, walk, and trot his horse with " stirrups, 
up" that is, to bump sound the school without 
stirrups. A day of this exercise an hour 



58 [August 12, 18G5.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



in the morning, and one in the afternoon was 
bad enough ; but when it came to day after day, 
week after week, and month after month of it, 
no man at least no Smith son could stand it. 
He first complained to his colonel that he 
could not get through the school. The 
colonel asked the riding-master, who declared 
that Smithson could not ride, and therefore 
ought still to be kept bumping round without 
stirrups; Smithson himself got disgusted, 
and after a time sold out. There was nothing 
against him, except, either he could not ride, or 
that the crabbed riding-master did not like to lose 
a victim. Smithson retired from the service 
under the shade of his club, and from that day 
to this has been " Captain Smithson." 

To Smithson I went, to ask how men made 
money by going into the City every day with 
umbrellas under their arms for a few hours ? 
Thougli Smithson had not taken honours as a dra- 
goon, he was far from being a fool. Twenty 
years of London life had taught him a few 
things worth knowing, and therefore I thought 
that I could not do better than apply to Smith- 
son. 

His reply showed that my confidence was not 
misplaced. " You want to make money ?" he 
said; "then be a director. I'll find you a 
company in which you can obtain a seat at the 
board, and you will then merely have to go into 
the City every day for a few hours (with an um- 
brella), in order to become a wealthy man." 

"But," I objected, "I never was educated to 
business ; I know nothing about it ; I should 
most likely make a mess of the very first thing I 
put my hand to." 

"Don't be an ass," was Smithson's reply. 
"Do you imagine that half the men whose 
names you see figuring in the lists of directors 
know anything about business ? Look at Sims 
you remember Sims, who was in the 110th ? 
Where did Sims learn anything about business, 
or business matters ? And yet he is director on 
the boards of seven companies, each of which 
give him three guineas a week-^three times 
seven's twenty-one, and fifty-two times twenty- 
one make a thousand and ninety-two guineas 
not poundsa year. I don't say that you can 
do as well as Sims at first ; of course you can't. 
But you will do quite as well a year or two 
hence ; perhaps better. Sims is a fool ; you are 
not. Sims has no money; you have some 
though not much. Be guided by me, and you 
will thank me for having put you at your ease, 
as the French say, before six months are over." 

Acting upon Smithson's advice, I at once 
borrowed, on the security of the mortgage in 
which what little money I had was invested, the 
sum of five hundred pounds. This amount I 
deposited as a drawing or current account in a 
highly respectable bank, to which I had obtained 
an introduction. Having this reference behind 
me, I was, through Smithson's means, intro- 
duced to a gentleman who was trying to get up 
a direction for the "Rio Grande Talhook 
Silver and United Lead Mining Company 
(Limited)." This gentleman was by profession a 



solicitor without practice ; by occupation what 
is called "a promoter." He was none of your 
flash, well-to-do, Greenwich-dining, Cremorne- 
frequenting, establishment-in-St.-John's-Wood- 
keeping, promoters ; but a poor, inoffensive, 
seedy creature, very civil, very much out at 
elbows, and apparently thankful for the smallest 
favours. When I was first introduced to him, 
he made a feeble attempt to persuade me, 
that in order to become a director of the " Rio 
Grande Talhook Silver and United Lead 
Mining Company (Limited)," I would be 
obliged to pay money down, before I could be 
qualified. Seeing, I presume, that such an idea 
was preposterous, or at least that I could not 
entertain it for a moment, he soon came round, 
and, alter offering to qualify me for nothing, 
ended by acknowledging that if I wanted to be 
a director of the company, I could be paid for 
accepting a seat at the board. This I agreed 
to, and forthwith received an undertaking by 
which it was stipulated that in the event of my 
becoming a director, and provided that the 
company proceeded to an allotment, I was to be 
given one hundred shares, on each of which five 
pounds had been paid : thus receiving a bonus of 
five hundred pounds for joining a direction 
which was to give me three guineas a week for 
sitting at the board. 

In due time, the Rio Grande Company was 
floated, and, considering it was a mining concern, 
it took very well indeed with the public. The 
directors were few in number, but they were 
fairly respectable, and among them I thought 
that my own name, " Captain Rickley, Army 
and Navy Club," read very well indeed. 

As Smithson said, my name being on one 
direction was the first step that was want- 
ing in order to make me a regular City man and 
man of business. A week after my name was 
published as a director of the Rio Grande, I had 
a couple of dozen applications to allow myself 
to be put on the board of other companies. 
Some of these were pretty respectable in 
their character, others the merest swindles, 
but one and all appeared most anxious to 
get directors. From those which appeared to 
be the best I selected three, and, receiving 
from each of these some five hundred pounds 
in paid-up shares, as well as three guineas a 
week for sitting at the board once every seven 
days, I soon began to find that my income had 
materially increased, and that I had done wisely 
in taking Smithson's advice. I now took up my 
umbrella every morning and walked to the City, 
coming back in about four hours with the pleas- 
ing knowledge that I was earning, in director's 
fees alone to say nothing of the shares which 
had been given me at least ten ortwelve guineas 
a week, and that my income was likely to increase. 
It is true that the companies which I had joined 
were by no means first-rate concerns, but much 
the contrary. Besides the "Rio Grande 
Mining," I was on the direction of the " India- 
rubber Shoeing and Carriage-wheelCover- 
ing Company (Limited) ;" " The North-East 
op America Overland Traffic, Passenger, 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR HOUND. 



[August 12, 1865.] 59 



and Trading Company (Limited) ;" and " The 
Direct Telegraph to JBarbadoes Company 
(Limited)." 

All these served to give me a name in the City 
with a certain class, and before I had been twelve 
months at the work, my business as a director 
had increased so much that I was obliged to take 
an office and hire a clerk. Still although taken 
collectively the number of boards at which I had 
a seat gave me a certain amount of respecta- 
bility with the director-seeking, joint-stock- 
company-getting-up, share-allotting, world not 
one of the concerns with which I was mixed up 
could be called even a second-class affair. As 
I got richer I became more and more ambitious 
of having my name connected with something 
that would give me a better commercial standing 
as well as more material wealth. I no longer 
asked myself whether I could possibly live upon 
a hundred and fifty pounds a year, for I knew 
I could spend five times that amount, and still 
put something by. My respectability as to 
money was undoubted. I left off frequenting 
the Rag, as being too " young" a club for a 
man in my position. I set up a brougham, kept 
my private account at Drummond's, had serious 
thoughts of taking a wife, and got myself elected 
a member of the Conservative Club. 

My friendship for Smithson had not de- 
creased, although I had distanced him in the 
race. Smithson was a director of one or two 
of my companies, but he did not push his luck 
with sufficient energy. If he had gone to bed 
early the night before (an event which very 
rarely happened), and could manage to get over 
his breakfast and cigar by ten o'clock next 
morning, he generally found his way on a board- 
day to the office. But for one board meeting 
that he was present at, he missed two. 

About this time, credit and finance com- 
panies began to attract notice in London. One 
or two of these concerns had been started, and 
others were about to come out. Talking over 
the probable gains of such undertakings, in the 
board-room of the Rio Grande Company, three 
or four of the directors agreed to start a 
finance company for themselves, and invited 
Smithson and myself to come on the direction. 
We both consented, and in very few days we 
published to the world a scheme by which 
people had only to take shares in this concern, 
in order to become wealthy beyond the hopes of 
ordinary mortals. The name of our company 
was, the * ; General House and Land Finance 
and Credit Company (Limited);" the manag- 
ing director was to be myself, the secretary was 
to be Smithson, my salary was to be two thou- 
sand a year, Smithson's was to be eight hundred, 
and every director was to have a five-pound note 
each time he attended a board meeting. 

The business which the "General House 
and Land Finance" proposed to do, was as 
follows : Our nominal capital was to be a million, 
but of this only two hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds were to be called up for the present. We 
intended to invite depositors to place their 
money with us, and, to induce them to do so, 



we offered them a much higher rate of interest 
than was current with the joint-stock banks. 
The money thus lent us say at five per cent 
we lent out again at ten, twelve, and even a 
higher per-centage, taking the security of houses, 
lands, or any other immovable property, for our 
repayment. This alone would have left us a 
wide margin for profit, notwithstanding the 
great office expenses we had to pay. But we 
intended to do better than that. We meant 
not only to lend and charge a high rate of 
interest for the money of our depositors, but to 
lend, and charge for, our acceptances, which 
was in England at least a scheme entirely 
new, and which could hardly fail to be profit- 
able. Thus, suppose an individual who owned 
houses and land to the amount of say ten 
thousand pounds, wanted to borrow money upon 
them. To raise a mortgage in the ordinary way, 
was a matter of time, expense, and greater or 
less publicity. He could not take the' property 
in his pocket to the bank, and ask them to dis- 
count it as he would a bill ; and to deposit title- 
deeds with a banker when he will take them 
as security for loans, injures a man's credit very 
much. The intending borrower who seldom 
wants the accommodation for any length of 
time, but always wishes the affair to be kept 
secret would therefore come to us, and upon 
the security of his ten thousand pounds' worth 
of property, would ask for an advance of six 
thousand pounds for a year. We should reply 
that we could not give him the cash, but if he 
liked to draw upon us, we would accept bills 
for that amount, and not charge him more than 
ten per cent for doing so. 

Knowing that the kites flown by a finance 
company of good credit could be discounted 
at any bank at the current rates of the day, 
the borrower invariably accepted our offer. 
We were made quite safe, by the title-deeds 
which were left with us ; and he was content 
with getting his money, although he had to 
pay a somewhat higher rate or interest for 
the use of it. On the other hand, the finance 
company got a good rate of interest for merely 
putting its name to bills, which were quite 
secure from having the title-deeds of pro- 
perty, with a very large margin, in hand. When 
transactions of this kind came to be multiplied, 
no wonder that we hoped to declare a dividend 
of at least twenty-five per cent upon our paid-up 
capital. 

But there was another means of making 
money which we profited very largely by. At 
the period I write of as k still the case 
joint-stock companies of various sorts were 
" floated," with greater or less success, every day 
of the week. After a time it became impossible 
for any of these schemes to take with the 
public, unless the concern were palpably " a good 
thing," or unless some finance company stood 
godfather for it before the share-taking world. 
Thus, to us there would perhaps come a gentleman 
who had a patent by which writing-paper could 
be made out of old ink, or plate glass fabricated 
from turnip-tops. The patent might be good 



60 [August 12, 18C5.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



excellent in its way, but the unfortunate 
patentee never had money with which to bring 
it to the notice of the public. He might be able 
to bring in three or four good men as directors, 
but that was all. Where could he get the four 
or five hundred pounds that were necessary to 
advertise, hire offices, print several thousand 
copies of a prospectus, and do all the hundred 
needful things that must be done before a 
joint-stock affair can be floated? In his di- 
lemma he would come to us. We agreed to 
provide everything for a consideration, of 
course. We took upon ourselves all the ex- 
penses of advertising ; we got the prospectus 
published, and lent the prestige of our name; 
we puffed, wrote up, and praised the scheme 
through our several agents. If the project died 
before the shares were allotted, we got nothing 
there was nothing to get for our trouble. 
If it " floated," we received a premium of from 
five to twenty thousand pounds out of the first 
deposits paid. We were in most cases winners. 
For our immense fee, we had not pledged 
ourselves to anything. If any company we 
v brought out " had come to grief, we should 
not have lost sixpence by it. On the contrary, 
there was more than one concern which had 
been launched into the world under the shadow 
of our wing, and which died a natural death. 
But what cared we ? Our fee had been paid 
it was always the very first charge which had 
to be paid and it was of no consequence to 
us whether or not the young company lived or 
died. 

After the first six months we declared a 
dividend upon our paid-up capital, at the rate 
of thirty per cent per annum ; besides putting 
aside some twenty thousand pounds as the 
commencement of a reserve fund. 

What surprised me, was the ease with which 
I got over my duties as managing director of 
the " General House and Land Einance 
and Credit Company." Before becoming a 
director in this undertaking, I had had no 
financial experience whatever. However, I 
managed to do pretty good yeoman's work. 
As time went on, I got accustomed to the 
business, and not ill versed in the various 
ways of making money for the concern. Smith- 
son, our secretary, also got through his duties 
well, and any one not knowing our antecedents, 
would have hardly believed that we were both 
mere ex-soldiers, who hardly knew on which side 
of the ledger to write the debit and on which 
the credit of an account. 

But fortune favoured us. Shortly after 
our company commenced business, a new 
species of joint-stock fever broke out suddenly. 
Every firm in which the partners were getting 
old, or of which the affairs were at the foun- 
dation a little shaky, seemed determined to 
make the concern a joint -stock company. 
Hitherto such undertakings had been got up 
by individual promoters, and had assumed a 
name which indicated what business they in- 
tended doing. But now we had " Smith 
and Co. (Limited) ;" " Jones, Wilson, and 



Co. (Limited) ;" " Mason, Watson, and Co. 
(Limited);" and a hundred other companies 
of the sort cropping up in every day's Times. 
As our credit stood good, and "as we had the 
good sense to ask fees for launching new con- 
cerns which were lower than those of other 
similar companies, we obtained a good deal of 
work. It is true that we had sometimes to 
put a bold face upon introducing to the public 
something that would not bear a very close 
investigation. And one case of this sort I will 
relate in another chapter. 



BEAUTIFUL GIRLS. 

When I was younger than I am now, was 
particular about my waistcoats, and carried a 
sense of my whiskers about with me like a 
solemn responsibility, I was accustomed, when 
called upon at evening parties and other high 
festivals, to sing, in a sentimental and foolish 
tenor, a song called " The Maids of Merry Eng- 
land, How beautiful are they !" I remember 
I used to sing both at the beginning of the 
verse and at the end of the verse ; and I sung 
it with becoming gravity, as if it had been a 
patriotic toast or a sentiment about the wing 
of friendship. I have now in my mind's eye 
a vision of myself singing that song; and 
the vision is suggestive of something, on the 
whole, idiotic. Every hair of my head is in its 
proper place, glistening with macassar; my 
whiskers are carefully brushed out to make the 
most of them ; my waistcoat is spotless ; my 
white handkerchief is redolent of the latest per- 
fume ; and there I stand at the piano with a 
chest like a pouter pigeon, my head in the air, 
and my eyes on the ceiling, singing The Maids 
of Merry England, How beautiful are they,, with 
all the gravity proper to the execution of a 
sacred song from an oratorio. I remember that 
the maids of merry England who were privileged 
to listen to me sat around with their hands 
folded, and looked grave and solemn, as if it 
had been a sad truth that I was reminding them 
of. I don't think that there was any moral to 
the effect that beauty was only skin deep, and was 
doomed to fade, and that flesh, though fair, was 
only grass ; but it w r as in that admonitory sense 
we took the sentiment, and it checked our 
levity, and made us all very seriously and 
solemnly happy. Ah me ! those days of senti- 
ment and flowered waistcoats are gone gone, 
I fear, never to return. I now sing what are 
called comic songs, at evening parties, and 
instead of being sentimental about the unadorned 
beauty of the maids of merry England, am 
lyrically facetious about their crinolines and 
their back hair. 

This is a pity ; for in these days the maids of 
merry England have made themselves so very 
attractive, that it would be easy to be both 
sentimental and poetical about them. The sen- 
timent, when I used to sing that song, was a 
mere formula. It was like singing about hearts 
of oak, Britannia, the ocean, and all that sort 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 12, 1865.] 61 



of thing. It was not very new, it was not very 
true, and nobody cared particularly about the 
sentiment except as an excuse for singing a 
song. If it had been the hills or the vales or 
the back-gardens of merry England, we should 
have equally taken it for granted that they were 
beautiful. 

At the time of which I speak, not quite 
twenty years ago, the maids of merry England 
were not so beautiful as they are at the present 
time ; at least, they were not so attractive. It 
was the time which immediately preceded the 
introduction of crinoline ; shoes and sandals 
were in vogue, leg-of-mutton sleeves and high 
waists had gone out, but bonnets were still 
pokey, and the female figure was made up after 
the clock-case model, which we are led to be- 
lieve ruled the fashions in Noah's ark. There 
was little shape or make about the maid of 
merry England at that period. It was impos- 
sible to see her profile without a background of 
bonnet. All the wealth of beauty that lay as 
yet undiscovered in her hair, was plastered 
down over her temples in formal sheets of po- 
lished veneer, or tied up in a wisp and hid in a 
box behind. The only variety was a bunch of 
prim corkscrew curls which hung on either 
side of her face like ornaments for your fire- 
stoves. I almost fancy there was an idea that 
in order to look modest, and maidenly, and 
feminine, it was necessary to put the natural 
beauties of the face and figure a little in the 
shade. 

Comparatively, the maids of merry England 
were beautiful, but they seemed to be afraid of 
being superlatively so. The manners of the 
maids at that time partook of the sober and 
rigid character of their costume. They were 
apt to sit with their hands folded, to deny 
themselves victuals and drink in support of the 
genteel fiction that appetite was not maidenly, 
to refrain from speaking save when spoken to, 
and to have doubts about the propriety of 
dancing. It was a complaint of the time that 
the young ladies laced too tightly. That was 
true in a double sense : their moral natures 
were as tightly laced as their bodices. It was at 
about this time that the American ladies put the 
legs of their pianos into trousers. 

The great transformation scene took place 
shortly after the International Exhibition of 
1851. Harlequin Progress batted (technical 
term for using his wand), and the old woman 
in the cloak was suddenly transformed into 
a fairy princess. The clock-case, and the poke 
bonnet, and the 'flat shoes, disappeared through 
the trap, and there was the princess in her 
expansive gauze skirt and natty boots, crowned 
with a cockle-shell. Before, she had hobbled 
like an old crone; now, she is on one toe 
pirouetting like a Peri ! I am not going to en- 
large, like a fashion book, on the graces of 
crinoline. It is not always graceful, and it is 
sometimes a nuisance for it is proverbial that 
you can have too much even of a good thing 
but I believe it is a fact that the adoption of 
this article of female attire was the foundation 



of all the elegancies of dress that have since 
been built upon it. It did away with the rigid 
straight line, and introduced a graceful curve, 
and from that moment it became necessary that 
all things should be in an artistic concatenation 
accordingly. The bell-shaped dress obviated 
any necessity for tight lacing, by rendering the 
natural form of the Taody harmonious and com- 
patible with the whole design. Under this new 
impetus, elegance and comfort went hand in 
hand. High-heeled boots harmonised with the 
embroidered petticoat (which was now an article 
of ornament as w r ell as use), and high-heeled 
boots showed off a handsome foot, and at the 
same time kept the handsome foot out of the 
wet. Then followed the picturesque bur- 
nous, and the elegant lace shawl, both so su- 
perior in every way to the old three-cornered 
Paisley, or Indian, blanket, and the dowdy silk 
mantle that looked as if it were made out of 
veneer. 

The bonnet was a very stubborn thing to 
deal with. The original model which our 
women folks were too conservative to depart 
from altogether was radically wrong. It was 
never adapted to any head whatever, and the 
fashion of twisting the hair into a knot behind 
rendered any attempt to reduce its proportions 
only an aggravation of the discomfort it caused. 
The front of the coal-scuttle admitted of various 
more or less graceful modifications; but the 
back remained an inexorable box, until some 
one hit upon the happy idea of cutting the 
back of the box out, and letting the great 
wealth of beauty that lies in the hair, flow out in 
natural luxuriance to delight the eyes of men. 
It was only the other day that women discovered 
the great treasure of beauty which lay in their 
hair. Eormerly, the primary object of their 
dressing seemed to be to tie it up and plaster 
it down and put it out of sight. I suppose 
this prejudice for it can be nothing else 
carne to us from the Puritans. What a 
long time we have been in outgrowing the 
austere fashions of those gloomy people ! 

Mr. Ruskin, who is allowed to be a judge of 
such matters, says that the present style of 
female dress is the most graceful and artistic 
ever worn. 1 quite agree with him, and I think 
it has had almost a magical effect in bringing 
out and setting off the beauty of the maids of 
merry England. There are no plain girls now- 
a-days. Positive ugliness is altogether banished 
from the land. All the girls are pretty. Walk- 
ing in the streets, or driving in the Park, or 
sitting in a box at the Opera, one is kept in a 
state of continual admiration by the numbers 
of pretty girls that meet the eye on every hand. 
All this female beauty has of course existed at 
any time ; but I venture to think that it is only 
lately that it has been shown off to the fullest 
advantage. Iu these days of economics and 
art training we know how to make the most 
and the best of things. Mark what a mine of 
beauty has been discovered in red hair. How 
many years is it, since red hair was contemptu- 
ous! v denominated " carrots" ? To be carroty 



62 [August 12, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR EOUND. 



[Conducted by 



was to be a fright, and an allusion to a carroty 
girl, in a song or play, was sure to raise a laugh 
of derision. But now, carrots are the fashion, 
the rage. The girl with the ruddy locks, instead 
of plastering her hair down, to look like polished 
slabs of Peterhead granite, combs it out and 
lets the sun into it, and straightway it is a 
fleece of gold. Golden locks that is to say, 
the ridiculed " carrots" of another period are 
now the admiration of all the men, and the 
envy of all the women. It is no secret, I be- 
lieve, that many women are in the habit of 
bleaching their dark hair in order to impart to 
it a tinge of the fashionable and admired red. 
I am informed, too and I can add my personal 
testimony to the fact that red-haired girls 
who have been on the shelf until they are no 
longer young, are now going off in the matri- 
monial market like wildfire. 

The great discovery that women have made, 
however, is not that auburn hair as they love 
to call it is particularly pretty ; but that any 
coloured hair is pretty when naturally and 
artistically displayed. In fact, they have dis- 
covered that their hair is their chief beauty. I 
hold, that no woman can be ugly, or even 
plain, if she have a profusion of hair. The 
eye is nearly always a beautiful thing in woman. 
The mouth may be large and ungraceful, the 
nose may turn up, the cheeks may be too thin 
or too plump, but the eye, in its normal and 
natural state, is rarely without beauty, either of 
form or expression. Good eyes and a wealth of 
hair will cover a multitude of deficiencies in 
other respects. Our maiden aunts have found 
this out, and these elderly ladies are now as 
smart and almost as juvenile as our sweethearts. 
In fact, when Miss Tabitha and Miss Edith are 
out walking together, it is hard to say, until 
you come to close quarters, which is the old 
girl and which is the young one. 

The moral influence of dress is well known to 
every one who has been exhilarated by clean 
linen, or depressed by an ill-fitting coat. I 
believe that we take a great deal of our moral 
tone from the cut of our clothes. A good con- 
dition of the clothes we wear, is necessary to 
sustain our self-satisfaction and complacency, 
but cut and fashion give elegance and ease. If 
you are sensible of being a guy, your comport- 
ment will be weak and ineffective. You .can- 
not strut like a peacock when you know that 
your feathers are those of a turkey. You must 
have a sense of being up to the mark, before 
you can practise an .elegant walk, or adopt 
an imposing swagger. When our dress was 
ungraceful and uncomfortable, we ourselves 
were ungraceful and uncomfortable also. The 
recent fashions have worked a wonderful change 
in this respect. The maids of merry England 
are much more lively than they used to be. 
They are more sprightly, they have more to 
say for themselves, and their manners, which 
formerly were cold and stiff and artificial, have 
now become easy and natural. 

Viewing such a wealth of female beauty, and 
seeing on every hand so many charming faces 



and graceful figures, I am sometimes disposed 
to look at our girls as the Scottish maiden 
looked at love in the abstract. As an elderly 
fellow, and in the abstract, I am apt to think 
that our girls are too pretty to be married. 
When some great hulking fellow, with an elabo- 
rate shirt-front which is generally his principal 
feature comes into our society, and leads off 
(to St. George's, Hanover-square) one of those 
pretty girls, who sing to me and prattle to me, 
and are the delight of my eyes with their 
sprightly and engaging ways, I feel a very 
strong inclination to kick him. I regard him 
as a bloated monopolist, a "Vandal, a Goth, 
an iconoclast. I have written up, "Do not 
touch the statues," and he has touched the 
statues ; I have warned him not to pluck my 
flowers, and he has plucked them from under 
my very nose. This is very aggravating to an 
elderly fellow like myself fellows who are 
either confirmed bachelors or very much married, 
and who consequently are privileged to regard 
love "in the abstract." Which, by the way, 
is a very pleasant and innocent way of looking 
at it. 

I will say this, however, that St. George's, 
Hanover-square, has not now that blighting in- 
fluence upon my flowers that it used to have 
in the old days. In those old days, when my 
pretty girls got married, they thought it a privi- 
lege and an obligation of their new state to 
disregard the elegancies of dress. They very 
soon got dowdy, and began to wear caps ; and 
the consequence was, that the hulking fellow 
with the elaborate shirt-front very soon began 
to be indifferent. But, now-a-days, when the 
cap period approaches, the matron renews her 
youth with some clever little trick of hair- 
dressing, which makes her look almost as young 
as her daughters. The world is all the brighter 
and pleasanter for these elegant and sprightly 
habits of our women folks. I only hope that, 
while they have learned to wear becoming 
clothes, and to dress their hair, they are not 
neglecting the art of making a flaky crust. 



CUTTING OUT CATTLE. 

There is great bustle and excitement at the 
cattle station this afternoon, for we begin to 
muster fat cattle and "strangers" to-morrow, 
and the stockmen from all the neighbouring 
stations have come to assist, and take away 
their stray stock. 

We mean to start in the cool of the evening, 
ride over the plains about twenty miles, and 
camp out, so as to begin our work at daylight 
in the morning. All hands, blacks and whites, 
are very busy, catching horses down at the yard, 
saddling, rolling up blankets, and preparing 
for a day or two "out back on the plains." 
Maneroo Jim is catching a buck-jumping colt 
from among the crowd of kicking and screaming 
horses assembled in the yard : an operation not 
to be accomplished without a good deal of 
swearing, and flourishing of long sticks. At 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 12, 1865.] 63 



last the colt is drafted out of the crowd, and 
" bailed up" in a corner of the high rail fences 
which constitute the horse-yard ; a saddle is as 
firmly secured on his back as girths, surcingle, 
and crupper can do it ; and he is led out into 
the paddock. Jim is a tali lathy Sydney native, 
with long hair, and a brown face : a great swell 
in his way, with his white shirt, his white sailor- 
cut moleskin trousers, his little cabbage-tree 
hat and long black ribbons. The colt is a 
strong chesnut, five years old; he was roped, 
handled, and backed, two months ago ; has been 
turned out since, and is fat and jolly. As he 
stands, with his back up, his tail tucked in, and 
showing the white of his wicked eyes, he looks 
vicious; what Jim calls "a regular nut, and no 
flies." Jim's mate catches hold of the colt's 
ear, and hangs on to it, while Jim gets well 
into his big colonial saddle and short stirrups. 

" Let un go !" says Jim, and, with his back 
arched, his head and tail tucked in between his 
legs, and his feet together, the buck-jumper 
executes a rapid series of springs into the air, 
each accompanied with a jerk from his powerful 
loins. " Stick to him, Jim !" shout the delighted 
lookers-on, as the colt goes bucking round in a 
circle, screaming savagely at every bound. Jim 
does stick to him, throwing himself right back in 
the saddle at every plunge, and laying into his 
mount vigorously with a green hide-cutting whip. 

Peace being established between these two, 
consequent on the colt's exhaustion, we all take 
a good drink of water, light our pipes, and start, a 
party of fifteen or sixteen, two or three ? swells," 
seven or eight stockmen, and some black boys. 
Most of us have spare horses leading alongside 
of us ; each has his blanket, quart pot, and a bit 
of bread and beef, packed on his back. Our 
party jogs quietly along, out through the low 
polygonum scrub which skirts the river, on to 
the great grey plain stretching like a sea before 
us, past the quiet milking cattle, that stray 
about the home station, past distant lines of 
cows and bullocks marching solemnly along 
converging tracks to their accustomed watering- 
place, past mobs of wilder cattle, that run to- 
gether as we approach, stare awhile at us, then 
start, galloping for some place of rendezvous or 
" camp." Jim's colt wants a canter, so he is 
started off to " round them up." He gallops 
round them once or twice, and stops them on 
a little sand-hill. 

An hour more, and, ahead of us, a couple of 
miles off, is a mob of some kind, which, from 
its dark colour there being nothing white 
among it and its scattered appearance, we take 
to be a lot of horses. This causes some little 
excitement among our party, many of whom 
would dearly like to have a gallop after them, 
and try to " run them in" somewhere, for there 
are sometimes wild mobs in this part of the 
plains, with unclaimed stock, or "clear skins" 
among them, besides, perhaps, stray horses, for 
which rewards are to be had stockmen's per- 
quisites. Horses, sure enough! They come, 
thirty or forty of them, thundering down 
towards us, in a cloud of dust, violently 



exciting our nags. A quarter of a mile from 
us, they stop short, heads and tails up, stare 
and snort a moment, then some old mare anxious 
for her foal's safety starts away at a hand 
gallop, the kicking and screaming crowd take an 
undecided turn, then follow her at twenty miles 
an hour ; a great black stallion, tail in air, ears 
laid back, and nose to the ground, whipping in 
the rearmost. Nelson, Trump, and Fly, three 
tall brindled kangaroo hounds, have followed 
us without orders. Some one says, " There's 
a warrigal !" and sure enough we see a yellow 
wild dog jumping up in the air to get a look 
at us over the tops of the low cotton bushes. 
The dogs have seen him too, and they are off like 
arrows, with their bristles up and with murder 
in their eyes. Warrigal canters on leisurely, 
thinking they are only sheep-dogs, and cannot 
catch him. Not until he sees our whole squad- 
ron follow the hounds, led horses and all, at full 
gallop, quart pots and hobble-chains clattering 
and rattling, does he start to run for his life. 
Nelson catches him in half a mile, knocks him 
over, receives one hard nip from the warrigal's 
steel-trap jaws, and has him by the throat. A 
savage worry; and the sheep are rid of an 
enemy. We cut off his brush, light our pipes, 
and go back to our course again. 

The sun is setting in a glory of coloured fire, 
illuminating the distant river timber we have 
left behind us, and the expanse of plain between 
us and it, with violet light, in which all distant 
objects seem strangely near and distinct. The 
clump of forest oak marking the water-hole 
where we mean to camp to-night is plainly in 
sight, from the high ground to the south of the 
desolate fifteen-mile swamp, when our friend 
Jim, whose colt has been going quietly and well 
for the last few miles, sees a great black snake. 
The snake prepares for action, coiling himself 
up, with Ms head and neck erect, and flattened 
venomously. Jim, forgetting that he is riding 
a young one, drops the coils of his sixteen-foot 
stock-whip, prepared to smite his enemy. The 
colt takes fright at the trailing thong, and 
starts bucking viciously in a circle, of which 
the angry snake is the centre. Jim's nerves 
are pretty strong, and few horses can throw 
him, but he looks awfully scared this time, for 
he thinks that if a strap or a buckle give way, 
he will be thrown right on the top of the 
poisonous reptile. " Sit tight, Jim, or the snake 
will have you !" shout the laughing lookers-on, 
and a black boy breaks the brute's back with a 
cut of his whip, takes off his head, and carries 
him to camp, to grill for his supper. Twilight 
does not last long, so we start into a canter for 
a mile or two, and soon arrive at our camping- 
place : a shallow water-hole, by a clump of 
ragged-looking trees, near which passes the 
boundary line of our run. Those confounded 
sheep of our neighbour's have been trespassing 
again, and have spoilt the water in the hole 
with their feet. 

We find a fallen tree against which to make 
a fire, pull off our saddles, secure our horses' 
fore feet with hobbles, light the fire, fill the 



C4 [August 12, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by- 



quart pots, range them in a row where they 
Mall boil soonest, set our saddles and saddle- 
cloths to dry, and pick the softest and smoothest 
places we can find, to windward of the fire, 
to lie upon. A handful of tea is thrown into 
each quart as it boils, and supper commences ; 
salt beef and damper disappearing with much 
rapidity. The water for tea is thick with 
clay, the beef is hard and salt, but we enjoy 
our supper vastly, and are silent during its 
consumption, after the manner of hungry men. 
Then, pipes are lighted, and yarns are spun, 
about the marvellous performances of certain 
stock-horses in "cutting out" cattle, or run- 
ning wild mobs; about wonderful bargains in 
horse-flesh, or knowing devices for circumvent- 
ing rival drovers. The black boys, at a little 
fire of thek own, are crooning their monstrous 
corroborry songs, or shouting with laughter at 
some aboriginal joke, the point of which no 
white man ever could make out. A supply of 
firewood being collected, the horses looked at, 
a bell attached to one or two of them, and their 
hobbles shortened, very soon every one is asleep, 
each man with his head in his saddle, his feet 
to the fire, and his blanket draw r n over his face. 
Now and then, some one wakes and listens. 
The bush is very silent at night, and the horse- 
bell can be heard a long way off; the only sound 
breaking the stillness, excepting perhaps the un- 
earthly wailing howl of a wild dog, or the 
cuckoo-note of a mopoke owl. Towards morn- 
ing, when the night is darkest, and every one 
else in their soundest sleep, our energetic 
friend, F., whose cattle we are gathering, 
wakes up ; he notices that the eastern stars are 
becoming pale, and hears the twittering of an 
early bird, or the scream of a cockatoo. He 
knows by these signs and tokens that daylight 
is not far off; so he pulls on his boots, throws 
some wood on the fire, and sings out the bush 
reveille, " Now then, lads, turn out here ; don't 
let the sun burn your eyes out !" Thus adjured, 
the white men arise and light their pipes, yawn- 
ing and warming themselves at the sparkling fire. 
Then the quart pots are refilled for breakfast, 
the black boys are roused out, and the appear- 
ance of a red streak in the east is hailed by a 
chorus of croaks from the crows, and an insane 
cachinnation from a pair of laughing jackasses 
located in the trees near us. We swallow our 
breakfast in haste, and are off, bridles in hand, 
to find our horses. It is still dim twilight, but 
we know in what direction to seek them, and 
soon hear the bell and clink of hobble-chains ; 
as the light brightens, w 7 e see them scattered 
over the plain in twos and threes, some of them 
a mile or more away ; that notorious old rogue, 
"Rocket," comes jumping along towards his 
home at a wonderful pace, in spite of his short 
hobbles, and followed by all the "up-the-river" 
nags. Archie starts after him, on the first horse 
he can catch, and soon brings him cantering 
back to camp. 

By the time the red sun has shown his fiery face 
over the rim of the horizon, we are all mounted 
and ready, the spare horses are consigned 



to a black boy, to be driven loose to the ren- 
dezvous, and our general, F., divides his forces, 
and instructs his lieutenants. " Bill, you take 
three or four with you, and ride down the plains 
until you sight the lake timber ; start all the 
cattle you see to your right, and send some one 
after them to see that they don't run to the 
Red Hill. You fetch the cattle from the scrubs, 
and don't let them gallop more than you can 
help." I am sent in another direction, wdth 
Archie and Jim, to the Abercrombie and Wanti- 
gong, for the bullocks and cows that there do 
congregate. F. rides away eastward with the 
black boys, to sweep together all the cattle that 
feed in that direction. Old Warry, the stock- 
horse, with F.'s red blanket strapped across his 
back, jogs off towards the rendezvous, followed 
in a string by the rest of our spare stud, whose 
services will be required later in the day. The 
old horse knows his way to every camp on the 
run, and is supposed to be a very' fair judge of a 
bullock. Arrived at the bald red sand-hill, worn 
bare by thousands of hoofs, and scattered with 
the white skeletons of many defunct bullocks, 
which is the gathering-place for the many groups 
(or mobs) of cattle, he can see, shining white in 
the morning sun, for miles around. Billy-go- 
Nimble, the black boy, succeeds, by dint of much 
tact and contrivance, in catching most of his 
equine charges, taking off their packs, and hob- 
bling them. 

As the sun mounts higher, and the grey Hue 
of the distant river timber disappears in his 
glare, white moving clouds of dust begin to 
arise all around the horizon, merging into one 
another, and approaching the place where Billy 
sits smoking his pipe and watching the grazing 
horses. Soon the galloping cattle themselves 
become visible, as they stop and assemble for a 
moment on the top of some sand-hill in their 
course. Presently the strong leading bullocks, 
with dusty faces and tongues hanging out, trot 
on to the camp, and stand there panting, well 
pleased to arrive at, what they seem to consider, 
a haven of refuge. They are followed by a long 
string of horned beasts of every age, sex, and 
colour, the rear being brought up by a bevy of 
matronly old cows, their young calves stagger- 
ing along beside them. Behind all, and riding 
in a cloud of dust, from which issue from time 
to time the reports of their long heavy whips, 
come some of the men who left us in the morn- 
ing, their horses white with dust and sweat. 
From every quarter, more and more cattle stream 
on to the camp ; the dust raised by the hoofs of 
a couple of thousand of half-wild cattle, flies in 
clouds; and the noise of bellowing becomes 
almost deafening. All our party having reas- 
sembled, we let our tired horses go, and catch 
and saddle the fresh ones. The work of draft- 
ing out the cattle we want to take home to the 
station, fat bullocks and cows for market, calves 
that require branding, and stock strayed from 
other " runs," has now to begin ; and for it wc 
have reserved the seasoned stock - horses, old 
stagers that know their work, and are used to 
" cutting out." We send men to ride round the 



Charles Dickens. 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 12, 1S65.] G5 



main body of the cattle, and keep them on the 
"camp;" we cut off a few quiet cows from the 
rest, and drive them a quarter of a mile or so 
to windward of the herd, where we leave them, 
well in sight of the others, with a horseman in 
charge of them. Presently, four or five of the 
most experienced hands ride quietly in, among 
the moving parti-coloured mass, select each man 
his beast, and dodge them through and among 
the rest, until they arrive at the edge of the 
herd. Then, a sudden rush, and the bullock is 
separated from his companions ; in vain he 
gallops, in vain he twists and dodges to regain 
the mob. Man and horse keep close to his 
quarter, between him and his mates, edging him 
nearer and nearer at every turn to the quiet 
cattle on the plain. Perhaps he wheels short 
round upon the horse, and tries to use his horns ; 
but the wary nag is not to be caught, turns 
shorter still, and the rider's heavy stock-whip 
cracks hard and sharp upon the beast's hide. 
Out-paced and out-manceuvred, the bullock at 
last perceives the quiet cattle towards which the 
stockman is trying to drive him, cocks his ears, 
and trots off towards them, while the man walks 
his horse quietly back in search of fresh game. 

It is a very lively and exciting sight. On the 
higher ground, half hidden by a cloud of white 
dust, which rises like a pillar of smoke into the 
bright blue sky, is a bellowing roaring assemblage 
of horned cattle. Wild old bullocks, wandering 
restlessly through the crowd, their sides orna- 
mented with many brands and devices, their ears 
cut into many shapes, strike savagely with their 
horns at everything in their way. Anxious 
matronly cows bellow frantically for their calves, 
which run under the horses' feet, looking for 
their mothers. Shaggy thin-legged half-starved 
weaners, with a precocious look about their 
wizen faces, like that on the face of a London 
street Arab, look out for a chance to steal 
some milk from the mothers of more fortunate 
calves. Blundering young bulls and hand- 
some sleek heifers, as yet untouched by rope 
or brand, and shoals of young cattle that, 
as though for mischief's sake, continually 
try to join the drafted lot where they have no 
business, and are hunted back by the black bop. 
Horsemen ride round the moving many-hued 
mass, from the midst of which, every now and 
again, the galloping beast darts out, a red- 
shirted stockman racing alongside him. Foiled 
in their efforts to re-enter the main body, the 
selected cattle go trotting about, with heads up, 
across the level space between the larger and 
the smaller herd. Horsemen are galloping far 
and near in all directions, cattle are bellowing, 
men shouting; all is sunshine, heat, dust, noise, 
and motion. The work goes on, until the sun 
is past the zenith, and horses and men become 
of one uniform dust colour. 

Three hundred head or so have been cut out, 
and the sharp eyes of the men on the camp can 
find no more of the cattle they require. The 
horsemen gather in a group; the cattle, no 
longer kept together by the men who have been 
riding round them, draw slowly off the camp ; 



we all adjourn to the neighbouring swamp, in 
which there is still a little water left, among the 
polygonum bushes at the bottom of it, to give 
our tired horses a drink. The water is very 
bad, but seems delicious to us, hoarse as we are 
with shouting and parched with dust. Then 
the drafted cattle are sent home to the station : 
three men in charge of them, to be shut up in 
the stock-yard to-night, and taken out in the 
morning to feed under strict surveillance. The 
rest of us, after lighting our pipes, ride slowly 
off in a contrary direction, to bivouac again to- 
night, and renew to-morrow, on a different part 
of the run, the operations of to-day. 



HOPE RASHLEIGH. 

There never was a prouder nor more indul- 
gent father than John Rashleigh. A haughty, 
dry, and saturnine man, with few weaknesses 
and fewer affections ; all the tenderness of his 
nature having concentrated itself on his daughter. 
The love which had been only partially bestowed 
upon the wife was lavished on the child with an 
excess that knew no bounds. 

It was unfortunate for Hope that she was 
left motherless at the very time when maternal 
care and guidance were most needed. A wilful, 
high-spirited girl, clever, beautiful, and peril- 
ously fascinating, ran but a poor chance of 
coming to good, without some firm hand to 
guide and govern her; but when she was 
just thirteen Mrs. Rashleigh died, and Hope 
was given up to the worst training a girl 
can have the over-indulgence of a father. 
Father, servants, masters (when she chose to ac- 
cept lessons, which she did sometimes out of the 
weariness of idleness), the half housekeeper, half 
companion, bowed to her. No one was found to 
oppose her; even Grantley Watts put himself 
under her feet with the rest, and thought him- 
self honoured if she condescended to treat him 
like a slave, made him fetch and carry and work 
for her, and attend upon her every whim and 
caprice. She never thanked him, and she 
rarely rewarded him even with a smile ; though 
sometimes she did ; and then he forgot all but 
that smile, and thought himself richer than 
many a king standing on the threshold of his 
treasure-chamber. 

Hope and Grantley Watts were cousins of a 
far-away kind ; though he was that most mise- 
rable of all things a poor relation brought up 
on charity, therefore in no wise her equal ac- 
cording to the canons of society. Still, the 
equality of blood was between them however 
great the inequality of means ; and the equality 
of nature as well; save that the balance of 
nobleness hung to Grantley's side, who had 
been spared the dangers which beset a spoiled 
and pampered child, and whose virtues there- 
fore had a better chance and freer room for 
growth. 

He was a fine, manly, noble-hearted fellow 
this Grantley, with two special characteristics, 
good temper and an invincible sense of honour. 



66 [August 12, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



His cousin, John Rashleigh, was substantially 
kind to him. He housed him, and had edu- 
cated him liberally; but for the more im- 
material kindnesses of tender look or gracious 
word, of indulgences granted by the generosity 
of love, of gifts or pleasures beyond strict 
deserving, the boy had grown up absolutely 
without them. Hope, too, had used towards 
him all the insolence which girls of a certain 
type are so fond of showing towards young men, 
no matter what their degree ; adding to this 
haughtiness the tyranny and domination to 
which every one within her sphere was 
forced to submit. But Grantley accepted 
all her girlish impertinences with unwavering 
good humour and that patience of the stronger 
which is so large and calm; never seeming to 
see what would have fired many another youth 
to saucy retaliation, but, always master of 
himself, returning good for evil, smiles for 
jeers, obedience for command, and service for 
ingratitude. And yet he was not mean spirited. 

Hope was now seventeen Grantley two years 
older. She was a tall, slight, fair girl, with 
dark eyes to which straight brows and long 
lashes gave a mingled expression of fire and 
softness ; her hair, which waved in broad un- 
dulations and was of a pure golden brown, was 
thrown back from her face and left loose and 
wandering about her neck; her lips were full 
and finely curved ; but the general tone of her 
face and manners altogether was that of pride and 
self will, with an underflow of loving warmth 
if it could but be reached. As yet no one had 
reached it save her father, and even he was not 
loved in proportion to the love he gave, as 
is the sorrowful law of life. The universal 
feeling in the neighbourhood where she lived 
was, that Miss Hope Rashleigh wanted her 
master, and that a little stiff tribulation would 
be the making of her. 

Hope had one quality which counted much in 
the blotting out of her sins : she was generous. 
In this she went beyond her father by many de- 
grees, for he was only just, and when he was 
more than just he was proud and bestowed 
from ostentation rather than from generosity 
as a duty owing to his own dignity and 
condition, not as the duty of kindliness to 
others. She, on the contrary, gave from the 
affluence of her nature, because making presents 
was a pleasure in itself, and alleviating suffering 
her instinct. No one who came to her was 
ever sent away empty handed ; and if she was 
more than usually exacting and impatient with 
her servants, she healed their wounds so libe- 
rally that they all said " a bad day with Miss 
Hope was equal to a month's wages any time." 

This was the only point on which her father 
ever checked her. He made her a liberal allow- 
ance, more than sufficient for her own wants 
had they been double what they were ; but as 
she was for ever behindhand, owing to her 
bounties, he had to make up her deficiencies 
at the end of the quarter ; vowing that this 
should be the last time, and that he must posi- 
tively, for her own sake, let her learn the value 



of money. But the last time had never come 
yet. 

At last Grantley's was offered an Indian 
appointment, which, though of small value in 
the beginning, promised well, and was sure to 
lead to a favourable future if he were found 
capable and steady. There was no question 
of doubt or hesitation in the matter ; he must 
go, willing or unwilling. Penniless young men, 
kept long idle at home, are generally glad 
enough of good appointments where they can 
make their fortunes: but his cousin noticed 
that he turned deadly pale as he spoke, and 
Hope caught a look such as she had never 
seen in his eyes before, and which sent all 
the blood in a thick wave of mingled passions 
round her heart. 

A few days before Grantley's departure, Hope 
was walking in the shrubbery by the long 
field. She had been rather dull of late. Hope 
Rashleigh could get out of temper. Presently, 
up the long path where she was walking came 
Grantley with his gun and his game-bag. He, 
too, was dull. Glad and grateful as he was for 
that Indian appointment, he had never been 
quite himself since it had been made ; though 
his gravity and preoccupation were perhaps only 
natural in a thoughtful youth on the eve of 
entering the world on his own account, and 
with all his future depending on himself alone. 
As he came nearer, Hope raised her eyes from the 
book she had been reading ; at least not exactly 
reading, since she was holding it upside down ; 
and as she looked she coloured. 

"I am going to get you a partridge, Miss 
Hope," said Grantley, stopping for a moment as 
he came near to her. He always called her 
Miss Hope. 

" I dare say the partridges will be safe enough 
from your gun," said Hope, insolently. But 
she did not look at him as she spoke ; and some- 
how her insolence seemed a little put on and 
forced. 

" Oh ! that is scarcely fair," said Grantley, 
smiling. " I may be good for very little, Miss 
Hope, but I am a pretty fair shot." 

" At least you say so of yourself. I never 
believe boasters," answered Hope, carelessly. 

" Is knowing an insignificant thing like this, 
a bit of skill which any one can attain by prac- 
tice and not being proud of it, boasting?" 
Grantley asked, gently. 

" I do not condescend to argue with you," 
cried Hope, shaking back her hair. " You are 
very rude to contradict me." 

"I do not wish to contradict you, Miss 
Hope," replied Grantley, in a sweet grave 
voice ; " but you must not think me rude 
because I do not like you to have a mean 
opinion of me, and try to set you right." 

The blood rushed over Hope's face, and she 
turned away abruptly. 

" I am going away perhaps for ever," then 
said Grantley after a short pause, speaking in a 
low voice but not looking at his cousin look- 
ing down instead, occupied about the stock of 
his gun which just then needed an extra polish ; 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 12, 18G5.] 67 



"and I should like to ask you one question 
before I go may I ?" 

"I suppose my permission or refusal would 
not count for much if you have made up your 
mind," said Hope, she too looking down, fold- 
ing- the leaves of her book a little unconsciously. 

'"I think it would, Miss Hope. I think I 
have always been careful to obey your every 
wish, so far as I could ; and I have never wil- 
fully displeased you, believe me." 

" It is a pity, then, that you should have clone 
it so often without your will," said Hope. 

"That is just what I want to ask," replied 
Grantley. " Why have you been so constantly 
displeased with me, Miss Hope ? No one has 
tried more earnestly than I to please and obey 
you I can truly say from the very first years 
of my life here why is it, then, that you hate 
me as you do ? "What have I ever done to make 
you hate me ? If I only knew ! if I only had 
known for all these years !" 

" Hate you ?" she cried quickly, turning full 
round upon him and raising her eyes with a 
strange look into his face. Then she dropped 
them again, and said coldly, " I did not know, 
Mr. "Watts, that I had ever honoured you 
enough to hate you. I have scarcely taken so 
much notice of you as to warrant you in saying 
that." 

Grantley turned pale. "Forgive me," she 
said, sadly ; " this has been again one of my un- 
lucky blunders." 

" I think," she said, with a gentler look than 
usual, " we might as well drop this conversation. 
I do not see to what good it can possibly lead ; 
and giving offence and then making apologies 
has always seemed to me a very childish way of 
passing the time ; and we are not children now," 
she continued, with girlish pride. " It has not 
been your fault, Grantley, if you have been tire- 
some and disagreeable." But as she looked up 
when she said this, and smiled all radiantly and 
sweetly, the words had no sting in them, and were 
indeed more coaxing than impertinent. " I dare 
say you have not meant to be unpleasant, and so 
I have forgiven you. But you had better go now 
and look after the partridges. I promise you, 
if you get one, to take it specially to myself ; 
and I am sure that will be honour enough!" 
And she laughed one of her sweet, clear, precious 
laughs, as rare as precious, which most people 
and Grantley among them prized as much as 
they would have prized the loving favour of a 
queen. 

" Ah, Miss Hope !" he said very tenderly, his 
handsome face, bronzed and flushed, looking 
down upon her with such infinite love and 
admiration, "you have too much power over 
your fellow-creatures. It is good neither for 
you nor for them." 

" It is very good for both them and me," she 
said. " It keeps them in their proper places, 
and makes me able to " She hesitated. 

"To what?" said Grantley, coming a step 
nearer. 

" To keep mine," she answered coldly, draw- 
ing herself away. 



He sighed, and seemed to wake as from a 
dream. "Well, I must go," he then said. 
" Good-by, Miss Hope ; I will get you a bird 
if I can ; and remember that you have promised 
to accept it specially for yourself." 

" You need not give yourself the trouble,", 
she answered disdainfully; she, too, seeming 
to shake herself clear from a pleasant dream. 
" I have not the slightest wish that you should 
get me one, Mr. Watts, or indeed that you 
should think of me at all." Saying which she 
walked away, and left him without another 
word. 

He looked after her as she slowly disappeared, 
and then he struck off into the fields for one of 
the last days of partridge shooting he was to have 
in the old country. But Hope, going deeper 
into the shrubbery, flung herself down on the 
moss at the roots of the trees and burst into a 
passionate flood of tears, hating and despising 
herself the while. 

When Grantley returned in the evening he 
had only one bird in his bag ; though game was 
plentiful this year and he was acknowledged to 
be a first-rate shot. His oousin, John Rash- 
leigh, rallied him unmercifully, and Hope said 
in her most disdainful way : " I thought the 
coveys would be tolerably safe, Mr. Watts !" 
But he only laughed, and admitted that he 
was a muff and not worth his salt that powder 
and shot were thrown away upon him and that 
he would make but a sorry .figure in India 
where men could shoot with other jeerings 
playful or bitter as they might be; simply 
saying, " Well, Miss Hope, you must have it 
some morning for breakfast when I am gone ; 
it is the last I shall shoot, and I should like 
you to have it." 

To which answered Hope indifferently : " You 
are very good, Grantley, but I dare say Fido will 
be the only one to benefit by your last bag ; I do 
not suppose I shall even see the creature." 

Grantley coloured ; and Mr. Rashleigh him- 
self thought she might have been more gracious 
just on the eve of the poor lad's departure, when 
perhaps they might never see him again; and after 
all, though he was a poor relation, and had very 
properly never forgotten that, or gone beyond 
the strictest line of demarcation, yet he had 
been many years in the house now, and Hope 
was very young when he came, so that if she 
had even considered him almost as a brother, no 
great harm would have been done ; and so on ; 
his heart unconsciously pleading against his 
child's untoward pride in favour of his de- 
pendent. 

Perhaps it was some such half discomfort 
it could not be said to be conscious displeasure 
that made him refuse Hope's request that 
evening. As usual, she was out of funds; 
and she had a special need for money at this 
moment. She wished to help poor Anne Rogers 
down in the fever, with her husband in the 
hospital, and her children destitute, and she 
knew that her father would not give them a 
penny ; for the man had been convicted of poach- 
in c\ and Anne herself did not bear the most un- 



6S [August 12, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



blemished character, and had seen the inside of 
the countyjailmore than once in her lifetime. But 
these counter-pleadings did not influence Hope ; 
and she thought only of the suffering family, 
which she could help, and would, if she had the 
money. Then she wanted to make Grantley a 
present before he went away, and she did not 
want her father to know of it ; though perhaps 
she would have been puzzled to explain why 
she wished to keep such a trivial matter secret. 
She had never given him anything, not even a 
flower, not even a book ; and he was almost the 
only person within her sphere so passed over ; 
but now, when he was going to leave for ever, 
she would give him something as a remem- 
brance something that would make him think 
of her when he was away. Poor, proud Hope, 
come then at last to this ! 

She knew that her father had money in the 
house, when she went into the library to speak 
to him; for she saw him put a twenty-pound 
note in his desk yesterday, which was just 
the sum she wanted, and indeed was on the 
point of asking for then. She would have got 
it had she done so ; but to-day the vane had 
shifted, and for the first time in his life he re- 
fused her, and so sternly and positively, that, as 
much in surprise as anger, she gave up the 
point at once. But with a sullen flush of pride 
and determination on her face, which he did 
not see, sitting as he was towards the light 
while she stood in the shadow. And then she 
left the room in stately silence ; too proud to 
coax even her father after a refusal so harshly 
made; though, had she coaxed him as Hope 
could when she chose, the whole thing w r ould 
have been at an end, and John Rashleigh would 
have yielded. She was but a spoiled child, re- 
member, whose faults had been fostered by the 
injudicious training of her life. 

The distress of poor Anne Rogers pressed 
upon her. Unused to opposition and in a 
mood more than ordinarily excitable, every- 
thing became exaggerated, and she laid awake 
through the night in a state bordering upon 
mania, feeling herself to be a coward and a 
murderess in not executing the righteousness 
of will, and taking from her father what he 
would not but ought to freely give. Was 
not humanity before mere obedience ? Was 
she to let a fellow-creature die rather than take 
what could be spared so well, and what she had 
the right to demand? Yes, by right; her 
father's money was hers as well, if not by law 
yet by moral justice, and if he made a cold and 
churlish steward, it was her duty to supply his 
defects, and to let the poor benefit by his 
superfluities. All the w 7 ild reasonings of a 
wilful mind aiding the impulses of a generous 
heart passed through her brain that night, and 
when she rose in the morning it was with the 
determination to do her own will, and defy her 
father's. 

John Rashleigh was a magistrate, and to-day 
was market-day at Canstow, the town near 
which they lived, where the magistrates always 
assembled in the upper room of the town-hali and 



dispensed law, if not justice, on the offenders. 
His absence gave Hope the opportunity she 
wanted. Very quietly and very deliberately she 
unlocked his desk, and took from it the twenty- 
pound note. But though the act was shameful, 
she had no perception that she was doing 
wrong, beyond the consciousness of self-will 
and disobedience, which did not trouble her 
much which, on the contrary, she had reasoned 
herself into considering the meritorious exercise 
of a better judgment and a nobler motive. 

_ " Grantley, change this for me," she said, 
giving him the note. 

" I cannot change it myself, Miss Hope," he 
answered, " but I will get it done for you in 
Canstow ; I am going over there directly." 

" Change it where you like," she answered 
carelessly. " I want the money as soon as you 
can give it to me, that is all ; and Grantley, do 
you hear? if papa asks you, do not telf him 
that I gave you the note to get changed." 

" Very well, I will not," said Grantley, who, 
suspecting nothing wrong saw nothing odd in 
her request; and who indeed felt not a little 
flattered that she should have made a secret 
with him on any matter. So, full of pleasant 
feeling, he rode over to Canstow, where he 
changed the note, and bought various things 
with the money, partly for Hope according to 
her orders, and partly for himself; not at Hope's 
charge it must be understood, the squaring of 
accounts having to come afterwards. And 
among other_ things, he bought a certain camp 
apparatus for himself at Tell's the ironmonger's, 
for which he paid with the note in question 
that being the largest shop and the largest 
purchase. 

Now it so happened that Mr. Rashleigh went 
to pay his bill at this same ironmonger's to-day. 
He took a cheque which he had just received 
in the market-place from one of his tenants 
who owed him half a year's rent for his farm ; 
and to save himself the trouble of going to the 
bank banking hours indeed being over he 
gave it to Tell, receiving the surplus change. 
Among which change came his own twenty- 
pound note. Passing it through his fingers, 
and looking at the number to take down in 
his pocket-book, he recognised it as that left 
in his desk at Newlands. He knew the number, 
and a certain private mark which he always 
made on his bank-notes, thereby rendering them 
doubly "branded;" and he knew that no one 
could have obtained possession of it lawfully. 

" Where did you get this, Tell ?" he asked. 

" Mr. Grantley, sir," said Tell. " He changed 
it here not half an hour ago, and ordered this 
patent camp apparatus," showing the young 
man's purchase. 

" Mr. Grantley Watts ?" cried John Rash- 
leigh, flushing up; "he changed this note 
here F" 

." Yes, sir; I hope no mistake, sir nothing 
wrong?" asked the ironmonger, a little anxi- 
ously. 

" No, no, nothing ! I was surprised, that 
was all ; no, Tell, nothing wrong." 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 12, 1865.] 69 



But his face was more truthful than his lips ; 
and Tell saw plainly that something was very 
far wrong in spite of his denial, and that young 
Mr. Grantley was in for it, whatever he had 
been doing. He did not suspect anything very 
bad. Canstow was by no means an immaculate 
place, and there were offences and offenders 
enough as times went ; but it was not to be sup- 
posed that a young gentleman like Mr. Watts 
had stolen a bank-note out of his cousin's 
drawer. Young gentlemen living in grand 
houses do not do such things; crime passes 
them by somehow ; and the police exercise their 
functions very much in proportion to the yearly 
income. The utmost the man imagined was 
that Grantley had broken into a sum which Mr. 
Rashleigh had desired him to keep intact ; and, 
as it was well known that the master of New- 
lands had a high temper of his own and liked 
to be obeyed, that was quite enough to put him 
out, and to make his face grow so white and 
his thin lips so pale. At all events, wherever 
the fault lay, the lad was in for it, thought Tell ; 
not without a kindly feeling of regret for the 
evil hour at hand. For Grantley was a general 
favourite in Canstow, and most people there 
wished him well. 

Home came John Rashleigh in a frame of 
mind more easily imagined than described. 
Things had gone crossly with him for the last 
few hours; and John Rashleigh was not the 
man to bear with the crossness of circumstance 
patiently. Hope's extravagance had annoyed 
him ; partly because some other of his money 
matters had gone wrong at the same time ; and, 
like most proud men, the merest suspicion of 
possible embarrassment galled him terribly; 
then he was sorry at Grantley's leaving, and 
vexed with himself for being sorry ; for what 
better could a poor relation do ? and if he had 
made himself useful, so that he, John Rashleigh 
of Newlands, felt that he should be " quite lost" 
without him, why, that was only the lad's duty 
and what ought to have been, and he was worse 
than absurd to feel the least pain at his going. 
Then the magistrate's business had been worry- 
ing him to-day ; and he had been on one side 
of an opinion and his brothers had been on the 
other, and he had been forced to give in ; which 
had annoyed him not a little; so that, when 
added to all this accumulation of disturbing 
influences was the sudden conviction that he 
had been robbed, and that too by the boy he 
had loved and cherished more than he had 
ever openly acknowledged, we can understand 
in what a whirlwind of fiery wrath he rode 
full speed through Canstow and up to New- 
lands, not ten minutes after Grantley had re- 
turned. 

" Grantley !" he called out as soon as he 
entered, and still standing in the hall ; " Grant- 
ley Watts, where are you ?" 

" Here, sir," said Grantley coming out of 
the drawing-room, where he had been giving 
Hope an account of his proceedings, and empty- 
ing his pockets of her commissions. 
" Where did you get that twenty-pound note 



you changed just now at Tell's ?" shouted John 
Rashleigh. 
Grantley was silent. 

" Come, sir, I want an answer !" cried his 
cousin. " Looking down and keeping a demure 
silence will not suit me; I want a simple 
answer to a straightforward question. Where 
did you get that twenty-pound note from ? I 
left it in my desk when I went to Canstow to- 
day, and mv desk was locked ; whoever got it 
forced the lock or opened it with a false key. 
It was either you or some one else. Who was 
it, Grantley I* 

Grantley still made no answer ; the truth was 
beginning to break upon him. 

" 1 do not think any one in my household 
would do such a thing ; two hours ago I should 
not have thought that you would have done it ; 
and even yet, suspicious as the whole circum- 
stance is, even yet I will accept any explanation 
that will clear you, else I must hold you re- 
sponsible for the theft." 

" I did not steal it. I have committed no 
theft," said Grantley, looking straight into his 
cousin's eyes. 

" Oh ! you may dislike the word, but that I 
do not care for," said Mr. Rashleigh, disdain- 
fully. "I have always remarked that people 
shrink more from a word than a deed, and think 
themselves especially ill-used if called by the 
name of their crime. If you are not a thief, what 
are you then? If you did not steal it, how 
did you get it ?" 

" I did not steal it," was all that Grantley 
could say, repeating himself monotonously. 

John Rashleigh was an impatient man as 
well as a proud and high-tempered one. At 
Grantley's second asseveration he raised his 
hand and struck the youth across the face. 

" Coward !" he said, " have you not even the 
bad courage of crime ? Dare you not confess 
what, by confession, would have been only a 
fault ? If you had told me frankly how and 
why you had come to do such a thing, I could 
have understood it as a boyish liberty, and have 
forgiven it, but now I have only one way of 
dealing with it as a crime." 

When he struck him Grantley involuntarily 
raised his own hand ; but a thought came across 
him, and he retreated a step or two and dropped 
his guard. 

" It takes the remembrance of all you have 
done for me, Mr. Rashleigh, and more than 
even this, to make me able to bear your in- 
sults !" he said, excitedly, his boyish face con- 
vulsed with contending passions. 

His voice, harsh and broken as it was, had 
somehow a different ring in it to that of guilt, 
and Mr. Rashleigh had not been a magistrate 
for so many years, and accustomed to all 
shades of criminals, not to know something 
of the human voice, and what it betokened 
under accusation. Grantley's startled him 
so did the proud flushed face with the honest 
eyes looking so frankly, and the indignation 
rather than fear upon it and made him half 
afraid that he had been too hasty. Rut men 



70 [August 12, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



of his character do not long donbt themselves 
for good or evil ; and while that one broad fact 
remained unexplained how did Grantley get 
possession of money left, locked up in his 
desk ? he was in his right to suppose that he 
had stolen it, and common sense and the law 
were on his side. 

"Tell me how yon came by it," he then said 
in a somewhat gentler tone ; " if I have done you 
wrong, boy, I ani sorry for it, and we will not 
bear malice; but tell me how you got that 
note." 

"I cannot, sir," said Grantley, his heart 
swelling. 

" You will not, you mean, you young- fool !" 
said Mr. Rashleigh, contemptuously. 

" I cannot," he repeated. 

" Then you will not be surprised if I send for 
the police '? Here, Lewis. Lewis ! come here ! 
The thing must be thoroughly sifted, Grantley ; 
and if you are guilty I am sorry for the ex- 
posure you have brought on yourself. It is 
your own folly to let things come to such a 
pass, when they can never be mended again !" 

" To send for the police will not make 
matters much worse for me," replied Grantley ; 
" the servants have heard all that has passed, 
and my character will be none the blacker now 
for a public charge." 

"At least we shall get to the truth then," 
said Mr. Rashleigh ; ; " which will be so much 
gained." 

" No, sir," Grantley replied, firmly, " I shall 
not tell you even then where I got that money 
from, or how I came by it !" 

All this while the drawing-room door had 
been standing half open, with Hepe close to it, 
listening to what was passing. A whole world 
of feelings had possessed her by turns fear of 
her father, fear for Grantley, and shame at the 
false position in which her self-will and cowar- 
dice together had placed him something, too, 
that was more than admiration at the constancy 
with which he Had borne such pain and indignity 
that he might keep faith with her, and a kind 
of dawning idea that what she had done had 
been after all a sin and a dishonour, and that 
confession would degrade her for ever all 
these thoughts and feelings passed through her 
mind by turns, and held her motionless and 
silent; with ever the bitter recollection that 
Grantley was but a poor relation at the best, 
and that the distance between them was im- 
measurable, running like a sorrowful refrain to 
each. But when her father spoke of giving 
him in charge, and called to the servant, then 
she hesitated no longer. Throwing the door 
wide open she came out into the hall. 

" i" took the money, papa," she said boldly ; 
and as she spoke she laid her hand in Grantley's, 
the first time that she had ever willingly done 
so. 

" Hope !" exclaimed her father, " are you 
mad ? You took that money ? You ?" 

" Yes, papa," she answered quite steadily ; 
" you refused to give it to me when I asked 
ydu for it yesterday, and I took it this morning. 



I wanted it, and you ought to have given it 
to me." 

" If I had thought that to refuse it would 
have made you capable of stealing it, Hope, I 
would not have hesitated a moment," said the 
father, sternly. 

" I do not call it stealing," said Hope, defiantly. 
"It was only taking -what I had a right to. I 
unlocked your desk with my own key, and gave 
the note to Grantley to get changed." 

John Rashleigh turned fiercely against the 
youth. " How dare you, sir, abet my child in 
her folly ?" he exclaimed, passionately. " What 
was folly in her, and excusable, considering how 
I have always humoured her and acceded to her 
wishes, and remembering that after all she is a 
mere child still, was downright wickedness and 
dishonour in you. And how do I know but 
that you instigated her to it ? How do I know 
but that it was your doing in reality, and she 
but the innocent tool of your cunning schemes ? 
You bought a precious gimerack for yourself, 
and paid for it with my money. I tell you, 
Grantley, the whole thing looks too black yet for 
your whitewashing." 

"Grantley accounted to me for that camp 
thing," said Hope. " Do I not tell you, papa, 
that it was my own doing from first to last ? 
Grantley did not know where I got the note 
from. I only asked him to get it cashed for 
me. But I asked him not to tell you that I 
had done so, because I was afraid you would be 
angry with me, and I meant to tell you when 
you were kind again." This she said coaxingly. 

" I could not break my word to Miss Hope," 
said Grantley in a low voice, but firmly. " Yet 
I should have thought, Mr. Rashleigh, that you 
would have known me too well to have suspected 
me of such a thing as this. What Miss Hope 
had the right to do was another matter, but it 
would have been a theft in me ; and men" 
(here Mr. Rashleigh smiled a little satirically) 
" do not become thieves all at once. Yet I do 
not think you have ever seen much want of 
honour in me !" 

" I will not have that tone taken," said Mr. 
Rashleigh, harshly. " You have done ill, Grant- 
ley, and it is absurd to attempt to give yourself 
the airs of injured innocence, and as if you had 
the right to blame me because I suspected what 
was so entirely suspicious. And what do I 
know yet? I have no proof; only your own 
word and Hope's assertion, w r hich, for aught I 
know, may be merely her generous desire to 
get you out of a perilous position by taking the 
blame on herself. I can scarcely believe her 
guilty. To have gone into my room in my 
absence unlock my desk take the money I 
had refused her only a few hours ago to steal 
I cannot believe it ! I will not ! You have 
been at the bottom of it, Grantley ; you have 
had some hand in it !" 

" Now, papa, how can you go on so ?" cried 
Hope, thoroughly frightened. " Do I not tell 
you that Grantley is innocent, and that I have 
been the only one to blame ? What more can 
I say to convince you ?" 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 12, 1806.] 71 



" It is not an easy matter to convince me 
that my child has committed a theft," said 
John Rashleigh, gravely, and turning away his 
head. 

" I did not think of it as a fault at the time, 
dear papa," she cried, flinging herself into his 
arms. "I wanted it for poor Anne Rogers, 
chiefly ; I did not want it for myself. Forgive 
me, dear, dearest papa, for having been so dis- 
obedient and wilful, and do not blame or accuse 
Grantley any more! I am the only one to 
blame, and he has been far nobler than I de- 
served." Here she burst into tears, and buried 
her face in her father's breast. "Won't you 
forgive me, dear papa ?" she sobbed again after 
a short pause, kissing his cheek which her tears 
made almost as wet as her own. 

John Rashleigh could not resist this. Hope 
had never yet been unforgiven even when she 
had not shown contrition, and the unusual soft- 
ness of her mood to-day could meet with nothing 
but the most fervent response. 

" Do not cry, Hope ! Dry your eyes, child !" 
he said, tenderly. " There, there ! Let us have 
no more about it. I quite believe you, and I 
quite believe that you did not know you were 
doing anything wrong, and that you were only 
thoughtless and impulsive, as usual. And as 
for you, boy" (to Grantley), " I am sorry that I 
accused you so hastily; so, shake hands, and 
think no more about it. You cannot expect me 
to say more than that I am sorry," he added 
pleasantly, as Grantley still hesitated. The blow 
on his cheek yet stung, and it was rather early 
daysto take the hand which had struck him. "No 
gentleman can want more than an apology, and 
a father can only express his regret to a son ; 
so shake hands, boy, and let us all forget 
what has been a very painfal misunderstand- 
ing." 

That word did what the feeling had failed 
to do. Grantley grasped his cousin's hand 
warmly ; he had conquered all his boyish pride 
and manly indignation by the simple name of 
father. 

"I have made you suffer, Grantley," said 
Hope, as her father left them ; and again she 
laid her hand in his. 

' " I would have borne more than this for your 
sake, Miss Hope," he answered, pressing her 
hand between both of his, and looking at her 
lovingly she not haughty and disdainful as 
usual, but downcast, bashful, and repentant. 

" I do not know what we shall do without you, 
Grantley," she then said very gently; and as 
she spoke she turned pale, and he felt her hand 
trembling in his. 

" Oh ! you will soon forget me. I have so 
often displeased you, you will be glad to get rid 
of me," Grantley answered. 

" I do not think we shall," said Hope, in a 
low voice. And then there was a moment's 
silence. 

All this time they were standing with their 
hands clasped in each other's in the hall which 
had just been so noisy and heated with the late 
storm passing through. 



" You have not displeased me ; it is I who 
have been ill tempered," Hope continued, in a 
still lower voice, still softer and richer in its 
tones. " I ought to ask you for forgiveness, 
Grantley, before you go, for I have often be- 
haved so badly to you." 

"You must not do that," he exclaimed 
hastily, and his eyes filled up with tears. " I 
could not bear that, Miss Hope. I cannot bear 
to hear you even blame yourself for anything." 

" Grantley !" she said ; and then she stopped 
and said no more. 

Still with her hand in his, still looking down 
on her as she stood with bent head and lowered 
eyelids before him, he drew just a shade nearer 
to her. 

" You spoke ?" he asked. 

She laid her other hand on his arm. 

" I am much obliged to you for all that you 
have done for me these many years," she said, 
almost in a whisper. 

The words were formal but the voice and 
tone were not ; the downcast eyes, the parted 
lips, the cheeks now crimsoning and now paleing, 
the heaving breast, the pride swept away be- 
neath the swell of this unusual tenderness and 
girlish gratitude, all told of something deeper 
and warmer stirring in that impetuous heart 
than what those quaint, formal words ex- 
pressed. 

"Do not say that you are obliged to me 
for anything, dear Miss Hope," said Grant- 
ley, himself scarcely able to speak; "it has 
been honour enough to me to be allowed to serve 
you." 

" No one has ever done so much for me," 
she said. 

"Because no one ever . . . ." He stopped 
in his turn, and said no more; then, after a 
pause, he went on : "I have done nothing for 
you unwillingly, Miss Hope. If you had asked 
me at any time to give you my life I would 
have done it as freely as I would have given 
you a flower. I have had but one object that 
of serving and obeying you ; and I have had 
but one desire that of pleasing you. I have 
done the first the best way I could if I have 
failed in the last sadly. But I want you to re- 
member me when I am in India," he went on to 
say, "and to remember me with as little dislike 
as you can ; and I am so glad of to-day, for the 
last thing you will have to remember of me will 
be my faith to you." 

The tears were swelling in her eyes, as in his. 

"I shall never forget to-day," she said gently, 
" nor how good you have always been to me, 
dear Grantley." 

" I am glad you can say that, dear Miss Hope. 
I am glad I am going to India too, though I 
shall never see you again ; for if I stayed in 
England I should only^fall out of favour again, 
and then I should have the pain of seeing you 
hate me more than ever, perhaps." 

By this time the tears were running down her 
face. 

" I have never disliked you, Grantley, ' she 
said ; " I have pretended to do so, but it was 



72 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 12, 1865.] 



mere pretence ; and I have tried, but I could 
not. I like you better than you like me, 
Grantley a great deal." 

" Hope !" 

What was it? What happened? What 
madness took him ? Neither of them ever knew, 
boy and girl as they were; but Hope found 
herself clasped to his heart, with her arm round 
his neck, and their flushed, wet, youthful faces 
laid against each other. 

But they were not in smooth water yet, and 
had something more formidable before them 
than even their own misunderstanding and 
childish blindness had been. Though John 
Rashleigh might forgive a girlish freedom like 
that of which Hope had been guilty, it was by 
no means certain that he would forgive this far 
graver sin. The light of his eyes and the pride 
of his heart, she for whom lords and princes 
would not have been too good, to give herself 
away at sixteen to a poor relation! Hope 
knew all the trial to be passed through. It 
must be met, however, and that at once, unless 
she and Grantley would undertake a clandestine 
correspondence for which the one was too 
proud and the other too honest ; or unless they 
would give up each other which neither would 
hear of. What she anticipated came to pass, 
in even exaggerated form. The father was 
furious; violent beyond anything she had 
dreamed possible ; but, girl as she was, she was 
firm, and Grantley would not yield her so long 
as she would hold to him. 

Then came that terrible collision of two wills 
equal in strength, and the battle of love and 
pride which tears a man's very soul. Look 
which way he would, there was no comfort for 
John Rashleigh; and refusal or consent was 
equally madness and despair. But he must 
decide. The proud man had to balance with 
the father; and eventually the father won the 
day. Yet he would not consent to the marriage 
for many years even after they had come to 
riper age than what is generally held ripe 
enough ; and when he did when Grantley came 
back from India with a character and repute of 
his own, and his cousin found that both poor 
relation and daughter had not swerved a hair's 
breadth from their young loves, and were 
minded to marry without his consent if it could 
not be with even then, when forced to yield, 
Grantley found his roses decidedly not without 
thorns. His sweetness of temper though con- 
quered before the end came ; and when John 
Rashleigh was dying, he confessed that Grantley 
had been the best son, and the dearest, father 
ever had ; and that now, when the things of this 
world were slipping away from him and he was 
beginning to learn their emptiness, he was glad 
that Hope had married one who, by his better 
influence, had made her a nobler and a gentler 
woman. 

" But you were a thief after all, my boy, 



and stole a greater treasure than a paltry bank- 
note," he said lovingly, not an hour before he 
died. 



MODERN TORTURE. 

We publish the following letter, as an act of 
justice. We do not observe, however, that it 
contradicts any statement to which this Journal 
has given circulation* 

TO THE EDITOR. 

Sir, An article headed Modern Torture ap- 
peared on the 10th of June in number 320 of 
All the Year Round, at page 463, being a sort 
of abstract of Riickel's work, entitled Sachsens 
Erkebung und das Zuchthaus zu Waldheim. 

I trust you will be good enough to complete - 
this article by mentioning, in your periodical, 
that the Saxon government has published a 
declaration in the official paper, the Dresden 
Journal, to the effect that it disdains to prose- 
cute the author, or take any legal proceedings 
against his book, preferring to leave the verdict 
on it to the sound common sense of the Saxon 
people. 

This individual, after having fought at the 
barricades against the government, whose paid 
servant he was at the time, was convicted for 
sedition, and received, through the royal grace, 
first his life, and, at a later period, the remission 
of his commuted sentence. He now seeks to 
make capital of his imprisonment by the publi- 
cation of a sensation romance. 

In conclusion, I may add that the Prussian 
press loudly predicted the confiscation and pro- 
hibition of the work by the Saxon government. 

This confiscation and prohibition have indeed 
taken place in Prussia, but not in Saxony. 

I am, Sir, your obedient servaut, 

E. P. DE COLQTJHOTJN, 

Aulic Councillor of H.M. the King of Saxony. 
* See page 463 of the last volume. 



Just published, bound in cloth, price 5s. 6d., 

THE THIRTEENTH VOLUME. 



NEW WORK BY MR. DICKENS, 

In Monthly Parts, uniform with the Original Editions of 

"Pickwick," "Copperfleld," &c. 

Now publishing, Part XVI., price Is., of 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

IN TWENTY MONTHLY PARTS. 

With Illustrations by Marcus Stone. 
London: Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly. 



A new Serial Novel, by CHARLES COLLINS, entitled 

AT THE BAR, 

Will be commenced in No. 335, for September 23rd, in 
addition to HALF A MILLION' OF MONEY, by Amelia 
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until completed. 



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A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. 



N- 330.] 



SATURDAY, AUGUST 19, 1865. 



[Price Id. 



HALE A MILLION OF MONEY. 

BY THE AUTHOR OF "BARBARA'S HISTORY." 



CHAPTER XXXVII. MR. KECKWITCH PROVES HIM- 
SELF TO BE A MAN OP ORIGINAL GENIUS. 

A thrill of virtuous satisfaction pervaded 
Mr. Keckwitcli's respectable bosom at the dis- 
covery of Elton Lodge, Slade's-lane, Kensington. 
He had gained the first great step, and gained 
it easily. The rest would be more difficult; 
but it would be sure to follow. Besides, he 
was not the man to be daunted by such ob- 
stacles as were likely to present themselves in 
an undertaking of this kind. They were ob- 
stacles of precisely that nature which his slow, 
dogged, cautious temperament was best fitted 
to deal with ; and he knew this. Perhaps, on 
the whole, he rather liked that there should be 
some difficulties in the way, that he might have 
the satisfaction of overcoming them. At all 
events, they gave an additional zest to the pur- 
suit that he had in hand ; and though his hatred 
needed no stimulus, Mr. Keckwitch, like most 
phlegmatic men, was not displeased to be stimu- 
lated. 

Sufficient, however, for the day was the 
triumph thereof. Here was the gate of Elton 
House ; and only to have penetrated so far into 
William Trefalden's mystery was an achieve- 
ment of no slight importance. But the head 
clerk was not contented only to see the gate. 
He wanted to have a glimpse of the house as 
well ; and so walked on to the bottom of the 
lane, crossed over, and returned up the other 
side. The lane, however, was narrow, and the 
walls were high; so that, take it from what 
point he would, the house remained invisible. 
He could see the tops of two or three sombre- 
looking trees, and a faint column of smoke melt- 
ing away as it rose against the background of 
blue sky; but that was all, and he was none 
the wiser for the sight. So, knowing that he 
risked observation every moment that he lin- 
gered in Slade's-lane, he turned quickly back 
again towards the market-gardens, and passed 
out through a little turnstile leading to a foot- 
way shut in by thick green hedges on either 
side. 

He could not tell in the least where this path 
would lead him ; but, seeing a network of similar 
walks intersecting the enclosures in various 



directions, he hoped to double back, somehow or 
another, into the main road. In the mean while, 
he hurried on till a bend in the path carried him 
well out of sight of the entrance to Slade's-lane, 
and there paused to rest in the shade of a:i 
apple-orchard. 

It was now about half-past six o'clock. The 
sun was still shining; the evening was still 
warm ; the apple-blossoms filled the air with a 
delicious perfume. All around and before him, 
occupying the whole space of ground between 
Kensington and Brompton, lay nothing but 
meadows, and fruit-gardens, and orchards heavy 
with blossoms white and pink. A pleasant, 
peaceful scene, not without some kind of vernal 
beauty for appreciative eyes. 

But Mr. Keckwitcli's dull orbs, however 
feebly appreciative they might be at other times, 
were blind just now to every impression of 
beauty. Waiting there in the shade, he wiped 
the perspiration from his forehead, recovered 
his breath as he best could, and thought only of 
how he might turn his journey to some further 
account before going back to town. It was 
much to have discovered Elton House ; but he 
had yet to learn what manner of life was led in 
it by William Trefalden. It would have been 
something only to have caught a glimpse through 
an open gate to, have seen whether the house 
were large or small, cheerful or dismal. He had 
expected to find it dull and dilapidated, with 
half the windows shuttered up, and the rest all 
black with the smoke of many years; and he 
did not feel inclined to go away in as much 
ignorance of these points as when he left Chan- 
cery-lane. Suddenly an idea occurred to him 
a very bright, ingenious idea, which gave 
him so much satisfaction that he indulged in a 
little inaudible laugh, and started forward again 
quite briskly, to find his way out of this laby- 
rinth of hedgerows, orchards, and cabbage- 
gardens. 

He had not gone many yards before he came 
to a cross-road whence more paths branched off 
in every direction. Here, however, like a large 
blue spider in the midst of his w r eb, stood a 
portly policeman, from whom Mr. Keckwitch at 
once learned his nearest way to Palace Gardens, 
and followed it. He asked for Palace Gardens 
this time, being anxious to emerge conveni- 
ently upon the High-street without again ven- 
turing too close to Slade's-lane in broad day- 
light. 



VOL. XIV. 



330 



74 [August 19, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



Having emerged at this point, Mr. Keckwitch 
went into the first stationer's shop that he could 
see, and bought a ledger. The stationer had 
considerable difficulty in supplying him, for the 
ledger he required was of a somewhat unusual 
shape and size. "It must be oblong," he said, 
"plain ruled, and bound in red leather." He 
would not have it ruled off in columns for ac- 
counts, and the stationer had none that were 
not ruled in that manner. At last he found one 
that was quite plain a mere oblong book of 
Bath-post paper bound in purple cloth, with 
scarlet leather back and corners ; and with this, 
although it was not exactly what he wanted, 
Mr. Trefalden's head clerk was forced to 
content himself. He also bought a parallel 
ruler, a small bottle of ink, and a couple of 
quill pens, saying that he would rule the book 
himself. 

It was now striking seven by Kensington 
church clock ; and Mr. Keckwitch, who was not 
used to going without his tea, inquired his way 
to the nearest coffee-house, which proved to be 
in Church-street, close by. It was a modest 
little place enough ; but he made himself very 
comfortable there, establishing himself at a table 
at the further end of the room, calling for lights 
and a substantial tea, and setting to work at 
once upon the ruling of his ledger. When he 
had done about a dozen pages, he divided each 
into three parts by a couple of vertical lines, and 
desired the waiter to bring him the London 
Post-Office Directory. But he did not look in 
it for Elton House. He had searched for that 
some days back, and found no mention of it. 
He simply opened it at Kensington High- 
street, page four hundred and forty-nine, and 
proceeded patiently and methodically to copy 
out its contents under the several titles of 
Name, Address, and Occupation. By the time 
that he had thus filled in some four or five 
pages, and finished his tea, it was half-past eight 
o'clock, and quite dark. 

That is to say, it was quite dark in the sky 
overhead, but quite brilliant in Kensington 
High-street. That picturesque thoroughfare was 
lighted up for the evening. The shops blazed 
with gas ; the pavements were crowded ; there 
was a brass band playing at the public-house at 
the corner ; and the very fruit and oyster stalls 
in front of the church were bright with lanterns. 
The place, in fact, was as light as at noonday, 
and Mr. Keckwitch, who w r ished to avoid obser- 
vation, was naturally disturbed, and a good 
deal disappointed. He had, however, made 
up his mind to do a certain thing, and he was 
determined to go through with it; so he 
pulled his hat a little more over his eyes, 
put his ink-bottle and pens in the breast-pocket 
of his coat, tucked his ledger under his arm, 
and went boldly out in the direction of Slade's- 
lane. 

He had observed a baker's shop within a few 
doors of the corner where the omnibus had set 
him down, and this shop was his present desti- 
nation. He went in with the assured step of 
a man who is about his regular w r ork, touched 



his hat to a pleasant-looking woman behind the 
counter, and said : 

" I am going round, ma'am, for the new Di- 
rectory. There's been no change here, I sup- 
pose, since last year ?" 

"No, sir; no change whatever," she re- 
plied. 

Mr. Keckwitch opened his ledger on the 
counter, pulled out one of his quill pens, and 
drew his fat forefinger down a certain column 
of names. 

"Wilson, Emma, baker and confectioner," 
said he, reading one of the entries. "Is that 
quite right, ma'am ?" 

"Fancy bread and biscuit baker, if you 
please, sir," replied Mrs. Wilson, "not con- 
fectioner." 

"Thank you, ma'am. Fancy bread and bis- 
cuit baker." 

And Mr. Keckwitch drew his pen through 
" confectioner," and substituted Mrs. Wilson's 
emendation with a business-like gravity that did 
him credit. 

" I thought the Post-office Directory for this 
year was out already, sir," observed Mrs. Wil- 
son, as he blotted off the entry, and closed his 
ledger. 

"This is not the Post-office Directory, 
ma'am," said Mr. Keckwitch, calmly. "This 
is a new Directory of the Western and South- 
western districts." 

"Oh indeed! a sort of new Court Guide, I 
suppose ?" 

" Just so, ma'am. A sort of new Court 
Guide. Wish you good evenin'." 

"Good evening, sir," replied Mrs. Wilson, 
as he again raised his finger half way to the 
brim of his hat, and left the shop ; he had 
scarcely passed the threshold, however, when 
he paused, and turned back. 

"I beg your pardon, ma'am, for troubling 
you again," he said, " but perhaps you can tell 
me who lives at Elton House ?" 

"Elton House?" 

"Yes; Elton House, in Slade's-lane. I've 
been knocking and ringing there till I'm tired, 
and can get no one to come to the gate. Is it 
uninhabited ?" 

Mr. Keckwitch said this so naturally, and 
with such an air of ill-used respectability, that 
detective Kidd himself would scarcely have 
doubted the truth of his statement. As for 
Mrs. Wilson, she accepted every word of it in 
perfect good faith. 

" Oh no," she replied, " it is not uninhabited. 
The name is Duvernay." 

" Duvernay," repeated Mr. Trefalden's head 
clerk, re-opening his ledger, and dipping his pen 
in Mrs. Wilson's ink. " With your leave, ma'am. 
A foreign family, I suppose ?" 

" I think she is French." 

"And Mr. Duvernay can you tell me what 
profession to enter ?" 

"There is no Mr. Duvernay," said Mrs. 
Wilson, with an odd little cough, and a slight 
elevation of the eyebrows. "At least, not that 
I am aware of." 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 19, 1865.] 75 



Mr. Keckwitch looked up with that dull 
light in his eyes that only came to them under 
circumstances of strong excitement. Mrs. 
Wilson looked down, and coughed again. 

"Is the lady a widow ?" he asked, huskily. 

"I believe she calls herself a widow/ 5 re- 
plied Mrs. Wilson ; " but indeed, sir, I can't say 
what she is." 

" And there's no gentleman ?" 

" I didn't say that, sir." 

" I beg your pardon, I thought I understood 
so." 

" I said there was no Mr. Duvernay ; and no 
more there is. But I don't desire to speak 
ill of my neighbours, and Madame's a cus- 
tomer." 

Mr. Keckwitch shook his head solemnly. 

" Dear ! dear !" said he. " Very sad, very 
sad, indeed. A wicked world, ma'am ! So little 
real respectability in it." 

" Very true, sir." 

" Then I suppose I must simply put down 
Madame Diwemay, there being no master to the 
house ?" 

*' I suppose so, sir. There is no master that I 
have ever known of ; at least, no acknowledged 
master." 

" Still, if there is a gentleman, and he lives 
in the house, as I think you implied just 
now " 

" Oh, sir, I imply nothing," said the mistress 
of the shop impatiently, as if she had had 
enough of the subject. "Madame Duvernay's 
doings are nothing to me ; and the gentle- 
man may be her husband for anything I know 
to the contrary." 

" You cannot give me his name, ma'am ?" 

"No, sir." 

"I am sorry for that. I ought to have his 
name if he really lives in the house." 

" I cannot give it to you, because I don't 
know it," said Mrs. Wilson, rather more 
graciously. " I cannot even take it upon 
myself to say that he lives at Elton House. 
There is a gentleman there, I believe, very 
constantly; but he may be a visitor. I really 
can't tell; and it's no business of mine, you 
know, sir." 

" Nor of mine, if he is only a visitor," 
replied Mr. Keckwitch, again closing his 
ledger, and preparing to be gone. " We 
take no note of visitors, but we're bound 
to take note of regular inhabitants. I'm very 
much obliged to you, ma'am very much in- 
deed." 

" I'm sure, sir, you're very welcome." 

" Thank you. A little help often goes a long 
way in matters of this kind ; and it isn't pleasant 
to stand at a gate knocking and ringing for half 
an hour together." 

"No, indeed; far from it, sir. I can't think 
what all the servants were about, to let you 
do so." 

* Good evenin' once more, ma'am." 

" Good evening, sir." 

And Mr. Keckwitch walked out of the shop, 
this time without turning back again. 



CHAPTER XXXVIIT. DESPATCHES MOM ITALY. 

" I love this terrace," said Miss Colonna, 
" it is so like the terrace of one of our Italian 
houses." 

"I am always glad, for that reason, when 
the summer is sufficiently advanced to let us 
put out the orange-trees," replied Lord Castle- 
towers. 

It was shortly after breakfast, and they had 
all strolled out through the open windows. 
The tide of guests had ebbed away some days 
since, and the party was once more reduced to 
its former numbers. 

" Yes," said Olimpia, " the dear old orange- 
trees and the terra cotta vases go far to heighten 
the illusion so long as one avoids looking back 
at the house." 

" Or round upon the landscape," suggested 
Saxon, smiling; "for these park trees are as 
English as the architecture of the house. What 
is the style, Castletowers ?" 

" Oh ! I don't know. Elizabethan Tudor 
English-Gothic. I suppose they all mean the 
same thing. Shall I cut down my poor old 
oaks, Miss Colonna, and plant olives and poplars 
in their place ?" 

" Yes, if you will give me the Sabine for the 
Surrey hills, and an Italian sky overhead." 

" I would if I could I wish it were pos- 
sible," said Castletowers, earnestly .^ 

" Nay, I always see them," replied Olimpia, 
with a sigh. " I see them now so plainly !" 

" But you Italians never have the mal de 
pays," said Saxon. 

" How can you tell that, Mr. Trefalden ? I 
think we have." 

" No, no. You love your Italy ; but you do 
not suffer in absence as we suffer. The true 
mal de pays runs in no blood but the blood of 
the Swiss." 

" You will not persuade me that you love 
Switzerland better than we love Italy," said 
Olimpia. 

" But I believe we do," replied Saxon. 
" Your amor patria is, perhaps, a more intel- 
lectual passion than ours. It is bound up with 
your wonderful history, your pride of blood and 
pride of place; but I cannot help believing that 
we Swiss do actually cherish a more intense 
feeling for our native soil." 

" For the soil ?" repeated Castletowers. 

" Yes, for the clay beneath our feet, and the 
peaks above our heads. Our mountains are as 
dear to us as if they were living things, and 
could love us back again. They enter into our 
inner consciousness. They exercise a subtle 
influence upon our minds, and upon our bodies 
through our minds. They are a part of our- 
selves." 

" Metaphorically speaking," said the Earl. 

" Their effects are not metaphorical," replied 
Saxon. 

"What are their effects?" 

" What we were speaking of just now the 
mal de pays ; home sickness." 

" But that is a sickness of the mind," said 
Olimpia. 



76 [August 19, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



" Not at all. It is a physical malady." 

" May one inquire how it attacks the patient?" 
asked the Earl, incredulously. 

" Some are suddenly stricken down, as if by 
a coup de soleil. Some fade slow T ly away. la 
cither case, it is the inexpressible longing, for 
which there is no possible cure save Switzer- 
land." 

" And supposing that your invalid cannot 
get away what then ?" 

" I fear he would die." 

The Earl laughed aloud. 

11 And I fear he would do nothing of the 
kind," said he. " Depend on it, Trefalden, this 
is one of those pretty fictions that everybody 
believes, and nobody can prove." 

" My dear Gervase," said Lady Castletowers, 
passing the little group as she returned to the 
house, " Signor Colonna is waiting to speak to 
you." 

Colonna was leaning over the balustrade at 
the further end of the terrace, reading a letter. 
He looked up as the Earl approached, and said, 
eagerly, 

" A despatch from Baldiserotti ! Garibaldi 
has sailed from Genoa in the Piemonte, and 
Bixio in the Lombardo. The sword is drawn 
at last, and the scabbard thrown away !" 

The Earl's face flushed with excitement. 

" This is great news," said he. " When did 
it come ?" 

" With the other letters ; but I waited to tell 
it to you when your mother was not present." 

" Does Vaughan know ?" 

" Not yet. He went to his room when he 
left the breakfast -table, and I have not seen 
him since." 

" What is the strength of the expedition ?" 

" One thousand and sixty-seven." 

"No more?" 

" Thousands more ; but they have at present 
no means of transport. This is but an ad- 
vanced guard of tried men; chiefly old Cac- 
ciatori. Genoa is full of volunteers, all eager 
to embark." 

u I would give ten years from my life to be 
among them," said Castletowers, earnestly. 

The Italian laid his hand caressingly upon 
the young man's arm. 

" Pazienza, caro," he replied. " You do good 
service here. Come with me to my room. There 
is work for us this morning." 

The Earl glanced towards Olimpia and Saxon; 
opened bis lips, as if to speak; checked him- 
self, and followed somewhat reluctantly. 

CHAPTER XXXIX. A BROKEN PROFUSE. 

It must be conceded that Miss Colonna had 
not made the most of her opportunities. She 
had not actually withdrawn from the game; 
but she had failed to follow up her first great 
move so closely as a less reluctant player might 
have done. And yet she meant to act this part 
which she had undertaken. She knew that, if 
she did so, it must be at the sacrifice of her 
own peace, of her own womanly self-respect. 



She was quite aware, too, that it involved a 
cruel injustice to Saxon Trefalden. But with 
her, as with all enthusiasts, the greater duty 
included the less; and she believed that, al- 
though it would be morally wrong to do these 
things for any other end, it would be practically 
right to do them for Italy. 

If she could not bring herself to lead this 
generous heart astray without a struggle if 
she pitied the lad's fate, and loathed her own, 
and shrunk from the path that she was pledged 
to tread she did so by reason of the finer part 
of her nature, but contrary to her convictions 
of duty. For, to her, Italy was duty; and 
when her instinctive sense of right stepped in, 
as it had stepped in now, she blamed herself 
bitterly. 

But this morning's post had brought matters 
to a crisis. Her father's face, as he handed 
her the despatch across the breakfast-table, told 
her that ; and she knew that if she was ever to 
act decisively, she must act so now. When, 
therefore, she found herself alone with Saxon 
on the terrace, she scarcely paused to think how 
she should begin, but plunged at once into her 
task. 

" You must not think we love our country 
less passionately than the Swiss, Mr. Trefalden," 
she said, quickly. " It needs no mal de pays 
to prove the heart of a people ; and when you 
know us better, you will, I am sure, be one of 
the first to acknowledge it. In the mean while, 
I cannot be happy till I convince you." 

" I am glad you think me worth the trouble 
of convincing," replied Saxon. 

" How should I not ? You are a patriot, 
and a republican." 

"That I am, heart and soul!" said Saxon, 
with sparkling eyes. 

"We ought to have many sympathies in 
common." 

"Why, so we have. The love of country 
and the love of liberty are sympathies in com- 
mon." 

"They should be," replied Olimpia; "but, 
alas ! between prosperity and adversity there 
can be little real fellowship. Yours, Mr. Tre- 
falden, is the happiest country in Europe, and 
mine is the most miserable." 

" I wish yours were not so," said Saxon. 

" Wish, instead, that it may not remain so t 
Wish that women's tears and brave men's blood 
may not be shed in vain ; nor a whole people be 
trodden back into slavery for want of a little 
timely help in the moment of their utmost 
need 1" 

" What do you mean ?" said Saxon, catching 
something of her excitement, without knowing 
why or wherefore. 

" I mean that the work to which my father's 
whole life has been given is at last begun. You 
know all the world knows that Sicily is in 
arms ; but you have not yet been told that 
an army of liberation is assembling in the 
north." 



"In the north? 
dinia 



Then the Kins: of Sar- 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR KOUND. 



[August 19, 1S65.] 77 



"Victor Emmanuel is willing enough to reap 
the harvest watered with our blood," replied 
Miss Colonna, impetuously, "but lie will not 
offer us even a hearty ' God-speed ' at present. 
No, Mr. Trefalden, ours is an army of volun- 
teers and patriots only an army of young, 
brave, and generous hearts that love Italy and 
liberty, and are ready to die for what they 
love !" 

Beautiful as she was at all times, Saxon had 
never seen Olimpia Colonna look so beautiful as 
when she spoke these words. He almost lost 
the sense of what she said, in his admiration 
of how she looked while saying it. He stam- 
mered something unintelligible, and she went 
on. 

"Garibaldi has sailed for Palermo with an 
advanced guard. Yolunteers are pouring into 
Genoa from Venice and Milan. Subscriptions 
are being raised on all hands in England, in 
Erance, in Belgium, in America. A month 
hence, and South Italy will be free, or doubly 
chained. In the mean while we need help ; and 
for that help we look to every lover of liberty. 
You are a lover of liberty you are a citizen 
of a model republic. What will you do for 
us ?" 

'' Tell me what to do, and I will do it," said 
Saxon. 

" Nay ; I might ask too much." 

"You cannot ask more than I will gladly 
grant." 

Olimpia turned her dazzling smile upon him. 

" Beware !" said she. " I may take you at 
your word. This cause, remember, is more to 
me than life ; and the men who enlist in it are 
my brothers." 

Alas ! for Saxon's invulnerability, and his 
cousin's repeated cautions ! Alas ! for his pro- 
mises, his good resolves, and his government 
stock! He was so far gone, that he would 
have shouldered a musket and stepped into 
the ranks at that moment, to please Miss 
Colonna. 

"These men," she continued, "want every- 
thing that goes to make a soldier save 
valour. They are content to accept privation ; 
but they can neither live without food, nor 
fight without arms, nor cross from shore to 
shore without means of transport. So take 
heed, Mr. Trefalden, how you offer more than 
you are prepared to give. I might say do 
you love liberty well enough to supply some 
thousands of brave men with bread, ships, 
and muskets; and then, what would be your 
answer ?" 

Saxon drew a blank cheque from his purse, 
and laid it on the parapet against which she was 
leaning. He would have knelt down and laid it 
at her feet in open day, but that he had sense 
enough left to feel how supremely ludicrous the 
performance would be. 

" There is my answer," he said. 

Miss Colonna's heart gave a great leap of 
triumph, and the colour flashed up into her face. 
She took a tiny pencil-case from her watch-chain 
a mere toy of gold and jewels and hastily 



pencilled some ligures in the corner of the 
cheque. 

"Will you do this for Italy ?" she said, in a 
breathless whisper. 

"I will double it for youT replied Saxon, 
passionately. 

" For me, Mr. Trefalden ?" 

Saxon was dumb. He feared he had offended 
her. He trembled at his temerity, and did not 
dare to lift his eyes to her face. 

Einding he made no answer, she spoke again, 
in a soft, tremulous tone, that would have 
turned the head of St. Kevan himself. 

" Why for me ? What am I, that you should 
do more for me than you would do for my 
country ?" 

" I I would do anything for you," faltered 
Saxon. 

" Are you sure of that ?" 

" As sure as that I . . . ." 

The young man checked himself. He would 
have said, "as that I love you," but he 
lacked courage to pronounce the words. Miss 
Colonna knew it, however, as well as if he had 
said it. 

" Would you jump into the sea for me, like 
Schiller's diver?" she asked, with a sudden 
change of mood, and a laugh like a peal of 
silver bells. 

"That I would!" 

"Or in among the fighting lions, like the 
Count de Lorge r* 

" I know nothing about the Count de Lorge ; 
but I would do for you all that a brave man 
dare do for a lady," replied Saxon, boldly. 

" Thanks," she said, and her smile became 
graver as she spoke. " I think you mean what 
vou say." 

"I do. Indeed I do!" 

" I believe it. Some day, perhaps, I shall 
put you to the proof." 

With this, she gave him her hand, and he 
scarcely knowing what he did, but feeling that 
he would cheerfully march up to a battery, or 
jump out of a balloon, or lie down in the path 
of an express train for her sake kissed it. 

And then he was so overwhelmed by the 
knowledge of what he had done, that he scarcely 
noticed how gently Miss Colonna withdrew her 
hand from his, and turned away. 

He watched her across the terrace. She did 
not look back. She went thoughtfully forward, 
thoughtfully and slowly, with her hands clasped 
loosely together, and her head a little bent ; 
but her bearing was not that of a person 
in anger. When she had passed into the 
house, Saxon drew a deep breath, and stood for 
a moment irresolute. Presently he swung him- 
self lightly over the parapet, and plunged into 
the park. 

His head was in a whirl ; and he wandered 
about for the first half-hour or so, in a tumult 
of rapturous wonder and exultation and then 
he suddenly remembered that he had broken his 
promise to William Trefalden. 

In the mean while, Olimpia went up to her 



78 [August 19, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



father's study in the turret, and stood before 
him, pale and stern, like a marble statue of 
herself. 

Colonna looked up, and pushed his papers 

' " Well," he said eagerly, " what speed ?" 

"This." V 

Saying which, she took a pen, deliberately 
filled in double the sum pencilled on the 
margin, and laid Saxon's cheque before him on 
the table. 



THRONED UPON THORNS. 

Whoever reigns in Mexico is throned upon 
thorns. And why ? The crop of troubles 
in that land was not of its own people's 
sowing. It was made subject centuries ago to 
the least liberal of European monarchies ; for 
three hundred years bearing as New Spain 
that monarchy's name, and governed by it 
upon imperial principles of despotic restriction 
in church and state ; with trade in shackles ; 
with a dominant privileged clergy; and with 
unequal laws that ground the common people 
while they protected the nobility in every direc- 
tion against burdens and responsibilities. After 
very many years the failure of force at the heart 
of that decrepid despotism enabled the fair 
country to shake itself free, and it broke loose 
into independence, witli a social system formed 
and pet by centuries of pressure in the old de- 
spotic mould. Eree, but perplexed at heart, 
with a dominant aristocracy of priests inter- 
fused with its social system, and unwilling to 
abate a jot of their supremacy ; overgrown also 
with an order of nobles unwilling to give up 
one of the exclusive privileges transmitted to 
them from the middle ages under a despotic 
government, to this hour mediaeval in many of 
its traditions and its usages. Mexico then 
having freed itself from foreign rule, but suffer- 
ing from the effects of the long tyranny, pro- 
ceeded through many a throe of internal strife 
to put out the despotic element from its own 
social system. There could be no sound liberty 
till that was done, but it would be found diffi- 
cult to do while the organised strength of the 
party holding undue privileges enabled it to 
neutralise the efforts of the people, who, in the 
first passionate untrained enjoyment of a hope 
of independence, desired to achieve for them- 
selves a freedom like that of a great and strong- 
republic lying on the borders of their land. 
During the ferment and confusion of the civil 
strife between those antagonist interests which 
had yet to be brought into accord, when every 
military chief or fighting adventurer, whose soul 
had been corrupted by the influences inherited 
from a long age of despotism, was ready to grasp 
for himself power and wealth at his country's 
cost the strong neighbouring republic held out 
its hand in hinderment instead of help, to rend 
and not to rescue. Thus we had the country of 
a people with high aspirations towards freedom, 
who had yet to learn its ways, not only troubled 



at home by the factions of those who were privi- 
leged in days of despotic rule, and who, in the 
days of liberty, were fighting for retention of 
rights incompatible with social freedom. As 
long as the domestic struggle remained equal, it 
was preyed upon and schemed against by every 
self-seeking adventurer within its borders, it was 
attacked, also, and robbed of wide regions by 
the strong state of the neighbouring republicans, 
with irrepressible greed for the ' extension of 
their own dominion. And what if there come 
some trouble for the same land that shall open 
for it a yet lowest deep after all these deeps 
have been safely sounded ? One of its patriots, 
Benito Juarez, proved strong enough to 
take and keep the directing influence that 
might have saved the state. He swept away, 
by a law bearing his own name, because it 
was of his proposing and supporting in the 
legislature, all the privileges that removed 
noble or ecclesiastic from their share in the 
responsibilities of all good citizens, and made 
them, like their neighbours, answerable to the 
law. He helped to give his country a free 
constitution ; he at last made known to the 
body of the people wherein a reasonable liberty 
consists; he broke, after a long and painful 
struggle, the disturbing power of those who up- 
held evil traditions of the centuries of despotism ; 
he was beginning to make trade free and develop 
the resources of the land. 

But that beaten party of the priests and 
nobles, shorn of privileges inconsistent with the 
life of a free state, regarded only its own mean 
interests, and sank so low as to seek the resto- 
ration of its power by the ruin of its country. 
Joined by some foreign traders who expect pay- 
ment of divers sorts of extortionate claims to be 
wrung under compulsion from the afflicted 
people ; self - seeking speculators who may 
profit largely by thrusting out of court the 
scrutiny of justice those beaten combatants 
for personal immunities and privileges, made 
false representations to a remote state under 
military despotism, knowing that the remote 
state is desirous for its own domestic reasons to 
find cheap and showy foreign occupation for its 
troops. They ascribe all the misrule of the 
past misrule of their own breeding to the 
native government that had just triumphed over 
it, and that ruled, peacefully at last, with the 
consent of a contented people. They stated 
falsely to the foreign despotism, that this native 
government was not ruling with consent of the 
people ; but that a foreign army, if it were to 
land in war against such government, would be 
hailed by the people as deliverer. Victories, 
they said, will be easy, and they will be cheap. 
Eor this is a rich land, with silver and gold in 
the very earth of it, and the mines are a safe 
guarantee to the conqueror that his own country 
will be the richer rather than the poorer for the 
conquest. So the foreign invader was tempted 
to error by false hopes. The foreign army landed, 
and was not received as a deliverer. With no 
allies but the men who had failed in the struggle 
to retain the social system of the fifteenth in the 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 19, 1865.] 70 



life of the nineteenth century, the invaders found 
the whole people that was to be delivered, bravely 
risen to retain the liberty from which it was 
proposed that they should have deliverance. 
That foreign army even began its career of glory 
by sustaining a defeat in battle, and was forced 
to raise a siege and send for succour to its home 
beyond the sea. The invading despotism being 
strong, could in due time pour in more bayonets. 
But even then all it could do at immense cost 
of life and money, was to take some towns and 
hold them as long as bayonets enough were in 
the streets. They were unable even to keep 
possession of the intervening country, or of 
town or country in much of the outlying land, 
where the patriot leader still remained the 
centre of the never-ending fight for indepen- 
dence. 

Thus it is that a country cursed for centuries 
with the rule of one great European despotism, 
is being now plagued by another, which other 
has borrowed from the next worst of the despot- 
isms a morsel of its royalty to dress and forward 
to the distant land as a mock emperor with a 
stage property throne and crown. And the 
domestic traitors of that land have been found 
to be, and have at last been treated as, the ill- 
conditioned curs they are, by the foreigners to 
whom their vain pretensions have proved as in- 
tolerable as they were to their own countrymen. 
And the people who are subject to that military 
despotism, and from whose country it has been 
so fatally borrowed, regret as they may the lives 
of their sons sacrificed and the good money that 
has been taken from their pockets by their 
master to be spent on an ill deed. That master 
of theirs, too, says in his heart that he has been 
befooled. But what is done is done, and the 
spilt blood must be worked up into rose-colour 
paint for the appeasing if not for the content- 
ing of his army and his people. 

It was the French emperor whom the defeated 
faction and some speculating traders blinded 
with false information and misled into that 
invasion of Mexico which has attained a nominal 
success represented in the getting from the 
house of the Austrian emperor, the loan of a 
royal dummy, to be dressed up as an emperor 
and sent to Mexico. 

This act has excited the attention of the Old 
World and the New. Its consequences are 
looked forward to with interest. They cannot 
be remote, and a little fuller knowledge of the 
history of which we have just taken out the 
pith, may make it easier to understand them 
rightly when they come. 

There was a rich and vigorous race in 
Mexico when Cortez made his famous raid of 
conquest nearly three hundred and fifty years 
ago. Their palaces equalled, said Cortez, the 
most beautiful in Spain ; and their capital, he 
said, was "the most beautiful thing in the 
world." But though they had skilled workers 
in gold and silver, their currency was gold-dust 
in quills, silver in the form of a T, and cocoa 
for small change. The ancient government was 



an absolute monarchy tempered by privileges 
of the aristocracy, and with irremovable judges. 
The sovereign, who, when admitted as heir- 
presumptive, had gone through a ceremonial 
which included buffeting by the people as 
a test of patience, had, on his accession, to 
go through a sharp reminder of the duties 
incident to power. He was kept for a year 
or two in the temple upon short allowance of 
comforts for a very long reckoning of prayers 
and sacrifices, and, when he overslept himself, 
had guards near him, who pricked his legs and 
arms with thorns, bidding him awake, lor he 
did not enter on his charge to sleep, but that 
he might watch over his people. Thus thorns 
were associated very early with the crown of 
Mexico. 

The Spaniards found Mexico a federation of 
three kingdoms; namely, that of the Aztecs, 
with its capital Tenochtitlan (Mexico) ; that of 
the Acolhuans, whose king lived at Tezcuco ; 
and the small kingdom of Tlacopan. The name 
of Mexico was probably derived from Mexitli, 
one of the names of the Aztec god of war, at 
the inauguration of whose temple, thirty-three 
years before the arrival of Cortez, seventy thou- 
sand victims prisoners of war, criminals, and 
rebels, saved up in various parts of the empire 
were sacrificed. Many traits of humanity 
were blended with this cruel superstition of the 
desire of the gods for blood, and the great effi- 
cacy of blood in sacrifice. In the story of the 
Conquest of Mexico, the Mexicans seem to have 
been better Christians than the Spaniards. We 
gladly remember the mild answer of Guatemozin 
to a suffering companion when their feet were 
rubbed with oil and roasted, to extort confes- 
sions of the whereabout of gold. The king's 
companion bitterly lamented and complained, 
to which Guatemozin only answered: " And am 
I taking my pleasure in a bath ?" But if the 
Spaniards were cruel, what pluck they had! 
When gunpowder ran short and sulphur was 
wanted to make more, it was suggested that 
there must be sulphur in the crater of the 
volcano of Popocapetl. Five men were sent to 
see. They climbed to the top of the mountain 
which for the next three centuries remained in- 
accessible to man, as it had been before. They 
found at the top in the eternal snow a gulf a 
thousand feet deep, at the bottom of which 
burnt a bluish flame sending up hot pestilential 
vapours ; they east lots which of them should 
be let down by a cord to explore that fiery 
gulf for the sulphur; the man who drew the 
lot went down in a basket, found sulphur 
at a depth of four hundred feet, and secured 
his supply. 

The spirit of religious intolerance, then strong 
in Spain, directed dealings with the Mexicans 
by their new conquerors. The Inquisition 
never was so merciless as then. Not long 
since had died the Grand Inquisitor Torque - 
mada, who, besides burning in effigy many 
thousands who escaped his clutch, had caused 
the burning alive of nine thousand persons. 
Spain was producing an Alva, France was tend- 



80 [August 19, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



ing towards the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 
when Mexico became dependent on the Spanish 
crown. As the most productive of the Spanish 
colonies it had ample attention. At first, the 
natives were divided among the colonising 
Spaniards in simple slavery. Las Casas made 
his protest showing the effects of such a system, 
and the result was, that while in the islands it 
remained, in Mexico it was replaced by a system 
of serfdom. Groups of families, called encomi- 
endas, were allotted for employment in specific 
services by Spanish soldiers, lawyers, colonists 
of mark, and clergy, the religious orders being, 
of course, endowed with a considerable wealth 
in these families of serfs. The system was 
abolished by King Charles the Third of Spain, 
but the root of it proved ineradicable. The 
same king abolished the oppressive local mayors, 
and divided the land into twelve larger districts, 
each under the care of an intendant. But the 
intendant was represented in each district by a 
" sub-delegate," who was no improvement upon 
the old-fashioned mayor. He was forbidden to 
trade, because trading would tempt to oppres- 
sion, but was left to live as he could, without a 
salary. Deriving all his income from fees, this 
official created vexations of the people, op- 
pressed the poor, acted in connivance with 
those who could pay him well, and thus trafficked 
in justice. 

At the beginning of the century, in Spanish 
Mexico, Humboldt found the natives, miscalled 
Indians, protected against fraud by being made 
unable to contract legally for any sum above a 
pound, and therefore, except their caciques or 
nobles, who had been left free from the first, 
unable to thrive by trading. This was a truly 
Spanish notion of Protection, meant as such, 
though horribly oppressive. The Indians paid 
annual tribute, but they were not slaves, and, 
better off than their neighbours of Peru, they 
had been exempted from forced labour in the 
mines. The people of mixed blood, descended 
from Indians and whites, and a few from Indians 
and negroes, were classed into castes and legally 
degraded. They paid tribute, and, being allowed 
to trade with the whites, found little reason to 
respect them. These people of mixed race 
in the old Spanish American colonies the 
Mestijos are more vigorous and able than 
either of the pure races, Spanish or American, 
whence they proceed. So manifest is their 
superior ability, that the future of what was 
once Spanish America is supposed by some to 
await, in course of time, their fashioning. 

The Indians, or what remained of the original 
people of Mexico, were forced by the forms of 
Spanish protection, and disposed by nature, to 
remain apart from the conquerors in villages of 
their own. The caciques also, though free, 
preferred to live with their own people as heads 
of the villages, and to live simply, making no 
dangerous display of any wealth they might 
possess. Not long after the conquest they were 
ahead of their conquerors in care of education, 
and founded a college for themselves in the 
Franciscan convent of Santiago de Tlatalolco. 



The first viceroy of Mexico, after Cortez, pre- 
sided at its solemn inauguration; but, the 
Spaniards following a policy of degradation 
against the spirited people "over whom they 
ruled, that college was disorganised, and the 
establishment of others was prevented. At the 
end of the last century a wealthy cacique of 
Puebla went to Madrid, where he spent years 
in vain endeavours to persuade the authorities 
to establish a College for Indians in his native 
city. Thus the native race was degraded while 
the half-breeds were oppressed, and the Spanish 
rule over Mexico was near its end when the 
Bishop of Michoacan reported the true state of 
things to the home government, saying, " What 
attachment to the government can there be in 
the Indian who is despised and degraded, who 
is almost without property, and without hope 
of bettering his condition ? He is attached to 
social life by a tie which offers to him no advan- 
tage. Your majesty must not believe that the 
fear of chastisement will alone suffice to pre- 
serve peace in this country ; there must be 
other and stronger motives. If the new laws 
which Spain awaits with impatience do not re- 
gulate the positions of Indians and of coloured 
people, the influence of the clergy, however 
great it may be over these unfortunate crea- 
tures, will not be able to retain them in the 
submission and the respect due to their sove- 
reign." 

The expected reforms never came. Even the 
Creoles, or Spaniards of unmixed blood but born 
in Mexico, had no political liberties or rights. 
It was not in the nature of the Spanish govern- 
ment to give even to Spain's own children such 
gifts as were enjoyed in the New World by 
colonists from every other land. W r hile the 
English colonists were thriving by action upon 
principles of civil liberty, the colonists of Spain 
were under tutelage of a country that sought to 
rule absolutely by weakening and dividing those 
under her sway. The several colonies of Spain 
in America were also carefully isolated, lest they 
might combine to break their bonds. Nothing 
could be printed till it had run the gauntlet of 
both civil and ecclesiastical censorship ; nothing 
about America might be printed without license 
of the Council of the Indies. Ciavigero's in- 
offensive History of Mexico, written for Spain, 
had to be published in Italy, translated into 
Italian. If license had been got for its publica- 
tion in Spain, special permission would have 
been required for the sending out of any copies 
to the colonies. As for works of imagination, 
they were contraband, as vain fiction aud idle 
tales. Ships sailing to the colonies were required 
to have inscribed on their register the contents 
of every book they carried. Ecclesiastical and 
civil officers met every ship on its arrival, to in- 
spect the books. And then came the examination 
by the Inquisition. 

" It w r as in the same jealous protective spirit 
that the home government sought to guard itself 
from all danger of local patriotism, by giving 
trust and office only to Spaniards who had been 
born in Spain, and placing apart, under ban of 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 19, 1S65.J 



distrust, those bora in Mexico who might be 
suspected of particular affection for the country 
of their birth. The Spaniards born in Spain 
were separated from all others, as a ruling caste. 
This involved often the establishment of a divi- 
sion of caste between a father and his children, 
and cut off from children the hope of following 
in the steps of their fathers as servants of the 
state. The Creoles, taught by the priests, and 
not suffered so much as to see a book in which 
the existence of such a thing as political liberty 
was mentioned, could earn money by mining or 
domestic trade (the foreign trade was restricted 
by incredible absurdities of protective discipline), 
and they could buy with their money titles or 
commissions in the militia, a favourite extrava- 
gance that turned every thriving shopkeeper 
into a captain or colonel, who might even be 
seen placidly weighing out sugar in full regi- 
mentals. The only thing that the Spanish go- 
vernment could not discover how to do for the 
protection of the native Mexicans, was to root 
out the banana, which, it was argued, by securing 
food to the poor, made them lazy. As it would 
have required a large and very costly army 
of officials to secure this extirpation of food, 
it was proposed and desired but not accom- 
plished. 

But let the Spanish despotism do what it 
would, these people could not be kept to the 
last from hearing of the existence in the world 
of other desirable things than the company of 
priests and women, with money, titles, and fine 
clothes. The independence of our North 
American colonies, and the power and honour 
that came of it, could not be kept a secret. 
Forbidden books were brought in over the land 
frontier. News of the French revolution and 
the emotions that belonged to it could not be 
kept out of Mexico. Agitation was the con- 
sequence, and Spain justified increase of the 
commotion by the way she took for its repres- 
sion. The Spanish authorities saw revolt in 
every effort after better knowledge, of whatever 
sort, and prohibited the establishment of printing 
offices in towns of from forty to fifty thousand 
inhabitants. 

The growth of an indolent clergy had been so 
rapid, that before the middle of the seventeenth 
century, Philip the Fourth was prayed by the 
municipality of Mexico to check the indefinite 
increase in the number of monks and nuns, to 
limit the amount of property held by convents, 
and prevent them from acquiring more; for 
already they had possession of the greater part 
of the territorial domains, acquired by gifts or 
purchase. Let there be no more bishops sent 
from Spain, or ordained in Mexico. Already 
there were in the country six thousand priests 
who had nothing to do. And let there be fewer 
church holidays, promoting rather more surely 
than the bananas idleness among the people. 
When the Spanish yoke was about to be thrown 
off, ten thousand monks and nuns held property, 
real and personal, equal to half the value of 
all the real property of the country. There 
was also a heavy annual levy of tithes. The 



wealth was divided most unequally among its 
holders. An archbishop or bishop took be- 
tween twenty and thirty thousand pounds a 
year. A priest of an Indian village, doing the 
real missionary work for which the church was 
founded, might get between twenty and thirty 
pounds a year. The great prizes were, with the 
rarest exception, all given to priests born in 
Spain; the parish priests on small pay were 
Mexican - born Spaniards, Creoles, and often 
Indians. For this reason the inferior clergy 
has been throughout the later history of Mexico 
on the side of the patriots, while the high dig- 
nitaries have upheld reckless of Mexican in- 
terests and caring only for their own the old 
disorder of things. All priests, as well as the 
military class, had "fueros" or extraordinary 
privileges which exempted them from judgment, 
even upon questions of debtor and creditor, be- 
fore courts whose members were not of their 
own body. In course of time, the civil power 
had acquired a right of hearing criminal charges 
against priests, after their ecclesiastical su- 
periors had degraded them and given them up 
to the secular arm ; but in no case could the law 
proceed to judgment so effective that a bishop 
might not neutralise its action. 

So matters stood with the Mexicans when, in 
the year eighteen hundred and eight, they heard 
that Napoleon was become master of Spain. 
First came, under the lead of the pure Spanish 
chiefs, an outburst of sympathy with the mis- 
fortunes of the outcast Bourbon. But the 
Mexican-born population, that had been ruled 
by the sole will of the sovereign, when that 
sovereign abdicated were without a master, and 
they seized then on the idea of a national sove- 
reignty. In the capital city of Mexico the new 
ideas associated with this term in the states of 
America, and part of Europe, were become fami- 
liar, and the Ayuntamiento, or local council of 
Mexico, went in state to the viceroy, professing 
attachment to the House of Bourbon, but, in 
the name of New Spain, asking for the convoca- 
tion of a National Assembly. The viceroy re- 
ferred the question to his imperial council, the 
Audiencia of Mexico, and this body, composed 
exclusively of natives of Spain its members 
being even, as a condition of their membership, 
forbidden to marry in Mexico strongly resisted. 
But the Ayuntamiento held to its request, and 
the viceroy, Iturrigaray, resolved to comply 
with it. Whereupon he was one night seized 
in his bed by three hundred of the pure Spanish 
party, and confined with his two sons in the 
prisons of the Inquisition ; his wife and his 
other children being imprisoned in a convent. 
An obscure soldier, who happened to be the 
senior among the Spanish officers, was placed in 
the viceroyalty, but he proved so blunt a tool that 
in a few months he was removed, and the Arch- 
bishop of Mexico put in his place. The arch- 
bishop, in turn, gave way to the rule of the Audi- 
encia itself, until the arrival of a new viceroy from 
Spain. Meanwhile, this body of Spanish-born 
rulers was banishing and imprisoning influential 
Mexicans, exhorting Spaniards to organise them- 



82 [August 19, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAH ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



selves into armed juntas, and haughtily said, that 
while there was a cobbler in Castile or a mule in 
La Mancha, there would always be a ruler for 
America. Representations in favour of the im- 
prisoned viceroy were met with insult. The 
Mexicans were thus stung into active assertion 
of their rights, and there was division of the 
land into two hostile parties of Spaniards, nick- 
named " Gachupines," and of Mexicans, who 
were commonly called Americans, and also, from 
a certain convent where the Virgin, as Our 
Lady of Guadalupe, was worshipped as special 
protectress of the country, were called " Gua- 
dalupes." 

Now, at this time there was a parish, priest 
in the small town of Dolores, a town almost 
entirely peopled by Indians, who loved his 
country, and had laboured with intelligence to 
help his poor parishioners. He had taught 
them to breed silkworms and cultivate the 
vine. But protectionist Spain demanded that 
in Mexico no wine should be drunk that had not 
come from the mother country ; an order came, 
therefore, for the plucking up of the vines round 
about Dolores, and they were plucked up. The 
parish priest, who was named Hidalgo or, in 
full, Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla a native 
of Guanaxuato, and then sixty years old, re- 
solved that his vines should bear fruit, and good 
fruit. He formed plans of revolt, which were 
disclosed to the Spaniards when one who had 
joined in them, being at the point of death, told 
all to his confessor. There were arrests, and 
Miguel Hidalgo was to be arrested, but the 
danger, instead of unnerving him, hurried him 
on to immediate action. Joined by Captain 
Allende, a young Creole, captain of the forces 
in the neighbouring town of San Miguel, the 
parish priest of Dolores raised the flag of inde- 
pendence, and down came the streams of Indians 
from the mountains to join in the following, as 
the little army of independence marched from 
San Miguel to Zalaga. It was the fierce crowd 
of an oppressed, warm-blooded people, and its 
march was not untainted with the cruelty of 
passion. Twenty thousand strong, it reached 
Guanaxuato, where the Spaniards refused to 
surrender; the town was taken, and Hidalgo 
would have striven in vain, if he did strive, to 
repress the ensuing massacre and plunder. But 
property of Spaniards, as a rule, was confiscated 
and divided by Hidalgo among his troops, and 
it is difficult to say whether he may not have 
been willing to strike terribly at once to make 
the stroke swift and effectual. But the Indians 
the old native population were those who 
fought cruelly ; they had small respect even for 
Creoles ; and their warfare, with the dread of 
some possible issues of it, drove many of the 
rich Creoles to the Spanish side. The arch- 
bishop excommunicated the whole rebel army. 
Truxillo led the troops that were to fight it, 
and was beaten at Las Cruces. Hidalgo 
marched on towards Mexico, but, after halting 
for some days before the town, with fatal hesi- 
tation turned aside. An army, under Don Felix 
Maria Calleja, sent in pursuit, beat Hidalgo's 



forces at Aculco, though the Indians fought 
only too recklessly, rushing at the very mouths 
of the enemy's guns, and thrusting their straw 
hats into the muzzles. They retired, and were 
pursued into Guanaxuato, where Calleja delibe- 
rately butchered in the great square fourteen 
thousand men, women, and children. The army 
of revolt fell then upon Guadalaxara, where its 
forces were broken, and Calleja's orders were 
"to exterminate the people of every town or 
village that showed signs of adherence to the 
rebels." There were men enough to carry on 
the fight with Spain, but they wanted arms and 
ammunition, and Hidalgo was about to sail to 
the United States for these, when he was be- 
trayed into the hands of the Spaniards, de- 
graded from the priesthood, given over to the 
secular arm, and shot at Chihuahua in July of 
the year eighteen hundred and eleven. 

Then followed a year of diffused civil war, 
during which the party of independence formed 
a junta, or central government, of five members, 
chosen by a large body of respectable landed 
proprietors. The peopie of the afflicted country, 
at a congress of Chipalzingo, made in moderate 
terms their last demands which were burnt 
by the hangman of a representative assembly, 
and equal rights in Mexico for Spaniards and 
Mexicans. 

Then rose up another country curate, Morelos, 
who held a commission under Hidalgo. There 
was again army against army. Morelos was 
besieged in Cuautla, till a rat there was worth 
a dollar, and a cat worth six dollars, as meat. 
But he and ail his forces contrived an escape, 
with the loss of only seventeen men. Then 
Calleja spent his fury with atrocious cruelty 
upon the helpless citizens of Cuautla, while 
Morelos was capturing Orizaba and Oaxaca. 
At Oaxaca a brave youth, in face of the enemy, 
swam the moat around the tower, and cut the 
rope of the drawbridge, over which, when it 
fell, the victorious insurgents marched. Another 
young Mexican chief, whose father had been one 
of the seventeen taken during the escape from 
Cuautla, offered to return three hundred pri- 
soners in exchange for the old man. The offer 
was refused, and the old man was shot ; upon 
which the young soldier set all his prisoners 
free, lest he might be tempted to a cruel ven- 
geance. Morelos carried on the struggle for 
four years, and was at last taken by General 
Concha, when remaining in a mountain pass 
with a small devoted band, to keep the Spanish 
army at bay while the members of the Mexican 
congress were being escorted to a place of safety. 
" My life," he said, " is of little consequence, if 
the congress be saved. My race was run when 
I saw an independent government established." 
After a stout resistance, when he was left fight- 
ing almost alone, Morelos was taken prisoner, 
and he was shot in December, eighteen hundred 
and fifteen, his last prayer being, "If I have 
done well, Lord, thou knowest it. If ill, to Thy 
infinite mercy I commend my soul." 

For more years the struggle was continued. 
It had in Xavier Mina, who was in revolt 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 19, 1865.] 



against the despotism of the restored Ferdi- 
nand, a Spaniard for leader ; but the Mexicans 
distrusted him for his birth's sake, and he too 
was at last taken and shot. That was in No- 
vember, eighteen hundred and seventeen, and 
the viceroy, whose name then was Apodaca, 
wrote to Spain (after the manner of the pacify- 
ing news we now read in the Moniteur) that 
Mexico was faithful to the Spanish crown, which 
need not send another soldier to his aid. And 
the viceroy proceeded to entrust to Colonel 
Iturbide, a Creole, the duty of proclaiming at 
the head of the troops the re-establishment of 
the absolute authority of the king. 

Iturbide had begun a selfish career as a 
brilliant soldier, by joining in efforts to over- 
turn the rule of Spain; then he had gone in 
private anger to the Spanish side, and beaten 
the Mexicans in battles, besides winning the 
clergy with professions of resolve to expiate the 
excesses of his former life by a rigid course of 
penance and mortification. Therefore the vice- 
roy trusted him as a safe instrument of Spanish 
despotism. But the use he made of the eight 
hundred men entrusted to him was to win them 
to his design, then issue at the little town of 
Iguala, in February, eighteen 'twenty-one, a 
scheme of independence, called the Plan of 
Iguala. This was carefully devised to bid for the 
union of parties who had common interests 
against Spain, with the three guarantees of abo- 
lition of caste, Mexican independence, and the 
establishment of the Roman Catholic religion. 
The crown was to be offered to the King of 
Spain, and, on his refusal, to some other member 
of the reigning family. Exactly six months after 
its date, on the twenty-fourtli of August, 
eighteen 'twenty-one, a new Spanish viceroy, 
O'Donoju, meeting Iturbide at Cordova, there 
accepted for Spain the terms of the Plan 
of Iguala, and the revolution was accom- 
plished. 

Iturbide became president of a regency of 
five. The Spanish Cortes scouted the treaty of 
Cordova, and in the following May, Iturbide 
attained his object, and was declared by his 
army Emperor of Mexico, as Augustine the 
Eirst. 

He reigned ten months, gave himself imperial 
airs, and was about to remove his friend, General 
Santa Anna, from the government of Vera Cruz, 
when Santa Anna turned upon him, and pro- 
claimed a republic by what was called the Act 
of Casa-Mata, in which two other generals took 
part with him. Iturbide, deserted by his fol- 
lowers, abdicated, and was furnished with a 
vessel to take him to Leghorn and a yearly 
pension of five thousand pounds. # But he was 
to die if he set foot again in Mexico. He did 
return, in character of a Pole, was discovered, 
and then it fell to his turn to be shot. 

To tell of all that happened after the de- 
moralising age of Spanish despotism between 
the time of Iturbide or Augustine the Eirst, 
emperor of Mexico, who set himself over his 
country's liberties, and that of Maximilian the 
Second, a foreigner set again by foreigners over 



the liberties of Mexico, and the first man since 
Iturbide who has ventured to sit in state upon 
Mexican thorns, would be a long story. Some- 
thing of it, however, we may take another day 
for telling. The old Aztec king, we have seen, 
had a probationary time, during which, if he 
slept, his guards pricked his legs and arms with 
the thorns of the metl, or maguay, which are 
like pins, to rouse him to a sense of his position. 
But the Mexican thorns which now r prick any 
despotic would-be ruler of that land are not like 
pins, they are like swords. During the interval 
between the two emperors, confusion has come 
of the struggle of the chief clergy and other 
privileged men to keep their fueros, or exemp- 
tions from responsibility before common tri- 
bunals, and the other rights that, ingrained in 
the old social system, had survived the revolu- 
tion. It was a law introduced by Juarez, and 
named after him, by which the equal rights of 
all citizens was established. But a stout battle 
followed, in which, for reasons we have seen, 
the parish priests were on the side of the people, 
and the higher dignitaries of the church in a 
land long church-ridden and still very super- 
stitious were the heads of the antagonism. 
When the popular cause had been betrayed by 
a former leader, Benito Juarez became the chief 
representative of the Mexican cause. He w r as 
true to it, before the interference of the French, 
through years of trial. He had broken at last 
the power of the antagonists of liberty, was by 
the great body of the Mexicans, w r hom he had 
trained in some degree to political knowledge, 
accepted as a president who naturally repre- 
sented the republic, and was moving quietly in 
the direction of peace and the removal of old 
obstacles to trade. The obstructive party that 
had suffered at home the extraction of its fangs, 
then sent for a new set of teeth from Paris. 
We know what followed upon that ; and what is 
yet to come, the past, as it has here been told, 
will perhaps help us to guess. 



OUR AUNTS. 

What would become of half of us if we had 
no aunts ? I don't know precisely what would 
have become of a score of persons upon whom 
my mind's eye now rests ; but generally, I am 
sure that but for their aunts they would have 
been in the race of life, by this time, nowhere. 
They would have fallen out of the course long 
ago and gone to the deuce, or died in ditches, 
as their other relatives metaphorically predicted 
of them. 

It is mercifully ordered in the great scheme 
of existence that nearly every person should 
have an aunt who is willing to grow into an 
old maid, and to sacrifice her life to the good of 
others those others being generally her nephews 
and nieces. Aunts are the fairy good god- 
mothers of society, the supplementary mothers 
who are often more kind and indulgent to the 
children, than their parents are. There is not 
a single person anywhere who is not familiar 



S4> [August 19, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



with this idea of a good aunt. We sometimes 
hear of children who never knew father nor 
mother ; but where is the child who never 
knew an aunt ? When the father and mother 
disappear and leave the poor infant to the mercy 
of the world, who is it that takes the little waif 
in, and feeds and clothes it, and sends it to 
school? Who? The aunt. The good kind 
tender-hearted soul, who, perhaps, has been 
passed over in life, who has toiled hard, who has 
suffered much, who, at any rate, has never 
tasted the joys of maternity, who has certainly 
never incurred its vexations. It is really 
wonderful, under such circumstances, that these 
women should retain so much humanity, that 
the fire of love should not have been quenched 
in their lonely hearts, that the milk of human 
kindness should not have dried up in their 
breasts long ago. We should be thankful to 
Heaven for these maiden aunts of ours : they 
are a legion of angels upon earth, for ever 
hovering about us, to pity and to succour. 

If the natural history of aunts were faithfully 
and accurately followed out, I am inclined to 
think that the aunts of whom I speak would be 
found to be a distinct species of the genus. 
There are points of resemblance in all aunts of 
this class, which are not to be observed in per- 
sons who stand to society in other relations. 
There are many varieties of mothers ; some 
good, some bad, some indifferent ; there are also 
many varieties of fathers, brothers, sisters, and 
uncles. There is the kind and indulgent father ; 
but quite as often there is the harsh and tyran- 
nical father. There is the affectionate brother 
and the jealous brother; the loving sister and 
the spiteful sister. Then, as to the uncle (who 
should be a counterpart of the aunt in every- 
thing, being the masculine of the species), is it 
not proverbial that while some of them poke 
their nephews in the ribs, call them sly dogs, 
and give them no end of bank-notes because 
they wouldn't sell their uncles' pictures, there 
are others, cruel, bloodthirsty rapacious uncles, 
who take their nephews into dark woods and 
leave them to die of hunger. But our aunts ! 
our aunts are always good. Who ever heard of 
a wicked aunt ? 

Be it understood, however, that I do not 
reckon among my bright particular aunts the 
sister of your father or mother, who marries 
and has children of her own; nor the lady 
whom your uncle may take to himself with the 
same common-place result. We don't think of 
her, be she the one or the other, in the true 
aunt sense. Do you ever call her li aunty," 
and go and sit in her lap, and put your arms 
round her neck ? Answer me that. No, no. 
She is Aunt mark how cold the word is with- 
out the endearing diminutive! Aunt Charles 
or Aunt James, with lots of little buckets of 
her own dipping into the well of her affections ; 
and she has not a drop for you. Dare to sit in 
her lap, and she will push you rudely and coldly 
away. Venture to put your arm round her 
neck, and she will probably stand upon her 
propriety. 



The person whom you call <: aunty dear" is 
quite another order of being. She is your 
father's sister, or your mother's sister occa- 
sionally the wife of your uncle; but, in this 
last case, she is only" "aunty dear" when she 
has no children of her own. As to her natural 
disposition : she is born to love and to be loved 
born to deny herself, to suffer patiently, to toil 
and spin, not for herself, but for others horn, 
above all, to rear the weakly sheep, and to 
rescue the black ones who go astray. 

These dear, good aunts of ours, so lovable 
in their brown fronts (with that single band 
of black velvet across their foreheads), in 
their plain prim caps and clock-cases of black 
silk, are not of that order of Samaritans who 
wait until their Christian duties are forced 
upon them. They meet the troubles of their 
nephews and nieces more than half way. 
They are interested in us before we come into 
the world, and, when we do make our debut, 
they are the first to applaud us. They are 
also the first to be troubled with us. Our 
mothers have all the honour and glory of pre- 
senting us to the world. We are the finest 
children that ever were seen, and our parents 
have all the credit ; but we are, mayhap, the 
most fractious brats that ever were born, and 
aunty dear has all the trouble of hushing us to 
sleep and sitting up half the night to pat us on 
the back and give us corrective waters. It is 
aunty dear who stands godmother, and presents 
us with the silver mug or the silver spoon. It 
is aunty dear who, when we are one too many, 
pays for our schooling ; it is aunty dear who 
invites us to pass the holidays with her, when 
our loving parents are glad to be rid of us, and 
takes that opportunity of rigging us out with a 
new suit of clothes. It is aunty dear who stands 
between us aud many a well-deserved whipping, 
and it is the same good soul who takes the 
trouble to sing old ballads to us, and tell us old- 
world legends, which often have a great share 
in refining our tastes and forming our characters. 
If it had not been for a dear old aunty, the name 
of Walter Scott might not now be a household 
word throughout the world. 

Why should aunty take all this interest in us ? 
and put herself to all this trouble on our behalf ? 
We are not hers ; we shall not be mentioned as 
being the very image of her, or as doing her 
credit. It is more than likely, too, that our 
mother, by getting a husband, while aunty has 
been condemned to lonely celibacy, has given 
her cause for jealousy ; that, on the wedding- 
day, while the bride was being arrayed in orange- 
blossom and white lace, the destined aunty was 
down in the kitchen tying up fowls with white 
ribbon for the dejeuner a la fourchette. Why 
does she forgive and forget all this and love us 
so tenderly and so unselfishly ? I have a theory 
about this, and I believe I am right in the main. 
I believe that women are never naturally vain, 
heartless, and unloving. They are made so. 
Let a woman alone with her own heart, and in 
most cases it will grow greener and warmer 
with age. There is no top round to the ladder 



CharleB Dickene.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 19, 1865.] 85 



of her heart's aspirations, as in the case of the 
woman who marries. The latter is apt to think 
that she has fulfilled her mission, so far as her 
heart is concerned, when she drives away from 
the church door. She cannot, of course, con- 
template such a thing as loving again and being 
married again. When she is married, the 
lamp of her love is. at the brightest and when 
things are at their brightest they are apt to 
fade. 

The old maid's love does not exhaust itself 
in too fierce a flame. Objects arise to engage 
her affection every day. She has always a heart 
to give away to every new comer who may have 
a claim upon it, and though she gives it away 
fully and entirely, she always has it still to give. 
In one word, her love is not a selfish love. 

I very strongly suspect that old maids are in 
the aggregate happier than married women 
happier because they are left more to the influ- 
ence of their own single natures, because 
they are not subjected to the will of others, 
and because their position exempts them from 
the tear and wear of passions which too often 
leave the heart chilled and the nature per- 
verted. 

When I think how happy, how good, how 
beautiful even in their fronts, our maiden aunts 
are, I feel very much disposed to finish the 
novel which I now have in hand, by making the 
culminating point of happiness at the end of the 
third volume, the resolve of my heroine not to go 
to St. George's, Hanover-square, with Augustus, 
but to live and die an old maid. 

It is a very old idea that aunts, and, I will 
add, uncles, are in some way designed by nature 
to be impartial third parties in life, to whom first 
and second parties may fly in time of distress 
and trouble. The French call their mutual friend 
the pawnbroker, ma tante. We, in England, call 
him our uncle. I think the French have adopted 
the true personification. The aunt is fully 
entitled to say, with a certain person of our 
acquaintance, that aunt is the friend, not nncle. 
I cannot imagine how we English originally 
made the mistake of calling our mutual friend- 
in-need our uncle. Compared to the true, 
kind-hearted, unselfish, unpretending aunt, our 
uncle is a blustering, ostentatious, purse-proud, 
vain old humbug. He is only kind to his 
nephews and nieces when it administers to his 
own vanity and his own importance. What 
trouble does he take for us ? He only gives 
away his money because he has got more of it 
than he knows what to do with. It is the 
easiest thing in the world to giveaway money ; 
but it is not an easy thing to give away love 
and sympathy, to give away ease and rest, to 
give away to others the love and care that you 
might keep for yourself. No ; the uncle is a 
constituted sham and a humbug, and I shall 
seize an early opportunity to write an essay 
upon him, and take him down a peg. 

Meanwhile, I will endeavour to discharge 
some part of my debt of gratitude I can never 
discharge it all to aunty. 

I shall not be stating at all an exceptional case 



when I say that I had an aunt who was an 
" aunty dear" to three generations. This is one 
of the blessed things about our aunts. They 
are sent into the world to be good and also to 
live long. The good die early, sentimental 
folks say. Stuff ! The good, thank Heaven ! 
live to have false teeth and wear false hair, and 
they are the most delightful creatures to kiss in 
the world. I can only think of that dear old 
aunty of mine (though I never saw her until 
she was threescore : she was my grand-aunt) 
as a fair young creature of seventeen summers, 
with blue eyes, and flaxen hair streaming over 
her shoulders to her waist. I have this vision 
of her though, when I knew her, she was 
wrinkled, and wore a brown wig that was any- 
thing but invisible, and a cap that some folks 
would call a fright because she once told me 
that she was like that when, as a girl, she ran 
over the hill one morning early to bid good-bye 
to her lover, who was going away to sea. She 
held me on her knee, and patted me on the head, 
and strained me to her breast, when she told me 
that story ; and I knew that she had kept her 
great wealth of love for me and mine. For the 
sailor-boy never came back. She had a lock of 
his hair, which she used to take from a sacred 
drawer and show me. It was jet black, and 
when she handled it, it curled round her finger, 
as if the spirit of her sailor-boy had come back 
from the depths of the sea to embrace her with 
all that was left of him on earth. 

" And what did you do, aunty," I said, tc when 
you heard the news ?" 

" What did I do, laddie ? I criet and criet 
until my heart was dry and my een were sair. 
I think I should ha' deet if your mother 
hadna' come; but when she came I took up 
wi' her. She had bonny black een just like my 
laddie's, and I loved her and nursed her for his 
sake. And when they had ower mony o' them 
at hame, I took her to live with me, and she was 
my lassie until your father married her. And 
then I was lonely again until your father had 
ower mony o' them, when I took your sister, 
and now I've got you : and a pretty handful I've 
had with the lot o' ye." 

She did not mean these last sharp words a bit ; 
for she took one of the succeeding generation 
to live with her, and it was always in danger of 
being smothered with kisses. 

Ah, dear aunty in Heaven, what would have 
become of some of us but for you ? 

HARDIHOOD AND FOOLHARDIHOOD. 

The month of July, 1865, when noted down 
in the annals of English families, will bear the 
black record of four lives, belonging to young, 
robust, intelligent, hopeful men, swept away. 
And for why ? Because of foolhardihood. 

There is a Swiss household, within sight of 
Mount Cervin, which has lost a hale, strong, 
brave son a man tempted for hire to assist his 
employers to conquer impossibilities. And for 
why ? Because of foolhardihood. 



[August 10, 1865. 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



There was another Swiss household last year 
similarly laid waste by the death of the faithful 
and indefatigable Bennen, Professor Tyndal's 
guide. But then the Professor, if too eager in 
adventure (we recollect a terrible account of his 
creeping round an ice-column, with his heels 
higher than his head), has some reason for his 
temerity, as one accumulating scientific facts 
with regard to the singularities and the excep- 
tions of the rock and glacier land. Only it is 
fearful that, with no very great result hitherto 
promulgated to the world, an excellent, faithful, 
and trustworthy being should have paid the 
penalty. 

There has been too much nonsense got up, on 
the renown to be won by scrambling high, rather 
high, higher, highest among Peaks and Passes 
which yield, in nine cases out of ten, no new 
aspect of Nature simply because nobody has 
ever been up there before. But the nonsense 
becomes ghastly when it implies contempt for and 
waste of human life a gift too holy to be played 
with like a toy, under false pretences, by brag- 
ging vanity. There has been too much enthu- 
siastic cant about " cutting out work :" of credit 
claimed for him who, in spite of desperate 
hazard, and by connivance of chances of weather 
not to be guaranteed by the most experienced 
in mountain climates, makes good his petty 
victory of standing on some rock splinter, or 
crossing some ice-crevice, where human foot 
has never stood till then. The real quality of 
enjoyment attendant on most of these ascents, 
if sifted, resolves itself into something not alto- 
get her unlike the gambler's triumph over the 
wretched Eield of Cloth of Green at Baden- 
Baden. Why not go in for the prize? Ma- 
nasseh won his seventy thousand pounds there. 
Sir Theodore broke the bank only last week. 
Upon this hint, Brown and Jones and Robin- 
son play, and any one of the three is capable of 
blowing his brains out should Black win twenty 
times out of the one-and-twenty ! Those poor 
creatures, who brutalise themselves by accepting 
wagers to perform preposterous gluttonies, have 
a like argumentthat of eating, drinking, and 
digesting more than throat and stomach have 
ever done before. After all, the most aspiring 
member of the Alpine Club is beaten in en- 
durance, and thus according to the code of 
honour, competition, and glory, by the hook- 
swingers of the East and the Red Men of the 
woods, from whom mortal tortures fail to extort 
a cry. 

No living creature could dream that any one 
permitted to speak in thesepages could use apara- 
graph, a word, a syllable, a letter, in disparage- 
ment of earnestness, bravery free use of the 
limbs, readiness in emergency to be enhanced by 
training (though such has been proved to pre- 
sent itself as an instinct to those who believe in 
Duty under circumstances the most trying,not 
merely of tbew and sinew, but also of imagina- 
tion and nerve). We live, and move, and have 
our being, in this England of ours, by aid of 
that patient and indomitable sense of respon- 
sibility which keeps every man who hopes up 



to the working out of his hope (forlorn enough, 
God help us ! sometimes) ; which compels every 
man who has passed his word, to fulfil the 
same; which makes light of fatigue, danger, 
risk of life, with every man who has taken 
service. And the last attribute is proved so 
often as some terrible catastrophe occurs. 
We recollect the death-ride at Balaclava 
the soldiers who went down, standing under 
arms, in the Birkenhead. We recollect the 
sea-boy, told of in this paper not long ago, 
who sat still to be swallowed up by the storm, in 
his boat, because he would not quit his post. 
Such stories crowd on us by the thousand. 
When this great and noble devotion shall pass 
away from us, or wane in obedience to anything 
like secondary and selfish interests or advan- 
tages, then, indeed, may we take leave of the 
glory of England. Flecked and flawed as it is, 
owing to want of clear sense on the part of our 
rulers (who, by the way, are just now beginning 
to speculate whether those entering the English 
navy might not be as well taught to swim), the 
ancient spirit is not dead among us. The more 
need, then, is there to protect it in any direc- 
tion of mistake and vagary. 

It is time the apotheosis of foolhardihood 
having been closed by a dead march, the echoes 
of which will not cease during the lives of 
those whom they concern that its triumphs 
should be displayed in their real colours, and not 
those of the red fire, blue fire, and green fire, 
which accompany, theatrically, every coronation 
of theatrical success. 

No wonder that the weary London lawyer 
weary of his desk, weary of his exhausted atmo- 
sphere, weary of the terrible streets, the stones 
of which burn under foot ; no wonder that the 
man of business whose lot is cast in some hideous, 
prosy, provincial town; no wonder that the 
professor, who has had enough of the lecture- 
room and its apparatus ; if he have a fibre of 
manhood in him, rejoices in the change, rejoices 
in the adventure, rejoices (this largely enters 
into the Englishman's account) in his power of 
proving to himself that he is neither effete nor 
effeminate, nor has been rendered stupid by the 
air, late hours, and tiresome headwork but can 
bear himself as a man among men of a class, and 
of sympathies different to his own. No wonder 
that the exquisitely bracing mountain air, the 
superb sight of God's marvels in the worlds of 
rock and ice and snow, are found by the thought- 
ful and high-spirited intoxicating in their amount 
of temptation. But there is a limit which sense 
and sanity prescribe ; and of late, among these 
Peaks and Passes of the Alps, the necessity has 
become that where Brown could not get, and 
Jones should not arrive, Robinson must mount, 
the last with a patent apparatus. The " why" 
remains an unexplained fact, save on the hypo- 
thesis of bragging vanity ; " the how," a story 
which, as has been said, cleaveth a grief into 
the hearts of many a home, where such grief 
need not have been cleft. Surely, therefore, 
this is not the wrong moment for the discrimi- 
nating of hardihood from foolhardihood. 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 19, 1SC5.] 87 



Let us look at the latter in the face ; laugh 
who will. The smallest expression of this vain 
and paltry spirit will be found in those with 
whom it is a pride to do everything at the last 
minute with a dash and a de'fiauce of time and 
casualty ; who will boast that they are never on 
a railway platform a second before the train is 
to start, and who are triumphant because they 
say they are never left behind. 

Never ? as I write, the spectre of one arises 
to recollection, with a bitter distinctness a 
force bearing on the argument so strongly to be 
pressed as a duty on every brave Englishman, 
by this late, gratuitous tragedy on the Mont 
Cervin. I look upon a good, honourable, intelli- 
gent fellow, with life, promise, and fortune 
opening to him on every side, but with whose 
spirits and strength an element of boast and 
defiance had become so closely intertwined, that 
to name a peril was to make him leap at it, no 
matter what the chances. He was in the south 
of Spain, on a pleasure journey ; and by those who 
knew how the coast-road is liable to be traversed 
by rains, as sweeping as those of the Sicilian 
fiumara, was warned, on a certain autumn night, 
fallowing many days of storm, not to go on. 
He was not alone. One of the most complete, 
unselfish, and gifted men that ever did England 
honour a man marked out for honours the 
central point of a large and loving family, was his 
travelling companion. There had been a cataract 
of rain pouring from heaven for eight-and-forty 
hours ; and the two, as I have said, were, at night- 
fall, by one who knew the country, advised to 
wait. Had the adviser known one of the party, 
he might have calculated on what followed. The 
more venturesome traveller overruled his com- 
panion by mere habitual force of high spirits. 
The two set forth through the night. In the 
morning, on the shore betwixt Barcelona and 
Castillon de la Plana, there was only to be seen 
a solitary mule belonging to the diligence 
straggling about. Its inmates, borne down to 
the sea by the torrent, against which they had 
been warned, had been torn to pieces on the 
cruel rocks. Two homes were made deso- 
late one for ever ; and for why ? Because 
the bragging vanity of Eoolhardiiiood had had 
its will. 

There is not one out of ten of those who 
arrive at Man's estate in this country, who 
is not cognisant of some such disaster as I am 
dwelling on ; of some case in which a valuable 
existence has been flung away, at the incite- 
ment of a folly which will own no difficulties, nor 
can endure to find itself surpassed in effort and 
enterprise ; of some generous being goaded to 
seek his death by false shame or false emulation. 
Those who make capital of any kind out of 
" sport," will gloss over these terrible deaths 
as inevitable visitations of Providence, and 
whine a remonstrance made up of a few catch 
words. The salubrious excitement of moun- 
taineering for over- worked men ; the proud pre- 
eminence of England in manly courage. We 
know the tune by heart. And then the accident 
ought not to have happened. There was no 



need for the dead men to have slipped, had the 
mystery of scrambling about in perilous places 
been more elaborately practised or better under- 
stood. And as to risk think of the appalling 
and certain perils of a ride " across country 51 
why, a chimney (this is a very favourite illus- 
tration) may be blown down and kill the quiet 
citizen as he passes along the street. 

The Alpine Club has had nothing to do with 
the fever of competition which the last few 
years have seen. There is hardly one of the 
apologists, be it also noticed, who lias not to 
tell of some narrow escape of life, due to his 
own judicious management of ropes and cram- 
pons, and the rest of the machinery got up in 
London for the use of the foolhardy. But 
which of them will deny that the problem of 
the Peak of the Matterhorn being accessible or 
not, has been solved at a cost to which no true- 
hearted man, be he ever so bold, so muscular, 
ever so skilled at describing scenes of breathless 
peril, would wish, directly or indirectly, by 
precept or example, to have contributed ? 



AMATEUR FINANCE. 

IN THREE PARTS. PART II. 

Some fourteen months ago, the writer of this 
paper happened to make the journey from 
Smyrna to Trieste in the Austrian Lloyd's 
steamer. Among the few passengers was a 
Greek merchant, a native of Chios, with whom 
he became pretty intimate. This gentleman's 
conversation like that of most Levantines 
turned upon matters monetary. The writer 
and he discussed the subject of finance and 
credit companies, which just then had found 
their way into England. The writer hazarded 
an opinion that if these undertakings multiplied 
in anything like the proportion in which other 
kinds of companies had multiplied, there would 
not be found capital enough in all England 
wherewith to work them. " Capital !" ex- 
claimed the Greek, " that is what you English- 
men are always talking about, and the craving 
after it keeps you always behind the rest of the 
world. Give me pen, ink, paper, and stamps, 
combined with commercial credit, and I will 
never ask for capital. Capital, my dear sir, is 
merely nominal, and can he increased to any 
extent you like, in five minutes" 

I have since thought, that in the "House 
and Land Finance and Credit Company 
(Limited), 5 ' we conducted our business much 
on the principles of this Greek gentleman. We, 
as it were, created securities for ourselves, and 
upon these securities we based our operations 
as if they were bona fide assets derived from 
some good source, and bearing some other 
signature. But the working of our system, 
and of the easy manner in which we managed 
to raise our dividends to a fabulous amount, 
and our shares to a proportionate premium, 
will be best illustrated as I proceed with my 
story. 

Among the directors of our company was a 



[August 19, 18C5.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by- 



pretended Frenchman, whose real name was Mon- 
tague, but who now called himself Monsieur 
Montaine. His financial talents were indis- 
putable, but his antecedents were not quite so 
unexceptional ; that is, so far as we knew, for it 
was not given to us to know much. This much, 
however, was certain ; that but four years pre- 
viously Mr. Montague had come over to England 
as the commis voyageur, or traveller, for a Bor- 
deaux wine house, and that he had no resources 
in the world, except the small commission which 
he got for what he sold in England. By de- 
grees he began to see an opening for himself, 
and, having a little credit with the house for 
which he had hitherto travelled, he set up for 
himself in London as a wine merchant. Being 
a sharp-witted fellow, he was not slow to per- 
ceive how very easily even the sharpest men of 
business in England are taken in by a foreigner, 
and how credit will be pressed upon one speak- 
ing another tongue than English, w T hile a native- 
born Briton will be often denied it even if. he 
have good security to offer. Of this mania for 
strangers, Mr. Montague, or Monsieur Montaine, 
availed himself to the utmost. He spoke French 
very well, and could therefore pass himself off 
as a native of France, without much difficulty, 
the more so as his English commercial friends 
were not likely to be very critical judges of that 
language. To hire an office somewhere in the 
neighbourhood of Fenchurch-street, purchase a 
little furniture, provide a few ledgers and day- 
books, hang up a calendar, a map or two, and a 
ground plan (purely imaginary) of the estate from 
which the very fine brands of claret (purchased 
at the London Docks, by the hogshead, as 
wanted), of which he had the exclusive sale, 
granted by the owner of the vineyards, did not 
require any very large capital. The whole 
affair did not cost more (including a zinc plate 
with the name of the firm, " Montaine and 
Company, Wine Merchants") than a ten-pound 
note ; and in consequence of his large imaginary 
connexion with the south of France, as well as 
the very superior wine which he was supposed 
to receive from Bordeaux, he managed, in a 
short time, to make himself a name, and to have 
not only credit, but some little capital. The 
latter he had increased considerably by a most 
judicious marriage with a not-over-young maiden 
lady, whose native land was Camberwell. Mr. 
Montague having been born an Englishman, and 
brought up so far as he had any religious educa- 
tion at all a Protestant, now, as Monsieur Mon- 
taine, gave out that he had been born and bred 
an idolatrous Papist, but having seen the error 
of his ways, and having undergone not a little 
persecution, he had become an enlightened 
member of the English Church. As a (sup- 
posed) foreigner and convert, this gentleman 
was doubly interesting to a certain class, and 
this degree of interest in all belonging to him 
had served to bring about his union with the not- 
over-comely nor very young lady, who brought 
with her, as a marriage dowry, five thousand 
English pounds sterling, besides a very comfort- 
able freehold, eight-roomed, semi-detached villa, 



in the immediate neighbourhood of Kennington 
Oval. 

To Monsieur Montaine these riches were as 
untold and unheard-of wealth. But he was 
determined that his ambition should not stop 
within these limits. His business gave him 
more than enough to live upon, for the Camber- 
well lady was an excellent housekeeper, and he 
found that he spent less as a married man than 
as a bachelor. The money brought him by his 
union was but half settled upon his wife ; with 
the other two thousand five hundred pounds he 
commenced speculating in joint-stock companies, 
foreign railways, and doing a little bill discount- 
ing when anything very good and extremely safe 
in that line turned up. When I first knew him, 
he had carried on this little game for about 
ten years, and was reputed to be worth twenty 
thousand pounds : which we will set down at 
five, in addition to what was settled upon his 
wife. The first time I ever heard of this gentle- 
man was when ' the board of the " House 
and Land Finance and Credit Company 
(Limited) " w r as formed. The name of " Mon- 
sieur Montaine (of the Firm of Montaine 
and Co., London and Bordeaux), 176, Close- 
lane, Fenchurch-street, and Silverton 
Lodge, Surrey," looked exceedingly well 
upon the list of our directors, and tempted not 
a few, who would not have trusted us with a 
five-shilling piece, to put the most implicit 
confidence in our commercial standing. Those 
who were acquainted with the antecedents of 
Monsieur Montaine must have laughed heartily 
at the good faith with which his co-directors 
received his assertions and pretensions. But, 
like most other people gifted with brazen 
powers, he got on, and got on well, as will 
appear. 

One of the first, if not the very first " opera- 
tions " proposed to the " House and Land 
Finance and Credit Company (Limited)," 
was proposed by Monsieur Montaine. 

There w r as so Monsieur Montaine told us 
in the south of France an estate upon which 
some of the very finest kinds of claret were 
grown. The value of this property as he 
proved to us by French legal documents which 
not one of us could understand was estimated 
at one million five hundred thousand francs, or 
sixty thousand pounds in English money. The 
owner of these vineyards wanted to part with 
them, and a joint-stock company had been formed 
at Bordeaux to buy them. Half the purchase- 
money was ready, the other half it was proposed 
to borrow of us, giving our company the most 
ample security. Monsieur Montaine told us that 
although an outline of this " operation" had been 
sent to him, he would, if it were deemed ex- 
pedient, proceed at once to France, make himself 
acquainted witli the details of the affair, return 
to England, and lay everything before his brother 
directors. This journey was sanctioned at the 
next meeting of the board, and five guineas a 
day were allowed as travelling expenses for our 
delegate, besides authority being given him 
to draw upon the board for any further 



Charles Dickena.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[xVugust!9, 1865.] 89 



"necessary expenses." Monsieur Montaine 
proceeded on his journey, and at the end of a 
week sent a telegram to the office, to the effect 
that the "operation" was a magnificent one 
for us, and that he would be in London in forty 
hours to lay before us the details of the affair, 
and obtain our sanction for concluding the 
business. By the next board -day he was in town, 
and at once proceeded to unfold the scheme, 
which was to benefit alike those who lent and 
those who borrowed. 

The estates, he said, were worth half as much 
again as they had been set down at ; that is to 
say, he, as a wine merchant, and knowing the 
value of the wines the estates produced, estimated 
them at ninety thousand pounds. They were 
to be sold for sixty thousand, of which one-half 
was ready to be paid down, and of which we 
were to advance the other half ; but only in our 
acceptances, not in cash. And for our bills for 
thirty thousand pounds, extending over twelve 
months, we were to hold as security the title- 
deeds of this magnificent estate. Our remunera- 
tion for the acceptances was to be a net sum of 
three thousand pounds, hard cash, paid in ad- 
vance. In short, we, the " House and Land 
Finance and Credit Company (Limited)," 
could not by possibility lose by the transaction. 
If the bills we gave, were not paid at maturity 
by the parties at Bordeaux, true we should have 
to meet them, but had we not in hand ninety 
thousand pounds' worth of property with which 
to pay thirty thousand ? However, to make 
everything doubly sure, it would be as well to 
depute our solicitor and another director to 
proceed to Bordeaux with Monsieur Montaine, 
and if they found everything as that gentleman 
had represented, to give them full written and 
vested powers from the board to complete the 
whole transaction at once. 

To Bordeaux, then, our deputation proceeded, 
Monsieur Montaine being the only one of the 
three who really understood French, though 
the other two prided themselves on being able to 
speak that language fluently, and to read it " as 
well as English,sir." But there is avast difference 
between theory and practice. Our solicitor had 
no doubt, at one time of his life, been able to ask 
for what he wanted, in any restaurant in the Palais 
Royal, or even to understand the greater part of 
what was said on the stage during a French farce 
at the St. James's Theatre. But many years of 
exclusively professional life had caused him to 
forget nearlv all he had learnt in that wise, so that 
now he could barely understand what was said in 
ordinary conversation, even when those who 
were talking spoke slowly and distinctly. But 
no one could have offended this gentleman more 
than by offering to interpret between him and a 
Frenchman. It would have annoyed him far 
less to question his knowledge of law than his 
acquaintance with French, though he was an 
excellent solicitor of more than twenty-five 
years' experience in a very good business. 
The other director, who, with Monsieur Montaine 
and our solicitor, formed our deputation to 
Bordeaux, had no knowledge whatever of any 



tongue save the English tongue, and depended 
entirely on his two colleagues for "getting on." 
The trip promised to be a pleasant one ; the 
season being July. 

In due time not without a three days' so- 
journ among the pleasures of Paris the details 
of^ which halt were fortunately, for her peace of 
mind, unknown to Madame Montaine, of "Silver- 
ton Lodge, Surrey" our colleagues reached 
Bordeaux, where they found that a pleasant apart- 
ment had, by the forethought of Monsieur Mon- 
taine, been engaged for them at the Hotel de 
l'Empereur. There are many more unpleasant 
places to live in than the capital of claret-land, 
and our deputation did not pass their time dis- 
agreeably. Moreover, Frenchmen mix business 
and pleasure together, much more than is the 
custom in this country. Thus, after rising at 
eight o'clock, and while partaking of their morn- 
ing cafe au lait, our deputation would be visited 
by two or three of the Bordeaux gentlemen who 
were acting for the joint-stock company that 
wished to purchase the estate, and that wanted 
the advance to be made upon it by us. These 
gentlemen would bring with them a few hard-to- 
be understood, and, if possible, more difficult to 
decipher, documents, which were invariably left 
with Monsieur Montaine to read and go through 
at his leisure. The French gentlemen would in 
the mean time sit smoking, talking of the opera, 
of the Italian question, or any subject that came 
uppermost. Now and again, perhaps, there was 
a reference made to the business that had brought 
our friends all the way from London, but only in 
a sketchy sort of way. The interview finished 
by one or other of the French gentlemen asking 
the three Englishmen to breakfast at some ex- 
cellent restaurant, where, over good cookery, 
better wine, pleasant conversation, coffee and 
cigars, three or four hours were consumed. 
Now and again our deputation made a pretext of 
looking into the business which had brought 
them to Bordeaux ; and on two, if not three 
occasions, they made a great show of going 
over the estate upon which the money had to be 
advanced. But what with the distance some 
three leagues, or nine miles from Bordeaux to 
the estate, the great heat of the weather, the 
excellence of the breakfasts, and the confusion 
which the computation of French weights pro- 
duced in the heads of the solicitor and the other 
director, these excursions always ended by two 
out of the three of the deputation being in a far 
greater muddle after they went to visit the pro- 
perty than before. In short, after a time, the 
real business, and the only business, of the de- 
putation, was done by the owner of " Silverton 
Lodge, Surrey." A fortnight slipped away in 
no time, and the deputation met together to 
draw up a report; but after one or two in- 
effectual attempts to compose anything read- 
able, the business ended in Monsieur Mon- 
taine's being deputed to do it. 

Monsieur Montaine, in twenty-four hours, pro- 
duced something between a letter and a report, 
which was addressed to the London Board of 
the " House and Land Credit and Finance 



90 [August 19, 1863.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



Company," on winch written in the name of 
the deputation the operation of advancing 
twenty thousand pounds on the security of the 
estate was strongly recommended, and a most 
flourishing account given of the property we 
were to hold as security. This was signed by 
the solicitor, by Monsieur Montaine, and by the 
other director, and, having been forwarded to 
London, received the sanction of the board. 
Had we known what afterwards came to 
light that Monsieur Montaine had received 
from "the other side" a fee of one thousand 
pounds for carrying the business through, and 
that the estate we held as security had been 
in the market any time these ten years for less 
than a fourth of its asserted value, we should 
not have been quite so ready. 

As it was, the bills were accepted and sent 
out to Bordeaux; the two thousand pounds 
commission and interest was paid us ; and the 
title-deeds, in all due form, were made over to 
a notary in Bordeaux who acted as our agent in 
the business. 

In the first half-yearly report of our com- 
pany, nothing could look better than the state- 
ment among others in our accounts, that, 
without parting with a shilling of our capital, 
and while holding undoubted security for the 
bills we had given, even to four times the 
amount of the sum we had guaranteed, we had 
received in hard cash, and in advance, a bonus 
of two thousand pounds. If every operation 
we entered into, turned out as fortunate, we 
might indeed expect that the shares of our 
company would rise in value. Our shareholders 
were delighted. Small hints respecting our in- 
creased and increasing prosperity were allowed 
to creep out in the money articles of the public 
press, and these served to increase the desire of 
the public to become shareholders. Our credit 
was good, our respectability undoubted, and our 
wisdom the praise of all the banks. The un- 
initiated Finance and Credit Societies were 
new in England at that time wondered how we 
managed, in our reports, to prove that we had 
nearly all paid-up capital at the banker's, and 
yet could declare a very large dividend indeed 
upon what our shareholders had paid. Many 
companies made money by a profitable invest- 
ment of their capital, but we managed to do 
this and yet kept our capital at interest at our 
banker's. How did we do it ? This was the 
question asked everywhere. 

In the mean time, another notable piece 
of business was offered us nearer home, and 
turned out to be most profitable. An English 
railway wanted to increase its capital for the 
purpose of laying down a branch line. The 
undertaking was perfectly legitimate, and would 
no doubt turn out very profitable for the com- 
pany. The bill had passed parliament, but as 
yet the money to carry out the scheme had not 
been raised. There were so many undertakings 
before the public, so many new concerns spring- 
ing into life every day, that the directors of the 
railway were afraid that any attempt on their 
part to raise more capital would prove a failure, 



and thus would ruin the credit of their com- 
pany, and greatly lower the market-value of 
their existing shares. And yet, not to raise the 
money would be tantamount to confessing their 
inability to do so, and would thus as certainly 
depreciate their shares by another mode. In 
their difficulty the directors applied to us 
in the first place to me as managing director 
and after numerous negotiations, meetings, 
and what not, the pith of the agreement en- 
tered into between the two companies was as 
follows : 

"The House and Land Credit and 
Finance Company" was to advertise this new 
stock of the railway, and was to state that a third 
of the new shares had already been subscribed 
for by our company, or rather by our individual 
shareholders, and that only two-thirds remained 
for the public. We undertook to guarantee the 
railway company that whether these new shares 
floated or not, they should have the money they 
required from us, as they wanted it, either on 
our acceptances or in cash. In return for our 
carrying this business for them, and guarantee- 
ing that they should by one or the other means 
have their money, they undertook to pay us a 
fee of twenty thousand pounds. (They had pre- 
viously made matters pleasant for me by a cheque 
for one thousand pounds.) 

Seeing our name at the head of the prospec- 
tus ; believing that we would not " touch" any- 
thing that was not very profitable; it being 
stated that a third of the proposed stock was 
already subscribed for by our shareholders ; and 
knowing that the affair was bona fide; the 
public not only applied quickly for the new 
shares of this railway, but those who applied 
were mostly real investors, and not men of 
straw, who ask for shares to-day in order 
to sell them to-morrow, or as soon as they 
rise in value. We managed to make matters 
pleasant for the railway company as well as for 
the new shareholders. In order to attract and 
allure the latter, we made the calls upon the new 
shares payable in very small instalments, and 
spread over a considerable length of time. In 
the mean time, as the railway directors wanted 
funds to carry on the works, we gave them our 
acceptances, which the contractors took as cash, 
discounting them at a very low rate, or deposit- 
ing them as securities for loans with their 
bankers. For these three months' acceptances, 
w r e charged at the rate of five per cent interest, 
and two per cent commission, being, together, 
at the rate of about thirteen per cent per annum, 
for we charged fresh commission every time we 
paid off the old acceptances and gave out fresh 
bills. This, with the twenty thousand pounds 
bonus received at the commencement, made a 
tolerably large addition to our profits for the 
half year. The Bordeaux estate business had 
been talked about, and represented as more 
profitable than it really had been, but the 
English railway "operation" being at the very 
doors of the shareholders, was patent to all 
London, and raised our name high with 
the public. To our original shareholders our 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 19, 18C5.] Ql 



company was very profitable, or indeed to those 
who had purchased our shares at anything like 
the original price. But to others they were 
of comparative little value: the market-price 
having risen to so high a premium, that even 
the large interest we got, was hardly large 
enough to make the shares pay when bought 
at such a price. But this state of things told 
well for some people. For instance, I, who as 
director had been presented with forty shares, 
now found them so valuable, that I determined 
to sell them at the premium of five pounds per 
share, making, with the sum they were worth at 
par but which, having got them gratis, I had 
never been called upon to pay of ten pounds 
each, a nice little amount of seven hundred and 
fifty pounds. The days when I had to calculate 
whether it was possible to live upon a hundred 
and fifty pounds a year, had passed away in- 
deed. 

A crusade had been commenced against 
Finance and Credit Companies, but it did not 
seem to injure us in any way. Two or three 
undertakings of like nature to our own, had 
been such very decided successes, that every 
morning's paper brought forth something new 
on the same basis. The Times said the day 
would not be far distant when every town in 
the kingdom, and then every street in every 
town, would have its own particular Finance 
Company. Still the mania for these schemes 
continued, though many such companies were 
born but to die immediately. Our direction in- 
creased in number and respectability. We got a 
live (Irish) peer for our chairman, and more 
than one member of the House of Commons 
joined the board. I began to have serious ideas 
of getting into parliament at the next general 
election. I was a rich man. Hardly any 
" good thing" was floated in the City without 
my having a share of it offered me ; and before 
anything of any magnitude could be concluded 
with our own company, matters were invariably 
made pleasant to me. 



PORTRAITS. 

Portraits may be considered the highest 
effort of the painter's art; higher, a good deal, 
than historical painting, which amounts to little 
more than the mere pictorial poses plastiques 
and theatricals. Higher, too, than little pieces 
of genre, which in some instances are a species 
of portrait-painting. Historical pictures, like 
the Roman scenes of Le Brun in the Louvre, 
may be excellent studies and exercises in colour, 
form, and grouping ; but, as the attempt of a 
Frenchman of the eighteenth century to show 
us how the Romans, before the beginning of 
the first, looked and behaved, the whole is false. 
He is painting from the description of others. 
To take an instance from Mr. Philip. Most of 
us know the traditional accessories of Spanish 
life and costume, and could put together the 
usual costumier properties into what we should 
fancy would be a correct representative of Life 



in Spain. But a glance at the " Murillo" now 
on the walls of the Academy would show how 
much more is wanting, and that the mere 
"wardrobe" portion is, in fact, the least 
characteristic portion of the whole. The mere 
vulgar eye rests on these generalities, but the 
skilful one who has been in the country and 
drank in the strange lights and colours the 
character y in short makes an effort that there 
is no mistaking, aud leaves an impression that 
even those w r ho have not seen, know to be 
true. 

But with portraits this principle is yet more 
remarkable. There, everything must be real, 
honest, and natural. The divine, almost in- 
tangible light of expression, hovering over the 
face, is seized on by living skill and intellect and 
imprisoned in colours. Tints of fancy, of hu- 
mour, of firmness, of melancholy and pensive- 
ness, in short, of the hundred-and-one shades of 
expression the presence, in fact, of life this 
is what gives the portrait its special value. 
The absence of this is what drives the pho- 
tographic portraiture out of the realms of art 
into the cold enclosure of mechanism and ma- 
chinery. 

This is scarcely understood even as yet. It 
is often said that a photograph must be a per- 
fect likeness, for, according to the common 
expression, " it is you." But it is not you. The 
instrument itself is incorrect, and exaggerates. 
It is forgotten that the true portrait - painter 
does not take his sitter at one special mo- 
ment, when the eyes are fixed on him in a 
hard staring gaze, with all the muscles rigid, 
and the features in a state of smirking catalepsy. 
But he draws, as it were, from memory, from 
an acquaintance of so many hours, during which 
the sitter has been opposite to him, and during 
which time he has learned by heart the natural, 
habitual, and most characteristic expression. 
For a few moments, by the help of some 
observation, he has caught, say, the sly roguish 
twinkle of humour in his sitter's eyes, and 
has secured it for ever. The mere mechanical 
shape of the features (which the photograph 
only gives) he has before him, to be put in at 
any moment. Then enter into the composition 
the skilful touch, the bright bits of colour, 
the transparent delicacy of tone, the poetry 
of treatment, which are reflections from the 
skilful mind taking the picture. In short, 
any tiling that is the free natural impression of 
the soul and of life has at once an interest for 
other souls a doctrine often preached by Mr. 
Ruskin, who has shown how " precious," on 
this principle, become the unfettered work- 
man's carving on the capital of a pillar, as 
contrasted with merely arbitrary and conven- 
tional design. 

On these principles it follows that a portrait 
has a special interest for us, and that a collec- 
tion of portraits must be singularly attractive. 
It is hopeless to think of knowing how some 
men who are gone, looked ; but a portrait is the 
best substitute. It is, in truth, the only real 
link between death and life. When, therefore, 



92 [August 19, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



the Eakl op Dekby comes forward with a 
proposal of gathering together all the known 
English portraits, it is impossible not to see 
that we are in presence of an original scheme 
with unique features of its own, apart and 
distinct from any exhibition that has been 
given before. The feeling, on entering the mon- 
ster collections of pictures that have hitherto 
been brought together at the grand cosmopoli- 
tan festivals, has been one of curious comparison 
of the style and treatment in favour with the 
different painters of the world. But here, will 
be altogether a new sensation. We shall feel, 
as it were, in the company of mighty ghosts. 
We shall be inclined to drop our eyes in con- 
fusion or reverence before those counterfeit 
presentments looking down in rows, for we 
shall know that most of those canvases rested 
on easels not a yard away from the great 
sitters, and might be said to reflect their faces 
like a looking-glass. 

I think of the huge company gathered under 
Lord Derby's invitation the great princes, 
captains, prelates, writers, divines, lawyers, and 
statesmen, all gloomily resenting the visitor's 
gaze and giving him back stare for stare that 
a more piquant treat cannot be conceived than 
a visit to such a Walhalla. We shall have our 
pet historical character our writer, divine, 
soldier, or sailor to a sketch of whose ap- 
pearance pages of graphic description could not 
help us, in the flesh. The danger is, that there 
is sure to arise an embarrassment of wealth. The 
land overflows with portraits. Not a squire's 
house in the country but has its " ancestor" of 
more or less merit and interest. The difficulty 
will be in the selection. To regulate this, it is 
obvious that there must be two principles. 
Where the subject is rare, workmanship need 
not be very much looked to; and where the 
workmanship is singularly excellent, the cele- 
brity of the subject need not be so much re- 
garded. Offers will pour in, sufficient to absorb 
double the space available, and we shall gasp at 
the mob of famous persons who have dis- 
tinguished our country. 

There is one point in Lord Derby's pro- 
gramme that should be reconsidered. It is pro- 
posed to make the order purely chronological. 
That is to say, to enable us to begin at the 
beginning of English history, public and private, 
and walk down to the day of Victoria; to 
start, say, from Holbein at eleven, and end 
with Boxall and Watts, at four. We would 
pass by and make our bows to the captains, 
writers, politicians, and priests of Henry the 
Eighth, through those of Elizabeth, Charles, 
George, and the rest. Nothing could be 
better than this notion. It is far more proper 
than herding together, as was proposed, all the 
soldiers, all the priests, all the politicians, so 
that the soldiers of Henry should be in the 
same room with the soldiers of Victoria. There 
would be a frightful monotony in such a course. 
Never would ihere be so fatai an illustration of 
the toujours perdrix principle. We should tire 
of soldiers, long before we reached the last 



Victoria captain, and should yawn our way into 
the next room, which would be left under pretty 
much the same conditions. 

But, owing to the calculated extent of the 
collection, Lord Derby proposes to halt half way, 
say at the year of the Revolution, 1088, the 
allowance of portraits up to that date being 
sufficient for a single year's digestion ; in the 
following year the series would be taken up again, 
down to our own time. Now, this scheme is open 
to the objection of a certain monotony of tone 
and character in the gathering. The first year's 
collection would have an ancient old-fashioned 
air, and not the interest which a mixed though 
incomplete chronological series would offer. We 
should be cut off from all modern sympathies. 
In the main, too, the works would scarcely be of 
the excellence which a broader class of years 
would secure, and although we should have 
Vandyke and Holbein, still others would not be 
of the same merit and interest. It would be far 
better to have the chronological series for the 
first year tolerably complete, and to begin again 
during the second with another collection. Or, 
supposing some such arrangement as this were 
made : Divide all into classes, such as divines, 
statesmen, soldiers, literary men, &c, and have 
only the divines, soldiers, and statesmen during 
the first year's exhibition, and take the rest in 
the following year. Still, this would leave ugly 
blanks, and perhaps the first course would be the 
better: that of an incomplete chronological order, 
in which the statesmen, soldiers, &c, would be 
partially represented during both years. All 
courses have many difficulties, for here it may 
be asked what principle is to guide the selection 
of worthies for the first year, and the postpone- 
ment of other worthies to the second. It must 
therefore be confessed that Lord Derby's own 
proposal, if not the most attractive, is at least 
the most logical. 

Again, if done at all, the thing should be 
done thoroughly. The kingdom should be tho- 
roughly " thrashed winnowed" for portraits. 
There should be explorers sent out to beat all 
the pictorial jungles. Ireland, specially, is 
dotted over with fine portraits, notably with Sir 
Joshua's, whom the mutabilities of social changes 
and Encumbered Estates Courts have left in cup- 
boards and corners without owners or trustees. 
Again, there should be no coyness or scruples 
about palaces or public buildings giving up their 
pictures for fear of stripping their walls. This 
faithful and generous nation, which has paid 
directly and indirectly for such things over and 
over again, has a right to expect on this oc- 
casion the most generous treatment in return. 
It is to be hoped that all royal collections, and 
pictures belonging to public boards, will be sent 
handsomely and with a full graciousness. It has 
been a little too much of a habit to make a favour 
of permitting the nation to take a walk in its own 
grounds, or step up into its own galleries, and see 
its own pictures. 

Yet another suggestion for Lord Derby and 
his committee. In the catalogue should be a short 
sketch of the original of each portrait ; not in the 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 19, 1SC5.] 93 



moral catalogue strain of "b. 1725, d. 1780," 
with otlier such meagre information, but a little 
characteristic sketch, on the model of what Mr. 
Cunningham furnished to the Manchester Exhi- 
bition. Further, a little hint of criticism as to 
the special merit of the picture for .nothing is 
so precious to "the vulgar mind" as a little 
criticism of this sort, judiciously done. Again, 
Sir Joshua is very delightful, and will be always 
welcome ; but it is easy to foresee that there will 
be a tendency to swamp the whole with works 
of that engaging master. Of late we have seen 
almost too much of him, and the " pocket-books" 
discovered by Mr. Tom Taylor. 



A TRUE BILL. 

Eaely on the morning of the fifteenth of 
April, information reached the French police 
that the Baroness de C. was lying dead in her 
bed. strangled with a piece of ribbon. She had 
been married as a widow to Baron de C, and 
was about twenty-eight years old, very pretty, 
of engaging manners; and both she and her 
husband were known far and wide for lavish 
hospitality. 

Three weeks before the murder the baron set 
out for Russia, where it was said that he inhe- 
rited some property from a relative. During 
the absence of her husband the baroness kept 
very much at home, with Ernestine Lamont, a 
beautiful girl of the most innocent and simple 
manners, who had been educated and protected 
by her. On the night before the murder, the 
baroness went to the Opera. Ernestine, who 
was not very well, did not accompany her; 
neither did she sit up for her, as the baroness 
had a private key, and did not wish the young 
lady to be disturbed. It was the custom that 
when the baroness, on awaking in the morning, 
rang her bell, Ernestine wentfirstto her bedroom. 
When, on the morning after the murder, no bell 
was heard to ring, the servants wondered, and 
at last one of them went up to Ernestine's 
room to ask the cause. It was empty. Think- 
ing that she was gone, as usual, to the ba- 
roness's bedroom, the servant went thither. 
There the shutters were still closed, and the 
night-lamp burning on a little table by the bed- 
side. On the floor lay the lifeless body of 
Ernestine. The girl now screamed for help; 
the other servants hurried up- stairs, and on 
opening the shutters it was seen that the 
baroness lay dead, evidently strangled with a 
piece of ribbon, which was at once recognised 
as belonging to Ernestine, who was lying in a 
swoon on the floor. 

On coming to herself, it was naturally sup- 
posed that she would be able to throw some 
light on the matter, but, to the surprise of all, 
she showed a nervous hesitation hardly to be 
reconciled with innocence. On further exami- 
nation, it was found that the secretaire stood 
wide open, and that a quantity of papers and 
other articles were lying about in confusion, as 
if the contents of each drawer had been hastily 



turned inside out. By this time the police had 
arrived. With scarcely a moment's hesitation 
they pronounced that one of the inmates of the 
house must either have committed the crime, or 
at least been an accomplice in it. Evidently, 
also, there had been robbery added to murder ; 
and, therefore, it was thought right to search 
the boxes of each member of the household. 
The servants were all willing ; but when it came 
to Ernestine's turn to deliver up her keys, the 
young lady showed a strange unwillingness to 
do so. Of course the police persisted, and in a 
very little time discovered a large sum of money 
and several jewels belonging to the murdered 
lady carefully secreted at the bottom of her 
box. 

"How does mademoiselle account for this 
money ?" was the first question put to her. 

" I do not know I cannot tell pray do 
not ask me," was the hesitating reply. 

The suspicions already attached to her were 
now considerably strengthened, and the police 
only discharged their duty in arresting her. 
The case was tried, and Ernestine Lamont found 
guilty. 

A young lawyer named Bernard, whose know- 
ledge of Ernestine's previous character made it 
very hard for him to believe her guilty, resolved 
to see her. After some little difficulty, permis- 
sion was granted him to visit the condemned' in 
prison. But if he went thither with any faith 
in her innocence, he left the prison without doubt 
of her guilt. Her answers to his questions 
were evasive and unsatisfactory. 

On reaching home late that evening, he found a 
note lying on his table. It was from Ernestine, 
and ran as follows : 

My dear Friend, I feel that I owe you at 
least some explanation for my strange conduct, 
and will therefore put you in possession of the 
facts of the case. It is only forestalling my 
intention. This letter would have been deli- 
vered to you after my death 

You are aware of the circumstances which 
made me regard the baroness as a mother. 
You are aware, too, of her husband's fatal pro- 
pensity to the gaming-table, a passion which in 
course of time led to an estrangement between 
them. The baroness was very beautiful, and 
still young, and failing to find that love and 
affection which she had hoped her husband 
would show her, formed an unfortunate intrigue. 
I was horror-struck when she informed me of 
this ; but it was not for me to blame her. As 
might be expected, no good could possibly result 
from this attachment. Her lover proved un- 
worthy of her confidence, and succeeded, whether 
by threats or by menaces, I know not, in ob- 
taining from her large sums of money. It was 
but a few days before her death that she con- 
fided this to me, and at the same time begged 
me to take care of her jewels and money for her 
in my box, as she dreaded lest her sordid lover 
should obtain possession of them. The last 
time I saw her alive was on the night she went 
to the Opera. At what hour she returned I 



94 [August 19, 18G5.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



know not, for she always had a private key with 
her. The rest you know. 

" Hence, dear friend, you will understand my 
reluctance to have my boxes searched ; and my 
evasive answers as to the money and jewels 
found in them. 

* Had I told the truth, should I have been 
believed ? * No ! And how could I say any- 
thing that would dishonour the good name of 
one who has been more than a mother to me ? 
Besides, I did not know even the name of her 
secret lover, and I had never seen him. No ; 
it is better as it is. I am ready to die. My secret 
to all save you, shall die with me. That you 
believe in my innocence is the only comfort I 
have left me. 

" Your unhappy friend, 

" Ernestine." 

" Thank God !" murmured the young man, 
pressing the paper to his lips. " Henceforth, I 
will devote my life to prove your innocence to 
the world. God grant it may not yet be too 
late!" 

Late though it was, Bernard at once repaired 
to the prefect's house, and after some difficulty 
procured admission. The prefect fortunately hap- 
pened to be an old friend of Bernard's father, 
and it was because of this that the young man 
was admitted at so late an hour. 

" But, my good friend," said the old man, 
after patiently listening to all he had to say, 
" believe me, it is a useless task ; there is no 
doubt that the young woman is guilty either as 
principal or as accomplice. Still, as you so 
earnestly wish it, you shall be permitted to 
search the apartments of the murdered lady. 
And now good night," he added with a smile, 
" and let me hear" the result of your investiga- 
tions." 

Early the next morning, Bernard, accompanied 
by a gendarme, repaired to the baroness's house. 
Everything lay exactly as it had been left on 
the fatal morning ; for the house had been and 
was still in the custody of the police. Not a 
drawer, nor a cupboard escaped Bernard's 
notice. There was no violence visible on the 
windows, as if forcible admission had been 
gained from the outside. Nothing, in fact, pre- 
sented itself which gave the slightest clue to 
the mystery. 

The search had now occupied several hours, 
and Bernard felt that it was useless to remain 
there any longer. With a sad and heavy heart, 
therefore, he proceeded to leave the apartment. 
But in passing out into the entree, which was 
quite dark, his foot struck against something, 
which, on taking up, he found to be a hat. 
Thinking it belonged to the baron, he was about 
to hang it up with the others on the peg from 
w^hich he supposed it to have fallen. 

" That hat, monsieur, if you please ; I do not 
remember to have seen it before. It is strange," 
remarked the gendarme, as he compared the hat 
in question with the others that hung up in the 
entree ; " it is larger, and of a different shape to 
them!" 



" Let me have it, my good friend ; I will show 
it to the prisoner. If it should chance to belong 
to this secret lover of the murdered lady!" 
thought Bernard to himself, as he hurriedly 
drove to the prison. 

Ernestine was anxiously expecting to see her 
friend, for he had promised to visit her that day 
again ; and she wished to learn from his own 
lips whether he still believed in her innocence. 

" Do you know this hat, Ernestine ?" said 
Bernard, on entering the cell. 

" That hat good Heavens ! it is the very hat 
which the baron had on the night he left Paris," 
said Ernestine, in an excited manner. 

" Impossible ! we compared it with the other 
hats and this is much larger. I believe it 
belonged to the baroness's lover " 

" No no a thousand times no it is the 
baron's he bought it the very day he left. It 
was too large for him, and he asked me to put 
some wadding under the lining for him see 
if it be not there !" 

" But, Ernestine, it must be fancy on your 
part this hat never belonged to the baron! 
But stay you are right," added Bernard, as, 
on turning up the lining, the wadding fell out, 
and with it a piece of paper which had been 
used to add a little to its thickness. It was a 
bill written by the landlord of an hotel at Stras- 
burg, made out in the baron's name, for a week's 
board and lodging. It was dated April 7, 
just fourteen days after his departure from 
Paris. 

Ernestine and Bernard looked at each other 
for a few moments in silence, as strange 
thoughts passed through the minds of each. 

That it was the baron's hat was now proved 
but how did it come there ? Had he returned 
to Paris secretly before the murder? Was he 
the murderer ? 

Ernestine turned deadly pale. 

" Do you suppose that the baron " she 

gasped. 

" Is the murderer ?" added Bernard, finishing 
the sentence. " Yes ! I do. But I will go at 
once to the prefect." 

For the first time since her condemnation a 
faint ray of hope was kindled in Ernestine's 
heart. The sight of Bernard, her old friend in 
happier days, had indeed excited a wish to live 
in her young breast. 

" How thankful I am I did not say anything 
at the trial. The good God will protect me !" 

Bernard now left the prison and hastened to 
the house of the prefect. 

"Well! and what did you find ?" asked the 
old man, smiling sadly at his young friend, who 
rushed into the room without waiting to be an- 
nounced. 

" Be good enough to examine this hat," said 
Bernard, as he handed it to him, and recounted 
to him the manner in which he had found it, 
and what Ernestine had subsequently told him. 

"Her husband! he the murderer! Yes, it 
is plain and we have been accusing an inno- 
cent girl !" ejaculated the prefect, carefully ex- 
amining the hat ; "but leave me now; I must 



Oharlcs Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 19, 1865.] 95 



think it over. But let me urge secresy on you, 
and depend on me." 

Early the next morning Bernard was again 
sent for to the prefect's house. 

" I have carefully gone over the whole evi- 
dence since I saw you," he said, "and it cer- 
tainly seems there is a very strong suspicion 
against the baron. I have caused inquiries to 
be made, and have ascertained that the baron 
was a confirmed gambler, and that his journey to 
Petersburg was probably only a ruse to avoid 
arrest. It is a terrible case, and we must pro- 
ceed very cautiously. The baron stands very 
high in the public esteem, and it seems incre- 
dible that he could have committed this horrible 
crime. Still that hat and the bill of the land- 
lord made out in his own name prove at least 
that he must have returned to Paris. Why 
should he return? What was the motive? 
However, I have despatched an agent of the 
secret police to Strasburg, to track his steps 
from that place. When I hear anything I will 
send for you." 

On arriving at Strasburg, the police agent at 
once repaired to the Maison Rouge. The land- 
lord perfectly remembered the baron's having 
stayed at his hotel for a week, and having then 
gone, whither he could not say. The porter, 
however, remembered where his luggage was 
taken. It was to a house outside the city, on 
the road to Saverne, where a hired carriage was 
in readiness. He got into the carriage and 
drove off. But as the driver was an acquaint- 
ance of the porter's, it was no difficult matter 
to find him. He remembered the job perfectly, 
but averred that the gentleman's name was 
Thionville. He should not perhaps have paid 
much attention to this fact, had he not had a 
sister living at Saverne as chambermaid in the 
same hotel to which he drove his fare. On in- 
quiring at Saverne, the agent found that a 
Monsieur Thionville had arrived at the hotel as 
stated, and that he had remained there four days, 
during the greater part of which he had kept 
in-doors, from indisposition. 

The description the landlord gave of his 
person and luggage left no doubt on the agent's 
mind that he was on the right track. But no- 
thing further could be learnt. Still, one im- 
portant circumstance had been proved namely, 
that, instead of proceeding on his journey to 
Russia, he had turned back on the road to Paris, 
under an assumed name. 

The only thing that now remained to be done 
was to put an advertisement in the French and 
German papers, inviting the husband of the 
murdered lady to repair to Paris, in order to 
claim the property of his deceased wife. Por, 
it was argued, if he bad murdered her for the 
sake of getting possession of her money, it was 
very probable that he would take the bait now 
held out. Neither did this surmise prove to be 
incorrect. 

Two months, or thereabouts, had elapsed, 
and ( the police were beginning to despair of 
getting further tidings of the baron, when a 
gentleman, attired in deep mourning, and appa- 



rently bowed down with grief, presented himself 
at the bureau of the police. "He had," he 
said, " by chance seen the fearful tidings of his 
wife's murder in a paper at St. Petersburg, 
and had hastened back to Paris as quickly as he 
could. The shock, however, it had caused him 
had brought on a severe attack of illness, from 
which he had only just recovered, otherwise 
he should have returned to Paris some weeks 
sooner." 

Acting in obedience to the orders of his chief, 
the agent referred the baron to a comptoir, 
where he would be furnished with the register 
of the death and burial of his wife. 

On entering the room, the baron was politely 
invited to take a seat while the necessary papers 
were being found. 

After the lapse of a quarter of an hour an 
official entered the room, and requested the 
baron to accompany him to another comptoir, 
where, to his dismay, he found himself submitted 
to a rigorous examination. 
. " But, Monsieur le Baron, when you left 
home, on March 25, whither did you travel ?" 
asked the chief officer. 

" I travelled through Germany, en route for 
St. Petersburg." 

"Good! But which was tlie first town at 
which you stayed ?" 

" Strasburg !" 

"Quite true!" said his questioner, referring 
to some papers. " On what day did you arrive 
there ?" 

"Onthe2Sth." 

" Yes ! and how long did you remain ?" 

"Let me see yes! it was one night and 
half the next day," replied the baron, with a 
little hesitation in his manner. 

" And where did you proceed to next ?" re- 
sumed the officer. 

After some reflection, the baron answered 
that he had gone to Prankfort. 

" Indeed !" answered the officer, raising his 
eyes, and directing a steady glance towards the 
baron. " To Prankfort ! 1 think you are mis- 
taken. You say you arrived at Strasburg on 
the 28th, where you remained till the following 
day. But the landlord of the Maison Rouge 
says that you remained at his house till April 7. 
How do you account for that, Monsieur le 
Baron?" 

" Was I there a week ? Yes ! now I think 
of it, you are quite right, monsieur ; for I met 
several friends there, who persuaded me to 
lengthen my stay." 

" You also state that you next went to Prank- 
fort. But if Monsieur le Baron reflects, he 
will remember that he went to Saverne in a 
close carriage." 

" Yes ; but that was only a day's trip, and 
had nothing to do with my journey," was the 
ready answer. " But may I ask, monsieur, 
why all these questions ?" 

"Excuse me, Monsieur le Baron, you are 
here to answer questions not to ask them. 
Suffice it to say, it is usual under such cir- 
cumstances. Now, please to attend. You 



96 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 19, 1805.] 



said just now it was only a day's trip, I 
think ; how was it you came to stay four days 
at Saverne ?" 

" I had only intended to remain one day at 
Saverne, but was taken ill during my stay at 
the hotel." 

" Was that why Monsieur le Baron changed 
his name ?" continued the officer. 

" Changed my name ? Monsieur must be in 
error." 

" Not at all. You took the name of Thion- 
ville, for some reason best known to yourself. 
But as you seem to have forgotten this circum- 
stance, will you have the goodness to tell us 
where you went on leaving Saverne ?" 

" I returned to Strasburg." 

" Pardon me, Monsieur le Baron, and allow 
me to refresh your memory. You went, or pre- 
tended to go, to a private house in the neighbour- 
hood. But was not Paris the goal of your 
journey, and did you not arrive here about 
April 15 ?" 

"Monsieur!" exclaimed the baron, "I have 
submitted to these impertinent questions quite 
long enough. By what right you presume to 
interrogate me in the manner you have done, I 
do not know. Rest assured I shall represent 
the matter to the Minister of Police. I wish 
you a very good morning !" And the baron 
turned himself round to leave the room. 

" Not so fast, monsieur. I have not yet 
done with you," continued the officer, without 
noticing the interruption. "I repeat you 
arrived in Paris about the 15th, and you were 
in your wife's bedroom on the night of the 15th 
and 16th." 

At these words the baron leaped to his feet, 
his face distorted with the pangs of fear and 
passion. 

* Calm yourself, Monsieur le Baron, I have 
not finished with you yet. Will you then ex- 
plain, if you were not in the bedroom of your 
wife on the night in question which you will 
remember was the very night on which she was 
murdered how it was your hat was found in 
the passage ?" And with these words he handed 
a hat to the baron. 

All eyes were bent upon him. The baron 
turned deadly pale, and remained speechless for 
a considerable time. At last he stammered 
forth incoherently : 

" It is not my hat. I never saw this one be- 
fore. ... I had one like it . . . but not 
this." 

" Not this ?" exclaimed the relentless ques- 
tioner. "Monsieur le Baron, you have been 
followed step by step from the day you quitted 
Paris, to the day you returned. If this hat be 



not yours, then have the goodness to tell me 
how your bill incurred at the Maison Rouge, 
Strasburg, found its way underneath the lining ? 
Please to look for yourself." 

_ " Hotel bill !" gasped the baron, as he struck 
his forehead with his clenched hand. 

"Yes! wretched man. By that little piece 
of paper, Providence has disclosed your crime, 
and has prevented an innocent girl from dying 
a felon's death. Confess that you entered your 
wife's room and committed the diabolical deed 
for which you would have allowed another to 
suffer." 

But such a confession was never made. 

That night Baron de C. was safely shut up in 
prison till his trial should take place. All Paris 
rang with the news that the real murderer of 
the baroness had been discovered, and that he 
was no other than her own husband. But that 
night the prisoner escaped. On entering the 
cell on the following morning, he was found 
lying stretched out on his couch, cold and stiff. 
It was supposed that, living a lawless life, he 
had been in the habit of carrying poison about 
him. 

Years have elapsed since the above events 
took place. Monsieur Bernard soon became 
one of the most celebrated ornaments of the 
French bar, and his wife, nee Ernestine Lamont, 
noted not only for the brilliancy of her balls 
and dinners, but for the affability of her manner 
and the courteousness of her disposition. Of 
the story of the murder nobody knows more 
than is here told. 



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BY THE AUTHOB OF " BAEBAEA's HISTOET." 



CHAPTER XL. THE CAUSE OP LIBERTY. 

Had Saxon been suddenly plunged into a 
cold bath, it. could scarcely have brought him 
to his senses more rapidly than did the re- 
membrance of his broken pledge, and the 
thought of what his lawyer cousin would say 
to him. 

" It isn't as if he hadn't cautioned me, either," 
said he, half aloud, as he sat himself down, 
" quite chopfallen," at the foot of a great oak, 
in an unfrequented hollow of the park. And 
then one unpleasant recollection evoked another, 
and he remembered how William Trefalden had 
joked with him about fetters of flowers, and 
made him almost angry by so doing ; and how 
he had boasted of himself as more invulnerable 
than Achilles. He also remembered that his 
cousin had especially inquired whether he had 
not yet been called upon to subscribe to the 
Italian fund, and had given him much good 
advice as to what his conduct should be when 
that emergency might arise. To put his name 
down for a moderate sum, and commit himself 
to nothing further those were William Trefai- 
den's instructions to him; but how had he 
observed them? How had he observed that 
other promise of signing no more large cheques 
without consulting his cousin ; and what reli- 
ance would his cousin place upon his promises 
in the future ? 

Saxon groaned in spirit as he thought of these 
things ; and the more he thought of them, the 
more uncomfortable he became. 

He did not care in the least about the money, 
although he had, in truth, been mulcted of an 
enormous sum ; but he cared a great deal about 
breaking his word, and he saw that it must be 
broken on the one hand or the other. He also 
saw on which hand it was to be. 

He had given the cheque to Miss Colonna, 
and Miss Colonna must have the money ; there 
was clearly no help for that. But then he 
entertained misgivings as to the cheque itself, 
and began to doubt "whether he had anything 
like balance enough at his banker's to meet it. 
In this case, what was to be done ? The money, 
of course, must be got ; but who was to get it, 
and how was the getting of it to be achieved ? 



Would that mysterious process called " selling 
out" have to be gone through ? 

Saxon puzzled his brains over those abstruse 
financial questions till his head ached; but 
could make nothing of them. At last he came 
to the very disagreeable conclusion that William 
Trefalden was alone capable of solving the diffi- 
culty, and must be consulted without delay ; but, 
at the same time, he did not feel at all sure that 
his cousin might not flatly refuse to help him in 
the matter. This was a fearful supposition, and 
almost drove the young fellow to despair. Tor 
Saxon loved the lawyer in his simple honest way 
not so much, perhaps, for any lovable quali- 
ties that he might imagine him to possess, as 
for the mere fact that his cousin was his cousin, 
and he trusted him. He had also a vague idea 
that William Trefalden had done a great deal to 
serve him, and that he owed him a profound 
debt of gratitude. Anyhow, he would not 
offend him for the universe and yet he was 
quite resolved that Miss Colonna should have 
the full benefit of her cheque. 

Thinking thus, he remembered that he had 
authorised her to double the amount. What if 
she should take him at his word? 

" By Jove, then," said he, addressing a plump 
rabbit that had been gravely watching him from 
a convenient distance for some minutes past, 
" I can't help it, if she does. The money's my 
own, after all, and I have the right to give it 
away, if I choose. Besides, I've given it in the 
cause of liberty !" 

But his heart told him that liberty had 
played a very unimportant part in the trans- 
action. 



CHAPTER XLI. A COUNCIL OF WAR. 

In the mean while, a general council was 
being held in the octagon turret. The coun- 
cillors were Signor Colonna, Lord Castletowers, 
and Major Vaughan, and the subjects under 
discussion were Baldiserotti's despatch and 
Saxon Trefalden's cheque. 

The despatch was undoubtedly an important 
one, and contained more stirring news than any 
which had transpired from Italy since the Napo- 
leonic campaign ; but that other document, with 
its startling array of numerals, was certainly not 
less momentous. In Major Vaughan's opinion 
it was the more momentous of the two ; and yet 
his brow darkened over it, and it seemed to the 



YOL. XIV. 



331 



9S [August 2G, 18C5J 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted ty 



two others that he was not altogether so well 
pleased as he might have been. 

Castletowers was genuinely delighted, and as 
much surprised as delighted. 

" It is a noble gift/' said he. " I had not 
dreamed that Trefalden was so staunch a friend 
to the cause." 

"I was not aware that Mr. Trefalden had 
hitherto interested himself about Italy in any 
way," observed Major Vaughan, coldly. 

" Well, he has interested himself now to some 
purpose. Besides, he has but just come into 
his fortune." 

Signor Colonna smoothed the cheque as it 
lay before him on the desk, filled in the date, 
crossed it, and inserted his own name as that of 
the person to whom it was payable. 

"I wonder what I had better do with it," 
said he, thoughtfully. 

"With what ?" asked the Earl. 

Colonna pointed to the cheque with the 
feather end of his pen. 

" Why, cash it, of course, and send the money 
off without delay." 

The Italian smiled and shook his head. He 
was a better man of business than his host, and 
he foresaw some of those very difficulties which 
were the cause of so much perplexity to Saxon 
himself. 

" It is not always easy to cash large sums," 
said he. " I must speak to Mr. Trefalden before 
I do anything with his cheque. Is he in the 
house ?"' 

To which the Earl replied that he would see ; 
and left the room. 

After he was gone, Vaughan and Colonna 
went back to the despatch, and discussed the 
position of affairs in Sicily. Thence they passed 
on to the question of supplies, and consulted 
about the best means of bestowing Saxon's 
donation. At last they agreed that the larger 
share should be sent out in money, and the rest 
expended on munitions of war. 

" It's a heavy sum," said the dragoon. " If 
you want a messenger to take it over, I am at 
your service." 

" Thanks. Can you go the day after to- 
morrow ?" 

" To-night, if you like. My time is all my 
own just now. By the way, who is Mr. Tre- 
falden's banker ?" 

He put out his hand for the cheque as he 
said this, and Colonna could not do otherwise 
than pass it to him. After examining it for 
some moments in silence, he gave it back, and 
said: 

" Are those his figures, Signor Colonna ? I 
see they are not yours." 

To which the Italian replied very composedly, 
" No, they are Olimpia's." 

Major Vaughan rose, and walked over to the 
window. 

" I shall ask Bertaldi to give me something 
to do, when I am out there," he said, after a 
brief pause. " I have had no fighting since I 
came back from India, and I am tired to death 
of this do-no thin 2: life." 



" Bertaldi will be only too glad," replied 
Colonna. " One experienced officer is worth 
more to us now than a squadron of recruits." 

The dragoon sighed impatiently, and pulled 
at the ends of his moustache. It was a habit 
he had when he was ill at ease. 

" I'm sorry for Castletowers ," he said, pre- 
sently. " He'd give his right hand to go over 
with me, and have a shot at the Neapolitans." 

" I know he would ; but it cannot be it 
must not be. I would not countenance his 
going for the world," replied the Italian, quickly. 
" It would break his mother's heart." 

" It never entered into the sphere of my 
calculations that Lady Castletowers had a heart," 
said Major Vaughan. " But you have enjoyed 
the advantage of her acquaintance longer than 
I have, so I defer to your better judgment." 

At this moment the door opened, and the 
Earl came in alone. 

" I can't find Trefalden anywhere," said he. 
" I have looked for him all over the house, in 
the stables, and all through the gardens. He 
was last seen on the terrace, talking to Miss 
Colonna, and nobody knows what has become 
of him since." 

" He's somewhere in the park, of course," 
said Colonna. 

" I don't think so. I met my mother as I 
came in. She has been wandering about the 
park all the morning, and has not seen him." 

" If I were you, Castletowers, I'd have the 
Slane dragged," said Major Vaughan, with a 
short, hard laugh. " He has repented of that 
cheque, and drowned himself in a paroxysm of 
despair." 

" What nonsense !" said Colonna, almost 
angrily; but he thought it odd, for all that, 
and so did the Earl. 



CHAPTER XLII. THE MAUSOLEUM. 

There was a very curious object in Castle- 
towers Park, the shape of which was like a 
watchman's lantern, and the material blue 
granite. It stood on a little eminence in a 
retired corner of the domain, was approached 
by a double row of dwarf cypresses, about three 
feet and a half in height, and enshrined the 
last mortal remains of a favourite hunter be- 
longing to the late Earl. It was called " The 
Mausoleum." 

A more hopelessly ugly edifice it would be 
difficult to conceive ; but the late Earl had in- 
tended it to be a model of elegant simplicity, 
and had wasted some hundreds upon it. Being 
abroad when his old horse died, he scrawled a 
rough outline of the Temple of Vesta on a sheet 
of foreign note-paper, and sent it up to his 
steward, w r ith instructions to hand it over for 
execution to a Guildford stonemason. But the 
Earl was no draughtsman, and the stonemason, 
who had never heard of the Temple of Vesta in 
his life, was no genius ; and thus it happened 
that the park at Castletowers came to be dis- 
figured by an architectural phenomenon com- 
pared with which the toll-houses on Waterloo 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR BOUND. 



[August 26, 1865.] 99 



Bridge were chaste and classic structures. The 
Earl, however, died at Naples, in happy igno- 
rance of the deed that had been done, and his 
successor had not thought it worth while to 
pull the building down. 

When Saxon rose from his seat under the 
great oak, it was yet so early that he was 
tempted to prolong his walk. So he went 
rambling on among the ferns, watching the 
rabbits, and thinking of Miss Colonna, till he 
found himself, quite suddenly, at the foot of 
the little eminence on which the mausoleum 
was built. 

It so happened that, although he had been 
more than ten days at Castletowers, he had 
never before strayed into this particular corner 
of the park. The phenomenon was consequently 
a novelty in his eyes, and he walked round it 
wonderingly, contemplating its ugliness from 
every side. He then went up and tried the 
door, which was painted to look like green 
bronze, and studded all over with great sex- 
agonal bosses. It swung back, however, quite 
easily, and Saxon walked in. 

The place was so dark, and the day outside 
was so brilliant, that for the first few moments 
he could see nothing distinctly. At length a 
dumpy pillar on a massive square base came 
into view in the centre of the building, and 
Saxon saw by the inscription carved upon it 
(in very indifferent Latin) that the object of all 
this costly deformity was a horse. And then he 
sat down on the base of the column, and con- 
templated the mausoleum from within. 

It was, if possible, uglier inside than outside ; 
that is to say, the resemblance to a lantern was 
more perfect. The dumpy column looked ex- 
actly like a gigantic candle, and the very walls 
were panelled in granite in a way that suggested 
glass to the least imaginative observer. Had 
the stonemason possessed but a single grain 6f 
original genius, he would have added a fine bold 
handle in solid granite to the outside, and made 
the thing complete. 

While Saxon was thinking thus, and lazily 
criticising the late Earl's Latin, he suddenly be- 
came aware of a lady coming slowly up between 
the cypresses. 

He thought at first that the lady was Miss 
Colonna, and was on the point of stepping out 
to meet her ; but in almost the same instant he 
saw that she was a stranger. She was looking 
down as she walked, with her face so bowed 
that he could not see her features distinctly ; 
but her figure was more girlish than Miss 
Colonna's, and her step more timid and hesi- 
tating. She seemed almost as if she were 
counting the daisies in the grass as she came 
along. 

> Saxon scarcely knew what to do. He had 
risen from his seat, and now stood a little way 
back in the deep shadow of the mausoleum. 
While he was yet hesitating whether to come 
forward or remain where he was, the young lady 
paused and looked round, as if expecting some 
one. 

She had no sooner lifted up her face than j 



Saxon remembered to have seen it before. He 
could not for his life tell when or where ; but he 
was as confident of the fact as if every circum- 
stance connected with it were fresh in his 
memory. 

She was very fair of complexion, with soft 
brown hair, and large childlike brown eyes 
eyes with just that sort of startled, pathetic ex- 
pression about them which one sees in the eyes 
of a caged chamois. Saxon remembered even 
that look in them remembered how that image 
of the caged chamois had presented itself to him 
when he saw them first and then, all at once, 
there flashed upon him the picture of a railway 
station, an empty train, and a group of three 
persons standing beside the open door of a 
second-class carriage. 

Yes ; he recollected all about it now, even to 
the amount he had paid for her fare, and the 
fact that the lost ticket had been taken from 
Sedgebrook station. Involuntarily, he drew 
back still further into the gloom of the mauso- 
leum. He would not have shown himself, or 
have put himself in the way of being thanked, 
or paid, for the world. 

Then she sighed, as if she were weary or 
disappointed, and came a few steps nearer ; and 
as she continued to advance, Saxon continued 
to retreat, till she was nearly at the door of the 
mausoleum, and he had got quite round behind 
the pillar. It was like a scene upon a stage ; 
only that in this instance the actors were im- 
provising their parts, and there were no spec- 
tators to see them. 

Just as he was speculating upon what he 
should do if she came in, and asking himself 
whether it would not be better, even now, to 
walk boldly out and risk the chances of recog- 
nition, the young lady decided the question for 
him by sitting down on the threshold of the 
building. 

Saxon was out of his perplexity now. He 
was a prisoner, it was true ; but his time was 
all his own, and he could afford to waste it 
in peeping from behind a pillar at the back of a 
young lady's bonnet. Besides, there was an air 
of adventure about the proceeding* that was 
quite delightful, as far as it went. 

So he kept very quiet, scarcely daring to 
breathe for fear of alarming her, and amused him- 
self by conjecturing what imaginable business 
could bring Miss Biviere of Camberwell to this 
particular corner of Castletowers Park. Was it 
possible, for instance, that the Earl had been 
insane enough to have the phenomenon photo- 
graphed, and was she about to colour the photo- 
graph on the spot ? The idea was too monstrous 
to be entertained for a moment. And then the 
young lady sighed again such a deep-drawn, 
tremulous," melancholy sigh, that Saxon's heart 
ached to hear it. 

It was no sigh of mere fatigue. Unlearned 
as he was in man and womankind, he knew at 
once that such a sigh could only come from a 
heart heavily laden. And so he fell to wonder- 
ing what her trouble could be, and whether he 
could help, in any anonymous way, to lighten 



100 [August 20, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



it for her. What if he sent her a hundred- 
pound note in a blank envelope ? She looked 
poor, and even if ... . 

But at this point his meditations were broken 
in upon. A shadow darkened the doorway; 
Miss Riviere rose from her seat upon the 
threshold ; and Lady Castletowers stood sud- 
denly before Saxon's astonished eyes. 



CHAPTER XLIII. WHAT SAXON HEARD IN THE 
MAUSOLEUM. 

Lady Castletowers was the first to speak ; 
and her voice, when she spoke, was measured 
and haughty. 

" You have requested to see me again, Miss 
Riviere," she said. 

" I have been compelled to do so," was the 
almost inaudibLe reply. 

" And I have come here at your request." 

Lady Castletowers paused, as if for some 
acknowledgment of her condescension in having 
done so; but no acknowledgment came. 

"I must, however, beg you to understand 
quite distinctly that it is for the last time," she 
said, presently. " It is impossible thatl should 
hold any future communication with you other- 
wise than by letter, and then only at stated 
periods, as heretofore." 

The young lady murmured something of which 
Saxon could not distinguish a syllable. 

"Then you will oblige me by saying it at 
once, and as briefly as possible," replied Lady 
Castletowers. 

Saxon felt very uncomfortable. He knew 
that he ought not to be there. He knew this 
to be a strictly private conversation, and was 
quite aware that he ought not to overhear it ; 
and yet what was he to do ? He could still 
walk out, it was true, and explain his involun- 
tary imprisonment ; but he had an instinctive 
feeling that Lady Castletowers would not have 
come to meet Miss Riviere in the park if she 
had not wished to keep the meeting secret, and 
that his presence there, however well he might 
apologise for it, would cause her ladyship a very 
disagreeable surprise. Or he might stop his 
ears, and so be, virtually, as far away as in his 
London chambers ; but then he felt certain that 
this young girl whom he had assisted once 
before, was now in some great trouble, and he 
longed to know what that trouble was, that he 
might assist her again. So, as these thoughts 
flashed through his mind, Saxon concluded to 
stay where he was, and not to stop his ears 
at least for the present. 

Lady Castletowers had requested Miss 
Riviere to state her business at once, and also 
to state it briefly; but it seemed as if the 
task were strangely difficult, for the girl still 
hesitated. 

At length she said, with a kind of sob : 

" Lady Castletowers, my mother is very ill." 

And then Saxon could see that she was 
weeping. 

" Do you mean that your mother is dying ?" 
asked the Countess, coldly. 



"No; but that she must die, if the necessary 
means are not, taken to save her." 

"What do you mean by the necessary 
means ?" 

"Doctor Fisher says that she must go to 
some place on the Italian coast to Nice, or 
Mentone," replied the girl, making a great 
effort to steady her voice, and keep her tears 
from falling. " He thinks she may live there 
for years, with care and proper treatment ; 
but . . . ." 

" Why not here, with care and proper treat- 
ment ?" said Lady Castletowers. 

" He says this variable climate is killing her 
that she is dying day by day, as long as she 
remains in it." 

"It is her native climate," said Lady Castle- 
towers. 

" Yes but she was so young when she left 
it ; and she has lived so many, many years of 
her life abroad." 

"Well?" 

The girl lifted up her face, all pale and tearful 
as it was, and looked at her just looked at 
her but said never a word. It was not an in- 
dignant look nor an imploring look nor even 
a reproachful look ; but it was, at all events, a 
look that Lady Castletowers seemed to under- 
stand, for she replied to it, and the reply, 
though spoken as haughtily as ever, had in it 
something of the nature of an apology. 

" You are aware," she said, " that your 
mother's annuity is paid out of my own private 
means, and without my son's knowledge. And 
my private means are very small. So small, 
that I find it difficult to meet even this obliga- 
tion, inconsiderable as it is." 

"But you will not let her die, Lady Castle- 
towers ! You cannot you will not let her 
die !" 

And the young girl wrung her hands together, 
in the passionate earnestness of her appeal. 

Lady Castletowers looked down, and seemed 
as if she were tracing patterns on the turf with 
the end of her parasol. 

"What sum do you require?" she said, 
slowly. 

"Doctor Fisher said about thirty pounds . . ." 

"Impossible. I will try to give you twenty 
pounds for this purpose in fact, I will promise 
you twenty pounds ; but I cannot do more." 

Miss Riviere was about to speak; but the 
Countess slightly raised her hand, and checked 
the words upon her lips. 

"The annuity," she said, "shall be paid, as 
usual, into the hands of whatever foreign banker 
you may indicate ; but I beg you both to under- 
stand that I must be troubled with no more 
applications of this kind." 

The girl's cheek glowed w T ith sudden indig- 
nation. 

"You will be troubled with none, madam," 
she said. " Had there been any other person in 
the world to whom I could have applied for aid, 
I should not have claimed your assistance now." 

Her eye dilated, and her lip trembled, and she 
said it firmly and proudly as proudly as Lady 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 2G, 1865.] 101 



Castletowers herself might have done. But the 
Countess passed her as if she had not spoken, and 
swept down the little avenue of cypresses, with- 
out taking any further notice of her presence. 

Miss Riviere continued to stand in the same 
proud attitude till the last gleam of her lady- 
ship's silken skirts had disappeared among the 
trees. And then her strength suddenly gave 
way, and she sat down again upon the gloomy 
threshold, and sobbed as if her heart were 
breaking. 



OCEAN SWELLS. 

: i 

If the quiet steady-going fishes of our coasts 
and rivers could see some of their brethren 
and relatives in the Eastern seas, they would be 
I a little astonished, always supposing they are 
| capable as I maintain they are of such a sen- 
i sation. English fish a few dandies, such as the 
! gold and silver carp excepted, and they really 
belong to China are attired in sober colours, 
! like well-dressed English folks ; but these "swells 
i of the ocean" blaze out in all the hues of the rain- 
bow and in divers others; orange and red; yellow 
| and black ; green and lake ; blue, purple, pink, 
and yellow. Bright sea-green and yellow are 
I perpetually seen in the same vestment, and one 
very heavy swell may now and then be beheld in 
yellow, blue, red, green, black, and grey. The 
dorsal fin is often marked with as many as four 
I colours, and to heighten the effect of all this 
I splendour, the hues are generally of the most 
brilliant character. Nor are these the excep- 
i tions. Our fish now and then offer a few eccen- 
| tricities of shape and colour. Anglers who go 
| hauling up great congers off the Channel 
Islands, and sharp-set young sharks in the 
| Irish Sea; enthusiastic naturalists prowling 
i about in bright summer mornings and golden 
autumn days, dredging up irritable star-fish, who 
! commit suicide by explosion; such explorers 
| stealing into still lonely nooks, to peer under the 
j olive-brown sea-wrack for the spotted goby and 
| velvet fiddler, now and then see some strange 
creature caught after a heavy storm in some far- 
away spot ; but in the Indian Archipelago all 
seems wonderful together. So soon as a family 
of fish gets into these enchanted waters it be- 
I gins to 

suffer a sea change 
Into some rich thing and strange. 

Nor is it in colour alone, but in pattern also, that 
they come out so strong. Instead of being content 
with a sprinkling of bars and spots, like a little 
well-appointed jewellery, they are crossed and 
spotted, marbled and streaked, from head to 
tail. Some, have patterns like flowers on their 
armour ; others, have chains of oval spots with 
scrolls bordering them like an indented mould- 
ing; and then come others with flourishes, 
twists, and grotesque figures, for which it is not 
easy to find suitable names. 

A Dutch naturalist, Dr. Bleeker, a physician, 
with something like twenty titles, is now publish- 



ing a gallery of portraits of fish found in the 
waters of the Indian Archipelago. The work is 
an honour to the author and his country. 

There was a fish called the scarus, for which 
those gormandising old thieves, the wealthy 
Romans, used to pay immense prices, and which 
they transported with immense care from the 
Mge&n Sea to their fish-ponds and stews, there 
to fatten for the dinner-table. 

Dr. Bleeker paints for us scari that swarm 
in the waters round Celebes, Java, and the 
Molucca Islands. This fish, once so highly 
prized, is considered by the Europeans in the 
East so worthless that it is never seen on their 
tables, being given up to the natives and the 
Chinese, who will eat anything. One species 
alone, the green pseudoscarus, now and then 
appears in the bill of fare, but it is not thought 
much of. 

It would be too much of a good thing to de- 
scribe all the species of this family, for there are 
scores of them. All that can be done is to single 
out one or two, which, however, of course but 
imperfectly represent so large a group. We will 
select the pseudoscarus tricolor as a specimen. 
In this beautiful fish the upper part of the head 
and the back are deep blue, shading down into 
black; the greater part of the side is of bright sky 
blue, while _ the colour beneath is a pale Indian 
red ; the hind part and tail are of a rich rose 
colour. The dorsal fin bears at its free edge a 
stripe of blue, then comes a broad band of rose ; 
below this, is a narrow strip of blue, and again a 
line of pale rose. The ventral fin is of rose 
colour, inclining to yellow ; the pectoral fin is 
yellow and black. The eye is of a bright yellow, 
and round the lips runs a delicate stripe of 
red. 

The dorsal fin is often very beautiful in the 
scari. Nothing can exceed the tints of the pale 
blue and rose bars, the yellow and rosy green, 
the Indian red and port wine hue, the salmon 
colour, the pink and lilac. Sometimes, the bars 
are spotted with strongly-contrasted colours, 
as, for instance, pink bars with blue or green 
spots. The head is often beautifully marbled with 
irregularly curved narrow bars of some colour, 
as, for instance, damask, green, red, lilac, or 
black, which is strongly relieved by the ground. 
The tail is frequently streaked or barred with 
blue, lake, and green, dark red, rose colour, and 
yellow. The flower-like patterns on the scales 
are very well marked in some scari, beginning 
just below the root of the dorsal fin, and running 
in a line from this spot towards the tail. 

The most striking thing about these fish is 
the strong resemblance of the head to that of a 
parrot : owing to which, and the brilliancy of 
their colouring, they have been generally called 
"parrot fish." One member of the family 
(the pseudoscarus microrrhinus) is so like the 
parrot about the head, that at first sight it 
looks as if the waters of the ocean were dis- 
playing a paradox as strange in its way as the 
rivers of Australia exhibit in the water-mole. 
The great circular brown eye, the iris bordered 
with yellow, the dark green cheek, and the 



102 [August 26, 1S65.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



obtuse shape of the head, strongly remind one 
of the parrot. The mouth in all these fish is 
very like a beak- Nor is this any forced com- 
parison; it is owing to the teeth and jaws being 
all fused into one, and the effect of this is 
heightened by the rostral lip covering the jaw 
to a great extent, while the maxillary or in- 
ternal lip is reduced to a mere slip of mem- 
brane. Oken, the German naturalist who ac- 
cording to his own account was inspired, and 
who had scarcely established a theory before he 
began to perceive the absolute necessity for 
immediately overturning it, lumped all the scari 
together under the name of " insect fish" for 
what reason it is difficult to surmise. As a 
natural sequel, he afterwards elevated both 
them and the next family the reader will come 
to in this paper (the labroids), to the rank 
of "bird fish." Some of the old writers, witli 
equal accuracy, described the scarus as a fish 
that feedeth on herbs and cheweth the cud like 
a beast an idea to which still later writers 
clung, calling it the ruminant among fishes; 
the fact is, that the scarus, though it feeds 
upon the sea-algae, also eats the molluscs and 
polvpi ; for which reason the fishermen take it 
in bamboo creels set among the roots of the 
polypi; never finding it in their large drag- 
nets at sea. It is restricted to such articles 
of diet by the strange conformation of the 
mouth, which, though strong, is too small to 
allow of the seizing of large fish. In order to 
masticate this rather tough food in comfort and 
safety, the scarus is furnished with teeth in the 
upper part of its gullet. 

Next to the scari come the labroids, the name 
being taken from the labrum, a fish men- 
tioned by Pliny, and rather vaguely described 
as a kind of ravenous fish, seeing" that every 
fish is by nature utterly and entirely ravenous. 
The elegant trout who flies in the wildest 
terror if you show the tip of your nose, will 
eat nearly his own weight of bleak and dace 
on a hot still June evening. A pike has been 
known to rush at a fish well-nigh the size of 
himself, and even to dash at a mule's nose ! 
I have known a fishing-frog lose its life in an 
insane attempt to swallow a wooden scoop, the 
proprietor of which objected to the proceeding. 
It is but a short time since an account appeared 
in the Times of a fish which had swallowed, 
among other matters, two broken bottles, a 
quart pot, a sheep's head, a triangular piece of 
earthenware, and a lobster, while in its liver the 
spine of a skate was comfortably embedded ! 
These labroids are fish with a free upper lip, 
which, like the lower one, looks in some species 
as if the animal had just been severely stung by 
some spiteful jelly-fish; the jaws in certain 
species are shaped like those of a pig. There 
is frequently a long spine at the beginning 
of the dorsal fin. One of their most distin- 
guishing marks, in the eye of a naturalist, is, 
that they possess a three-cornered or narrow 
gullet bone, set with grain-like or globular 
teeth. The gilt-head, the bass, and the wrasse 
may be familiar specimens to many readers. If 



there be fish more beautiful and strangely 
coloured than the scari, we find them here. 
Some of the blues and reds, the rose and orange 
tints, are marvels ; and yet it is hard to say 
whether some of the dark-coloured fish are not 
even more to be admired than the showy ones. 
Dr. Bleeker has added more than a hundred 
new species, and each species is a study in itself. 
I will confine myself to one, and select for 
description the iulis lunaris, or the crescent- 
tailed wrasse. The head is dark green, beauti- 
fully marked with bent irregular bars of a 
damask colour ; the body is of a lighter green, 
with narrow rose-coloured bars cutting each 
scale vertically. The dorsal fin is bright yellow 
at the top ; below this, it is bright blue ; be- 
neath this, it is deep rose, and again blue. The 
fin underneath, is damask, blue, and bright 
yellow; from its beginning run two rose- 
coloured bars, extending as far as the head. 
The tail, which curves broadly outwards, and 
ends in two long points which then bend to- 
wards each other like the limbs of a pair of 
old-fashioned compasses, is of bright yellow in 
the middle ; outside this, it is coloured Indian 
red ; outside of all, it is streaked with a pale blue. 
It is a finely-proportioned fish, about the build 
of a well grown dace, and is found over a wide 
extent of water. 

Like the scari, these fish are not valued for 
their flavour. Except a few species of a pale 
gold colour, with remarkably large red spots 
(the hemipleronoti), which in the Molucca 
Islands are called ikkan bokki, or " fish pf the 
princess," on account of their delicate flavour, 
they are rarely eaten, except by natives and 
Chinese. Here, the classical schoolboy will of 
course interfere, and tell us that the lupus, or 
sea-dace of the Romans, one of this family and 
an inhabitant of the Mediterranean, was greatly 
esteemed for its flavour. Don't believe it. 
You will find it like a bad roach, and a poor 
earthy fish. The princess's fish live at such great 
depths that they can never be extensively made 
use of, or sold at a reasonable price. Out of the 
hundred and twenty -six species now known- 
seventy-nine of which have been discovered by 
Dr. Bleeker only five contribute in any material 
degree to the food of the people. 

The labroids are followed by the silurians, 
something between a salmon and a pike, with 
beards and without scales ; great creatures with 
a fleshy eel-like look, and a fat fin on the hinder 
part of the back. Every person who is a 
member of the Acclimatisation Society, or the 
Thames Angling Association, or who has a 
friend who is a' member of either, or who has 
taken any interest in the proceedings of these 
capital institutions, has heard of the silurus, 
which, if it thrive here as it is said to do in 
Hungary, will have to be caught with a cod- 
line, and be hoisted out with a steam-crane. If 
the reader wants to see a few species, he can 
gratify his taste in Dr. Bleeker's work. These 
fish swarm in the waters of Borneo and Sumatra, 
not only in the sweet and brackish water, but 
even in the seas, and the laborious naturalist 



Charles Dickens.j 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 26, 1865.] 103 



has taken their likenesses by the dozen. A great 
many of them are anything but attractive, and I 
don't think there will be much to regret if the 
silurus can never be induced to live in England. 
We have neither room nor food for him, so let 
him stay where he is. Besides, what is the use 
cf angling for such a fish ? Who in his senses 
can want to catch a great brute of a thing, 
as heavy as a jackass, and capable of eating 
children, as the silurus is said repeatedly to 
have done? There is one comfort, however, 
the silurus, if it really lived formerly in our 
rivers, as it is said to have done, left of its own 
accord, end that is a pretty good proof that 
the locality did not agree with it, and is not 
likely to do so. 

Though beauty is not the rule among these 
Eastern silurians, there are exceptions. Some 
of them are of a lovely grass-green colour as 
the arius, for instance ; the salmon gold of one 
species, the pale green of another, and the gold 
green of the batrachocephalus, being equally 
fine ; the small-headed pseudarius is also a fine 
specimen. Manv are stippled with gold about 
the head ; the ariodes is very elegantly marked 
in this way. The beard, too, is of a beautiful 
hue. The dorsal fin, with its remarkably strong 
spine in front, and sloping sharply backward 
towards the tail, with the three fins in a line 
beneath, give some of these fish a very strik- 
ing appearance. One species (the hexanema- 
trichthys) is barred from head to tail with what 
seem to be sunbeams. 

Some of the silurians are remarkably hump- 
backed. The reader is doubtless familiar 
with the appearance of certain consequential- 
looking fish,* as round as a ball and as deep as 
they are long. But from these downward in 
successive descent to the straight-backed eel, 
there is always something like symmetry ; the 
great spinal curvature rises and falls with an 
equable sweep. This is not the case with the 
silurian humpbacks, for they look as if the spine 
had been badly broken in two places. There is 
one species (the bagrichthys) in which this 
singular feature is developed to an extraordinary 
degree, and is, moreover, coupled with other 
peculiarities which make it, in many respects, 
one of the strangest-looking of fish. The back 
rises almost perpendicularly from the head ; and 
from the highest point of this hump issues a 
dorsal fin, which seems especially designed to 
get this unhappy-looking animal into difficulties, 
being free and seven inches long, only an inch 
wide at the base, and narrowing so rapidly, 
that through the greater part of its length it 
is not more than an inch in width, looking on 
the whole somewhat like a half quill trimmed 
very close. Erom the hinder part of this strange 
fin towards the tail, the back is concave, which 
gives it a singularly weak and ugly look. In 
this hollow is laid a long oval mass, or fin, of 
fat (adipeuse), which not only fills up the vacuity, 
but even gives the outline a convex form ; as 
it is distinctly seen to be superimposed, a dead 



Such as the ephippus, platax, &c. 



load laid upon the backbone, it is an additional 
ugliness. Erom each point of the tail waves a 
narrow streamer of cartilage, not much thicker 
than packthread, and nearly three inches long. 
All this, with its peculiar claret colour, looking 
in places as if it had been washed out, its queer 
little short thick head, and the oval fin in the 
middle of its body, give it a remarkably odd 
look. 

Another very unusual feature in some of them 
(as the leiocassis, &c.) is a narrow straight bar 
of a bright gold colour, running from the head 
to the tail, where it suddenly bends upward to 
the end of the backbone. The beard, too, is 
singularly developed in some of these fish. The 
wallago has streamers extending from the upper 
jaw, half way to the tail ; they are not thicker 
at the thickest part than whipcord, and taper 
away till they become mere threads. One 
little fellow (a silurichthys) has a long beard 
waving from both upper and lower jaws, and 
one small silurodes has a beard almost as 
long as himself, projecting from his lower jaws, 
and arching away high over his back in graceful 
waves towards his tail : while in the hemibagrius 
the beard is actually as long as the creature to 
which it appertains. Some of these beards, as 
that of the plotosus, for instance, are most 
delicately coloured ; inthebagarius, the cartilages 
of which it is formed are very elegant. Indeed, 
this fish possesses some peculiarly attractive 
features ; the height and bold sweep backward 
of its dorsal fin, its compact but slender form 
and elegant head, and the tail arched like a 
lancet-headed window, striking the eye of the 
most unobservant. 

The silurians do not contribute much to 
the luxuries of the table. The natives and 
Chinese prize them because they afford cheap 
and nutritious food, but they are not sought 
after by those who can afford to live well. Some 
river species are eaten by the Europeans, but 
there is no mania for them. The plotosi are 
liked, but their spines are apt to give very 
troublesome wounds to those who dress them, 
often occasioning locked-jaw and abscesses; the 
natives attribute this to the cartilage being 
poisonous, but it is due to its brittleness, as 
the spines, which are very sharp, penetrate 
deep, and being very fragile, easily break off and 
remain in the wound. 

There is little in the cyprinse to detain 
us very long. Any person who wishes to see 
particularly stuck-up fish, is recommended to 
look at the likenesses of some of the puntius 
race ; little, petulant creatures, as deep as they 
are long, and into which one would think the 
spirits of so many defunct parish beadles must 
have migrated. 

Until Dr. Bleeker took up the subject, only 
thirty-four species of cyprinoids were known. 
He has raised the number to a hundred and 
nineteen; but his discoveries, though deeply 
interesting to the naturalist, have contributed 
little to benefit the human race, for these fish 
are almost useless as food ; some of them being 
too rare, others too small. The yellow-finned 



104 [August 26, 1805.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



carp alone comes in for a small modicum of 
praise, but it is merely naturalised at Java, 
being only found in some rivers of the western 
provinces. A few species, such as the rohita, 
morulus, and lobocheilus, are sufficiently nume- 
rous and large to be useful in this way, and 
that is all. The labeobarbi are eaten in some 
places ; in others, the people prefer worshipping 
them. 

As we are now to bid good-bye to fish of this 
class, and enter upon the acquaintance of a 
family distinguished by a totally different form 
and look, and to which the following remarks 
would be in no degree applicable the eels it 
is here necessary, in justice to Dr. Bleeker, to 
say that his likenesses, so far, exhibit one 
feature which must go far to raise the artist in 
the estimation of all those interested in the 
character of the finny tribe. This feature is 
the almost entire absence of that lugubrious, 
fretful expression of face we see in all portraits 
of fish. Let the artist be who or what he may, 
the unhappy fish looks as if he were given up 
to hopeless misanthropy. In Cuvier's great 
work you will not find a fish that does not seem 
as utterly sick of the world, as a man who has 
invested his all in bad accommodation-bills and 
married a drunken wife. 

There are people who like fishing for eels, who 
think there are worse things than to sit in some 
out-of-the-way nook, shady and quiet, by a deep 
pool where the brown heathy river eddies and 
swirls softly by the steep bank, watching the 
float swim away, going down sharply as the 
hungry fish tug at the tough bright red worms ; 
there are people who have fished in the dark 
Scotch lochs for the great dangerous-looking eels 
that live deep in their silent waters ; or in still 
moats by old granges, where the hinds catch them 
with whip-cord lines and fishing-rods like great 
flails, throwing all their rude energies into the pas- 
time, tugging at the rod when a fish strikes as 
if they would root up a tree, flinging the eels, 
when they catch them, over the nearest hay- 
stack, and when they miss, shouting, " Dammun, 
ah thowt ah heddun theer." There are other 
people too who love to angle with a hand-line on 
breezy October days for conger off the Eorelands. 
Some of these good folks may possibly have got 
tired of always having the same thing, and 
would like a change in the way of eel fishing ? If 
so, they have only to go to Borneo, Sumatra, 
Java, and a few other places mentioned by Dr. 
Bleeker, to find variety enough. Such eels ! 
Purple, green, gold, and golden brown ; spotted, 
striped, barred, and marbled ; eels in such hosts 
that we can only stay to speak of a few. 

The first of Dr. Bleeker' s eels (the aphthal- 
michthys abbreviatus) is a creature some 
eighteen inches long, and not more than a 
third of an inch wide ; of a beautiful purple on 
the back, and gold colour below, with a row of 
tiny symmetrical spots running along each side 
from the head to the tail. Then there is a fierce 
spotted eel (the muraena maculata), some two 
feet long and an inch and a half deep, with a 
long powerful dorsal fin, a file of sharp teeth, 



and a bright blue eye. It is wonderfully marbled, 
quite a picture ; coloured dark green, pale green, 
and purple. Then there is a beautiful eel, with 
dark green back and bright green belly, with a 
golden dorsal fin, which is prolonged over the 
tail, and then runs along underneath the body. 
Then there is (I wish there wasn't) the aphthal- 
michthys javanicus, of a most gorgeous green 
on the back, and gold colour below, also with a 
row of tiny dots from head to tail, and a small 
mouth, but with a threatening, putty look about 
the gills, as if, likeothergood-looking individuals, 
it could get out of temper. Though a yard long, 
to judge from its portrait, it is not more than half 
an inch thick, and displays neither dorsal nor 
ventral fin. Then there is an eel with a name 
almost as long as itself (the aphthalmichthys 
macrocephalus !), of much the same proportions, 
also coloured dark green on the back, and of a 
pure golden yellow underneath, with wonderful 
tiny eyes. Then there are many eels. Then we 
come to a creature (the mursenesox singapa- 
rensis) which, if I had the good fortune to hook, 
I should decapitate as soon as possible ; for, 
though a magnificent eel, two feet long, with 
dark green back, pale green sides, brownish 
golden fin, and large yellow eye, yet it has a range 
of teeth which I should not care to test. In 
addition to four long and extremely sharp cutting 
teeth in the upper jaw, there is a row of most 
formidable grinders or crushing teeth, shaped 
somewhat like pointed acorns in their cups, 
running along the roof of the mouth, while the 
under jaw is nearly as well stocked. However, 
we soon afterwards come to an eel (the brachy- 
somophis cirrocheibus) which looks still more 
formidable ; in fact, I think if I caught him, I 
should not even go near enough to try decapita- 
tion, but should adopt the expedient put in 
force by a friend of mine, who, finding himself 
the captor of an ill-looking eel, drew his knife 
and resolutely cut away, not only the fish, but the 
tackle also. This redoubtable animal is about 
four feet long. The mouth is large enough to 
give a serious bite, and is furnished with a 
row of powerful teeth ; the small oval deep blue 
eye is set almost at the fore end of the head. The 
prevailing colour of the throat and body is orange, 
passing in places into a purplish red, and marbled 
with purple here and there almost of a black hue. 
All this, with the swollen look of the throat, gives 
it very much the appearance of a serpent, equally 
beautiful and repulsive. And now we pass more 
eels, some marvellously long and beautifully 
coloured, until we are arrested by a most snaky- 
looking thing, not so large as the great fish just 
described, but still more like a serpent; the 
dorsal fin rises like a hood from its head, the 
eye is small and round; it is marbled all over 
with yellowish green, dirty Indian red and black. 
Altogether, it is decidedly unpleasant to look at, 
and we gladly hurry on to gaze at an eel so 
beautiful that it must be quite delightful to be 
eaten by it, and any worm or shrimp so honoured 
ought to blush at his own unworthiness of such 
a preference. Some two feet long, of the most 
graceful form conceivable, it at once catches the 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 26, 1865.] 105 



eye. The snout is of a reddish gold colour, 
the head purplish, the iris purple and tight blue. 
At the neck is a bright bar like gold, more than 
half an inch wide, running vertically ; and then 
for an inch to the beautifully shaped pectoral 
fin, the throat is deep purple ; directly after this 
comes a bar of golden yellow. From this point 
the upper part of the side is of a rose colour, 
shading off above almost into black, and passing 
below into a faint greenish hue, and then into a 
decided yellow. The dorsal fin is a narrow 
streak of bright canary yellow at the top ; 
beneath this begins quite abruptly a blackish 
purple hue, which passes into a greenish straw 
colour. The lofty crested fish snake (ophichthys 
altipinnis) is a splendid animal, but also not a 
very pleasant one to catch. It is a fine power- 
ful eel, more than three feet long, with a lar^e 
mouth and pointed head. The colour above is 
olive green ; beneath and in front, it is Indian 
red passing into a reddish hue behind ; all along 
underneath it is speckled; the colour of the 
back is divided from that of the belly by a very 
sharp line of demarcation. The pectoral fin is 
of a beautiful purple, but the dorsal fin is cal- 
culated to give it a thorough snaky look, for 
not only is it marbled all over with Indian red, 
greenish yellow and brown, but it rises up 
almost immediately behind the head so as to 
look like a hood. The eye is very fine, having 
one ring of blue, another of purple, and a third 
of bright yellow. The teeth, however, are not 
nearly so formidable as in some others. 

Time and space fail fast, and we must push 
on past other eels till we stop at the serpent fish 
Bonaparte (ophichthys Bonapartei). It is a finely- 
proportioned eel, from two feet to two feet and 
a half long, with a pointed head most beauti- 
fully marbled with the palest brown and brown 
almost of a purple hue, parted from each other 
by sharp trenchant lines of colouring, and run- 
ning all over the head in islets and creeks. 
From the head backwards it is barred with purple 
brown, and a mixture of Indian red and golden 
green, the colours being very distinct. The 
bars themselves are shaped thus : the dark ones 
are wide below, then narrow inwards, and then 
swell out gradually to become round at the top, 
which reaches half way up the dorsal fin. Being 
nearly as wide as they are deep, they resemble 
in shape the old-fashioned coarse jars or pipkins 
turned upside down. The dorsal fin rises almost 
from the head ; it is of a golden straw colour, 
and, besides being marked here and there with 
the bars, is dotted with brown purple spots. 
Then come more eels still. Tapeworm eels, not 
a third of an inch deep, and nearly, if not quite, 
half a yard long ; green and gold eels, wonder- 
fully slender and elegant in their figures, with 
diamond-shaped tails ; eels coloured gold, shaded 
with Indian red and brown; others, coloured 
dark Indian red, brown, and white, with pectoral 
fins the hue of brickdust ; many of them fine 
large fish, strong enough to test the temper of 
the best bamboo rod, or try the toughness of the 
best gut and Kendal hook ever made. Eels, 
again, with scarcely a vestige of fin, and that 



only at the tail ; some, coloured as if they had 
been dipped into a paste of red brick and mashed 
olives ; eels that would take pages and pages to 
describe. 

And now comes the most beautiful eel in 
the world. It is not merely the shape 
of the creature (the leiuranus colubrinus), 
though that is faultless ; " Oh no, it is some- 
thing more exquisite still" the colouring. 
This superb eel 13 about half a yard long, 
and only about half an inch deep, with a most 
elegant narrow dorsal fin, like a straw green 
silk cord lying along its back. From the tip of 
its snout to the tip of its tail, it is barred with 
yellowish nankeen and rich golden brown, .both 
colours of the greatest delicacy and purity. 
The brown bars are shaped somewhat like a 
Minie bullet, with the narrow end of the cone 
turned downwards. The head, eye, and mouth, 
are extremely small and elegant. 

The last eels to be here mentioned are the 
echidna, nasty disgusting things, with a fleshy 
newt-like look, to which the thick dorsal fin, 
continued from the head over the tail, and the 
thick speckling with a dirty -meat like colour, 
which almost entirely covers some of them, in 
no slight degree contribute. The xanthospilos 
is one of the most remarkable. Though not 
really much stouter than the English eel, it 
looks much heavier, has a fleshy appearance, and 
is spotted in a most singular manner for a fish : 
the ground in the body being dark brown 
throughout, and lighter brown in the fin ; all 
over the surface are sown bright golden 
spots, mostly round or oval in shape, and 
not bigger than a split pea; a few, however, 
are somewhat lengthened out. There are four 
parallel rows of spots on each side. In all 
these echidna the eye is remarkably small : for 
instance, in this fish it is not more than the tenth 
of that of a conger on the same page, an animal 
only a little longer. The variegated echidna is 
nearly two feet long, and slender, bein<* not 
much more than an inch thick at the thickest 
part. This fish is streaked all the way along, fin 
and all, with bright golden bars upon a dark 
brown ground. It is, however, difficult to say 
that these shades of colour can be called bars, or, 
indeed, to say what they can be called; for though 
tolerably uniform in .respect to breadth, the 
golden stripes are mottled with many little 
irregular islets of brown, that they look like 
colour which has flowed upon glass : while each 
bar of brown colour bears from one to several 
spots of bright yellow, generally clustered into 
groups. The many-zoned echidna (echidna poly- 
zona) is perhaps the cleanest built of these 
strange fish, but even it has a little of the newt- 
like look; something of the cut you would 
expect to see in the inmate of some cool dark 
grot, or an old Asian tank not kept over sweet. 
But it is very pretty in its way. Octavia might 
have put it in her bosom in lieu of a lizard, and 
Cleopatra might have paired it with the " pretty 
worm of Nilus." It is not above six inches long; 
the head is exceedingly small, and the tail 
pointed; it is of a beautiful clear brown colour, 



106 [August 26, I860.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



with narrow vertical stripes of bright gold at in- 
tervals of a third of an inch. These stripes are 
nearly straight, though some few of them bend 
a little, and two of them, about an inch and a 
half from the head, are united below by a cross- 
bar of the same colour. 

The commander of Tilbury Fort could not 
see the Spanish fleet because it was not in sight, 
and the circumstances which influenced the 
visual powers of so illustrious a person may well 
be allowed equal potency over those of ordi- 
nary mortals. I cannot tell what our na- 
turalist has to say about eels, their ways and 
habits, their manners and customs, their lungs 
and spiracles, &c, because I cannot yet see the 
numbers of his great work which ought to con- 
tain all this. I look across the library-table for 
them, and behold a blank. 



DREAMING SHARP. 

When people in Ireland have dreams of great 
significance they are said to " dream sharp," and 
I had a dream the other night that had much 
meaning in it, mixed up with a great deal of 
whimsicality. I thought I was present at the 
performance, not of a pantomime exactly, but 
of a sort of extravaganza equally grotesque as 
any pantomime I ever witnessed. It was en- 
titled " The Metamorphoses of Mammon, with 
Wonderful Changes and Startling Effects," as set 
forth in letters of gold on a slip of white satin, 
for playbill, all being magnificent in my 
dream, scenery, dresses, everything. I cannot 
remember a consecutive plot exactly, there being 
much of that disjointed wildness in my vision 
so characteristic of phantasma, but the main 
upshot of the piece was all about the attractions 
and temptations of money, and the plots of vil- 
lains to obtain it. There was a quantity of al- 
legory, as might be expected : one of the 
grandest scenes was the Temple of Mammon, 
and a leading character was the hierophant of 
the temple, ycleped Ghulthephools. The King 
of the Inexhaustible Gold Mines, called Rhaub- 
alyucan, held a foremost place also. The King 
publishes a sort of manifesto or proclamation, 
setting forth how Mammon rejoices in observing 
his votaries acquiring money, that for this pur- 
pose there is nothing tends so much to that de- 
sirable end as making offerings of gold in his 
temple. Mammon, moreover, delighted with 
this act of his worshippers, and the mere sight of 
the gold laid on his altar, for a short time, not 
only is undesirous of holding this money perma- 
nently, but permits his votaries to withdraw 
their lodgments in his temple whenever they 
like, according to their necessities or their 
pleasure. To encourage them, however, in the 
practice of votive investments of a more enduring 
kind, Mammon promises an increase of wealth 
to such as leave their treasure longer in his 
care, proportionably with the various value of 
the deposits, and this act of grace on his part is 
called a "per centum" while, from time to time, 
Ghulthephools cries out in an imposing tone, 



" Bonus ! Bonus !" being given to Latin phrases, 
though his Latin would not bear a strict 
translation in plain English, for there was very 
little good in his bonus, as will be seen in the 
sequel. 

But this politic move on the part of Rhaub- 
alyucan, increases, as might be supposed, the 
votive tendencies of his subjects, and a special 
scene of great bustle occurs in the rush of crowds 
to the temple, who pass immense quantities of 
treasure over the altars of the " Fane of the 
Golden God" into the hands of his inferior 
ministers, for deposition in the "Treasure 
Vault of the Temple," a scene of great mag- 
nificence : quite a triumph of the unrivalled 
pencil of Mr. H. Cleverly. 

Amongst the ministers of the temple are u the 
Lords Directors," rather queer characters too. 
One might expect magnificent dresses upon the 
persons of Lords Directors : but no ; they wore 
white aprons and white nightcaps in fact, 
appeared nothing more nor less than cooks. 
They, wishing to pleasure Rhaubalyucan by 
the gratification of his inordinate appetite, cook 
away for him gaily, but after a manner unknown 
to Ude, Soyer, or Francatelli ; and so far from 
hinting that he is ravenous, they suggest that 
his appetite wants stimulating, and recommend 
him to seek a bracing air, and as this can best 
be obtained by yachting, they procure for him a 
vessel appropriately called a " craft," somewhat 
strained in her timbers, for she had been engaged 
before in the Levant trade, and was distin- 
guished among the knowing ones by the name 
of "The Three Decks and no Bottom." That 
title they change, however, to the more promis- 
ing one of u The Floating Capital," but all they 
can do will not get her rated at Lloyd's as class 
A, No. 1. Nevertheless, she is considered 
quite fit for a start except as regards her rig- 
ging, so a gang of riggers is engaged, and to 
work they go with a will, pulling away like 
" good 'uns," and Rhaubalyucan, Ghulthephools, 
and the riggers, soon set sail for the Gulf of 
Jugglum. On the shores of this gulf there 
appears to be a market a fish-market much 
after the manner of the celebrated market-scene 
in Masaniello. There is a chorus, too, as in 
Masaniello, the chorus being that of the riggers, 
who arrive in the nick of time at the market, 
and deal for flat fish and gudgeons extensively. 
Word for word, and note for note, the famous 
passage in the Masaniello chorus is copied in 
that of the riggers : 

Take heed, whisper low ! 
After which thunders forth the well-known 
joyous outbreak, 

The prize we seek we'll soon ensnare, 

and the scene closes with a Pas de Greeurs, or 
dance of riggers, a tremendous Rigadoon, " by 
the whole strength of the company." 

Now, while the King and his worthy ministers 
are cruising about, the guardianship of the trea- 
sure vault of the temple is entrustedto the King's 
eldest son, Prince Khofferghutter, a name not 
very suggestive of fitness for his office ; and an- 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 26, 1865.] 107 



other official of very evil tendencies enters into a 
plot with him to rob the treasure vault. That 
official's name is Ballanzjheet, apparently of 
mortal mould, but, in fact, one of the demons of 
the piece for a good deal of devilry was inter- 
woven through it. Ballanzjheet is celebrated 
for his disguises, and by this means (that is, in 
disguise) passes into the service of the treasure 
temple, while, in fact, he is only an imp of the 
worst description, and a favoured child of the 
Father of Lies, and he (that is, Ballanzjheet) and 
Khofferghutter make sad havoc in the treasure 
vault ; in short, playing old gooseberry with the 
money is the fruit of their union. 

Another of my dreamy imps was called the 
Demon of Distrust, at enmity with Khofferghut- 
ter and his confederate, and always dodging about 
hiding in sly places to watch them, and making 
ever and anon sharp speeches against them in 
most fantastical rhymes. In the course of this 
strange dream-drama the Spirit of Public Con- 
fidence appeared, who seemed but a simple sort 
of body, fond of works of fiction, which she was 
going about reading, much given to sweets of a 
deleterious and intoxicating character, made by 
a swindling confectioner called Suckkumbendi- 
bus, at whose shop this weak-minded spirit was 
a constant customer. Part of the " funny busi- 
ness" of this extravaganza consisted in Public 
Confidence having her pocket everlastingly 
picked by the oddest characters in which this 
dreamy drama abounded ; and one circumgyra- 
ting sylph, in particular, with spangled wings, 
personated by a young lady, was very busy in 
cheating everybody she could. She was called 
" Legs," and a very nice pair she had, by-the-by, 
but, instead of being encased in white silk or 
in ** fleshings," they were dressed in black. 

Some mysterious doings were going on be- 
tween Prince Khofferghutter and this sylph, and 
once, on her flying away with a lot of money, 
the Prince, pointing to the spangled flappers at 
her shoulders, elegantly exclaimed : 

" I say ! my eye ! 
How money does fly !" 

This witticism "brought down the house" to such 
a degree, that I wonder it did not waken me. 

There was a queer scene, too, between Bal- 
lanzjheet and the Father of Lies. The latter 
asks why the former has a large bag of gold- 
dust in his possession. " I always melt my gold 
into ingots, in my fire here," says Father of 
Lies ; and he proposes to do the same by Bal- 
lanzjheet's gold-dust, if he likes. But Ballan- 
zjheet says he can turn his dust into a much larger 
amount than melting it down could produce. 
" How ?" inquires Eather of Lies. * By throw- 
ing it into people's eyes," says Ballanzjheet, 
* that's how 7 do it !" 

Towards the end of the piece, Public Con- 
fidence approached the Temple of Mammon with 
an ample offering, and Khofferghutter, with an 
insinuating smile and a low bow, received it from 
her. They both retired at opposite sides, the 
Demon of Distrust peeping from behind a 
column where he had been hidden. This column, 
like all the others of the temple, was of a 



twisted form, such as RafFaelle introduces in the 
cartoon of " The Beautiful Gate," and was com- 
posed of intertwined bars of gold, silver, and 
copper, representing pounds, shillings, and pence, 
and from this hiding-place, I say, the Demon of 
Distrust came forward. Looking to the point 
where Public Confidence had retired, he put 
his hands to his nose, after the manner of 
"taking a sight," and then to his sides, and 
shook again with a guffaw of a laugh. Then, 
after clenching his fists and brandishing them 
in a most menacing manner after Khofferghut- 
ter, he made to the audience, in a confiden- 
tial style, one of his minacious and vindictive 
speeches. 

" Villany of villany, will Time disclose. 
' I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,' 
Sweet William says. This question / propose : 
Who knows a bank whereon the vile time grows, 
And venture to prognosticate 'twill never close f 
For on that bank, alas! in vile time grows 
Some parasites that steal the sap that flows, 
And leaves the parent ' Plant' to withering woes ! 
Yes, upon that bank in vile time grows 
Inward corruption, gnawing, without shows, 
Like the maggot in the nut, or the canker in the 

rose. 
Within the Fane, from gaze profane, a secret drain 

there flows, 
Sucking down the money which the public never 

knows. 
Stealthily, the wealth away, will melt away, like 

snows 
That fall on pavements underneath which baker's 

oven glows. 
'Twould take a conjuror to tell how all the money 

goes. 
Is't chasing ? is it racing ? for no one can suppose 
That horses fine, and costly wine, and dinners, and 

fine clothes, 
Of cash by hundred thousands, could possibly dis- 
pose. 
Is't knave and ace that go the pace, or little bones 

whose throws 
Can make or break the reckless rake that bird of 

night who goes 
To a fashionable aviary of pigeons and of crows ? 
Or is there an ambition to be 'mong the ' ayes' and 

* noes' 
Of a certain 'House?' to get into which always 

costs quelque chose. 
Or are there mines? For pantomimes so quickly 

can't transpose, 
As 'balances' at bankers are transmogrified by 

those. 
Or was ' the opera' taken? that ruin of repose, 
To subsidise soprani and the meritorious toes 
Of high danseuses, of able thews and sinews, who 

unclose 
The eyes of some old fogies thro' the opera who 

dose. 
Or was it ' Pennsylvanian Bonds' that ' chaw'd all 

up?' Who knows? 
But guessing is like fretting, of no use. Experience 

shows 
Our grandmothers knew better where their trust 

they might repose, 
For they kept their golden guineas safely hidden in 

their hose. 
A ravelled worsted stocking is safer far for heirs 
Than when a worsted banking-house unravels its 

affairs." 



108 [August 26, 18C5.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



After this, there was an attempt at a grand 
piece of scenic illusion, but seemingly a hitch 
occurred in the machinery, and the audience 
began to hiss, and there were loud cries of 
" Manager ! Manager !" The manager, how- 
ever, did not appear, and the piece seemed to 
be hurried over to a termination. 

An old witch hobbled in, holding up a bag, 
and crying, " Now for the catastrophe !" Then, 
opening the bag, she exclaimed, "The cat's 
out of the bag !" and out jumped a large 
cat, which changed immediately into a lovely 
young lady, dressed in white, and bearing a 
wandi. She called on Prince Khofferghutter, 
in an appalling style, to " ap-p-e-a-r ! ! !" which 
he did, throwing himself on his knees before 
her. She then exclaimed, in a magnificent 
manner, 

"Wretched youth ! 
I am the Spirit of Truth." 
She waved her wand, and several of her 
attendants rushed in, some of whom earned 
off Khofferghutter in chains, while others pur- 
sued up and down the evil-doers of the 
temple, and a desperate hurry-scurry ensued. 
In the midst of all this shindy, the Spirit of 
Truth shook her wand at the temple, over 
whose portico, by the way, blazed forth in 
letters of gold, 

" Temple or Mammon," 
and at this condemnatory motion of the wand 
down fell the "Pane of the Golden God" with 
a loud crash, a cloud of dust arose from the 
fallen rubbish, and all that remained of the 
temple was the name, which still appeared on the 
cloud ; but even that underwent a change, for 
the initial letter M was metamorphosed into 
G, so Mammon became Gammon. 



OUR UNCLES. 

I have vowed to take our uncles down a peg, 
and now I will do it. I have said that they are 
vain, purse-proud, pretentious, blusterous old 
humbugs, and I hold by that. I repeat, aunt is the 
friend, not uncle. Mind, I speak ex cathedra, 
for I am an uncle myself, and you know the 
proverb: which, being interpreted for the 
present occasion, is set an uncle to catch an 
uncle. 

No, no, my fine fellows, you can't deceive me. 
/know you, with your broad-brimmed hats, and 
your flowered waistcoats, and your gaiters, and 
your malacca canes, with the tassel, and all the rest 
of your Brummagem avuncular paraphernalia. 
What is the meaning of paraphernalia ? Tell 
me that. Goods in a wife's disposal. Just so. 
All the good that is in you is derived from your 
association with our aunts. You shine with a 
borrowed light. You are the moons of our 
family system, full and fair enough in the face 
sometimes ; but pale and cold. Our aunts are 
the warm suns. 

Come down from that pedestal. I am regard- 
ing you as an image now, a senseless stock and 
stone, which we have worshipped too long. So, 



I say, come down from that pedestal. Let me 
ask, who put you up there on that towering 
pinnacle, where you have no right to be ? I 
will answer that question. The comedy writers 
put you up there. You were put up there as a 
Deus ex machina, a figure to be let down a wire, 
a mere dummy with a sham purse, and sham 
sovereigns in it you being wound up to give 
those sham sovereigns to a sham nephew, whose 
distress is as much a sham as the " gold" which 
relieves him. If those pieces chinking in your 
purse were anything better than discs of tin, 
you would see your nephew hanged before you 
would give him one of them. 

Holding the mirror up to nature, I can find 
no one at all like you reflected in it. You exist 
only in the imagination of the comedy writer. 
He brings you out from his box of figures, as 
occasion requires, just as he brings out the 
wicked lord and the virtuous peasant. What is 
the difference between you and the wicked 
lord ? The wicked lord dresses in sky-blue 
velvet and you dress in snuff-brown. The wicked 
lord wears a sword, and has elegant legs; you 
carry a malacca cane, and make up your legs to 
convey the respectable idea of rupees and gout. 
As to the difference between you and the vir- 
tuous peasant, it is simply this : you say " Gad- 
zooks" and he says " Dang it." Which is the 
full extent of profanity to which he will go in 
presence of the public, albeit out of his flowered 
waistcoat he can swear like a trooper, just as 
you, when you lay aside your broad-brimmed 
hat, your gaiters, and your malacca cane with 
the tassel, can be, in reality, as wicked, as 
cruel, and as heartless, as the lord is supposed 
to be. Yes ; the lord is wicked because he is a 
lord; the peasant is virtuous because he is a 
peasant, and you are rich and generous because 
you are an uncle. It would be just as reason- 
able to regard a man as pious because he is a 
pork-butcher. 

I appeal to the public. Is not this your idea' 
of uncles ? That they are all kind-hearted old 
fogies, whose whole mission on earth is to give 
their nephews and nieces sovereigns, and make 
them happy ; that they are short and fat and 
choleric, gruff externally, but within, warm ; 
that, almost as a rule, they make a great deal 
of money in India, and come home on purpose 
to die of liver complaint, and leave it all to the 
children of their brothers and sisters ; that they 
condemn themselves to celibacy for this very 
purpose, and die happy in the consciousness 
that they have fulfilled that purpose. Yes ; you 
admit it this is your idea of uncles. Now, 
whence have you derived that idea ? Is it war- 
ranted by your own experience? When you 
have had sufficient time to review your uncles 
and reckon up how many sovereigns they have 
given you, and what amount of happiness they 
have conferred upon you, I have no doubt you 
will be very much surprised to find that it is 
not warranted by your experience. You have 
had faith in an uncle of this sort ; but when 
you come to turn him about and examine his 
points, you discover that he is nothing but an 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 26, 1865.] 109 



idea an idea of the comedy writer. He has 
been handed down to us from the earliest eras 
of the drama, until we find him setting a copy 
to all modern time in the School for Scandal. 
Do you believe in Sir Oliver Surface ? /don't. 
Do you believe that an uncle of real life would 
have troubled himself about those arcades ambo, 
Joseph and Charles ? Why should he ? Joseph 
was a cold-hearted hypocrite; Charles was a 
spendthrift, and as great a hypocrite as Joseph. 
Don't tell me it was because he had natural 
affection that he wouldn't sell his uncle's pic- 
ture. He knew very well all the time who the 
old fellow in the snuff-coloured coat was. Care- 
less had warned him beforehand. And the old 
donkey, Sir Oliver, was vain enough to believe 
those crocodile tears genuine ! I know I have 
tried on little dodges of this kind with my 
uncles, and it was no go. I have baited the 
hook with real genuine affection, but they 
wouldn't bite. You see the sovereigns which 
they chinked in their pockets were made of gold, 
not of tin. And in this connexion gold is more a 
hardener of the heart than tin. 

It is true we are all familiar with these absurd 
uncles, who are for ever going about with a 
breastful of human kindness and a purseful of 
money; but, according to my experience and 
the experience of a large circle of nephews and 
nieces of my acquaintance, we rarely never, I 
may say meet with them, except on the stage. 
That jeune premier's stage uncle is giving him 
gold and his blessing, while his real uncle at 
home is selling him up for the fifty pounds he 
owes him. 

As a matter of fact and reality, I prefer the 
tragedy writer's view of our uncles. In tragedy 
they are uncles who smother us in our sleep, 
who burn our eyes out with red-hot irons, who 
take us into dark woods and lose us, who poison 
our papas as they lie sleeping in their back 
gardens of an afternoon. This sort of uncle is 
much nearer the mark of real life. Instead of 
ftis being designed by nature and a beneficent 
fate to be a blessing to his nephews, his nephews 
are designed to be a curse to him. They stand 
in his way, or they are always wanting some- 
thing of him, or they are a disgrace to him. 
It is only natural, therefore, that he should 
consider them bores, and treat them as such. 

According to my experience, the uncle of 
real life seldom bears any resemblance to the 
ideal which we are all so fond of cherishing. 
He is neither uniformly good, as he appears in 
comedy, nor uniformly bad, as he is represented 
in tragedy. He is of all sorts, and in the ma- 
jority of the aspects which he assumes he is 
about as indifferent and unsatisfactory a person 
as is to be met with on the stage of life. 

Let us review some of the uncles whom we 
all know and have experience of every day. 
About that uncle who goes to India, makes a 
heap of money, and comes back expressly to die 
and leave it all to his nephews and nieces. Who 
knows him ? Is there one person in ten thou- 
sand who ever had, or ever will have, such an 
uncle ? Is there one in a million ? I opine, not. 



Such a phenomenon has been seen and known, 
no doubt, but he is not the uncle of every day 
in the week ; far from it. I once thought that 
/had an uncle of this delightful kind, but I was 
mistaken. True, I had an uncle he remained in 
India many years, he made a large fortune, and 
he came home (as we all expected) with the ami- 
able intention of dying and leaving it to his re- 
lations. But in this latter respect he neglected to 
fulfil his mission. After reaching London he came 
down to the country place where we lived, and ex- 
cited us all to a pitch of delirium with a story of his 
immense wealth and benevolent intentions. We 
made a great fuss with him ; we launched into 
enormous expenses to entertain him and make 
him comfortable. We gave him the very softest 
bed in the house to die on, we provided parch- 
ment, pounce, and sealing-wax for the will. The 
girls broke off their matches with substantial 
young farmers in the expectation of elegant 
earls; the boys forfeited their indentures in the 
assurance of commissions in the army ; we 
snubbed and slighted our old humble friends, 
and quarrelled with them. In fact we conducted 
ourselves as if we had had the bird in the hand. 
But the bird was still in the bush. He flew 
away to London to settle his affairs, but he 
never came back, and we never heard of him 
more. It was suspected that he was murdered 
in London for his money, but I don't believe he 
had any money ; my opinion is that he was a 
boasting, lying humbug, like Joe Grimaldi's 
brother, of whom I will never believe anything 
but that his design was to impose upon Joe, and 
live upon him until he should be disposed for 
another voyage. Did I not once know an uncle 
who came home to his family and excited great 
expectations (at the same time securing for him- 
self great attention and hospitality) by reason 
of a large and heavy box, which he said he had 
brought direct from the Australian diggings ? 
This uncle remained with his family for six 
months, living on the fat of the land, and hinting 
mysteriously every now and then that the box 
would be opened some day soon. But one 
morning he disappeared suddenly, and when the 
box was opened by his expectant nephews aud 
nieces it was found to contain paving-stones ! 

That rich uncle from India was the ruin of us. 
We had got into debt on our expectations ; we 
were sued on account of calipash and calipee ; 
we had to borrow money of the neighbours we 
had slighted ; we had to eat humble pie and 
abase ourselves in the dust. I have known a 
rich uncle, and so, no doubt, have you an 
uncle who lived by himself in a fine house, 
securely guarded by a spiked wall behind, and 
a dragon of a housekeeper in front. We all 
look up to that uncle, and have expectations of 
him. But, generally, that uncle looks down upon 
us, and disappoints those expectations. It is 
no easy matter to pass that dragon of a house- 
keeper, looking out from her tower of observa- 
tion in the front parlour. She has a keen eye 
for nephews wanting a few pounds, or a suit of 
clothes, or a letter of recommendation. It is 
really wonderful how very often an uncle of this 



110 [August 26, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



class, so guarded, is " not at home." And when 
he is at home, and you are admitted to his bene- 
volent presence, does he poke you in the ribs, 
call you a sly dog, and chuck you purses of 
money ? Does he ? But why do I ask, when 
I know it is much more his disposition to slap 
you in the face, call you a lazy dog, and turn you 
away from his door. If he gives you anything 
which he rarely does without consulting his 
housekeeper he gives it you grudgingly, tell- 
ing you that this is the last time, and you 
mustn't apply to him any more. And how does 
he ask about* his dear brother, your papa? Does 
he not ask after him as if he were a low, unfor- 
tunate person, who had no business to be his 
brother? And when you tell him that your 
papa has had another misfortune, he says, 
"Humph!" which is a word which is never 
used by any one but curmudgeons and grumpy 
uncles. Is it in your recollection that, when 
you visit a rich uncle of this kind, you are al- 
ways sharply told to wipe your feet, and not to 
make a mess with the crumbs of the dry stale 
biscuit they gave you for refreshment ? How 
often does this uncle make a fool of himself (and 
of you) by marrying that dragon of a house- 
keeper, or leaving all his money for the pro- 
motion of something which is anything but 
the welfare of his own flesh and blood ? 

There is another variety of rich uncle, who 
is a good deal more pleasant in a certain way. 
He is rather a jolly old party, but he is a hum- 
bug, for all that. He slips a sovereign into your 
hand just to enjoy your surprise and delight; 
he takes you out for the day, because you are 
a handsome lad, perhaps, and people may take 
you for his son. Notice him prick up his ears 
when some one says, " Hasn't that old gentle- 
man got a fine boy !" How often does he in- 
troduce you to his friends, and say, " My 
nephew, sir," quite proud to let people know 
that he has members of his family better look- 
ing than himself. In the innocence of your 
young heart, you think it very kind of uncle to 
take you to the theatre, and sit out, for your 
sake, some play that he must have seen scores 
of times. You don't know then, but you come 
to understand afterwards, that it was a much 
greater gratification to him to watch your won- 
der and astonishment and to listen to your 
hearty boyish remarks, than it was to you to gaze 
at the brilliant scenes, and listen to the fine 
talk of the actors. It is a new sensation to the 
selfish old hunks ! When he gives you that 
sovereign and pays for the brougham and the 
box, he has had his pleasure cheap. 

But, if I am not mistaken, we are all much 
more familiar with uncles who are not rich, who, 
indeed, are anything but rich. I have known 
uncles come back from India and lands of gold, 
in rags and tatters with very generous disposi- 
tions, no doubt, but without the means of show- 
ing them. I have known nephews and nieces 
club together to send those uncles back again to 
India and lands of gold, not with the faintest 
hope that any of the gold would ever stick to 
them, but simply to get them out of the way. 



I knew such an uncle once, who came back from 
El Dorado and declared that he would hang him- 
self if his married niece did not give him a new 
pea-jacket with brass buttons. The favour 
which this uncle did to his relations was to get 
drunk and consort in an unseemly manner with 
the servant maids. 

And who has not known, to his cost, that 
uncle of a free and liberal disposition as re- 
gards himself who never settles down to any- 
thing, who lives gaily at the expense of the 
family, and, in bearing the name of the family 
constantly drags the name through the dirt and 
brings it to disgrace ? This is an irrepressible 
sort of uncle, whom there is no disposing of. 
His brothers and sisters, and nephews and 
nieces, are people of credit and renown in the 
world, and they don't like to send their scape- 
grace uncle out of their own immediate sphere, 
where they are well known, into another sphere 
where they are not so well known. And so 
they take the viper to their bosoms, and bear 
with him, as best they may, while he bites them 
all over. I declare, upon my honour, that this 
is the most generous uncle I have ever met 
with. Yes, I have known him poke his nephews 
in the ribs, and call them sly dogs, and give 
them money. But it was not his own money ! 

I don't like to say anything about the poor, 
unfortunate, half-starved, broken-down uncle, 
but he is, if I may be allowed the expression, 
a frequent fact, nevertheless. He is an uncle 
whose existence is sometimes kept a profound 
secret, who is warned never to come to the 
house when there is company, and who, when 
he does arrive, on a borrowing expedition, at 
an inopportune moment, is hid away out of 
sight in the housekeeper's room, or the kitchen. 
I am afraid I can remember an uncle of this 
class, who, for many years, was only known to 
his nephews and nieces as " the man." He 
was a man, but I fear he was not a brother. 

These are very unpretending uncles, who 
would never take the liberty to poke their 
nephews in the ribs, and never have any money 
about them to chuck at anybody. I pity them. 
But as for those blusterous, purse-proud patron- 
ising uncles, who get the credit for unlimited 
human kindness and generosity, they are arrant 
old humbugs and pretenders. I vowed that I 
would take them down a peg, and now I flatter 
myself 1 have done it. 

AMATEUR FINANCE. 

IN THREE PARTS. PART III. 

Amongst the directors of "The House 
and Land Finance and Credit Company (Li- 
mited)," there was hardly a single individual 
who did not attempt to serve two masters. We 
had on the Board soldiers, sailors, barristers, re- 
tired Indian judges, country gentlemen, solicitors, 
and pure idlers individuals whose whole day 
was taken up in finding out the best way of killing 
time but we had very few merchants, and no 
bankers, or men whose business it had been to 
deal in financial undertakings. But notwith- 



Charles DickenB.] 



ALL THE YEAB ROUND. 



[August 26, 18GC] 111 



standing this, we all thought ourselves fully 
competent to negotiate or discuss any under- 
taking, no matter how large, or no matter how 
intricate were the various ramifications which 
had to be considered ere we decided the ques- 
tion. 

After we had been some little time at work, 
and our credit was pretty well established, one 
of the small South American republics applied 
to us for a loan of two millions sterling. That 
is to say, the government in question did not 
ask or expect us to put our hands in our pockets 
and make over this amount to them ; nor yet 
was it deemed likely that we should sign a 
cheque on our bankers for two millions, and 
send it to them in a registered letter. What 
they wanted was that we should "place the 
loan" on the London and foreign markets for 
them, and this we undertook to do on certain 
conditions. These were, first, that our com- 
mission should be two per cent on the whole 
amount if we succeeded and "floated 5 ' the 
undertaking, and one per cent if we failed in 
so doing. Thus, whether the loan came off or 
not, we were certain of a commission of at least 
twenty thousand pounds, or if the loan was 
taken up, of double that amount. In the second 
place, the loan, if it succeeded, was to be paid 
half in cash, and half in acceptances of our 
company, which were to be renewed every six 
months. And lastly, the customs revenues of 
the republic were to be made over to us as 
security, and we were to put men of our own 
into office as receivers of customs, until the loan 
was paid off. The loan was to be issued to the 
public at seventy-five, or, in other words, for 
every hundred pounds worth of scrip in this 
loan, the subscribers would only have to pay 
seventy-five pounds, and every half year a certain 
number of these bonds which were to be de- 
cided by lottery were to be redeemed at par. 
Thus, let us say that Mr. Jones subscribes for 
one thousand pounds in this loan ; he will only 
have to pay seventy-five per cent for the sum, 
or seven hundred and fifty pounds for one 
thousand pounds' worth of bonds, and he would 
receive interest at the rate of six per cent upon 
the thousand, not upon the seven hundred and 
fifty pounds. Moreover, let us suppose that at 
the first or second drawing of lots to decide what 
bonds of the scrip is to be redeemed, he was 
fortunate enough to have one, two, or more of 
his numbers turn up, he would then receive 
one hundred pounds for each seventy-five pounds 
he had laid out. The mere chance of being 
fortunate enough to secure such a prize, was of 
itself quite enough to attract plenty of sub- 
scribers. Our company showed its complete 
confidence in the undertaking by subscribing 
largely to the loan on its own account. But as 
the directors knew that all the shares for the 
company could be paid for in our own ac- 
ceptances, there was but little of our capital 
which could be risked, no matter how much of 
the loan we acting as a corporation should 
take for ourselves. 

The loan floated, there was no possible doubt 



about it. At the very favourable terms which we 
had offered it to the public, the two millions had 
been subscribed for at once. Of this gross total 
some three hundred thousand pounds belonged 
to our company ; and although we paid for them 
in renewable bills of our own, no sooner was 
the scrip issued than we made use of it to raise 
more money as we wanted it. Thus our bills 
really often procured for us exactly double the 
value of the sum they represented upon paper. 
If we wanted funds, we often placed as security 
in one of the joint-stock banks the bonds, or cou- 
pons, we held of the loan, the bank manager who 
advanced the money little thinking that the scrip 
he was taking as security was based upon no 
better foundation than bills which bore our own 
signature and no other. In short, the signature 
and seal of the company was the foundation of 
more transactions than most people dreamt of. 
We were always able to purchase any amount 
of shares upon our own acceptances at three or six 
months, and these shares could be always quickly 
turned into cash when we required it. In fact, 
it was a system of founding credit, or getting 
credit, upon our own bills or notes of hand, and 
real security beyond our own signatures we had 
none whatever, although the fact was never 
fully understood by the public. This sort of 
business suited us. The paid-up capital of the 
company was never laid out at all, but was kept 
at interest with our banker. The capital we 
worked upon was what we made by our own 
bills, and of this we created as much as ever we 
wanted. What wonder, then, if our profits were 
large ? In measure as we required money to 
work with, we, so to speak, coined it, and this 
gave us interest at a high rate, with interest 
upon interest, almost as much as ever we re- 
quired. Our concern did not belie its name. 
We were rightly called a House and Land Com- 
pany, for it was on such securities that we pro- 
fessed chiefly to lend, and as to being a " finance 
and Credit" affair, we certainly worked on 
credit, for the whole basis of our scheme was to 
make others take on credit paper bearing our 
signature, and pay us very highly for taking it. 
The loan for the South American republic we 
carried through, and a most profitable business 
it was for us in every way. The English public 
took up the full amount of two millions, so that 
there was little or nothing left to place on the 
Erench or other foreign markets. As I said 
before, the fact of obtaining for seventy-five 
pounds scrip of a recognisea government for 
one hundred, proved a temptation which few 
people could withstand. Moreover, after six 
months' time a certain portion of the scrip 
would be paid off at par, and every bond- 
holder had a chance of obtaining this great 
piece of good fortune. Then, again, the pay- 
ments of each shareholder had not to be made 
at once, and what will nine men out of ten not 
do on credit when they can obtain it ? When 
an individual applied for shares in the loan, he 
had to deposit iive pounds, a similar sum when 
the shares were allotted to him, and as much 
more a month later. After this, he had to pay 



112 [August 23, 1S65.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



fifteen pounds every two months, until he had 
paid off the whole seventy-five pounds, so that he 
had about nine months in which to turn himself 
round and get the money. 

When the transaction with the South Ame- 
rican government was so far finished that the 
loan had been taken up, our account with them 
stood somewhat as follows : "We held security, 
more or less good, over the customs dues of the 
country for two millions sterling, on which sum 
they had to pay us two per ceut commission, 
and six. per cent interest. For this they re- 
ceived one million five hundred thousand pounds, 
the payment to be spread over a year, and to be 
made two-thirds in cash and one-third in our ac- 
ceptances, which of course we could renew as we 
thought fit. Thus we really, for our own bills, not 
cash, of seventy-five pounds, obtained scrip worth 
one hundred pounds, and charged interest at the 
rate of six per cent upon the hundred pounds. 
The commission was to be deducted from the first 
payment of the loan, and had to be paid in hard 
coin. The securities which the South American 
government gave us we made available to raise 
money upon when we wanted it, and thus, as I 
have before pointed out, we made our own 
signature that is to say, the bills we gave good 
for obtaining, as it were, double the amount 
which they represented. 

But whilst working out our scheme in foreign 
lands, we did not neglect the harvest at home. 
Few people who have not been behind the scenes 
can be aware what immense interest can be ob- 
tained in London in the City, from business 
men who are reported to be in good and even ex- 
cellent circumstances if the thing is managed 
quietly, and no one knows that the advance has 
been made. In every bank, every bill-discounter's 
office, every finance company's establishment, 
there are small, private, Chubb-locked ledgers, 
which, if laid open to the world, would cause a 
far greater sensation east of Temple-bar than if 
all the " seals of confession" throughout Europe 
were broken. It is not only the needy West- 
end swell, or the broken-down Guardsman, or the 
man who has made a bad book at Goodwood, 
that must have money, and will pay any price 
for it, provided the transaction is " kept dark." 
I have known a firm whose signature in any com- 
mercial town in Europe would have been good 
for half a million and more, so hard up, that if 
they had not been accommodated with two or 
three hundred thousand pounds, they must, as 
the Americans say, have " cracked up." In such 
cases, men don't go to their bankers ; on the con- 
trary, they always endeavour to keep up a good 
show with that individual, and for this reason 
never allow their balance with him to run lower 
than a certain fixed amount. Customers like these 
we dealt largely with, and of course made them 
pay highly for the accommodation we gave them. 
I remember an instance of this kind. A bill- 
broker came to me as managing director of the 
" House and Land" one morning, and asked 
whether we would accept his drafts on our 
company for a hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds, provided we came to terms respecting 



the interest and commission which was to be 
paid. I, of course, answered his question, Scotch 
fashion, by asking another, which was, what 
securities he had to offer us. He named certain 
bonds, shares, debentures, and such-like, all of 
which were quite third or fourth class securi- 
ties. These I declined, feeling certain that there 
must be something behind which I could not yet 
see, and being, at the same time, somewhat 
surprised that so old a hand in obtaining loans, 
discounts, and advances, should propose such 
very indifferent security. Presently, as if struck 
with a sudden thought, he exclaimed, " Suppose 
I was to bring you a letter of guarantee from 
Messrs. Blank and Blank," naming a very large 
and first-class discounting firm in the City, 
" would you let me have the money ?" I at 
once replied that I would, and in twenty minutes 
he returned with the letter from the firm he had 
named, in which they undertook to repay us the 
loan, if it was not liquidated by the borrower on 
such a date, or to pay off any portion of the loan 
which was unpaid at that period. The security 
was undoubted, and, after some little bargain- 
ing about the commission and interest, the 
transaction was concluded, although I was still 
sadly puzzled to understand how it was that the 
broker had obtained the guarantee of Messrs. 
Blank and Blank, or what he could want with 
so large a sum of money. In due time the loan 
was repaid, but it was not until some months 
later that I found out, by mere chance, the outs 
and ins of the transaction. 

The broker some months later suspended pay- 
ment, and as he owed our company a few hundred 
pounds, I was appointed one of the committee to 
investigate his affairs. His books were not very 
voluminous, and were exceedingly well kept, all 
in his own handwriting. Amongst other matters, 
I found that he had no less than three separate 
accounts open with the great discount house of 
Blank and Blank. One of these was a discount 
account, in which it appeared that he had, from 
time to time, in the regular way of business, 
discounted bills of customers with the firm. 
This was of course perfectly intelligible, and 
needed no explanation whatever. The second, 
a loan account, was also plain. The broker had 
from time to time borrowed money from the 
great discounting house, and had repaid such 
advances. But the third account, headed 
Guarantee Account with Messrs. Blank and 
Blank, I could make nothing of. Erom it the 
broker appeared to be a creditor of Messrs. 
Blank and Blank, and nothing was shown why 
or wherefore these sums due to him, or paid to 
him, had been earned. We could not make the 
books balance by taking in this account. The 
name of our company, bein<* put down as a 
creditor of Messrs. Blank and Blank, made me 
still more anxious to learn all about the trans- 
actions detailed in the books, and I questioned 
the broker concerning it. At first he declined 
altogether to answer me, but, upon being pressed, 
and upon my threatening to have the estate 
thrown into bankruptcy, when he would be 
obliged to answer the commissioner of the court, 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 26, 1865.] 113 



he gave me the information I required. It would 
appear that Messrs. Blank and Blank, although 
passing for men of almost unbounded wealth, 
were often very hard pressed for money. They 
did not like to make their wants known to any 
one, as, to do so, they would at once and for ever 
ruin their credit. What they did, therefore, 
was to employ as middleman my friend the 
broker, who borrowed the money as if for him- 
self ; but gave the security of those for whom 
he really obtained the, loan. I found that the 
same little game had been carried on with 
almost every bank and finance company in Lon- 
don, and that whilst passing for a firm that 
could command any sum it liked, they were, in 
point of fact, obliged day by day to feed their 
till with the money of others, borrowed in the 
name of a third party. 

But there were many who came to us direct, 
and who, rather than let it be known that they 
were in need of a few thousands, would have 
pawned themselves, and sold their families into 
slavery. Many of these were in our books; 
although the full nature of the transactions 
were known only to myself. I remember the 
head of one of the most wealthy mercantile 
firms coming to me one forenoon, and offering 
to deposit with me the title-deeds of his estate, 
which was worth some fifty or sixty thousand 
pounds, and also to give me a private bill of 
sale over his furniture, plate, pictures, carriages 
and horses worth at least ten thousand pounds 
more if I could let him have twenty thousand 
pounds that day, and until the next mail from 
India arrived. There being no danger whatever 
in the transaction, I agreed to let him have the 
money in bills drawn by a third party, a man of 
straw, and accepted by us at once. The advance 
was only wanted for about twenty days, yet I 
charged him two per cent commission, and at 
the rate of five per cent per annum. The loan 
was worth any sum that could be named to him. 
Had he not obtained it, the bills of his firm would 
have been returned that evening, and the house 
of old standing and great respectability 
have been in the Gazette next day. As it was, 
he was able to tide over the difficulty. By the 
next mail from Bombay the expected remittances 
came, he repaid the loan, and no one was a bit 
the wiser of the touch-and-go danger he had 
escaped. 

But why, it will be asked, should not this 
party have applied to his banker for an advance ? 
Would not that personhavebeen the most natural 
person to go to when in difficulty ? To this I 
reply, that, in these days of joint-stock banking, 
no merchant who is at all on shaky ground 
likes to apply to the manager of a bank for 
an advance. In the commercial world, credit is 
ever v thing. If the manager of a bank at which 
you keep your account knows you to be in diffi- 
culties, he is, in a measure, obliged to inform 
Messrs. Smith, Jones, Robinson, and Brown, 
who are his directors and masters. When your 
credit has been talked of in the bank parlour, 
you are little better than a dead man. Besides, 
do you suppose that Smith will not tell the story 



in confidence, of course to his friend Wilson, 
as they go home together on the knife-board of 
the Clapham, omnibus ? Or, when Jones goes this 
afternoon to the board meeting of the Grand 
Junction of Mexico Railway Company, of which 
he is a director, will he not mention what he 
heard to-day at the Resistance Bank? Of 
course he will ; and your name will be " up," 
be talked about ; your bills will not be dis- 
counted readily, if at all ; and, in a word, your 
credit be shaken, which means gone. But why 
not go to a private banker ? It is not given 
unto everybody to have private bankers, and 
they, too, are often as difficult to deal with as 
the manager of a joint-stock concern. In former 
days it was different. Any man who could 
show his private banker that he could pay 
twenty shillings in the pound, was certain to be 
helped to the very utmost of the security he 
could offer, and very often beyond it. It is 
still so with W r est-end and country bankers, 
when noblemen, country gentlemen, or others 
who have dealt long with them, and have real 
security to offer, are in temporary troubles. 
There are very few whose names are in the 
Peerage, the Baronetage, or Burke's Landed 
Gentry, but what have once or oftener in their 
lives gone into Coutts's, Drummond's, or Ran- 
some's with an anxious careworn face, and come 
out in a quarter of an hour looking quite jolly. 
The best of men the best in a pecuniary as 
well as in a moral sense may, and will, want 
money until the end of time, and if they behave 
honestly with those who lend it them, will be able 
to borrow again and again. But in the present 
day merchants don't much care to keep their 
accounts with private bankers. The latter is 
to the trader what a father confessor is to a 
Roman Catholic, only that the latter is a good 
deal more indulgent than the former. The 
banker knows all that the merchant does, and 
in these days of great commerce and great over- 
trading, most men in a large way of business 
divide their accounts, so that no one bank 
need know all the risks they run in trade. 
There are now few firms that don't patronise 
more than one bank. If a house deals exclu- 
sively with a private bank, you may take it for 
granted that it does not put its hand out further 
than it can draw back, and the head of the firm 
is a steady-going, well-to-do individual, who sel- 
dom wants to discount, and who sleeps easy at 
night. 

Finance companies are upon a different foot- 
ing. They are to commerce what the Jew 
money-lending, West-end-living attorney is to 
the Household Brigade. They charge hi^h, run 
greater risks, make greater profits, ana keep 
transactions they enter into much quieter than 
the banks, either private or joint-stock. This is 
one reason why they flourish so greatly. The 
managing director of a finance and credit com- 
pany is everything, and does not even tell his 
colleagues who are the parties that have borrowed 
from their purse. So long as the securities he 
holds are good, and are of greater amount than 
the money he has lent, the other directors ask 



114 [August 26, 1SC5.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



no questions. Unless the latter have every con- 
fidence in him, they would not commit their 
affairs to his management, and, in point of fact, 
he but acts as a pawnbroker on a large scale. 
His chief work is to see that the article pledged 
is worth more than the money advanced upon it. 
When large advances have to be made to other 
companies, on which financial operations of 
great magnitude are entered into, the directors, 
as a body, control the decisions arrived at by 
the board. They don't run great risks, or at 
least they don't think they do, and so long as 
borrowers will take their acceptances as cash, 
and pay interest for the use of their signature, 
there can be no doubt that finance and credit 
companies must make large fortunes for their 
shareholders. 

There is one, and only one, circumstance 
which can injure establishments like ours, and 
that is when discounting becomes difficult. Un- 
fortunately, this turn in the events of the trading 
world took place when we were at the height of 
our prosperity. Money got tight, and then 
tighter. The first intimation we had of there 
being a slight cloud in the horizon, was when 
one of our best customers applied for a loan of 
some ten thousand pounds, and requested that 
we would make the advance in cash, as he had 
found it difficult to discount some of our paper. 
Not that our bills were in any way exceptional. 
A commercial crisis was at hand, and, as if by 
instinct, all men began to limit the business 
they were doing. Short-dated bills became 
difficult to discount ; long-dated paper impos- 
sible. We had a great deal of money on deposit, 
for we could afford to pay a higher rate of inte- 
rest than the joint-stock banks, and consequently 
had many more depositors. By almost imper- 
ceptible degrees these commenced to withdraw 
the sums they had placed with us. After a 
short time, this deficit in our disposable balance 
began to be sensibly felt, but we believed that 
the storm would pass by, and even that the air 
would be benefited by the slight commercial 
thunder which had made itself heard. Unfor- 
tunately, when London, which may be called the 
heart of the mercantile world, is affected, the 
whole world feels more or less the effects of the 
illness. In South America there was a general 
stagnation of business, in consequence of which, 
the interest upon the loan we had negotiated 
for the government began to be very irregularly 
paid, and after a time was not paid at all. This 
event not only affected our funds, but affected 
still more our credit. As a matter of course, 
the want of punctuality on the part of those 
who had raised this money in England, became 
very soon generally known in London, and we 
found it almost impossible to raise money, as we 
used to do formerly, upon our own acceptances. 
We had still a good deal of business on hand, 
but chiefly with foreign houses and in foreign 
markets. We sent out a special agent to South 
America, in order to try and recover at any rate 
a part of the money we had lent; but after a 
time he reported that he found it impossible to 
do anything, as the local authorities threw every 



possible obstacle in his way. We then made a 
complaint to the Foreign Office in London, who 
sent out instructions to her Majesty's represen- 
tative in the republic, who made a reference to 
the authorities at home, who promised to do 
their utmost for us, but in the end did nothing. 
What could we do, or what could we expect"? 
England would certainly not go to war with a 
republic situated thousands of miles away, for 
the sake of a finance company, so we had but to 
make the best of a bad job, and wait for better 
times. 

In the mean while, the aspect of things 
was not improving at home. The joint-stock 
banks, having long watched our success with 
jealousy, now rejoiced when they found that 
both duty and inclination led them to wound 
us upon our weakest point, that of refusing 
to discount our paper held by third parties. 
At last it came to this, our acceptances were 
so very difficult to negotiate, that borrowers 
would not take them as cash, except at a very 
low rate of interest. Our directors thought 
they would contract greatly the limits of our 
business, and only advanced money to those 
who could produce the most unexceptionable se- 
curity. But here, too, we were foiled. Those 
who had really sterling security to offer, did not 
bring it to us, they went to the joint-stock 
banks with whom they had dealt all along. We 
determined not to offer our bills any more to 
customers, but when we made any advances, 
to do so in cash. This worked very well for a 
time, but, of course, lessened immensely the 
amount of profits we had to show at the next 
general meeting, and of course made the 
shareholders angry. A very stormy discus- 
sion was the result. Our shareholders had all 
along been accustomed to very high dividends, 
and thought they were to last for ever. Find- 
ing their mistake, the needy who are always 
the most greedy amongst them commenced 
upon that most sure mode of bringing a com- 
pany to grief, abusing the directors. It is 
curious, under such circumstances, what mere 
children a great number of those who hold 
shares in joint-stock companies become. What 
sane man, if he was disgusted with the way in 
which his house had been built, would stand at 
the door and tell the faults of its construction 
to all passers-by? But English shareholders 
do more than this. When annoyed with the 
directors of a company, they not only find fault 
with them, but also with everything that con- 
cerns the undertaking, and this in a manner 
that from its publicity cannot fail to greatly de- 
preciate their own property, and, as a natural 
consequence, invariably lessen the value of the 
shares. When the price of these falls, they turn 
round and take the board to task for ruining 
the prospects of the undertaking ; whereas, had 
they been content to hold their tongues, or else 
have washed their dirty linen at home, it is 
more than probable the shares in their company 
would have fallen little, if anything, in value. 
As a general rule, few shareholders who attend 
meetings of their company can resist the temp- 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 28, 18G5.] 115 



tation of seeing their own names in print. 
They pay, and generally pay very dearly, for 
their whistle, but they should not object to doing 
so, for it is but the natural consequence of their 
own acts, and for one company that is ruined 
by the manager or directors, a dozen are forced 
into the winding-up court by the more than 
absurd acts of their own shareholders. 

Unfortunately for us, a rumour of Monsieur 
Montaine, as Mr. Montague called himself, 
having taken money from the proprietors of the 
estate near Bordeaux on which we had advanced 
money, got abroad, and the shareholders were 
exceedingly indignant, although they could not 
prove what they asserted. At the next general 
meeting, they asked questions which few of the 
directors could, and none would answer. Toiled 
so far, they passed resolutions, which, in undis- 
guised English, accused the whole board of 
being rascals. The results of the proceedings 
were, that every one saw the shares of the com- 
pany must fall in value, and in one week they 
came down from six premium to two discount. 
This was but the natural result of the stupid, 
blind, and useless rage displayed at the meeting. 
It became more difficult than ever for us either 
to float any acceptances of our own, or to get 
others to take them as cash. And whilst this 
was going on, all monetary transactions in the 
City became more and more difficult. Like 
every undertaking or individual that has pros- 
pered, we had many enemies, and these now 
began to run us down by every means in 
their power. Unfortunately, our hands were 
not clean enough to come into any court ; we 
could neither appear before a jury nor before 
the opinion of the public, for there was very 
much to be said against us. Although it was 
worse than foolish of the shareholders to make 
a fuss about what could not now be remedied, I 
for one knew that in a general way these gentle- 
men had truth on their side. Perhaps no one of 
us who formed the board would have allowed that 
he had actually taken bribes, but there was little 
doubt thatnearly every director myself amongst 
the rest had accepted presents and gifts, with 
which matters were made very pleasant to him. 
In proportion as these stories got abroad, 
our credit fell off, and with that we lost what 
little remained of our business, so much, indeed, 
that instead of the busy scene which was for- 
merly witnessed at our offices, it became almost 
a matter of form going down there at all. 

Still we had money to receive from loans for- 
merly made, and outstanding debts ought by 
this time to have been coming in fast. But 
whenever either an individual, a firm, or a 
company is in difficulties, debtors seem in- 
variably to think they need not trouble them- 
selves to pay what they owe. In the days 
of prosperity, we had seldom or never to 
ask twice for what was due to us, but now 
letters from the secretary, letters from our soli- 
citor, writs, and even judgments were required 
before we could get in our money. At last, it 
struck some shareholder that he could makea 
good thing of it by winding us up, and in 



accordance with a proceeding which has be- 
fore been described in this journal,* he com- 
menced proceedings to bring the working of our 
company to an end. He succeeded; we are 
now in the Vice-Chancellor's Court, but how 
long we shall remaiu there it is impossible to 
say. A call of ten pounds per share has been 
made on our shareholders, but not one of them 
has obeyed the order, and I feel certain that 
nothing short of coercion will induce them to 
do so. 

ARAB THOUGHTS. 

Genekal E. Datjmas, well known to fame as 
the historian of the Arab Horse, and still better 
as the acute author of Mceurs et Coutumes de 
FAlgerie, has nevertheless the modesty to speak 
of the Arab mind as a subject which is still al- 
most unknown. Eeeling the interest which the 
Erench nation has in becoming acquainted with 
the intellect of its subjugated colony, he is pub- 
lishing, in the Revue Contemporaine, a series of 
Pensees Arabes. The thoughts, which are given 
in the picturesque disorder in which they ori- 
ginally cropped up, were collected, for the most 
part, in frequent conversations held with Abd- 
el-Kader during his compulsory residence in 
Erance. As the general is an accomplished 
Arabic scholar, it is easy to understand that he 
would be anxious to nrofit by his daily inter- 
course with the illustrious captive, at first at 
Eort Lamalgue, and afterwards at the Chateau 
de Pau, whither himself and General Lheureux 
were deputed to conduct him, in 1848, by order 
of the government. Here are some of the 
sayings he collected : 

Eortune has only a single eye, and that is on 
the top of her head. So long as she does not 
see you, she will call you by the tenderest 
names; she will treat you like her favourite 
child, and load you with benefits. But one fine 
day she will take you in her arms, raise you up 
on high, examine you attentively, and then 
repulse you with disgust, exclaiming, " Be off ; 
be off with you ! You are not my son." 

The sultan is a palace, of which the vizier is 
the gate. If you try to climb in at the window, 
you run a great risk of breaking your neck. 

Three things in this world try the rarest 
patience, and make the sagest lose his reason ; 
the compulsion to quit one's native spot, the 
loss of friends, and separation from her we love. 

Love begins with a look, exactly as a fire 
begins with a spark. 

A sage, beholding a hunter who had stopped 
to converse with a pretty woman, called to him, 
" thou, who pursuest and killest wild beasts, 
have a care lest that woman do not catch thee 
in her nets." 

An Arab was asked, "Do you believe in 
the end of the world ?" " Yes," he answered. 
"Since I lost my wife, half the world has 

* See How the Bank was Wound Up, page 
276 of the last volume. 



116 [August 20,1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



already disappeared ; and when I die, in turn, 
the other halt" will vanish also." 

Remember that princes have the caprices of 
children and the claws of lions. 

She sent word to me, " You sleep, and we are 
separated." I replied, " Yes ; but it is to rest 
my eyes after the tears they have shed." 

He who greedily seeks honours and riches, 
may be compared to a man suffering from thirst 
which he tries to quencli with the water of the 
sea. The more he drinks, the more he wants to 
drink, until at last he dies of drinking it. 

Never despise counsels, from whatever quarter 
they reach you. Remember that the pearl is 
keenly sought for, in spite of the coarse shell 
which envelops it. 

The vizier may be compared to a man mounted 
on a lion's back. People tremble as they see 
him pass ; and he, more than any of them, is in 
terror of the creature he is riding. 

When Allah has a mind to ruin the ant, he 
gives him wings. The insect, filled with joy 
and pride, takes his flight. A little bird passes, 
sees him, and snaps him up. 

To kill, or to be killed, is the lot of men ; 

The lot of women is, to drag the lengthy folds 
of their garments along the ground. 

An Arab woman was asked, What do you 
think of a young man of twenty ? 
He is, she said, a bouquet of jasmine. 
And of a man of thirty ? 
That one is a ripe and well-flavoured fruit. 
And of a man of forty years ? 
He is a father of boys and girls. 
And of a man of fifty ? 
He may pass into the category of preachers. 
And of a man of sixty years ? 
He is good for nothing but to cough and groan. 
Her eyes are the eyes of a frightened antelope, 
She breathes the pure air of the desert; 
She lives entirely on laitage (milk-diet) and game, 
And her complexion is darkened by the sun. 
When I die, may my body be washed in her tears, 
And may I be buried in her hair. 

The well-born woman supports her husband 
in the trials of life, encourages him, and inspires 
his children with noble and generous sentiments. 

The intelligent woman assists her husband, 
keeps a watch over his interests, and allows him 
to devote all his time to important affairs. 

The pure woman obtains her husband's love, 
and acquires his intimate friendship. Nature 
leads us to prefer the person who has been loved 
by us before by anyone else. 

Finally, the pious woman is strictly faithful 
to her husband, and maintains religious senti- 
ments in her family : 

Remember that an ounce of honour 

Is better than a quintal of gold ; 

And the country where your dignity suffers, 

Quit it, were its walls even built with rubies. 

He who has never hunted, nor loved, nor 
trembled at the sound of music, nor sought 
after the perfume of flowers do not say that 
he is a man. Say that he is an ass. 



The best of wives is she who bears a son yet un- 
born, 
Who leads another by the hand, 
And whose steps are followed by a third, 

I^am vanquished by love ; but she is so 
beautiful that my defeat is no humiliation. 

The human heart instinctively loves every- 
thing that is beautiful ; but in this world how 
many brilliant flowers do we find, which please 
our eye, and nevertheless are utterly destitute 
of any sweet or agreeable perfume ? 

By Allah, I would not espouse a widow, were 
her eyes the eyes of a gazelle. All her affection 
is for her late husband ; all her thoughts are 
with the dead. 

Do not attach yourself to a cruel man; 
sooner or later you will find him as pitiless for 
you as he is for others. 

Do not speak of anything which yon would 
not like to have repeated to-morrow. 

Never remain alone with a pretty woman, 
even if yon are obliged to occupy your time in 
reading the Koran. 

Generosity is a tree planted in heaven by 
Allah, the master of the world, and its branches 
droop down to the earth. By them will climb 
to paradise he who treats weil his guests, who 
fills the stomachs of the poor, and never keeps 
his hand closed. 

When a young man marries, the Demon 
utters a fearful cry. His fellows immediately 
crowd round him, and inquire the subject of 
his grief. " Another son of Adam," he answers, 
" has just escaped out of my clutches." 

The hand always open, 

The sabre ready to start from its scabbard, 

And one sole word. [Marks of nobility.] 

To teach early, is to engrave on marble ; 
To teach late, is to write on sand. 

Repentance for a day, is to start on a journey, 
without knowing where to find shelter for the 
night* 

Repentance for a year, is to sow seed in your 
fields out of season. 

Repentance for a whole lifetime, is to marry 
a woman without being properly edified respect- 
ing her family, her temper, and her beauty. 

Somebody said to a cock, " Thou art nothing 
but an ingrate and a bad-hearted creature. 
Thou art well fed, and supplied with all the en- 
joyments of life; thou art vaunted, admired: 
and nevertheless, if we wish to caress thee, 
thou takest thy departure precipitately. Behold 
the bird of lofty lineage (thair el hoorr the 
falcon) ; his whole life has been spent in the 
wilderness. And yet, if he become captive, he 
resigns himself immediately, quickly gets ac- 
customed to his master, refusing to leave him, 
and showing his gratitude for every kindness of 
which he is the object." 

" True," replied the cock. " But if he had 
seen as many of his fellows bled and roasted as 
I have seen brethren of mine on the spit, his 
conduct would not be different to my own." 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 26, 18(55.] 117 



Life is this : For a day of joy, you count a 
month of grief, and for a month of pleasure, you 
reckon a year of pain. There is no strength 
except in Allah. 

Ordinarily, a man is better towards the close 
than at the commencement of his career. Why ? 
Because then he has gained in knowledge, in 
experience, and in resignation. His temper is 
more even, he is less subject to be carried away 
by passion, and he has acquired a settled posi- 
tion in the world. But is the case the same 
with a woman? By no means. Her beauty 
passes; she bears no more children; she be- 
comes morose, uncivil, and her temper gets 
sourer and sourer. 

If, therefore, any one informs you that he has 
married a woman of a certain age, be assured 
that he has accepted two-thirds of the evil which 
the life of a woman contains. 

Do not meddle with what does not concern 
you. Recollect that when the hounds are fu- 
riously fighting for a morsel of meat, if they see 
a jackal pass, they set off together in pursuit of 
him. 

When a woman has adorned her eyes with 
kohol and dyed her fingers with henna, and has 
chewed mesteka (the gum of the lentisk), which 
perfumes the breatli and whitens the teeth, she 
becomes more pleasing in the sight of Allah; 
for she is then more beloved of her husband. 

Never marry a woman for her money ; wealth 
may make her insolent: nor for her beauty; 
her beauty may fade. Marry her for her piety. 

The goods of this world rarely bring happi- 
ness, and they almost always exclude us from 
the benefits of the next. 

He who bears patiently the faults of his wife, 
will receive from the hands of Allah a recom- 
pense similar to that which he accorded to Job 
after his long sufferings. 

This world and the next resemble the East 
and the West ; you cannot draw near to the one 
without turning your back on the other. 

The best way of getting rid of an enemy 
whose sentiments are elevated, is to pardon him : 
you so make him your slave. 

There was inscribed on the principal gate of 
one of the cities of antiquity : To obtain ad- 
mission into a sultan's palace, the three follow- 
ing conditions must be united : Wisdom, Riches, 
and Resignation. 

Lower down was written: It is not true; if 
a man possessed only one of these qualities, he 
would never cross the threshold of a palace. 

Destiny has a hand furnished with five iron 
fingers. When she chooses to submit a man to 
her will, she claps two fingers on his eyes, 
thrusts two fingers into his ears, and placing 
the fifth on his mouth, says, "Hold your 
tongue." 

Death is a gate through which all must pass. 
But it is not, as is believed, the gate of the 
Unknown. 



Have you done good ? it leads to paradise. 
Have you done evil? it conducts you to 
hell. 



THE SIGN OF EIVE CENTURIES. 

I have been looking over one of the oldest 
houses in London a house with a story at- 
tached to it a house with a place in English 
literature only second to that famous timber 
domicile in Henley-street, Stratford-upon-Avon, 
where Shakespeare first drew breath. The house 
of which I speak is an inn, and it has been an 
inn for five hundred years, or more. It is 
situated about a stone-cast- from one of the 
greatest centres of essentially modern London 
life to be found in all this vast metropolis ; yet 
there it lies, dim, ancient, dusty, dreamy 
wonderful even, if one begins to think of all 
that has come and gone since first it hid itself 
away in the venerable seclusion of its court- 
yard. Erom the great network of railways 
having their termini at the top of Tooley-street 
it is not ten minutes' walk to this quaint old 
house. You pass at one step from the nine- 
teenth century into the fourteenth. Now, you 
are in all the roar of omnibuses, and cabs, and 
vans, with trains departing and arriving every 
minute, a hideous iron viaduct spanning the 
road, and telegraphic cables vibrating in mid- 
air ; and now, you are in a shady nook, as quiet 
as a monastery, and as reverend (if not more 
so), where you ascend by external staircases 
and proceed by external galleries into the 
oddest of little rooms, which are as the very 
coffins of dead and buried times. Supposing 
you to have come from the Middlesex shore 
over London Bridge, your approach to this 
ancient hostelry has been in itself a curious 
pilgrimage. To the left are the railway termini 
already spoken of; across the road extends the 
new line to Charing-cross, striking sheer down 
close to the beautiful old church of St. Mary 
Overies, where poet Gower lies buried under a 
costly tomb, and Fletcher and Massinger occupy 
a single grave in the churchyard ; to the right 
is the said church, lying sullenly apart at the 
bottom of a little valley caused by the artificial 
approaches to the bridge, as if indignant at its 
modern associates ; a little way off, towards the 
Southwark Bridge-road, once stood the Globe 
Theatre, famous for the original production of 
certain plays, of which the world has heard 
somewhat ever since ; and straight ahead 
stretches the old High-street of Southwark, not 
yet greatly modernised for all its traffic, and 
cherishing at its heart the ancient inn which 
has brought me all this way to see it and do it 
honour. 

High-street, Southwark, is a land of old inns, 
as any one may perceive by looking up the quiet 
court-yards which open inwards from the main 
thoroughfare, and which you reach by passing 
under archways. Being the high road to some of 
the southern and eastern counties of England, 
the street has existed for centuries as one of the 



118 [August 26, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



great arteries of London. The Romans knew 
of it, and perhaps made it ; or perhaps even the 
Britons, in the pre-Roman times, had already 
marked out a track to the southern coast 
through the marshy soil which in those days 
here spread itself about the uncertain confines 
of the river. In the middle ages, it was often 
thronged by pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas a 
Becket, and hence arose the number of inns by 
which the way is lined ; for the pilgrims were 
commonly very jolly fellows, and did not con- 
sider it necessary to mortify themselves on the 
road. To this day, the White Hart, the George, 
the King's Head, and the Talbot the last the 
most famous of all, under its more ancient and 
correct name of the Tabard remain almost un- 
touched, to remind us of the times when people 
travelled at the rate of only a few miles a day, 
and were obliged, even in the course of a short 
journey, to put up for the night at hostelries 
large enough to accommodate a small army with 
bed and board. At the White Hart, Shake- 
speare introduces Jack Cade, and it was here 
that Mr. Pickwick first made the acquaintance 
of Mr. Samuel Weller : the house until the last 
few weeks remained exactly as it was on the 
latter occasion, and as it manifestly had been 
for some centuries ; but, as I write, it is being 
pulled down. Older than the White Hart, or 
any of the others, however, is the Tabard, and 
round its walls and on its roof will glimmer, as 
long as they shall last, the very dawn-light of 
English poetry. 

" In South wark," writes Stow, as far back as 
1598, "be many fair inns for receipt of travel- 
lers ; amongst the which the most ancient is 
the Tabard, so called of the sign, which as we 
now term it is of a jacket or sleeveless coat, 
whole before, open on both sides, with a square 
collar, winged at the shoulders : a stately gar- 
ment of old time, commonly worn of noblemen 
and others, both at home and abroad in the 
wars ; but then (to wit, in the wars) their arms 
embroidered, or otherwise depict upon them, 
that every man by his coat of arms might be 
known from others. But now these tabards are 
only worn by the heralds, and be called their 
coats of arms in service." It was from this 
house, towards the close of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, that nine-and-twenty pilgrims set forth on 
that journey which gave rise to the Canterbury 
Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, At this distance 
of time we are little concerned with the specu- 
lation whether or not any such pious company 
ever really started from the Tabard under the 
exact circumstances described by our great old 
poet. That pilgrimages to the shrine of St. 
Thomas a Becket were frequent at that period, 
we know as a matter of history ; and that they 
started from hostelries in the neighbourhood, 
at which they had previously mustered, is so 
probable as to be almost certain. Chaucer, 
though inclined to liberal views in religion, to 
the extent even of being a Wicliffite, was 
doubtless well enough disposed to join in the 
religious ceremonies of his age, if only for the 
sake of observing character ; and it is therefore 



not at all unlikely that he actually formed one 
of a band of pilgrims who baited at the Tabard 
the night before their journey to the Kentish 
city. Again, it is probable enough that at least 
some of his characters are life-portraits ; they 
certainly have all the effect of literal truth. 
But, even if they are pure inventions, they have 
been clad by the genius of the poet with that 
mysterious vitality which is more enduring than 
the mere life of flesh and blood. What men 
and women of the old days of Edward the Third 
and Richard the Second apart from such as 
have become famous, historically or otherwise 
possess a tithe of the reality of those jovial pil- 
grims who told tales of mirth and sadness, of life 
and love and death, of marvel and enchantment 
and saintly miracle, as they ambled by the way, 
and who shall continue to tell them in the free and 
facile verse of Chaucer as long as this English 
tongue is spoken on English ground, or in any 
region peopled by our race ? "The Knight who 
had fought in many strange lands, Christian and 
Heathen, and yet was " of his port as meek as 
is a maid ;" the Squire, his son, " a lover and a 
lusty bachelor," singing and fluting all day, ac- 
complished in all feats of chivalry, and embroi- 
dered in his attire as a mead with fresh white 
and red flowers ; the Yeoman, with his nut- 
head and brown visage, and his " sheaf of pea- 
cock arrows bright and keen," borne thriftily 
under his belt ; the Prioress, who was simple 
and coy of her smiling, and yet such a sweet 
human soul, so all-compact of w conscience and 
tender heart," that we love her like a friend ; 
the Monk, who evidently thought more of horse- 
flesh than of devotion, and rode with a bridle 
jingling in the wind like the chapel bells; the 
Friar, wanton and merry, who heard confession 
"sweetly," and gave absolution "pleasantly," 
and was great at weddings, and knew the taverns 
in every town better than the very beggars ; 
the Merchant, who never lost an opportunity of 
proclaiming his vast increase in wealth, and 
who managed matters so well that no one had 
any idea he was in debt ; the Clerk of Oxenford, 
who cared for books above everything else in 
the world, and who did not speak a word be- 
yond what was necessary ; the Sergeant of the 
Law, " wary and wise," who knew all the pre- 
cedents from the time of William the Conqueror 
downwards; the Eranklin, who was "Epicurus's 
own son," and loved in the morning a sop in 
wine, and in whose house it " snowed of meat 
and drink;" the Cook, who had an intimate 
knowledge of " a draught of London ale," and 
was unrivalled in the making of blanc-mange ; 
the Seaman, who rode clumsily, as all seamen 
do, and was a good fellow, though not caring 
much for nice points of conscience, and was 
brown with the hot summer, and had felt many 
a tempest in his beard ; the Doctor of Physic, 
who was grounded in astronomy, and studied 
the Bible but little, and read iEsculapius, and 
Hippocrates, and Galen, and Avicenna, and 
would eat nothing but what was very nourishing 
and digestible, and that not in excess ; the Wife 
of Bath, handsome and free, and somewhat 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAK ROUND. 



[August 26, 1S65.] 119 



plain-speaking ; the poor Parson, who not only- 
taught the lore of Christ and his Apostles, but 
first followed it himself ; the Rcve, slender and 
choleric ; the Sompnour, with a face like that 
of a ** fire-red cherubin," and who, when drunk, 
would speak in nothing but Latin; the Par- 
doner, the Ploughman, the Miller, and all the 
others of that famous company; these men 
and women, even though they were but the 
generalisations of Chaucer's genius from a wide 
observation of English manners, are neverthe- 
less real living beings to us who see them at the 
distance of five hundred years in all the elabo- 
rate vitality of actual existence. The tradesmen 
who kept shop along the High-street then, much 
as they keep it now, have vanished utterly, 
are, to our poor human perceptions, less than 
ghosts and shadows are absolutely nought. 
But these brain-children live, and defy chance 
and mutability. We see them move and act ; 
we hear them talk and jest. Their vanities and 
passions endure as ours shall not endure ; their 
very raiment has a kind of immortality in it. 
Standing in the external balcony of this old inn, 
and looking down into the court-yard where the 
pilgrims assembled previous to starting (for, at 
least, if anywhere, it was on this spot), I find 
the motley company rising again in form and 
colour, dividing into groups, or filing in stately 
procession through the gateway. It is a hot 
midsummer day as I stand here, and the brood- 
ing noontide sultriness and silence seem to bring 
a weird enchantment over the old place. I forget 
the modern accessories by which I am sur- 
rounded. I forget the railway, and the electric 
telegraph, and Tooley-street, and the warehouses 
which the great fire ravaged so in 1861, and 
omnibuses, and cabs, and Pickford's vans. I 
am stranded in a little nook of ancient times, 
and the very dust about me is the dust of buried 
days. 

The oldest part of the inn lies back from 
the road, and is reached by passing under a 
house. You then find yourself in a court-yard, 
with the existing tavern to the right itself far 
from a new building, yet much more modern 
than the rest, and constructed, not of timber, 
but of brick. Immediately in front, as you 
enter from the High-street, and also to the left 
thus making an angle, and occupying two 
sides of the court-yard is the antique, timber- 
built hostelry, with wooden galleries, external 
staircase, and high sloping roof, which, there 
seems some reason to believe, is partially the 
same edifice as that which Chaucer must have 
seen. I observe, indeed, that Mr. Peter Cun- 
ningham, in his excellent Handbook of London, 
says that " no part of the existing inn is of the 
age of Chaucer, but a good deal of the age of 
Elizabeth." The point, however, does not 
appear at all certain. Speght, writing at the 
same time as Stow, speaks of the house as 
beinw the one from which Chaucer and the 
pilgrims started, and he adds that, having be- 
come "much decayed" through the effects of 
time, it had then been recently " repaired " by 
" Master J. Preston," with the addition of many 



new rooms for the reception of guests. Prom 
this, then, it would seem that the house was 
only renovated and enlarged, not entirely rebuilt, 
at the time of Speght's writing. The best part of 
a hundred years later, however, a serious calamity 
befel the Tabard, and we shall have to examine 
whether that calamity deprived us of all traces 
of the original building. In 1676, a great fire 
broke out in Southward about four o'clock in 
the morning of the 26th of May, and, accord- 
ing to the account given in the London Gazette 
of the 29th of the same month, "continued 
with much violence all that day and part of the 
night following, notwithstanding all the care of 
the Duke of Monmouth, the Earl of Craven, 
and the Lord Mayor, to quench the same by 
blowing up houses, and otherwise." In this 
conflagration, about six hundred houses were 
destroyed, either by the fire itself, or by being 
blown up. That a portion of the Tabard perished 
on the occasion, seems to be certain, because 
Aubrey, who lived at the time, alludes to the 
fact ; but the older part of the building, as we 
now see it, can hardly have been erected as late 
as the end of the seventeenth century, as tiie 
style of architecture is manifestly that of a 
much earlier period. " Galleries like this," 
writes Mr. John Saunders, in his interesting 
paper on the Tabard in Mr. Charles Knight's 
London, " belong not to the time of Charles the 
Second ;" nor, it may be added, do the rooms 
which open on to the gallery, nor the passages 
and corridors, nor the queer old attics, nor indeed 
any of the features of the place. The house in 
the High-street, under which you pass to gain 
the court-yard, was doubtless built after the 
fire in 1676; so, perhaps, was the tavern to the 
right of the gateway, where you may sit in a 
little bar-parlour, and order refreshments in a 
little bar ; but the timber edifice at the back, 
and to the left hand, is unquestionably much 
older. The great question is as to the amount 
of rebuilding carried out by Master J. Preston. 
The fairest interpretation of Speght's words 
seems to be, that a portion of the Chaucerian 
hostelry survived the alterations and repairs ; 
and, if so, it is almost certain that that portion 
remains to this day. 

At any rate, the house has an hereditary con- 
nexion with the masterpiece of our first great 
poet, and it is certainly old, and quaint, and in- 
teresting. Ascending into the gallery, under 
the guidance of one of the female servants of 
the inn, who seems to take as lively a concern 
in the antiquities of the place as though she 
were an antiquary, I enter one by one the little, 
mouldering, dusky, panelled rooms, some of 
them still occupied as dormitories, some empty 
and unused, in which the very air seems heavy 
with a weight of centuries. There is something 
ghostly about the place, it is so much a thing 
of the past, and lingers so strangely in the full 
daylight of the present. The old timber, doubt- 
les*s, is firm enough at the heart, for the floors 
are solid to the tread, and seem as if they would 
last a long while yet; but the surface of the 
great beams and panels crumbles to the touch, 



120 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[August 2G, 1865.] 



coming down in a little grey and noiseless 
shower, like the stealthiness and mystery of 
deatli. The ironwork, as in the hinges of doors, 
is red and cankered with the rust of years; and 
damp " has written strange defeatures" on the 
ceilings. Creeping about the rooms and cor- 
ridors in tliis summer noon, I fancy that here is 
the very corpse of a house, slowly decomposing 
before my eyes, rather than a living house, such 
as one is accustomed to dwell in. I think I 
should hardly like to sleep here not for fear of 
seeing ghosts, but because I should be oppressed 
by a sense of the immense array of human 
lives that had been before me in these rooms, 
and had traced their little circles, and passed 
away into the dim immensity, leaving no record 
of their presence. What dreams have been 
dreamt in these sleeping chambers by those who 
are themselves dreams now, and dreams that are 
forgotten ! Dreams of good and evil, of youth 
and age; lovers' dreams, avaricious dreams, am- 
bitious dreams, incoherent dreams, murderous 
dreams, with the knife at the throat, and a sense 
of life-long horror ; wicked and haggish dreams ; 
and others, again, fair with the promiseof goodly 
days, or sweet with exquisite memories of the 
past ! What projects have been formed here by 
pilgrims wending to the shrine of Thomas a 
Becket, or travellers going about their secular 
business ; projects of which, whether in success 
or failure, the cynic hand of Time has written 
the old old moral, that all is vanity beneath the 
sun ! Truly, these ancient houses preach more 
grimly than a death's-head. Up here in the 
deserted garrets, crouching under the sloping 
roof, one might indulge the Jaques vein bravely. 
All garrets are melancholy places; but were 
there ever such forlorn garrets as these ! Thick 
with dust, ghastly with rotting wood and crum- 
bling iron (here is a hinge on one of the doors 
so primitive in shape, that it looks as if it might 
have been made by Tubal Cain), dim, blinking, 
and haggard with long solitude, they look as if 
they had been abandoned for centuries. A 
skeleton bedstead lurks in one, and a skeleton 
arm-chair in another both gone to decay. If 
anybody comes up here alone, at night, with a 
swaling, sputtering candle, I think he is a bold 
man. Surely there are no such rooms as these, 
except in a ghost story ; they look so " eerie," 
even in the sunlight, that we will descend once 
more to the gallery and the main suite of 
chambers 

So, this little cupboard is "The Pilgrims' 
Room," where Harry Baily (landlord temp. 
Richard the Second) feasted the nine-and-twenty 
pilgrims ? Yes, says my conductress ; but then 
the hall originally ran along the whole length of 
the gallery, and has since been divided into a 
number of little rooms. That this was really 
the case is very probable. The idea first struck 
Mr. John Saunders, on his visit in 1841, 



described in the paper to which allusion has 
already been made; and the conjecture thus 
thrown out is now stated by the attendants at 
the inn as a positive fact. The architectural 
features^ of the rooms show signs that all was 
at one time open from end to end ; and it is not 
improbable that Master J. Preston made the 
alteration when he was about his repairs. Over 
the chimney-piece in "The Pilgrims' Room" 
there was at one time a fragment of ancient 
tapestry, representing a procession; but this 
has now disappeared. Outside on the gallery, 
however, you may still see, under the penthouse 
roof, a picture of the pilgrims, said to have been 
painted by Blake, but which is now so obscured 
by dirt and weather that scarcely a single figure 
can be detected in the general haze. 

And this strange old innthis most interest- 
ing memorial of the earliest work of genius in 
our language this house which, in Prance, or 
Germany, or Italy, would be regarded as almost 
sacred, and which, in fact, is visited by literary 
pilgrims from America, as well as from various 
parts of England is to be pulled down ! After 
lasting for five centuries, it is at length to give 
way before the devastating rush of modern 
change. They tell me at the inn that the lease 
will run out in some two years from the present 
time, and that then the old walls are doomed. 
A pile of warehouses, I understand, is to take 
their place. The back of the High -street, 
Southwark, as I have already remarked, is a 
cluster of old inns and inn-yards, all of them 
interesting, but none so interesting or so old 
as this Tabard or Talbot. Will the literary 
men and the antiquarians of England suffer 
such a loss without at least making an effort to 
avert it ? There is time enough for the attempt, 
and time in itself is a great auxiliary. We 
have saved Shakespeare's house at Stratford; 
let us all do our best to save Chaucer's house at 
South wark. 



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CHAPTER XLIV. THE ART OE SELLING OUT. 

It was no wonder that Saxon could not be 
found when he was wanted, or that it was late 
before he returned to the house. His imprison- 
ment lasted altogether more than an hour ; and 
when Miss Riviere at length rose and went away, 
he took a long walk round in another direction, 
in order that he might be able to account for 
his absence. 

He had no sooner made his appearance, how- 
ever, in the drawing-room, than the Earl carried 
him off to Signor Colonna's study, and there 
left him. The Italian met him with outstretched 
hands ; and Olimpia, who was writing busily, 
looked up and smiled as he came in. 

" What am I to say to you, Mr. Trefalden ?" 
exclaimed Colonna. "How shall I thank you?" 

" Pray don't mention it," said Saxon, shyly. 

" How can I help mentioning it ? An act of 
such munificence . . . ." 

" I should be so much obliged to you," in- 
terrupted Saxon, " if you would say nothing 
about it." 

" You may compel me to silence, Mr. Trefal- 
den; but every true heart in Italy will thank 
you." 

" I hope not, because I don't deserve it. I 
did it to to please Miss Colonna." 

" Then I hope that you at least permitted her 
to thank you as you deserve to be thanked, Mr. 
Trefalden," said the Italian, as he glanced 
smilingly from the one to the other. "And 
now will you pardon me if I ask you a 
question ?" 

" I shall be happy to answer a thousand." 

" You have given us your cheque for a very 
large sum," said Colonna, taking the paper from 
his desk, and glancing at it as he spoke. " For 
so large a sum that I have almost doubted 
whether your banker will cash it on presen- 
tation. It is unusual, at all events, for even 
millionnaires like yourself, Mr. Trefalden, to 
keep so many loose thousands at their banker's. 
May I ask if you have given this a thought ?" 

Saxon stared hard at the cheque across the 
table, and wondered whether Olimpia had really 
doubled it or not ; but the slope of the desk 
prevented him from seeing the figures distinctly. 

" I have thought of it," he replied, with a 



really 



troubled look, " and and I 
afraid . . . ." 

"That your balance will be found insufficient 
to cover it," added Colonna, entering a brief 
memorandum on the margin of the cheque. " It 
is fortunate that I asked the question." 

" I am very sorry," stammered Saxon. 

" Why so ? It is a matter of no importance." 

" I was afraid . . . ." 

" I do not know, of course, how your moncv 
is placed," said Signor Colonna, "but I should 
suppose you will have no difficulty in transfer- 
ring to Drummond's whatever amount may be 
necessary." 

" It's in government stock that is, a great 
part of it," replied Saxon, mindful of the New 
Overland Route Railway and Steam -Packet 
Company, Limited. 

"Oh, then you will only have to sell out. 
Nothing easier." 

Nothing easier, indeed ! Poor Saxon ! 

" You may have to go up to town, however," 
added Colonna. "By the way, who is your 
stockbroker ?" 

But Saxon did not even know what a stock- 
broker was. 

" My cousin manages my money for me," said 
he ; " I must go to him about it." 

"Mr. Trefalden of Chancery-lane?" 

"Yes." 

Signor Colonna and his daughter exchanged 
glances. 

" I do not see that you need trouble your 
cousin this time," said the Italian, after a mo- 
ment's hesitation. 

"Why not?" 

" Because a lawyer has nothing to do with 
the transfer of stock. He can only employ a 
stockbroker for you ; and why should you not 
employ a stockbroker for yourself ? It is more 
simple." 

"I don't think my cousin William would like 
it," said Saxon, hesitatingly. 

"Pray pardon me, but is it well that you 
should defer so much to his opinion ? Might 
it not lead him to think himself privileged to 
establish some sort of censorship over your 
actions ?" 

Saxon was silent. He knew that his cousin 
had already established that censorship, and that 
he had submitted to it. But he did not feel in- 
clined to acknowledge it. 

"The present," said Signor Colonna, "'is a 



VOL. XIV. 



332 



122 [September 2, 1863.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



case in point. Your cousin is no hearty friend 
to our cause. He never gave sixpence to Italy 
in his life, and he will surely regard this noble 
gift of yours from an adverse point of view. Why 
then place the matter before him ? If he dis- 
approved you wo aid not withdraw your dona- 
tion " 

" Of course not !" exclaimed Saxon, hastily. 

" And you would offend him if you persisted. 
Be advised by me, my dear Mr. Trefalden, and 
act for yourself." 

' ' But I don't know how to act for myself," 
said Saxon. 

" I will put you in the way of all that. I will 
introduce you to my friend, Signor Nazzari, of 
Austin Friars. He is an Italian Jew a stock- 
broker by profession and worthy of whatever 
confidence you may be disposed to place in 
him." 

Saxon thanked him, but his mind was ill at 
ease, and his face betrayed it. He was sorely 
tempted by Signor Colo ana's proposition. He 
shrunk from telling his cousin what he had done, 
and he knew that William Trefalden would be 
ten times more annoyed than he was by the 
Greatorex transaction ; but, on the other hand, 
he abhorred deceit and double-dealing. 

" But won't it seem sly to William ?" he said, 
presently. u I won't do what's sly, you know. 
I'd put up with anything sooner." 

Signor Colonna, who had been writing his 
countryman's address on a slip of paper, looked 
up at this and laid his pen aside. 

" My dear sir," he said, " I but advise you to 
do as other gentlemen do in your position. No 
lawyer does stockbroker's work." 

" That may be, and yet . . . ." 

"You might as reasonably send for your 
lawyer if you were ill. He could but call in a 
physician to cure you, as he would now call in a 
stockbroker to sell your stock." 

"I wish I knew what I ought to do !" ejacu- 
lated Saxon. 

The Italian glanced impatiently towards his 
daughter; but Olimpia went on writing, and 
would not look up. She knew quite well that 
her father wanted her to throw in the weight 
of her influence, but she had resolved to say no- 
thing. The great work was hers to do, and she 
had done it ; but she would not stoop to the 
less. So Colonna went back, unaided, to the 
charge, and argued till Saxon was, if not con- 
vinced, at least persuaded. 

And then it was arranged that Saxon and 
Vaughan should go up to town together on the 
following day the millionnaire to draw out his 
money, and the dragoon to dispose of it as Signor 
Colonna might direct. 

CHAPTER XLV. WHAT HAPFENED THE EVENING 
BEFORE. 

The morning was cold and grey, quite unlike 
the glowing golden mornings by which it had 
been preceded for the last fortnight, as Saxon 
Trefalden and Major Vaughan sped up to Lon- 
don by the fast train that left Sedgebrook sta- 
tion at 9.45. 



They were alone in the compartment, sitting 
silently face to face, each busy with his own 
thoughts. The landscape was dull outside. A 
low mist shrouded the pleasant Surrey hills, the 
steam hung in the damn air for a quarter of a 
mile behind the flying train, and the plumy elms 
that came in places almost to the verge of the 
line, looked ghost-like and shadowy. It was 
such a day as "French authors love to describe 
when they write of England and the English 
a day when the air is heavy and the sky is grey, 
and Sir Smith (young, rich, handsome, but 
devoured with the spleen) goes out and cuts his 
throat on Primrose Hill. 

Dreary as the day was, however, these two 
travellers were no less dreary. Saxon's thoughts 
were troubled enough, and Vaughan's were all 
gloom and bitterness. As he sat there, knitting 
his brows, gnawing the ends of his long mous- 
tache, and staring down at the mat between his 
feet, he was going over something that happened 
the evening before in Lady Castletowers' draw- 
ing-roomgoing over it, word for word, look 
for look, just as it happened going over it for 
the hundredth time, and biting it into his 
memory deeper and sharper with every repe- 
tition. 

This was what it was, and how it happened. 

Dinner was over, coffee had been handed 
round, and Major Vaughan had made his way to 
a quiet corner under a lamp, where Olimpia sat 
reading. He remembered quite well how the 
light fell on her face from above, and how she 
looked up with a pleasant smile as he sat down 
beside her. 

They_ fell into conversation. He asked first 
if he might be forgiven for disturbing her, and 
then if she had any commands for Italy. To 
which she replied that her only commands con- 
cerned himself; that he should fight bravely, 
as, indeed, she had no need to tell so daring a 
soldier, and come back safe when the cause was 
won. Whereupon, the thing that he had re- 
solved never to say rose all at once to his lips, 
and he asked if there would be any hope for him 
when this had come to pass. 

"Hope?" she repeated. "Hope of what, 
Major Vaughan?" 

And then, in a few strong, earnest words, he 
told her how he loved her, and how, to win her, 
he would endure and dare all things ; but she, 
looking at him with a sort of sad surprise, re- 
plied that it could never be. 

He had never dreamed that it could be. He 
had told himself a thousand times that he was 
mad to love her ; that he should be ten times 
more mad to declare his love ; and yet, now 
that the words were spoken, he could not bring 
himself to believe that they had been spoken in 
vain. 

So, with an eager trembling of the voice that 
he could not control, though he strove hard to 
do so, he asked if time would make no diffe- 
rence ; and she answered, very gently and sadly, 
but very firmly " None." 

None! He remembered the very tone in 
which she said it the dropping of her voice at 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 1865.] 123 



the close of the word the sigh that followed 
it. He remembered, also, how he sat looking 
at her hands as they rested, lightly clasped 
together, on the volume in her lap how white 
and slender they showed against the purple 
binding and how, when all was said, he longed 
to take them in his own, and kiss them once at 
parting. Well ; it was said, and done, and over 
now all over ! 

And then he looked out into the grey mists, 
and thought of Italy and the stirring life before 
him. He nad never cared much for the " cause," 
and he now cared for it less than ever. Olim- 
pia' s eyes had been the " cause" to him ; and, 
like many another, he had attached himself to 
it for her sake alone. But that mattered little 
now. He needed excitement; and any cause 
for which there was work to be done and danger 
to be encountered, would have been welcome to 
him. 

In the mean while, Saxon, sitting in the oppo- 
site corner, had his own troubles to think about. 
He was not at all satisfied with himself, in the 
first place, for the part he was playing towards 
his cousin. He could not divest himself of the 
idea that he was doing something " sly ;" and 
that idea was intolerable to him. In the second 
place, he was not quite comfortable with regard 
to Miss Colonna. He had not begun exactly to 
question himself about the nature of his admi- 
ration for her, or even to speculate upon the 
probable results of that admiration ; but he had 
become suddenly aware of the extent of her 
power, and was startled at finding to what 
lengths he might be carried by his desire to 
please her. William Trefalden had said that 
she was capable of asking him to take the com- 
mand of a troop ; but a vague consciousness of 
how Olimpia was capable of asking him to do a 
great deal more than that, had dawned by this 
time upon Saxon's apprehension. 

And then, besides all this, he could not help 
thinking of his adventure in the mausoleum, and 
of the strange interview that he had involun- 
' tarily witnessed between Lady Castletowers and 
Miss Riviere. The girl's sorrowful young face 
haunted him. He wanted to help her; and he 
wanted advice as to the best way of helping 
her. Above all, he wanted to penetrate the 
mystery of her claim on Lady Castletowers. 
He would have given anything to have been 
able to talk these things over with the Earl ; 
but that, after what he had heard, was, of course, 
impossible. So he pondered and puzzled, and at 
last made up his mind that he would consult his 
cousin on the subject while he was up in town. 

Thus, absorbed each in his own thoughts, the 
two men sped on, face to face, without exchang- 
ing a syllable. They might probably have con- 
tinued their journey in silence to the end, if, 
somewhere about half way between Sedgebrook 
station and Waterloo Bridge, Saxon had not 
chanced to look up, and find his companion's 
eyes fixed gloomily upon him. 

"Well," said he, with a surprised laugh, 
"why do you look at me in that portentous 
way ? What have I done ?' 



" Nothing particularly useful that I am aware 
of, my dear fellow," replied the dragoon. " The 
question is, not what you have done, but what 
you may do. I was wondering whether you 
mean to follow my example ?" 

" In what respect ?" 

"In respect of Italy, of course. Are you 
intending to join Garibaldi's army?" 

" No that is, I have not thought about it," 
replied Saxon. " Is Castletowers going ?" 

"I should think not. His mother would 
never consent to it." 

" If he went, I would go," said Saxon, after 
a moment's pause. " There's camp-life to see, 
I suppose ; and fighting to be done ?" 

" Eighting, yes ; but as to the camp life, I 
can tell you nothing about that. I fancy the 
work out there will be rough enough for some 
time to come." 

" I shouldn't mind how rough it was," said 
Saxon, his imagination warming rapidly to this 
new idea. 

" How would you like to march a whole day 
without food, sleep on the bare ground in a 
soaking rain, with only a knapsack under your 
head, and get up at dawn to fight a battle 
before breakfast ?" asked Vaughan. 

"I should like it no better than others, I 
dare say," laughed the young man; "but I 
shouldn't mind trying it. I wish Castletowers 
could go. We've been planning to make a tour 
together by-and-by; but a Sicilian campaign 
would be a hundred times better." 

"If he were as free as yourself, Castletowers 
would be off with me to-morrow morning," said 
Vaughan ; and then his brow darkened again as 
he remembered how not only Saxon, whom he 
suspected of admiring Olimpia Colonna, but the 
Earl, of whose admiration he had no doubt 
whatever, would both remain behind, free to 
woo or win her, if they could, when he was far 
away. 

It was not a pleasant reflection, and at that 
moment the rejected lover felt that he hated 
them both, cordially, 

" Which route do you take ?" asked Saxon, 
all unconscious of what was passing in his com- 
panion's mind. 

" The most direct, of course Dover, Calais, 
and Marseilles. I shall be in Genoa by eight 
or nine o'clock on Sunday evening." 

" And I at Castletowers." 

" How is that ?" said Vaughan, sharply ; " I 
thought you said your time was up yesterday ?" 

"So it was; but Castletowers has insisted 
that I shall prolong my visit by another week, 
and so I go back this evening. How we shall 
miss you at dinner 1" 

But to this civility the Major responded only 
by a growl. 

CHAPTER XLVI. WILLIAM TREFALDEN EXPLAINS 
THE THEORY OF LEGAL FICTIONS. 

Signor Nazzari was a tall, spare, spider-like 
Italian, who exercised the calling of a stock and 
share broker, and rented a tiny office under a 
dark arch in the midst of that curious web of 



124 [September 2, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



passages known as Austin Friars. He had been 
prepared for Saxon's visit by a note from 
Colonna, and met him in a tremor of voluble 
servility, punctuating his conversation with 
bows, and all but prostrating himself in the dust 
of his office. Flies were not plentiful in Signor 
Nazzari's web, and such a golden fly as Saxon 
was not meshed every day. 

It was surprising what a short time the trans- 
action took. Colonna might well say nothing 
was easier. First of all they went to the Bank 
of England, where Saxon signed his name in a 
great book, after which they returned to Austin 
Friars, and waited while Signor Nazzari went 
somewhere to fetch the money; and then he 
came back with a pocket-book full of bank-notes 
secured round his neck by a steel chain and the 
thin<* was done. 

Thereupon Major Vaughan solemnly tore up 
Saxon's cheque in the stockbroker's presence, 
and received the value thereof in crisp new Bank 
of England paper. 

" And now, Trefalden," said he, " fare you 
well till we meet in Italy." 

"I've not made up my mind yet, remember," 
replied Saxon, smiling. 

"Make it up at once, and go with me in the 
morning." 

" No, no ; that is out of the question." 

" Well, at all events, don't put it off till the 
fun is all over. If you come, come while there's 
something to be done." 

" Trust me for that," replied Saxon, with a 
somewhat heightened colour. "I won't share 
the feasting if I haven't shared the fighting. 
Good-bye." 

" Good-bye.'; 

And with this, having traversed together the 
mazes of Austin Friars and emerged upon the 
great space in front of the Exchange, they shook 
hands and parted. 

Saxon turned his face westward, and went 
down Cheapside on foot he was going to 
Chancery-lane, but he was in no hurry to reach 
his destination. He walked slowly, paused every 
now and then to look in a shop-window, and 
took a turn round St. Paul's. He pretended to 
himself that he went in to glance at Nelson's 
monument; but he had seen Nelson's monu- 
ment twice before, and he knew in his heart 
that he cared very little about it. At length in- 
exorable fate brought him to his cousin's door ; 
so he went up the dingy stairs, feeling very 
guilty, and hoping not to find the lawyer at 
home. On the first landing he met Mr. Keck- 
witch with his hat on. It was just one o'clock, and 
that respectable man was going to his dinner. 

" Mr. Trefalden is engaged, sir, with a client," 
said the head clerk, to Saxon's immense relief. 

" Oh, then you can say that I called, if you 
please," replied he, turning about with great 
alacrity. 

"But I think the gentleman will be going 
directly, sir, if you wouldn't mind taking a seat 
in the office," added Mr. Keckwitch. 

"I perhaps I had better try to come by- 
and-by, said Saxon, reluctantly. 



" As you please, sir, but I'm confident you 
wouldn't have to wait five minutes." 

So Saxon resigned himself to circumstances, 
and waited. 

The clerks were all gone to dinner, with the 
exception of Gorkin the red-headed, whom Saxon 
surprised in the act of balancing a tobacco-pipe 
upon his chin. 

" Pray don't disturb yourself," laughed he, as 
Gorkin, overwhelmed with confusion, lifted the 
lid of his desk and disappeared behind it as if lie 
had been shot. " I should like to see you do 
that again." 

The boy emerged cautiously, till his eyes just 
cleared the lid, but he made no reply. 

" It must be difficult," added Saxon, good 
naturedly trying to put him at his ease. 

" It ain't so difficult as standing on your 
head to drink a pint of porter," said the boy, 
mysteriously. 

" Why, no I should suppose not. Can you 
do that also ?" 

The boy nodded. 

" I can put half-a-crown in my mouth, and 
bring it out of my ears in small change," said 
he. " If I'd half-a-crown handy, I'd show you 
the trick." 

Saxon's fingers were instantly in his waist- 
coat-pocket, and the half-crown would have 
changed owners on the spot, but for the sudden 
opening of William Trefalden's private door. 

" Then you will write to me, if you please," 
said a deep voice ; but the owner of the voice, 
who seemed to be holding the door on the other 
side, remained out of sight. 

" You may expect to hear from me, Mr. 
Behrens, the day after to-morrow," replied the 
lawyer. 

" And Lord Castletowers quite understands 
that the mortgage must be foreclosed on the 
tenth of next month ?" 

" I have informed him so." 

" Must, Mr. Trefalden. Remember that. I 
can allow no grace. Twenty thousand of the 
money will have to go direct to the Worcester- 
shire agent, as you know; and the odd five will* 
be wanted for repairs, building, and so forth. 
It's imperative quite imperative." 

" I am fully aware of your necessity for the 
money, Mr. Behrens," was the reply, uttered 
in William Trefalden's quietest tone ; " and I 
have duly impressed that fact upon his lordship. 
I have no doubt that vou will be promptly 
paid." 

" Well, I hope so, for his sake. Good morn- 
ing, Mr. Trefalden." 

" Good morning." 

And with this Mr. Behrens came out into the 
office, followed by the lawyer, who almost started 
at the sight of his cousin. 

" You here, Saxon !" he said, having seen his 
client to the top of the stairs. " I thought you 
were at Castletowers." 

It would have taken a keener observer than 
Saxon to discover that the wish was father to 
Mr. Trefalden's thought ; but there could be no 
doubt of the relationship. 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 1865.] 125 



" Well, so I am, in one sense," replied the 
young man. "Fm only in town for the day." 

" And what brings you to town only for the 
day ? Nothing wrong, I hope ?" 

" Oh, no nothing at all. I that is you . . ." 

And Saxon, unpractised in the art of equivo- 
cation, floundered helplessly about in search of 
a reason that should be true, and yet not the 
truth. 

" You want to consult me about something, 
I suppose," said the lawyer, observant of his 
perplexity. " Come into my room, and tell me 
all about it." 

So they went into the private room, and 
William Trefalden closed the double doors. 

" First of all, Saxon," said he, laying his 
hand impressively on the young man's shoulder, 
"I must ask you a question. You saw that 
client of mine just now, and you heard him 
allude to certain matters of business as he went 
out?" 

" I did," replied Saxon; "and I was 
sorry . . . ." 

" One moment, if you please. You heard 
him mention the name of Lord Castletowers ?" 

" Yes." 

" Then I must request you, on no account, to 
mention that circumstance to the Earl. It is 
a matter in which he is not concerned, and of 
which there is no need to inform him." 

" But it seemed to me that he owed twenty- 
five thousand . . . ." 

William Trefalden smiled and shook his head. 

" No, no," said he. " Nothing of the kind. 
It is a simple transfer of capital a private 
transaction in which the Earl's name has been 
incidentally used ; but only his name. He has 
nothing to do with it, personally nothing 
whatever." 

" But . . . ." 
. " But you heard only the end of a conversa- 
tion, my dear fellow, and you misunderstood 
the little you did hear. You understand that 
this is not to be repeated ?" 

" Yes I understand," replied Saxon, doubt- 
fully. 

" And I have your promise to observe my 
request ?" 

Saxon hesitated. 

" I don't doubt you, cousin William," he said, 
bluntly; "though, of course, you know that 
without my telling you. But I don't know how 
to doubt my own ears, either. I heard that 
big, cross-looking old fellow distinctly say that 
Castletowers must pay him twenty-five thou- 
sand pounds by the tenth of next month. What 
can that mean, if not . . . ." 

" Listen to me for three minutes, Saxon," 
interrupted Mr. Trefalden, good-humouredly. 
" You have heard of such things as legal 
fictions ?" 

" Yes ; but I don't understand what they 
are." 

" Well legal fictions are legally defined as 
' things that have no real essence in their own 
body, but are acknowledged and accepted in 
law for some especial purpose.' " 



" I don't understand that either." 
" I should be surprised if you did," replied 
his cousin, with a pleasant smile ; " but I will 
try to explain it to you. In law, as in other 
things, my dear fellow, we are occasionally glad 
to adopt some sort of harmless hypothesis in 
order to arrive at conclusions which would 
otherwise cost more time and' trouble than they 
are worth. Thus, when a legal contract is 
made at sea, the deed is dated from London, or 
Birmingham, or any inland place, in order to 
draw what is called the cognisance of the suit 
from the Courts of Admiralty to the Courts of 
Westminster. Again, a plaintiff who brings an 
action into the Court of Exchequer fictitiously 
alleges himself to be the Queen's debtor. He 
is not the Queen's debtor. He owes the Queen 
no more than you owe her; but he must make 
use of that expedient to bring himself under 
the jurisdiction of that particular court." 

" What intolerable nonsense !" exclaimed 
Saxon. 

" One more instance. Till within the last 
eight years or so, the law of ejectment was 
founded on a tissue of legal fictions, in which 
an imaginary man called John Doe lodged a 
complaint against another imaginary man called 
Richard Roe, neither of whom ever existed in 
any mortal form whatever. What do you say 
to that?" 

" I say, cousin, that if I were a lawyer, I 
should be ashamed of a system made up of lies 
like that !" replied Saxon. 

Mr. Trefalden flung himself into his arm- 
chair, and laughed. 

"I won't have you abuse our legal fictions 
in that way," he said. " These little things are 
the romance of law, and keep our imaginations 
from drying up." 

" They ought not to be necessary," said 
Saxon, who could not see the amusing side of 
John Doe and Richard Roe. 

" I grant you that. They have their origin, 
no doubt, in some defect of the law. But then 
we are not blessed with a Code Napoleon ; and 
perhaps we should not like it, if we were. Such 
as our laws are, we must take them, and be 
thankful. They might be a great deal worse, 
depend on it." 

" Then is it a legal fiction that Castletowers 
owes Mr. Behrens twenty - five thousand 
pounds ?" asked Saxon. 

William Trefalden winced. He had hoped 
that the woolstapler's name would have escaped 
Saxon's observation ; but it had done nothing 
of the kind. Saxon remembered every word 
clearly enough ; names, dates, amount of money, 
and all. 

"Precisely," replied the lawyer. "Lord 
Castletowers no more owes Mr. Behrens twenty- 
five thousand pounds than you do. He would 
be a ruined man at this moment, Saxon, if he 
did." 

" He does not behave like a ruined man," said 
Saxon. 

" Of course not. He would not be filling his 
house with guests and giving balls, if he were. 



126 [September 2, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR BOUND. 



[Conducted fcy 



So now all's explained, and I have your pro- 
mise." 

Saxon looked earnestly in his cousin's face. 
He fancied that no man could look another in 
the face and tell a lie. Many persons entertain 
that belief; but a more mistaken notion does 
not exist. Your practised liar makes a point of 
staring into his hearer's eyes, and trusts to that 
very point for half the effect of his lie. But 
Saxon would not have believed this had an 
angel told him so. Therefore he looked in his 
cousin's face for evidence and therefore, when 
William Trefalden gave him back his look with 
fearless candour, his doubts were at once dis- 
pelled, and he promised unhesitatingly. 

"That's well," said the lawyer. "And now, 
Saxon, sit down and tell me what you have 
come to say." 

" It's a long story," replied Saxon. 

" I am used to hearing long stories." 

" But I am not used to telling them ; and I 
hardly know where to begin. It's about a 
lady." 

" About a lady ?" repeated William Trefal- 
den ; and Saxon could not but observe that his 
cousin's voice was by no means indicative of 
satisfaction. 

"In fact," added the young man, hastily, 
" it's about two or three ladies." 

Mr. Trefalden held up his hands. 

"Two or three ladies!" said he. "How 
shocking ! Is Miss Colonna one of them ?" 

"Oh dear no!" replied Saxon, emphatically 
perhaps a little too emphatically. And then 
he plunged into his story, beginning at his first 
meeting with Miss Riviere at the Waterloo 
Bridge station, and ending with the adventure 
in the mausoleum. 

Mr. Trefalden heard him to the end very 
patiently, putting in a question now and then, 
and piecing the facts together in his mind as 
they were brought before him. At length Saxon 
came to a pause, and said : 

" That's all, cousin ; and now I want you to 
tell me what I can do." 

"What do you want to do?" asked the 
lawyer. 

" I want to help them, of course." 

" Well, you have the young lady's address. 
Send her a cheque for fifty pounds.'"' 

" She wouldn't take it, if I did. No, no, 
cousin William, that's not the way. It must be 
done much more cleverly. I want them to have 
money regularly twice a year, you know 
enough to keep her poor mother in Italy, and pay 
the doctor's bills, and all that." 

"But this annuity from Lady Castle- 
towers . . . ." 

" Lady Castletowers is as hard and cold as 
marble," interrupted Saxon, indignantly. "I 
had rather starve than take a penny from her. 
If you had heard how grudgingly she promised 
that miserable twenty pounds !" 

"I never supposed that her ladyship had a hand 
open as day, for melting charity," said Mr. Tre- 
falden. 

" Charity !" echoed Saxon. 



{f Besides, I doubt that it is charity. There 

must be some claim Surely I have heard 

the name of Riviere in connexion with the 
Wynncliffs or the Pierrepoints . . . and yet . . . 
Pshaw ! if Keckwitch were here he could tell 
me in a moment !" 

And Mr. Trefalden leaned back thoughtfully 
in his chair. 

" I wish you could suggest a way by which I 
might do something for ihem," said Saxon. " I 
want them to get it, you see, without knowing 
w T here it comes from." 

" That makes it difficult," said Mr. Trefalden. 

"And yet it must not seem like almsgiving." 

"More difficult still." 

" I thought, if it were possible to give her 
some sort of commission," said Saxon, doubt- 
fully, "a commission for coloured photographs 
of the Italian coast, you know .... would that 
do?" 

" It is not a bad idea," replied the lawyer. 
" It might do, if skilfully carried out ; but I 
think I hear Keckwitch in the office." 

And then Mr. Trefalden went in search of his 
head clerk, leaving Saxon to amuse himself as 
well as he could with the dingy map and the 
still more dingy law books. 

At the end of a long half hour, he came back 
with a paper of memoranda in his hand. 

" Well ?" said Saxon, who was tired to death 
of his solitary imprisonment. 

" Well ; I believe I know all that is to be 
learned up to a certain point ; and I have, at 
all events, found out who your railway heroine 
is. It's a somewhat romantic story, but you 
must sit down and listen patiently while I re- 
late it." 



THE EIRE BRIGADE. 

The fire-engines of London, including the 
puffing Billies which make such a ferment of 
steam and smoke along the streets, now belong 
to the public, or at least will do so as soon as 
the recent statute comes into operation. Strange 
it may appear to continental nations that these 
invaluable aids to the security of our dwellings 
have hitherto been absolutely unrecognised by 
the government, the municipality, or any public 
body. 

Eor a period of ninety years there has really 
been only one statute in operation containing 
compulsory rules as to fire-engines; and this 
refers only to the little half-pint squirts known 
to us as parish engines. It is to the effect 
that every parish must keep one large engine 
and one small, one leathern pipe, and a certain 
number of ladders. What the parishes might 
have done if no other organisation had sprung 
up, we do not know ; but the insurance com- 
panies having taken up the matter, the parishes 
backed out, doing only just as little as the law 
actually compelled, and doing that little about 
as ineffectively as possible. It used to be fine 
fun to see the magnificent beadle and his troop 
of young leather-breeches drag the parish engine 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR KOUND. 



[September 2, 13C5.] 127 



to a fire, and profess to pump upon the flames. 
But that fun has sadly waned; some of the 
engines have died from asthma or rickets, or 
have been laid up with rheumatism in the joints ; 
while others are so rusty and dusty, and the key 
of the engine-house is so likely to be lost, that 
we can afford to forget them altogether. 

No ; it is to the insurance offices, aud not to 
any governing or official body whatever, that we 
are indebted for our capital fire-engines, and the 
small army of brave fellows who attend them. 
The system was a self-interested one, of course, 
in the first instance ; seeing that the companies 
were not bound to take care of any property save 
that in which they were directly concerned. But 
the curious part of the matter is, that the com- 
panies have long ceased to feel that kind of 
interest, and have actually kept up the engines 
and the brigade-men at a loss, until the public 
authorities should fill up the gap. In the first 
instance, the fire insurance companies thought 
fire-engines an essential part of their establish- 
ments ; seeing that the less damage was inflicted 
on the property for which they had granted 
policies, the less they would have to pay to the 
persons insured. They bought, each company 
for itself, as many fife-engines as they chose, 
and paid for as many men as they chose to 
manage them. When a fire occurred, out rushed 
these engines, with no paucity of heroic daring 
on the part of the men. But then two evils 
arose. Each corps cared only for such houses 
as were insured in one particular office, and 
deemed it no matter of duty to save adja- 
cent property. The other evil was, that the 
men quarrelled with each other as to precedent 
claims for reward, and sometimes fought while 
the flames were blazing. To lessen if not re- 
move these evils, was the purpose of a very use- 
ful arrangement made about forty years ago. 
The managing director of the Sun Eire Office 
proposed that, without interfering with the inde- 
pendent action of the companies in other ways, 
they should place all their fire-engines in one 
common stock, to be managed by one superin- 
tendent, under a code, of laws applicable to all 
the firemen; the system to be administered 
with due impartiality to all the partners, and 
paid for out of a common purse, to which 
all should contribute. It was a sagacious 
suggestion, proper to come from the largest of 
the companies. As some minds move more 
slowly than others, so do some companies fall 
in more readily than others with anew and bold 
scheme. At first the Sun, the Union, and the 
Royal Exchange were the only companies which 
entered cordially into the scheme; the others 
"didn't see it. 3 ' Then _ the Atlas and the 
Phcenix joined. This limited partnership lasted 
till the year eighteen hundred and thirty -three, 
when all the companies assisted in the forma- 
tion of the London Eire-Engine Establishment. 
Mr. Braidwood threw his energies into its orga- 
nisation, and gallantly headed the brigade-men 
in their dangerous duties for some thirty years ; 
but he fell in the great fire at Tooley-street four 
years ago a brave man dying at his post. 



The arrangement of this fire establishment is 
peculiar. Any insurance company may belong 
to it, on paying a fair quota of expenses ; and 
the total number has gradually risen to about 
thirty. Each board of directors sends one or 
more delegates to represent it, and the delegates 
form a committee for managing the system. AM 
the engines and apparatus, floating engines, and 
engine-houses, belong to the committee; and 
out of the funds provided by the several com- 
panies, the committee pays the salaries of the 
superintendent, inspectors, and firemen. The 
metropolis has been divided into a certain num- 
ber of districts, convenient as to size and rela- 
tive position ; and each district has a station at 
which the engines are kept, with firemen always 
ready to dash out when their services are needed. 
These head-quarters of districts, to which the 
boys " run to fetch the engines," are at Wat- 
ling-street, Tooley-street, Southwark Bridge- 
road, Wellclose-square, Jeffrey's-square, Shad- 
well, Rotherhithe, Whitecross-street, Farring- 
don-street, Hoiborn, Chandos-street, Crown- 
street, Waterloo-road, Wells-street, Baker- 
street, King-street, and Horseferry-road. Cap- 
tain Shaw, the present commander-in-chief of 
the brigade, pitches his camp at Watling-street. 
These stations have engines and men ready 
day and night. The general allowance is three 
engines, four horses, and about nine men 
to each station. Electric wires extend from 
station to station, affording means for commu- 
nicating the news of a fire very quickly ; and 
the men pride themselves on the rapidity 
with which they can horse their engines and 
start off. The most prominent novelty in the 
organisation of the system is the steam fire- 
engine, which drives the water forth in a jet 
such as no engine worked by hand power 
can equal. During the International Exhibi- 
tion, there was a grand field-day of steam fire- 
engines in Hyde Park, at which Marshals 
Shand and Mason, General Merryweather, and 
other steam magnates, showed what they could 
do. One engine shot fortli three hundred gallons 
of water in a minute ; and another sent up a 
jet to a prodigious height, showing how useful 
such a power would be when a lofty building is 
on fire. In some of the steam-engines, such is 
the arrangement of the boiler and flues, the 
water can be raised from the freezing tempera- 
ture to the boiling point in ten or twelve 
minutes. The attendant genii have not to wait 
for steam before they start ; they fill the boiler 
with water, light the fire, gallop away, frighten 
all the old women, delight all the boys, and 
nearly madden all the dogs ; and by the time they 
arrive at the scene of conflagration, the water 
boils and the steam is ready for working. Cap- 
tain Shaw speaks highly of these steam fire- 
engines ; and more and more of them are to be 
seen rattling through the metropolis. All the 
engines, steam and hand, have their regular 
quota of apparatus stowed in and around them 
scaling-ladders, canvas sheets, lengths of hose, 
lengths of rope, nose-pipes, rose-jets, hooks, 
saws, shovels, pole-axes, crow-bars, wrenches, &c. 



128 [September 2, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



Fires are multiplying quite as fast as the 
population, despite the fact that fire-proof con- 
struction of buildings is more adopted than ever. 
London heads the list with fourteen hundred 
fires annually; Liverpool follows with three 
hundred, Manchester with about two hundred 
and fifty, and Glasgow with over two hundred. 
In America, New York and Philadelphia both 
range between three and four hundred ; Paris 
about equals Liverpool; Berlin and Hamburg 
each about equals Manchester. The difference 
between any one year and the next is never 
very considerable ; for a sort of law of human 
carelessness prevails, leading us to a pretty 
steady aggregate of mishaps. Captain Shaw 
will not include " chimneys" or " false alarms" 
among his fourteen hundred. In one of the 
recent years there were sixteen days with no 
fire, one day with nine fires ; but the average 
is between three and four fires per day. The 
late Mr. Braidwood tried to ascertain whether 
the social and industrial habits of the people 
lead to a predominance of fires at particular 
seasons, days, and hours. In one year, August 
was most disastrous, October least; Tuesday 
the most disastrous day, Wednesday the least. 
There is no reason traceable for this ; and as 
the disastrous months and days differed in 
other years, we may pass the matter by. There 
are reasons, however, connected with the social 
habits of Londoners in respect to fire and light, 
which render intelligible the statement that more 
fires break out about ten or eleven in the evening, 
and fewer at six or seven in the morning, than 
at any other periods of the day. As to the 
causes of fire, one out of every six or seven is 
set down either as " wilful," " suspicious," or 
" unknown." The known causes, besides the 
more obvious connected with flues, ovens, 
boilers, gas explosions, include "cinders laid 
by hot," "poker left in the fire," "reading 
in bed," " playing with lucifers," " cigar-ends 
and pipe-lights thrown down carelessly," " sun 
set fire to fusees," "cat upset linen-horse," 
" cat ignite lucifers," in fact, we are inclined to 
think that puss is made responsible for more 
sins than she really commits, in this as in other 
kinds of wickedness. The terrible crime of 
arson terrible in relation to the peril to inno- 
cent life it brings with it we say nothing of 
here ; the insurance companies suspect more 
than they openly accuse. 

In Prance, the system is military ; the sappers 
and miners, or sapeurs-pom piers, are the firemen 
when on home-duty, in whatever town it may 
be. The fire-engines are small, but very nume- 
rous ; and as Paris houses have more complete 
and lofty party walls than those of London, ren- 
dering the spread of fire from house to house 
less likely, the engines and the sapeurs suffice. 
In Germany, many of the larger towns empower 
the police to demand the assistance of the 
inhabitants in case of fire. A night-watchman 
is perched upon some high place; when he 
sees a fire he fires a gun, and telegraphs with 
lanterns; the inhabitants then drag the fire- 
engines in the direction shown by him. In 



America, the volunteer system is adopted. New 
York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, 
Pittsburg, San Francisco, and most of the large 
towns, have their respective volunteer fire-bri- 
gades. At New York there are no less than two 
thousand of these volunteers, grouped into eight 
brigades ; and a dashing sight it seems to be 
when they have their annual procession through 
the city. _ Captain Lennard says that San Fran- 
cisco is divided into a number of wards, each of 
which has its quota of engines, firemen, and hook- 
and-ladder men. A tocsin bell at the station of 
each ward gives the sound of alarm to the neigh- 
bouring wards, and the alarm of fire is thus 
speedily disseminated through the city. The 
firemen are a fine body of young men, in a smart 
yet suitable working dress, consisting of a red 
shirt and trousers, a belt, and a helmet, the 
latter indicating which corps the fireman belongs 
to, such as the First or Second Tigers. The 
fire-engines are generally beautiful models of 
their kind, very light, and in some cases deco- 
rated with silver ornaments. The larger engines 
are worked by steam, and send forth an immense 
body of water. By the rules of the several 
corps, a volunteer fireman, however engaged, 
is bound when the fire tocsin rings to don his 
helmet and red shirt and appear at his post. 
The hook-and-ladder men attend the firemen, 
and render service like that rendered by our 
admirable fire-escape brigade. The example 
of America is not wholly lost upon us here in 
England. The dock companies mostly possess 
private engines ; so do many of our large public 
establishments, and many large mansions. But 
the voluntary system, properly so called, is that 
which is intended to serve others as much as 
ourselves. Hodges's Distillery certainly takes 
the lead among such, so far as London is con- 
cerned. Well-appointed fire-engines, for steam 
as well as manual power, firemen clothed and 
accoutred at all points, an observatory whence a 
look-out is maintained all night, fire bells at the 
residence and the distillery, half a mile of hose or 
leathern water-pipe, horses and harness kept in 
such readiness that an engine can be sent off to 
the scene of a fire within three minutes after the 
fire-bell is heard, a lieutenant to command the 
men under the proprietor as captain -there is 
something very gallant about this, and we touch 
hat to Mr. Hodges. This brigade has gone out 
to attend more than a hundred fires in twelve 
months, and not simply on the Lambeth side of 
the water. The example is spreading. Early 
in the present year it was stated that there were 
at that time forty-three Volunteer Fire Brigades 
in Great Britain, possessing seventy manual and 
steam fire-engines. 

There is something catching, not only in fire, 
but in the exciting enthusiasm connected with 
a large conflagration in London. One of our 
noble dukes has had a telegraphic wire laid 
from the nearest engine-station to his own bed- 
room, in order that he may jump up and go 
out to a house on fire, if so disposed; and, 
not many weeks ago, the same nobleman gave 
an afternoon fete to all the firemen, on the 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 1805.] 129 



lawn attached to his mansion. Nay, even the 
heir to the throne has donned the fireman's 
helmet, and ridden on the engine to the scene 
of a conflagration. In a recent fire on a small 
scale at Marlborough House, the royal fireman 
mounted on the roof, and did his duty. A fire 
levels all distinctions. More than one despotic 
king and emperor on the Continent has shown a 
relish for this kind of volunteer service, lending 
a hand, ordering the lazy, encouraging the timid, 
rewarding the brave, and doing hot battle to save 
a cottage. 

The insurance companies, we have said, 
wish to get rid of the cost and responsibility of 
maintaining the engines and the brigade. It is 
known that there is twice as much uninsured as 
insured property in the metropolis. The engine- 
men direct their gallant services equally to all 
houses and buildings, small and great, insured 
and uninsured. What is the consequence ? The 
companies do their best to extinguish fires in 
twice as many buildings with which they have 
no interest, as in those which are properly 
insured. If the brigade-men allowed a fire to 
blaze away because the house was not insured, 
what a public commotion there would be ! And 
yet the companies get no thanks for their un- 
paid service. There is no official recognition 
whatever of the brigade by any governmental, 
parliamentary, municipal, or parochial authori- 
ties. 

The London Brigade has received only a few 
augmentations in its strength during many years 
past, and is now too weak for the requirements 
of so vast a city. The companies refuse to 
strengthen it, because the non-insurers would 
get the lion's share of the benefit. Three years 
ago they addressed the Home Secretary on the 
subject ; they pointed out that there is no such 
anomaly in any other city in Europe or America, 
announced their intention of discontinuing their 
fire-engine establishment as soon as it could be 
done without public inconvenience, offered to 
transfer their establishment to some well-con- 
stituted public body on easy terms, suggested a 
small house-rate of a farthing or a halfpenny in 
the pound to defray the annual expenses, and 
expressed their willingness to render aid in 
every way towards the development of the new 
scheme. A committee of the House of Com- 
mons, in the same year, supported these recom- 
mendations, and named the Commissioners of 
Police as a fitting body to be entrusted with the 
work. In the years 'sixty-three and 'sixty- 
four the matter was well talked over ; and now 
we have an act (lately passed) which defines 
what is to be done. The Metropolitan Board 
of Works, and not the Commissioners of Police, 
are to have the management. On the first 
day of next year the new order of things will 
begin. The board are to build or buy new fire- 
engines and fire-escapes, or to buy up those now 
existing, whether from companies or societies, 
at their discretion. They will form a brigade 
of their own, and will pension off such of the 
brigade-men (if any) as they do not want. They 
may establish fire-engine stations at as many 



parts of the metropolis as they choose, and may 
make all necessary contracts with water com- 
panies and telegraph companies. They may 
draw^ up a scale of salaries, gratuities, and 
pensions for those employed by them in these 
duties. They may make arrangements with 
parishes for a transfer of parish engines and 
men. The government is to contribute ten 
thousand a year, on account of so many of the 
government establishments being in the metro- 
polis. The fire insurance companies are to con- 
tribute thirty-five pounds for every million ster- 
ling of property insured by them, as an hono- 
rarium for the new brigade's extinguishing of 
fires in insured property. The remaining expenses 
are to be defrayed by an additional halfpenny in 
the pound on the poor-rates. Eor the good work- 
ing of the statute, intimate relations are to exist 
between the new brigade, the police, and the 
insurance companies, in all that relates to pro- 
perty under fire. Lastly a hint to those who 
neglect the chimney-sweeper a chimney on fire 
will entail a penalty of twenty shillings on the 
owner or occupier of the room to which the 
chimney may belong. 



A FEW SATURNINE OBSERVATIONS. 

Here is a gentleman at our doors, Mr. R. A. 
Proctor, who has written a book upon that planet 
Saturn, and he asks us to stroll out in his com- 
pany, and have a look at the old gentleman. It 
is a long journey to Saturn, for his little place 
is nine and a half times further from the sun 
than ours, and his is not a little place in com- 
parison with our own tenement, because Saturn 
House is seven hundred and thirty-five times 
bigger than Earth Lodge. 

The people of Earth Lodge made Saturn's 
acquaintance very long ago ; nobody remem- 
bers how long. Venus and Jupiter being bril- 
liant in company, may have obtruded themselves 
first upon attention in the evening parties of 
the stars, and Mars, with his red face and his 
quick movement, couldn't remain lon^ unob- 
served. Saturn, dull, slow, yellow faced, might 
crawl over the floor of heaven like a gouty and 
bilious nabob, and be overlooked for a very little 
while, but somebody would soon ask, Who is that 
sad-faced fellow with the leaden complexion, who 
sometimes seems to be standing still or going 
backwards ? 

He was the more noticeable, because those 
evening parties in the sky differ from like parties 
on earth in one very remarkable respect as to 
the behaviour of the company. We hear talk 
of dancing stars, and the music of the spheres, 
but, in fact, except a few, all keep their places, 
with groups as unchanging as those of the guests 
in the old fabled banquet, whom the sight of 
the head of Medusa turned to stone. Only they 
wink, as the stone guests probably could not. 
In and out among this company of fixtures 
move but a few privileged stars, as our sister 
the moon and our neighbours the planets. These 
alone thread the maze of the company of statues,. 



130 [September 2, 1863.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND, 



[Conducted by 



dancing round their sun, who happens to be 
one of the fixed company, to the old tune of 
Sun in the middle and cau'fc get out. > Some of 
the planets run close, and some run in a wide 
round, some dance round briskly, and some slip 
slowly along. Once round is a year, and Saturn, 
dancing in a wide round outside ours, so that 
in each round he has about nine times as far 
to go, moves at apace about three times slower 
than ours. His year, therefore, is some twenty- 
seven times longer; in fact, a } T ear in the House 
of Saturn is as much as twenty-nine years five 
months and sixteen days in our part of the 
world. What, therefore, we should consider 
to be an old man of eighty-eight, would pass 
with Saturn for a three-year-old. 

A hundred and fifty years ago, Bishop 
Wilkins did not see why some of his posterity 
should not find out a conveyance to the moon, 
and if there be inhabitants, have commerce with 
them. The first twenty miles, he said, is all 
the difficulty; and why, he asked, writing 
before balloons had been discovered, may we not 
get over that ? No doubt there are difficulties. 
The journey, if made at the rate of a thousand 
miles a day, would take half a year ; and there 
would be much trouble from the want of inns 
upon the road. Nevertheless, heaviness being 
a condition of closeness and gravitation to the 
earth, if one rose but the first twenty miles, 
that difficulty of our weight would soon begin 
to vanish, and a man clear of the influence of 
gravitation might presently stand as firmly in 
the open air as he now does upon the ground. If 
stand, why not go ? With our weight gone from 
us, walking will be light exercise, cause little 
fatigue, and need little nourishment. As to 
nourishment, perhaps none may be needed, as 
none is needed by those creatures who, in a 
long sleep, withdraw themselves from the heavy 
wear and tear of life. " To this purpose," says 
Bishop Wilkins, "Mendoca reckons up divers 
strange relations. As that of Epimenides, who 
is storied to have slept seventy-five years. And 
another of a rustic in Germany, who, being 
accidentally covered with a hayrick, slept there 
for all autumn and the winter following, with- 
out any nourishment." Though, to be sure, the 
condition of a man free of all weight is imper- 
fectly suggested by the man who had a hay- 
rick laid atop of him. But what then ? Why 
may not smells nourish us as we walk moon- 
ward upon space, after escape from all the 
friction and the sense of burden gravitation 
brings ? Plutarch and Pliny, and divers other 
ancients, tell us of a nation in India that lived 
only upon pleasing odours; and Democritus 
was able for divers days together to feed him- 
self with the mere smell of hot bread. Or, if 
our stomachs must be filled, may there not be 
truth in the old Platonic principle, that there is 
in some part of the world a place where men 
might be plentifully nourished by the air they 
breathe, which cannot be so likely to be true of 
any other place as of the ethereal air above 
this. We have heard of some creatures, and of 
the serpent, that they feed only upon one ele- 



ment, namely, earth. Albertus Magnus speaks 
of a man who lived seven weeks together upon 
the mere drinking of water. Rondoletius affirms 
that his wife did keep a fish in a glass of water 
without any food for three years, in which space 
it was constantly augmented, till at first it 
could not come out of the place at which it was 
put in, and at length was too big for the glass 
itself, though that were of large capacity.' So 
may it be with man in the ethereal air. Onions 
will shoot out and grow as they hang in common 
air. Birds of paradise, having no legs, live 
constantly in and upon air, laying their eggs on 
one another's backs, and sitting on each other 
while they hatch them. Rondoletius tells, from 
the history of Hermolaus Barbarus, of a priest 
who lived forty years upon mere air. And, if 
none of these possibilities be admitted, why, we 
can take our provision with us. Once up the 
twenty miles, we could carry any quantity of it 
the rest of the way, for a ship-load would be 
lighter than a feather. Sleep, probably, with 
nothing to fatigue us, we should no longer 
require; but if we did, we cannot desire a 
softer bed than the air, where we may repose 
ourselves firmly and safely as in our chambers. 

As for that difficulty of the first twenty miles, 
it is not impossible to make a flying chariot and 
give it motion through the air. If possible, it 
can be made large enough to carry men and 
stores, for size is nothing if the motive faculty 
be answerable thereto the great ship swims as 
well as the small cork, and an eagle flies in the 
air as well as a little gnat. Indeed, we might 
have regular Great Eastern packets plying 
between London and No Gravitation Point, to 
which they might take up houses, cattle, and 
all stores found necessary to the gradual con- 
struction of a town upon the borders of the 
over-ether route to any of the planets. Stations 
could be established, if necessary, along the 
routes to the Moon, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and 
the rest of the new places of resort ; some Lon- 
don Society could create and endow a new Bishop 
of Jupiter ; and daring travellers would bring us 
home their journals of a Day in Saturn, or Ten 
Weeks in Mars, while sportsmen might make 
parties for the hippogriff shooting in Mercury, 
or bag chimeras on the Mountains of the 
Moon. 

Well, in whatever way we may get there, we 
are off now for a stroll to Saturn, with Mr. R. 
A. Proctor for comrade and cicerone, but turn- 
ing a deaf ear to him whenever, as often occurs, 
he is too learned for us, and asks us to " let 
N P' P" N' represent the northern half of 
Saturn's orbit (viewed in perspective), n En'E' 
the earth's orbit, and N p p' p" N' the pro- 
jection of Saturn's orbit on the plane of the 
earth's orbit. LetN S N' be the line of Sa- 
turn's nodes on this plane, and let S P' be at 
right angles to N S, N', so that when at P' 
Saturn is at his greatest distance from the 
ecliptic on the northern side." When of such 
things we are asked to let them be, we let them 
be, and are, in the denseness of our ignorance, 
only too glad to be allowed, not to say asked, 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 1865.] 131 



to do so. We attend only, like most of our 
neighbours, to what is easy to us. Sun is gold, 
and moon is silver; Mars is iron, Mercury 
quicksilver, which we, in fact, rather like still 
to call Mercury, thinking nothing at all of the 
imprisoned god with the winged heels, when we 
ask how is the mercury in the thermometer. 
Jove is tin, yes, by Jove, tin is the chief among 
the gods, says little Swizzles, who, by a miracle, 
remembers one thing that he learnt at school 
Jove's chieftainship among the heathen deities. 
Yenus is copper, for the Cyprian is Cuprian ; 
and as for Saturn, he is lead. A miserable old 
fellow they made Saturn out in the days of the 
star-decipherers. Mine, Chaucer makes Saturn 
say, is the drowning in wan waters, the dark 
prison, the strangling and hanging, murmur of 
discontent, and the rebellion of churls. I am 
the poisoner and the housebreaker, I topple 
down the high halls and make towers fall upon 
their builders, earth, upon its miners. I sent 
the temple roof down upon Samson. I give 
you all your treasons, and your cold diseases, 
and your pestilence. This is the sort of estima- 
tion in which our forefathers held the respect- 
able old gentleman we are now going out to see. 

When Galileo's eyes went out towards Saturn 
through his largest telescope which, great as 
were the discoveries it made, was clumsier and 
weaker than the sort of telescope now to be got 
for a few shillings at any optician's shop he 
noticed a peculiarity in the appearance of Saturn 
which caused him to suppose that Saturn con- 
sisted of three stars in contact with one another. 
A year and a half later he looked again, and 
there was the planet round and single as the 
disc of Mars or Jupiter. He cleaned his glasses, 
looked to his telescope, and looked again to the 
perplexing planet. Triform it was not. "Is 
it possible," he asked, "that some mocking 
demon has deluded me ?" Afterwards the per- 
plexity increased. The two lesser orbs reap- 
peared, and grew and varied in form strangely : 
finally they lost their globular appearance alto- 
gether, and seemed each to have two mighty 
arms stretched towards and encompassing the 
planet. A drawing in one of his manuscripts 
would suggest that Galileo discovered the key 
to the mystery, for it shows Saturn as a globe 
resting upon a ring. But this drawing is 
thought to be a later addition to the manu- 
script. It was only after many perplexities of 
others, about half a century later, that Huygens, 
in the year sixteen 'fifty-nine, announced to his 
contemporaries that Saturn is girdled about by 
a thin flat ring, inclined to the ecliptic, and not 
touching the body of the planet. He showed 
that all variations in the appearance of the ring 
are due to the varying inclinations of its plane 
towards us, and that being very thin, it becomes 
invisible when its edge is turned to the spectator 
or the sun. He found the diameter of the ring 
to be as nine to four to the diameter of Saturn's 
body, and its breadth about equal to the breadth 
of vacant space between it and the surface of 
the planet. 

The same observer, Huygens, four years 



earlier, discovered one of Saturn's satellites. 
Had he looked for more he could have found 
them. But six was the number of known 
planets, five had been the number of known 
satellites, our moon, and the four moons of 
Jupiter, which Galileo had discovered; one 
moon more, made the number of the planets 
and of the satellites to be alike, six, and this 
arrangement was assumed to be exact and final. 
But in sixteen 'seventy-one another satellite of 
Saturn was discovered by Cassini, who observed 
that it disappears regularly during one half of 
its seventy-nine days' journey round its principal. 
Whence it is inferred that this moon has one of 
its sides less capable than the other of reflecting 
light, and that it turns round on its own axis once 
during its seventy-nine days' journey; Saturn 
itself spinning once round on its axis in as short 
a time as ten hours and a half. Cassini afterwards 
discovered three more satellites, and called his 
four the Sidera Lodoicea, Ludovickian Stars, in 
honour of his patron, Louis the Fourteenth. 
Huygens had discovered, also, belts on Saturn's 
disc. Various lesser observations on rings, belts, 
and moons of Saturn continued to be made until 
the time of the elder Herschel, who, at the close 
of the last century, discovered two more satellites, 
established the relation of the belts to the rota- 
tion of the planet, and developed, after ten 
years' careful watching, his faith in the double 
character of its ring. " There is not, perhaps," 
said this great and sound astronomer, " another 
object in the heavens that presents us with such 
a variety of extraordinary phenomena as the 
planet Saturn : a magnificent globe encompassed 
by a stupendous double ring ; attended by seven 
satellites; ornamented with equatorial belts; 
compressed at the poles ; turning on its axis ; 
mutually eclipsing its rings and satellites, and 
eclipsed by them ; the most distant of the rings 
also turning on its axis, and the same taking 
place with the furthest of the satellites ; all the 
parts of the system of Saturn occasionally re- 
flecting light to each other the rings and 
moons illuminating the nights of the Saturnian, 
the globe and moons enlightening the dark parts 
of the rings, and the planet and rings throwing 
back the sun's beams upon the moons when 
they are deprived of them at the time of their 
conjunctions." During the present century, 
other observers have detected more divisions of 
the ring, one separating the outer ring into two 
rings of equal breadth seems to be permanent. 
It is to be seen only by the best telescopes, under 
the most favourable conditions. Many other and 
lesser indications of division have also at different 
times been observed. Seventeen years ago an 
eighth satellite of Saturn was discovered by Mr. 
Bond in America, and by Mr. Lassell in England. 
Two years later, that is to say, in November, 
eighteen 'fifty, a third ring of singular appear- 
ance was discovered inside the two others by 
Mr. Bond, and, a few days later, but indepen- 
dently, by Mr. Dawes and by Mr. Lassell in 
England. It is not bright like the others, but 
dusky, almost purple, and it is transparent, not 
even distorting the outline of the body of the 



132 [September 2, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



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planet seen through it. This ring was very 
easily seen by good telescopes, and presently 
became visible through telescopes of only four 
inch aperture. In Herschel's time it was so 
dim that it was figured as a belt upon the body 
of the planet. Now it is not only distinct, but 
it - has been increasing in width since the time 
of its discovery. 

These were not all the marvels. One of the 
chief of the wonders since discovered, was a 
faint overlapping light, differing much in colour 
from the ordinary light of the ring, which light, 
a year and a half ago, Mr. Wray saw distinctly 
stretched on either side from the dark shade 
on the ball overlapping the fine line of light 
by the edge of the ring to the intent of about 
one-third of its length, and so as to give the 
impression that it was the dusky ring, very 
much thicker than the bright rings, and seen 
edge-wise, projected on the sky. Well may 
we be told by our guide, Mr. Proctor, that no 
object in the heavens presents so beautiful an 
appearance as Saturn, viewed with an instru- 
ment of adequate power. The golden disc, 
faintly striped with silver - tinted belts; the 
circling rings, with their various shades of 
brilliancy and colour ; and the perfect symmetry 
of the system as it sweeps across the dark 
background of the field of view, combine to 
form a picture as charming as it is sublime and 
impressive. 

But what does it all mean? What is the 
use of this strange furniture in the House of 
Saturn, which is like nothing else among the 
known things of the universe? Maupertuis 
thought that Saturn's ring was a comet's tail 
cut off by the attraction of the planet as it 
passed, and compelled to circle round it thence- 
forth and for ever. Buffon thought the ring 
was the equatorial region of the planet which 
had been thrown off and left revolving while 
the globe to which it had belonged contracted 
to its present size. Other theories also went 
upon the assumption that the rings are solid. 
But if they are solid, how is it that they exhibit 
traces of varying division and reunion, and 
what are we to think of certain mottled or 
dusky stripes concentric with the rings, which 
stripes, appearing to indicate that the ring 
where they occur is semi-transparent, also are 
not permanent ? Then, again, what are we to 
think of the growth within the last seventy 
years of the transparent dark ring which docs 
not, as even air would, refract the image of 
that which is seen through it, and that is be- 
coming more opaque every year ? Then, again, 
how is it that the immense width of the rings 
has been steadily increasing by the approach of 
their inner edge to the body of the planet? 
The bright ring once twenty-three thousand 
miles wide, was five thousand miles wider in 
Herschel's time, and has now a width of twenty- 
eight thousand three hundred on a surface of 
more than twelve thousand millions of square 
miles, while the thickness is only a hundred miles 
or less. Eight years ago, Mr. J. Clerk Maxwell 
obtained the Adams prize of the University of 



Cambridge for an essay upon Saturn's rings, 
which showed that if they were solid there 
would be necessary to stability an appearance 
altogether different from that of the actual 
system. But if not solid are they fluid, are 
they a great isolated ocean poised in the Sa- 
turnian mid air ? If there were such an ocean, 
it is shown that it would be exposed to influ- 
ences forming waves that would be broken up 
into fluid satellites. 

But possibly the rings are formed of flights 
of disconnected satellites, so small and so closely 
packed that, at the immense distance to which 
Saturn is removed, they appear to form a conti- 
nuous mass, while the dark inner mass may have 
been recently formed of satellites drawn by dis- 
turbing attractions or collisions out of the bright 
outer ring, and so thinly scattered that they 
give to us only a sense of darkness without 
obscuring, and of course without refracting, the 
surface before which they spin. This is, in our 
guide's opinion, the true solution of the problem, 
and to the bulging of Saturn's equator, which 
determines the line of superior attraction, he 
ascribes the thinness of the system of satellites 
in which each is compelled to travel near the 
plane of the great planet's equator. 

Whatever be the truth about these vast pro- 
visions for the wants of Saturn, surely there 
must be living inhabitants there to whose needs 
they are wisely adapted. Travel among the 
other planets would have its inconveniences 
to us of the earth. Light walking as it might 
be across the fields of ether, w T e should have 
half our weight given to us again in Mars or 
Mercury, while in Jupiter our weight would be 
doubled, and we should drag our limbs with 
pain. In Saturn, owing to the compression of 
the vast light globe and its rapid rotation, a 
man who weighs twelve stone at the equator, 
weighs fourteen stone at the pole. Though vast 
in size, the density of the planet is small, for 
which reason we should not find ourselves very 
much heavier by change of ground from Earth 
to Saturn. We should be cold, for Saturn gets 
only a ninetieth part of the earth's allowance 
of light and heat. But then there is no lack of 
blanket in the House of Saturn, for there is a 
thick atmosphere to keep the warmth in the old 
gentleman's body and to lengthen the Saturnian 
twilights. As for the abatement of light, we 
know how much light yet remains to us when 
less than a ninetieth part of the sun escapes 
eclipse. We see in its brightness, as a star, 
though a pale one, the reflexion of the sun- 
shine Saturn gets, which if but a ninetieth part 
of our share, yet leaves the Sun of Saturn able 
to give five hundred and sixty times more light 
than our own brightest moonshine. And then 
what long summers ! The day in Saturn is 
only ten and a half hours long, so that the 
nights are short, and there are twenty-four 
thousand six hundred and eighteen and a half of 
its own days to the Saturnian year. But the 
long winters ! And the Saturnian winter has its 
gloom increased by eclipses of the sun's light 
by the rings. At Saturn's equator these eclipses 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 1S65.] 133 



occur near the equinoxes and last but a little 
while, but in the regions corresponding to our 
temperate zone, they are of long duration. 
Apart from eclipse the rings lighten for Saturn 
the short summer nights, and lie perhaps as a 
halo under the sun during the short winter days. 



FATHERS. 

Time, who is the Edax rerum, has become most 
voracious in this, the latter half of the nineteenth 
century. Previous to the era of the "latter 
half" he was in no hurry over his meals. He 
masticated his victuals well, and fully digested 
one dish before he attacked another. But now, 
as if he were getting gluttonous in his old age, 
he gobbles up the whole feast the moment it is 
set before him. It is really alarming to see 
that old man with the scythe sitting at a bench, 
outside the Half-way House, devouring pounds 
of the world's sausages and quartern loaves, as 
if he were eating for a wager ! It makes one 
quite nervous to look at him. What if he should 
over-eat himself, upset the sand-glass, and die of 
a surfeit thus putting an end at once to him- 
self and the century ! 

When the old gentleman first began to be 
gluttonous he made a light meal of the most 
substantial things. Stage-coaches were a wafer, 
which he took one morning with his cup of 
coffee; rotten boroughs, and the system thereto 
pertaining, were a game pasty (rather high), 
which he disposed of at lunch ; the wooden walls 
of old England, that piece de resistance under 
which his board had so long groaned, was 
polished off to the last morsel at dinner; com- 
mercial duties were a thin slice of bread-and- 
butter for his tea, and religious disabilities 
served him for a light supper. And he had 
little snacks between whiles. 

Mark how he snapped up the old-fashioned 
father at a mouthful. There is not a vestige of 
him left. He is clean gone : high-collared coat, 
short waistcoat, strapped pantaloons, terrestrial 
globe, compasses, retort and all. There is not 
so much as a brass button of him remaining^ 

The old patriarchal father, who began with 
Abraham, lasted a long time. He was such 
a very tough morsel, I suppose that Edax 
could not make up his mind to tackle him until 
he was fairly obliged, by the terms of his wager, 
to clear him off the plate. This being a fast, 
go-a-head, flippant, unbelieving, irreverent age, 
no one will be either surprised or shocked if 1 
express the opinion that the old-fashioned father 
was a bit of a humbug. I don't think he meant 
to be a humbug ; but the nature of his position 
imposed upon him a certain deportment, which 
he was bound by the law and custom of society 
to maintain. 

The patriarchs of old treated their sons as 
part of their chattels, and were rather their lords 
and masters than their " affectionate parents." 
This phrase is, in itself, a witness to the fact 
that the patriarchal rendering of the popular 
part of father was adhered to until very recent 



times. Children, writing home from school, 
address their fathers and mothers as their " dear 
parents." In Lord Chesterfield's time, this 
would have been regarded as an undue fami- 
liarity. Indeed, for long after that elegant but 
mortal lord made his final bow to the world, a 
boy was accustomed to address his father as, 
"Honoured Sir," and his mother as, "Honoured 
Madam." A father, then, was a sort of Jove 
to his children. The high, solemn, and severe 
pinnacle upon which he sat marked him out as 
a being of a superior order. Love was not so 
much his attribute as justice. No Magna 
Charta, or bill of rights, or habeas corpus, had 
invaded the sphere of his dominion. He was 
judge, jury, witness, and executioner all in 
one. The good mother, Queen Philippa, might 
plead for the offenders ; but their pardon was 
granted to her as a favour, not as a right. I 
am not very old, but I can remember the time 
when almost every father in Great Britain kept 
a strap, or a cane, for the special purpose of 
correcting his children. I had one of the 
kindest, fondest, most indulgent fathers that 
ever hoy was blessed with ; but, in accordance 
with the paternal custom, which prevailed even 
at the time of the Reform Bill, he kept a three- 
tailed strap for the castigation of his boys. I 
was rarely punished with it ; but I can remem- 
ber every feature of that strap as vividly and 
distinctly as if it Were now hanging up before 
me on that nail, where it so long hung over our 
heads, like the sword of Damocles. I can count 
the cracks in its tails, one of which was shorter 
than the others, and gave the idea of a little 
finger on a three - fingered hand. It is not 
because this strap made an impression, physical 
or moral, upon me, that I can remember it so 
distinctly, but because it was an institution. I 
associate it with the household gods, with the 
eight-day clock, the barometer, and the family 
Bible. There was a writer and grainer's flourish 
at the end of the table of the Ten Command- 
ments in church, and that flourish was in the 
likeness of the strap. In my eyes the one was 
as much an institution as the other. 

We all remember how these fathers treated 
us. They loved us of course, and were proud 
of us, but it was not the paternal thing to show 
that they entertained those natural and there- 
fore undignified sentiments towards us. We 
were kept under. We were taught, like ser- 
vants and humble dependents, to know our 
place, which was the nursery. We were not 
allowed to sit at table with our parents. We 
dined at another hour of the day, the governess 
or the housekeeper presiding at the head of the 
table. Our food was inferior to that which 
was reserved for our parents; our dress, too, 
was inferior. In many parts of the country 
corduroy was the badge of all our tribe. We 
went into the grand apartment, the paternal 
Star Chamber, to make obeisance to our parents, 
as people go to court. We had our faces 
washed and our hair brushed for the solemn 
occasion, and we were carefully tutored to make 
bows and say "please." How many times, 



134 [September 2, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



when in the impetuosity of my filial affection, I 
have rushed into the grand apartment, have I 
been challenged with " Where's your bow, sir ?" 
When I have had to return to the door and bob 
my head and scrape my foot on the carpet. 
Publicly, in church, we were told that God 
made us ; privately, in the family circle, we 
were informed that we came from London in a 
box, or were found in the parsley-bed. 

These fathers conducted themselves towards 
their children as if they, the children, were a 
lower class, a dangerous class, which it was 
necessary to suppress and keep down, lest it 
should obtain universal suffrage and swamp the 
paternal class altogether. This conduct was, in 
fact, an application of the prevailing principle 
of Toryism to the affairs of the family circle. 
Our fathers resisted the intellectual ^ develop- 
ment of their children as they resisted the 
Reform Bill. There is possibly more analogy 
between the cases than we suspect. A parent 
who allowed his boys to sit at table with him, 
and mix on terms of intellectual equality with 
his grown-up relations, was regarded as a danger- 
ous innovator a demagogue in domestic policy. 
Boys treated in this rational manner were 
spoken of as " spoilt," and the good old con- 
servative father pitied them, and prophesied 
that they would never do any good in the world. 
In 1831, Lord Russell was a political father 
" spoiling" his children in this way. 

The sovereign receipt for managing boys, 
which descended from generation to generation, 
and passed from one to another, was expressed in 
a very few words. " Be severe with them." That 
was the golden rule. Never let a boy contradict 
you ; never let him answer again ; don't allow 
him to have an opinion of his own ; don't let 
him talk about matters which he does not under- 
stand and it was considered that boys had no 
business to understand anything that belonged 
to the practical affairs of life. Let them learn 
geography at school, and know how to describe 
the boundaries ; but don't let them know better 
than you about the natural products of Peru. 
What can a boy know about guano and its 
chemical properties ? Let him go and learn his 
lessons ; let him learn to say like a parrot 
by what countries or seas Peru is bounded on 
the north, and the south, and the east, and the 
west ; but don't let him presume to teach Ins 
father how to grow turnips. 

The severity of some of the old-fashioned 
fathers was positively brutal. With full warrant 
from high and venerable authorities, they carried 
the maxim, " Spare the rod and you spoil the 
child," to the extent of thrashing their boys 
within an inch of their lives. I remember a 
very worthy, well-intentioned father, who used 
to horsewhip his boys first, and then duck them 
in the horse-pond. Those boys, and many more 
whom I knew, were punished with a severity 
which would not now be sanctioned towards 
convicts. I have seen children crouch and 
cower like dogs in the presence of their fathers, 
furtively and in a shrinking way watching their 
faces for an indication of anger. I remember 



a boy who, whenever he was spoken to by his 
affectionate paternal parent, always lifted up 
his elbow in an attitude of defence. It had 
become a habit with him. A word was sugges- 
tive of a blow ; and he was ever ready with his 
elbow in case of accidents. Such was the faith 
of those fathers in the virtues of the rod, that 
they would allow others to punish their children, 
and sometimes be guilty of the exquisite cruelty 
of sending a boy to school with a letter con- 
taining injunctions to the schoolmaster to give 
the bearer a sound flogging. 

This old-fashioned fatherwho has died uni- 
versally unregretted made up for the character. 
You could tell a father of real life as readily as 
you can tell the stage king by his brass crown 
and his fur tippet. The paternal "make-up" 
was severe. It included a coat with a great 
deal of collar, a hat with a great deal of crown, 
a shirt with a great deal of frill, a watch with a 
great deal of seal, and a walking-stick with a 
great deal of tassel. It was not until he actually 
became a father that he thought it necessary to 
appear in this guise. In his bachelor days he 
was smart enough and gay enough, both in his 
manner and attire ; but no sooner was it an- 
nounced to him that he was a father than he 
put on severe looks and severe clothes. Where 
he got that wonderful top-heavy hat, that looked 
as if it had a suit of clothes packed up in the 
crown of it, that formidable frill resembling the 
dorsal fin of a pike in full charge upon its 
enemies, that seal, so huge and imposing that it 
might have satisfied a lord chancellor, that 
tassel, that bastion of a collar where he got all 
these paternal " properties" I never could dis- 
cover. But he did get them ; he thought it 
incumbent upon him to get them ; and when he 
put them on he put on with them the severe 
aspect of the family Jove. How our mothers, 
even in their coal-scuttle bonnets and leg-of- 
mutton sleeves, could love him, and have any 
admiration for him, I never could understand. 
I am inclined to think that it was the Reform 
Bill which first undermined this monumental 
father. Indeed, I believe that the Reform Bill 
has been the cause of "all the mischief," as 
some folks call it including that leakage which 
has nearly caused the wreck of Noah's ark. I 
feel sure that if there had been no Reform Bill 
we should still be eating our beefsteaks with 
three-pronged steel forks, and lighting our 
matches by plunging them into bottles of 
phosphorus. 

The monumental father, who was first under- 
mined by the Reform Bill, began to topple 
over about the time when penny postage was 
adopted. It was not that he was ashamed to 
wear a hat like that and a frill like that when 
a letter could be sent from one end of the king- 
dom to the other for a penny ; but it was be- 
cause his boys began to see that he w r as an in- 
congruity, an anomaly, and an anachronism. No : 
papa did not march with the times, and the 
young hopeful who did, began to call him 
" Guv'nor." No more " Honoured Sir" now in 
the school letters. Boys were grown taller for 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 1S65.] 135 



their age, and could reach to their fathers' 
hearts. Hearts, indeed, came into vogne in 
place of hats, and coats, and frills, and such- 
like attributes of paternity. Nature, so long 
tied and bound, managed to free some of her 
limbs from the cords of the senseless custom 
which had so long restrained her. When her 
arms were loosed, it was only like herself that 
she should embrace her child. 

The British father has undergone a great 
metamorphosis of late years. He has relaxed 
his old severity of aspect, and become more 
human. He plays Jove no longer ; he has cast 
aside his tinfoil thunderbolts, and come down 
from his pasteboard Olympus. He stands con- 
fessed a man a man with the same heart and 
the same sympathies as those which animate 
the breasts of boys. It may be said that chil- 
dren have compelled their autocratic fathers to 
give them a constitution. When they know 
how to use a knife and fork which is their 
qualification for the franchise they are allowed 
to sit at the same table with their parents. 
They are permitted to have a voice in the house, 
and to exercise their right respectfully to think 
and have opinions of their own. Love and 
sympathy and intelligent communion have taken 
the place of a cold and senseless severity, and 
children, who formerly were little better than 
mechanical dolls, to be pushed up and down a 
stick like monkeys, or squeezed for a bark, like 
toy dogs, are freed from artificial restraints, 
and their intelligence is allowed to expand with 
the natural growth of their minds and bodies. 

No human system is perfect ; and in treating 
of Boys in these pages, I ventured to express the 
fear that children might be forced on too rapidlv. 
This is a danger to be guarded against ; but it 
is easy to guard against incidental dangers when 
the fundamental system is based upon sound 
and rational principles. And there is no doubt 
that the relations which now subsist between 
parents and children are more in accordance 
with nature and reason then they have ever been 
at any previous period of the world's wisdom. 



EOREIGN CLIMBS. 

If you read to a lady a newspaper para- 
graph recounting a death through crinoline, 
whether by burning or by entanglement in a 
carriage- wheel, she will ask in triumph, "And 
do you never get killed foolishly ? What are 
your battues? What are your Melton Mow- 
brays ? And what, if you please, are your Alpine 
scrambles? I have as much right to expose 
myself to a roasting or a pounding, as you have 
to risk your neck on a gun-flint a thousand feet 
in height. And it brings me more permanent 
enjoyment. At best, you have only a few fleet- 
ing hours of excitement ; you can't reside fm the 
point of a needle ; whereas, / am daily in every- 
body's way ; I can daily swell myself to any 
dimensions ; I have the daily pleasure of drag- 
gling my train through the mire, and of frowning 
on every one who cnances to tread on it." 



It may be safely stated that many more deaths 
from accident and imprudence occur amongst the 
Alps, than ever reach the public eye or ear 
certainly those of the British public. To be 
assured of this, you have only to travel in 
Switzerland with your ears and eyes open. The 
increased number we have recently heard of, 
may be ascribed partly to increased publicity, 
and partly to the increasing rashness of would- 
be acrobats calling themselves amateur moun- 
taineers. 

But a mountaineer may be assumed to be a 
person who, dwelling amidst mountains, uses 
them for the purposes of procuring sustenance 
and shelter for himself, his family, and his cattle ; 
for the chase, and for travelling from one spot 
in his native country to another. An ambitious 
adventurer coming from afar, with money and 
curious appliances, for the sake of scaling, with 
no practical object or end except the gratifica- 
tion of his personal vanity, peaks and pinnacles 
never scaled before, is no more a mountaineer 
than Blondin, wheeling a child in a barrow 
along his tight-rope, is a mountaineer. And he 
has not Blondin's excuse for his temerity a 
living to get nor, now, his merit, originality. 
On the contrary, he is following a comparatively 
beaten track known to be beset with dangers ; 
while his example is inducing other weak sim- 
pletons to come after him and do the same. 

Does our snarling philosophy, then, mean to 
prohibit the pleasures of Alpine excursioning ? 
Certainly not j only, like other pleasures, let 
them be enjoyed in moderation and with common 
sense. The fact is and it cannot be too 
strongly insisted on that there really exist 
three distinct Switzerlands, suspended one over 
the other at different altitudes. The first the 
Switzerland of ladies, children, elderly gentle- 
men, and ordinary folk in general, includes all the 
valleys and lakes traversed by railways, highway 
roads, and steamers, comprising the carriageable 
passes, such as Mont Cenis, the Simplon, the St. 
Gothard, and others. These, with the walks and 
rides branching off from them, afford an immense 
total of enchanting scenery, which will occupy 
several years of delightful travel. 

The second region, sometimes dovetailing 
with the first, sometimes soaring above it, takes 
in the localities which cannot be reached in car- 
riages, but to which prudent lads and lassies 
may roam on foot or on horseback, with proper 
precautions. Its limits are necessarily variaole 
and indefinite, depending upon season, weather, 
nerve, obedience to guides, and the capability 
of those individuals ; of whom it is only justice 
to say that accidents rarely occur through their 
fault. But as there are plants which gardeners 
call " half hardy," and which, in fact, are not 
hardy at all, so there are Swiss excursions 
commonly regarded as tolerably safe, or slightly 
dangerous, which in truth are not a bit safe, but 
are perfectly dangerous. All that can be said 
is, that you may accomplish them with a whole 
skin, which may also be stated of the ascent of 
Mount Cervin. Several of the minor less fre- 
quented peaks are in the same predicament ; as 



13 G [September 2, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



is one of the most celebrated passes, the Gemmi ; 
witness (omitting obscure native accidents) the 
French lady, a senator's daughter, whom, two 
or three summers ago, her stumbling mule 
pitched over the precipice. Her husband, walk- 
ing within a few feet of her, heard her one shriek 
of despair, and she was gone. She was picked 
up afterwards a mangled mass. The Gemmi, 
therefore, although a sensational pass, is cer- 
tainly not a safe one, and it would hardly be 
pleasant to be caught on that part of it by a thick 
fog, a snow-storm, or a hurricane. 

Our third and uppermost Switzerland supplies 
the Alpine Club with spots where human foot 
has never trod, or where the number of its foot- 
prints may be counted. It furnishes peaks as- 
cended only by scientific men and human 
donkeys. Nor is it the first time that fortune 
has associated those names. When the invading 
French infantry formed its squares to resist the 
onslaught of the Egyptian horsemen, a standing 
joke with the soldiers was the cry, " Savans and 
asses into the middle !" 

Now what, one asks, is the inducement which 
leads to the essaying of these perilous feats? 
One would gladly find a reasonable motive ; but 
none is either found or offered. A late secre- 
tary to the Alpine Club leaves unanswered the 
very natural question, "What is the use of 
scaling precipitous rocks, and being for half an 
hour at the top of the terrestrial globe?" al- 
leging that these are questions of sentiment, and 
do not admit of conclusive arguments on either 
side. But if it once be conceded that life is 
risked for no earthly use whatever, most people 
will think that the admission settles the matter 
most conclusively. 

What is the motive of foolhardiness ? We 
have said before, and again say, that the only 
one discoverable is brag. The common-place 
sport of steeple-chasing is eclipsed and extin- 
guished by pinnacle-chasing. But it is time to 
be instant in urging that the first ascent of an 
unclimbed peak, in which only a single life 
(whether of guide or friend) is lost, confers, not 
fame, but a painful notoriety, which is a punish- 
ment instead of a reward of the exploit. 

Is scientific observation the object ? Hardly. 
No problem is solved ; no geographical difficulty 
cleared away. It is not like ascertaining whe- 
ther at the North Pole there be an open sea, or 
whether, in the midst of Antarctic ice, there lie 
a region of mild and habitable temperature. If 
it be merely wanted to behold the ghastly flame 
of candles burning at great elevations,' or to 
learn by experiment what vegetables will and 
will not cook in water boiling fifteen hundred feet 
above the level of the sea, Mont Blanc is there 
open, ready, secure, guaranteed to be ascended 
and descended with the least possible chance of 
broken bones. Glaciers may be studied, rare 
minerals, plants, and insects collected, with 
equal safety. So that a society for the scaling 
of such heights as the Schreckhorn, the Eiger, 
and the Matterhorn, contributes about as much 
to the advancement of science as -would a club 
of young gentlemen who should undertake to 



bestride all the weathercocks of all the cathedral 
spires in the United Kingdom. 

Is it for the love of the picturesque, and for 
the sake of the view from the mountain-top, 
that the gymnast climbs to his giddy eminence ? 
A panorama, however magnificent, will be but 
carelessly and cursorily scanned during pro- 
gresses in which one false step, one feeble hand- 
hold, is death. But it is notorious that the 
most difficult peaks do not command the finest 
views. The eye derives far greater gratification 
from the scenes displayed by our second region. 

Of the manifold surprises in store for the 
climber, one or two instances will suffice. 
Professor Tyndall, illustrating the phenomenon 
now known under the name of Regelation, takes 
a straight bar of ice, and by passing it succes- 
sively through a series of moulds, each more 
curved than the last, finally turns it out as a 
semi-ring. The straight bar on being squeezed 
into the curved moula breaks, but by continuing 
the pressure new surfaces come in contact, and 
the > continuity of the mass is restored. By 
taking a handful of those small fragments and 
squeezing them together, they freeze at their 
points of contact, and the mass becomes one 
aggregate. " The crossing of snow bridges in 
the upper regions of the Swiss glaciers, is often 
rendered possible solely by the regelation of the 
snow granules. The climber treads the mass 
carefully, and causes its granules to regelate ; 
he thus obtains an amount of rigidity which, 
without the act of regelation, would be quite 
unattainable. To those unaccustomed to such 
work, the crossing of snow bridges, spanning, as 
they often do, fissures a hundred feet and more 
in depth, must appear quite appalling." By 
way of encouragement, we are previously in- 
formed that, in order that this freezing shall take 
place, the snow ought to be at thirty-two degrees 
and moist. When below thirty-two degrees and 
dry, on being squeezed it behaves like salt. 

The same great authority, to impress his 
readers with what happens when heat waves, 
pursue their way unabsorbed, reminds them 
that a joint of meat might be roasted before a 
fire, the air around the joint being cold as ice. 

"The air on high mountains," he adds, "may 
be intensely cold, while a burning sun is over- 
head. The solar rays which, striking on the 
human skin, are almost intolerable, are incom- 
petent to heat the air sensibly, and we have 
only to withdraw into perfect shade to feel the 
chill of the atmosphere. I never, on any oc- 
casion, suffered so much from solar heat as in 
descending from the Corridor to the Grand 
Plateau of Mont Blanc, on August 13, 1857. 
Though we were at the time hip deep in 
snow, the sun blazed against my companion and 
myself with unendurable power. Immersion in 
the shadow of the Dome du Goute at once 
changed my feelings, for here the air was at a 
freezing temperature. It was not, however, 
sensibly colder than the air through which the 
sunbeams passed, and I suffered, not from the 
contact of hot air, but from radiant heat, which 
had reached me through an icy cold medium." 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 1865.] 137 



It may be doubted whether exhausting moun- 
tain rambles are the best restorative for hard- 
worked professional men, who have been pent 
in cities for the ten months previous. The 
change of their physical conditions is too abrupt 
and complete to be healthy. Erom situations 
in which they are almost entirely screened from 
radiation, both from within and without, they 
rush into floods of light, showers of sunbeams, 
and other influences darted out by our great 
luminary, the sun, while they incur sudden 
losses of animal heat unknown to their city ex- 
perience. It cannot be a very salutary tonic to 
be roasted at one end and iced at the other. 
The effects of the cooking are visible in the 
noses and lips they bring down to the valley. 
Starlight nights passed on the mountain-side 
may have worse effects than the temporary 
suffering from cold. Moon-blindness, we are 
told, is caused by the chill produced by radia- 
tion from the eyes ; the shining of the moon 
being merely an accompaniment to the clearness 
of the atmosphere. A member of the Alpine 
Club, who made an ineffectual attempt to ascend 
the Schreckhorn while it was still a virgin peak, 
never recovered his eyesight perfectly after the 
two nights which he spent among the snow. 

Michelet, speaking of the beneficial effects of 
change of air (La Mer, p. 360), says : " Tran- 
sitions, especially, ought to be made with great 
caution. 

" Can we, without preparation, without some 
modification of living and regimen, be abruptly 
transferred from a completely inland climate 
(Paris, Lyons, or Dijon) to a sea-side climate? 
Can we, until we have breathed the sea air for 
a considerable time, begin taking sea baths? 
Can we, without some habituation of prudent 
hydrotherapy, commenced inland, brave, in the 
open air, the nervous constriction, the horripi- 
lation caused by cold water which sticks to you 
as you get out of it, and often with a high wind 
blowing ? These preliminary questions will more 
and more attract the attention of medical men. 

f * The extreme rapidity of railway travelling 
is an anti-medical circumstance. To go, as we 
do, in tw r enty hours from Paris to the Mediter- 
ranean, traversing different climates from hour 
to hour, is the most imprudent act in the world 
for a nervous person to commit. You reach 
Marseilles with your head in a whirl, full of 
agitation, inebriated. When Madame de Se- 
vigue took a month to go from Brittany to 
Provence, she passed gradually and by cautious 
stages through the violent opposition of those 
two climates. She proceeded insensibly from 
the western to the eastern maritime zone, and 
thence to the inland climate of Burgundy. 
Then, slowly following the Upper Rhone into 
Dauphiny, she confronted with less difficulty 
the high winds of Yalence and Avignon. Fi- 
nally, resting for a while at Aix, in inland Pro- 
vence, away from the Rhone and from the coast, 
she became a naturalised Provencale, as far as 
breathing and the chest were concerned. Then, 
and then only, she encountered the Mediter- 
ranean." Contrast this with the instantaneous 



flights made now-o'-days from Westminster 
Hall to the top of Mont Blanc. 

We shall be told that " mountaineering" is 
a manly exercise. It is so, inasmuch as it is 
not womanly. But it is not noblemanly when 
it is selfish. Is it manly to expose a parent, a 
brother, or a wife, to the chance of quite un- 
called-for sorrow ? To lead them into danger 
perhaps for the satisfaction of recovering our 
remains ? To tempt hardworking guides, mostly 
family men, to expose their lives for no adequate 
object; bringing them, for our amusement, to 
the condition of Roman gladiators, who might 
exclaim, " Morituri te salutamus," " We take off 
our caps to you, on our way to destruction ?" 

Is gambling manly ? A gambler, for the sake 
of temporary excitement, takes his chance of 
worldly ruin ; but he is led on by the expectation 
that he will one day make his fortune- perhaps 
that very day or night. Reckless mountaineer- 
ing is greater folly than gambling ; because, for 
the sake of overstrained emotions, it risks all, 
with nothing to win but an empty boast. 

When Alpine Clubbists hold that it is "a 
question of sentiment," we may ask whether it 
be not rather a question of duty. The great 
argument against' suicide urged by moralists is, 
that a man has not the right to dispose of his 
life as he pleases. Life is a precious gift, not 
to be lightly thrown away. It is not a man's 
own, but a trust conferred upon him by his 
Maker, to employ to the best of his ability. 
Has, then, a man the right to cause the wanton 
sacrifice (even in his own proper person) of a 
useful member of society, by the snapping of 
a rope, the slipping of a stone, the failure of a 
grapnel, or the imperfect freezing of a bridge of 
snow? 

When sensible people discover that they are 
on a wrong track, they confess it, and retrace 
their steps. Our climbing enthusiasts may do 
the same, without exposing themselves to the 
slightest reproach as to want of courage. No- 
body will say or believe that our countrymen 
(whether Irish, Scotch, or English) are afraid 
to face danger. But danger should be nobly 
faced. Compare the man who ascends Mount 
Cervin, "prepared to conquer the mountain or 
die," as reported in the newspapers, with him 
who braves the cholera, or visits typhus patients. 



A TREMENDOUS LEAP. 

It was, under the circumstances, the oddest, 
though at the same time the most common- 
place and unexciting ghost-story I ever heard in 
my life. It related to a giant, some ten or 
twelve feet high, who, many hundred years ago, 

dwelt on a rather high mountain in shire, 

and greatly oppressed the inhabitants of the 
neighbouring villages. Since the time of his 
death, his ghost had, from time to time, 
appeared in a certain green lane close to the 
foot of the mountain ; where it was apparently 
persecuted by a troop of smaller ghosts, sup- 
posed to represent the victims of his op- 



138 [September 2, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



pression. A very stupid tale, such as one 
might expect to find in a child's story-book, or 
perhaps in a collection of semi-mythological 
legends. Its oddity consisted in the circum- 
stance that it afforded the subject of conversa- 
tion to a party assembled in the parlour of a 
roadside inn, situated near the haunted lane, 
and that one of the speakers asserted that he 
had actually seen the ghost with his own eyes. 

Any one who analyses his own feelings with 
respect to supernatural manifestations, will dis- 
cover that a ghost-story is terrible just . in 
proportion to the closeness of its connexion 
with the real life of the present day. If genuine 
awe is to be inspired, it is absolutely necessary 
that the originating cause of a spectre should 
not be more ancient than the reign of Queen 
Anne. Should the ghost be traced to some un- 
happy gentleman who committed suicide under 
one of the Georges, so much the better. And 
if referred, with convincing evidence, to some 
one who died last year, it would be absolutely 
perfect. Unfortunately, this last position in- 
volves an ideality of effectiveness that can 
rarely be obtained, and it is to be remarked that 
the apparition of a gentleman personally known 
to a large number of living souls, might have 
to encounter an ordeal of searching criticism, by 
no means easy to pass. On the whole, as a 
good, safe, practical expedient for raising terror, 
nothing is better than a ghost in a court dress, 
after the fashion depicted by Hogarth. 

Something may be said in favour of the ex- 
tremely white ghost, which belongs to no period 
at all the ghost that was once rendered familiar 
to the public by the short tragedies performed 
in Richardson's show, and by Monk Lewis's 
Castle Spectre. This was the ghost rudely 
copied by the wicked boors, who constructed 
spectres with sheets and hollow turnips for the 
purpose of terrifying old women, and the fact 
that this base mockery has literally frightened a 
great many persons out of their wits, sufficiently 
proves the effectiveness of the appearance. 
But I would say that the white ghost rather 
appeals to a primitive than to a cultivated mind 
is somewhat vulgar in its strength. The white 
dress once meant a shroud, and was well suited 
to a manifestation in a churchyard, but after- 
wards it assumed any pattern, and meant 
nothing. The ghost at Richardson's wore a 
tunic and helmet of surpassing whiteness, and 
his face was chalked to correspond. The fault 
of the white ghost is, that it is too abstract. 

Still, as an expedient for exciting terror, the 
stock white ghost of rustic villages is far su- 
perior to the ghost that is referable to a time 
wholly different from our own. Our grand- 
fathers link us with the early Georges, and then 
take us back to Queen Anne, but when we 
come (say) to Elizabeth, we find ourselves in a 
period represented by books and monuments 
alone, and with which we have no traditional 
connexion. A ghost in an Elizabethan dress 
is too historical to be terrible ; while as for a 
baronial ghost in armour, the rumour that such 
a being haunted any grim castle would fail to 



scare the most timid old woman in the neigh- 
bouring village. 

But the spectre of a giant of an ultra-mythi- 
cal monster, that probably never lived at all, and, 
if he did, must have been ten times more wonder- 
ful than his own ghost such a spectre was the 
very sublime of effeteness. One is accustomed 
now-a-days to regard a giant as a funny figure. 
I recollect, when a party of us got up an amateur 
pantomime on the subject of Jack the Giant 
Killer at the hospitable mansion of Mr. Bend- 
lads, how a fund of mirth was produced at the 
appearance of thin Harry Smith, when with 
infinite bolsters he had stuffed himself into an 
Ogre. I was the harlequin on that occasion, 
and executed the flying leap through a sup- 
posed window with great applause. I recollect 
that just as I was in the middle of the leap an 
uneasy doubt crossed my mind whether the 
men who were to catch me behind the scenes 
were really at their post. The doubt was hor- 
rible. Could anything like that horror be pro- 
duced by such a dull phenomenon as the ghost 
of a giant ? 

Absorbed in these reflections (the acuteness 
and profundity of which have, I trust, been 
appreciated by the reader), I found myself in the 
very lane which, according to local tradition, was 
haunted by the insipid spectre. The sun was 
going down, and, I am ashamed to confess the 
fact, I felt rising within me a pusillanimous re- 
gret that the lane was connected with any 
ghost whatever, gigantic or otherwise. The 
practical value of my professed theories was 
rapidly approaching zero. 

I once read, with considerable respect, the 
theatrical notice which a literary friend of mine 
wrote for a weekly newspaper on the occasion 
of some performance of Sheridan's comedy 
The Rivals. With much shrewdness, as I 
thought, my friend pointed out a glaring incon- 
sistency in the character of Bob Acres. Why 
should the aforesaid Bob be so ferociously 
valiant when writing the challenge, and so ob- 
trusively timid when awaiting the approach of 
his antagonist ? The author had clearly sought 
to amuse his audience at the expense of truth. 
So said, or rather wrote my friend, and the ex- 
position of his view occupied nearly a column 
of close small print. I thought him lengthy, 
but right. My walk in the haunted lane has 
convinced me that Sheridan was right, and my 
friend was wrong. 

Still I went on, and soon perceived straight 
before me a sort of white mist, which extended 
almost entirely across the road, and was by no 
means to be accounted for by the general state 
of the atmosphere, the adjoining fields being 
entirely free from exhalations of any kind. This 
was strange, and the phenomenon became 
stranger still as I approached it. Manifestly 
the mist had something like a human outline. 
A large mass, resembling a body, culminated in 
a smaller one, which seemed like a head, and 
was split at the bottom into two columns, which, 
without any great stretch of fancy, might be 
taken for legs, while towards the head shot out 






Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 1865.] 139 



two other columns, that very tolerably repre- 
sented arms. All was very vague and undefined, 
and there was a total absence of minute details. 
Nevertheless, if a party of schoolboys, on a 
winter's day, had succeeded in making anything 
half so like a man, out of snow, they would have 
deemed themselves artists of no ordinary skill. 
Whether this were a ghost or a lusus naturae, 
there was no doubt it was the spectral giant 
of whom I had heard so much. 

What was I to do ? I felt monstrously dis- 
inclined to proceed, and I did not relish the 
notion of waiting till the form dispersed, 
especially as, instead of rarefying it seemed to 
become more dense, and I began to observe in 
the head-like mass a pair of luminous spots, that 
were by no means a bad imitation of eyes. 
Should I go back ? I rather think I should 
have adopted that inglorious expedient, had I 
not, on turning my head, perceived in my rear 
some half a dozen smaller masses of mist, 
which likewise vaguely resembled the human 
form, and which, as they moved towards me, 
were rendered singularly unpleasant by a sort 
of chirping sound, of which they seemed to 
be the source. I had often read of " gibber- 
ing" ghosts, without precisely knowing the sig- 
nification of the participle, just as a cockney 
poet freely writes about "glades," and "dells," 
and " dingles," without any very distinct picture 
before his mind's eye. I perfectly understand 
the meaning of it now. 

The little ghosts, for so I must consent to 
call them, as they exactly corresponded to the 
spectral victims of cruelty of which I had heard, 
were much more formidable than the big one, 
and rendered retreat morally impossible. The 
big ghost, at all events, stood still, but these 
minor phantoms pressed close upon me closer, 
and closer till I felt something extremely cold 
and clammy touch my ungloved hand. 

This was unbearable. A thrill of horror shot 
through my whole frame, and instinct brought 
to my mind if mind I had at the time the 
memory of that harlequin's leap by which I 
had once acquired such honourable distinction. 
Taking a run, I darted, after the most approved 
pantomime fashion, through the larger misty 
form that stood immediately before me. 

Never shall I forget the sensation of that 
dreadful moment. I seemed to be passing 
through a medium, cold beyond the power of 
thermometrical expression, and at the same time 
my ears were stunned by a shriek of agony that 
might have come from the chained Prometheus. 

It is not at all surprising that I was found 
insensible on the road. A harlequin's leap, with 
nobody to catch the leaper, is in itself no joke, 
and here was a leap of the kind in question, 
accompanied by the most aggravating circum- 
stances. How, as T afterwards heard, I was 
picked up and carried back to the little inn, and 
lay for a day or two in a very incapable con- 
dition, I need not record at length. It is 
sufficient to say that no bones were broken 
though I had been shaken enough to justify the 
production of a moderate doctor's bill and that 



I soon found myself once more in the parlour of 
the inn. 

An old distich, hackneyed to death, teaches 
us that 

He who's convinced against his will 

Is of the same opinion still. 

I once laid a wager that these lines were or were 
not (I forget which) in Hudibras, and though I 
do not remember the result of the search made 
on the occasion, I perfectly recollect that I lost 
half-a-crown. Never could the proverbial ex- 
pression be applied with more perfect accuracy 
than to my mental case when I was in a con- 
valescent state. I had been convinced of the 
existence of ghosts very much indeed against my 
will sorely against my will, in a most disagree- 
ably strict sense of the word as many a bone in 
my skin could testify. Hence I was determined 
not to yield to such obtrusive convictions. I 
would disbelieve more sturdily than ever. 

Indeed, what more easily explained away than 
the phantom giant ? The beverages vended at 
the hostelry were not of the best, and I had im- 
bibed rather more than my usual quantity while 
listening to the interesting discourse in the 
parlour when I entered the room. My mind 
was filled with the ridiculous legend I had just 
heard, and when I encountered a mist that had 
no distinct shape at all, it was the easiest matter 
in the world to accommodate to the shapeless 
mass a form corresponding to the story. With- 
out any determining cause whatever, we all of 
us, on occasion, make tolerably distinct images 
out of clouds, burning coals, coffee-grounds, and 
what not ; and here was an obvious determining 
cause why I should take a mist for a giant, 
without an approach to that monomania which 
made Don Quixote mistake a windmill for a 
similar monster. 

While I was vainly striving to scrape a par- 
ticle of amusement out of a local paper, two 
persons entered the room who had been the 
principal speakers in the memorable discussion. 
One of them, according to his own assertion, 
had actually seen the spectre ; the other was an 
obstinate disbeliever, newly arrived from an- 
other district, and who, having no respect what- 
ever for the popular creed of the village, 
simply doubted whether his informant was a 
fool or a mendacious person. 

The ghost-seer came in first, and had hardly 
seated himself than he was joined by his former 
adversary, who accosted him in a jeering tone : 

"Well, Jones, have you seen anything of 
your friend the ghost again ?" 

"About the ghost being my friend, Mr. 
Nicolls, that's neither here nor there," answered 
Jones ; " but if I did not see it last night, I'm 
a Dutchman." 

" You may be a Dutchman, for all I know," 
brilliantly retorted Nicolls ; " but, whether 
Dutchman or no, you seem to be none the worse 
for it." 

" No, Mr. Nicolls, I flatter myself I have 
seen that ghost rather too often to be much ruffled 
when I come across it : and it is not those who 



140 [September 2, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



believe least in them things that are 
least frightened at them." 

This was a blow unintentionally dealt at me, 
but of course I took no notice. 

"Last night, however," proceeded Mr. Jones, 
"the ghost was very much altered quite 
changed like." 

" Stood twenty feet in his stockings instead 
of ten," sneered Mr. Nicolls. "Growed, no 
doubt." 

" No ; there you are out, sharp as you think 
yourself," replied Jones. " If you must know 
the truth, though you don't deserve to know it, 
the ghost had a large hole like, right through the 
middle of his chest. There is no mistake about 
it, for I saw the moon shining clean through his 
bosom, while all the rest of him was misty 
like, as usual." 

I rushed out of the room into the open air. 
I had had an experience too strange for my 
endurance. I, and I only, knew the cause of 
the poor spectre's disfigurement. I believe, 
indeed, that I am the only person recorded in 
the pages of fact or fiction the only person, I 
say, who ever jumped through a ghost. 



NORTH GERMAN HARVEST-HOME. 

Towards the end of August, eighteen 'sixty- 
two, I was at Daheran, a sea-bathing place on 
a secluded part of the Baltic, and there made 
the acquaintance of Herr Hillmann, a wealthy 
" Ritterguttbesitzer " literally Knight-estate- 
owner of the neighbourhood. Herr Hill- 
mann, being not only a wealthy but also a 
well informed and pleasant man, who, more- 
over, had a certain amount of English at his 
command, I soon became very friendly with 
him, and the result was, that he asked me to 
spend a few days with him at Basdorf the one 
of his extensive farms which he inhabited in 
order to witness a harvest-home and peasant 
wedding at Mecklenburg. Accordingly I gave 
up the last day of the races, which formecithe 
special attraction of Daheran at that time, and 
went by rail to Biitzow. 

Here I was met by a long waggon, the sides 
of which were formed by a pair of ladders, 
whence it derived the appellation of "Ladder- 
waggon," and the seats of two well-stuffed 
sacks, placed at a little distance, one behind 
the other, in a cozy bedding of straw. The 
first of these sacks was the seat of the driver, 
I occupied the second, and the space behind 
me received my luggage. This conveyance was 
drawn by four splendid bay horses, which would 
not have disgraoed Hyde Park in the month of 
June, had not the harness been made up of very 
rusty leather and rope's ends. I climbed to my 
sack, and we drove at a solemn pace out of the 
station, through the town and past the red brick 
prison, till we came to the " chaussee," or mac- 
adamised high road, where the four bays, upon 
a gentle admonition from Eriedrich, went off 
at the mildest trot ever performed by horses. 
Thus we proceeded, till after about an hour 



and a half we left the chaussee and entered a 
country road, the recollection of which is still 
enough to make my bones ache : for the soil here 
being of the heaviest wheat-growing descrip- 
tion, and the road commissioners generally 
contenting themselves with that part of then- 
duties which obliges them to go to a round of 
country dinners (after which they are all more 
or less in a state such as makes them forget 
their sufferings on the road thither), I was most 
forcibly impressed with every rut and flint that our 
wheels encountered. An hour and a quarter of 
this brought us to the manor-house of Basdorf, 
Herr Hillmann's "estate," the approach to which 
consisted of a long avenue of lime-trees, flanked 
on either side by the outhouses i.e. the stables, 
cowhouses, barns, and other farm buildings 
and of a causeway, the like of which my English 
mind could scarcely have accepted as a possi- 
bility. The ruts between the boulders that 
formed the pavement were such as to oblige 
the horses to go at a procession pace, yea, 
sometimes to come to a perfect stand-still. But 
at last we did arrive at the door of a long one- 
storied house, that stood in the shade of a row 
of magnificent lime-trees. Hostess and host 
as perfectly well bred and educated a lady and 
gentleman as one could wish to see, received 
me with frank hospitality, and led me through 
a spacious hall into a large whitewashed apart- 
ment on the right, with homely but comfort- 
able furniture, and a rosewood grand piano ; on 
a side-table in this room, where all the meals 
were taken (no less than six a day : breakfast 
at eight, luncheon at eleven, dinner at half-past 
one, coffee with cake at three, " vesperbrod," 
a kind of afternoon luncheon, generally con- 
sisting of bread-and-butter and cold meats, to 
which tea is added sometimes, at half-past five, 
and supper hot at nine o'clock), a cold and 
very appetising collation was laid out, of which 
I gladly partook in company with my enter- 
tainers. When our acquaintance had in this 
way been cemented, we took a stroll in the 
garden that flanked the house on either side, 
and spread a considerable distance behind it a 
garden that was a wonderful conglomeration of 
park, flower-garden, kitchen-garden, orchard, wil- 
derness, and stately avenues of grand old oaks 
and beeches. Beguiling the walk with pleasant 
chat, we had reached the edge of a thick 
brushwood, when we suddenly heard a most 
piteous whine. Herr Hillmann immediately 
recognised the voice of his favourite pointer 
dog, whistled to him, and received a feeble yelp 
in answer. We hurried in the direction of the 
sound, and soon found the dog, apparently 
dying. Herr Hillmann examined the poor brute, 
and discovered crowds of enormous horse- 
leeches that were sucking the life out of him. 
The poor old boy had evidently been in a 
certain black pool hard by probably in pur- 
suit of a water-hen and there been fastened 
on by these murderous creatures. It was a 
pitiful sight, for nothing could be done to save 
the poor animal, who died half an hour after. 
This incident threw a slight gloom over the rest 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 1865.] 141 



of the evening, and the supper was but a silent 
meal. But after supper my host proposed a 
walk to the fields, where the waggon-loaders 
were still at work bringing in the last loads of 
wheat, for on the morrow was the harvest-home, 
and not a sheaf must remain in the field, except 
what is left for the gleaners. 

It was a pretty scene : the waggons, like the 
one that met me at the station, were each 
drawn by four beautiful horses, some were 
loaded to the top, that is about twelve feet 
high from the bottom, on which eminence some 
lads and women were riding home to the grana- 
ries to unload and store the corn, some being 
laden and some returning empty from the gra- 
naries for fresh loads. The women wore short 
black stuff petticoats, little short-waisted scarlet 
jackets with silver buttons, that hung loosely 
open over their white long-sleeved shirts, which 
went high up to the neck like those of the men, 
and with little scarlet caps, that covered no- 
thing but the very backmost back of their back 
hair, of which they all have a profusion. The 
lads were in white linen trousers, shirt sleeves, 
red braces, and straw hats, ornamented by their 
sweethearts with gay ribbons and flowers all 
whistling and working and singing merrily in 
the soft smile of the large approving harvest- 
moon. It was twelve o'clock before the last 
load had left the field, and all the men and 
women who did not find room on the top of it, 
shouldered their pitchforks and escorted it home 
with songs. 

My bedroom was situated in a side-gable of 
the house, and although the furniture was 
homely, the room was delightfully clean and 
cozy. The two Gothic windows overlooked 
the flower-garden, and it being a sultry night, 
I left them open and enjoyed the full benefit 
of the fragrances arising from below, as well 
as the songs of the nightingales that lived in 
every bush and tree of the garden. It seemed 
to me as if I had scarcely gone to sleep, when at 
three o'clock I was wakened by a tremendous 
clattering noise, which I soon ascertained pro- 
ceeded from the milk-pails of the dairymaids, 
going out into the pastures to milk the cows. 
Too tired to go out and witness this performance, 
I returned to my bed, and slept till half-past 
seven o'clock. On arriving in the hall below, I 
found a large assembly of the village peasants, 
dressed in their Sunday best, and when I 
entered the living-room, Herr and Frau Hill- 
mann, after making kind inquiries in regard to 
my comforts during the night, informed me 
that I had just come down in time to witness 
the beginning of the ceremonies of the day. It 
appeared to be the custom that all the weddings 
of the village people were put off till the feast 
of the harvest-home partly, I suppose, because 
the people had not the time before, and partly 
because the whole expense of the festivity 
was in this way transferred to the lord of the 
manor. The brides we had three of them on 
this occasion dress themselves in their best, 
consisting of a new black stuff shirt, a very 
short-waisted scarlet jacket fastened with silver 



buttons, and a white muslin kerchief pinned 
across the bosom, and then go up to the manor 
house, that the lady may put the finishing touch 
to their hair generally insisting upon having 
it curled in front, a glory which they will un- 
dergo much agony to attain and put on their 
crowns! These crowns had been prepared by 
Frau Hillmann, and consisted of a mysterious 
structure of the shape of a small beehive, built up 
with artificial flowers, natural green leaves, nar- 
row ends of parti-coloured ribbons, and an abun- 
dance of tinsel. When this ornament had been 
placed on the head of the bride which could not 
oe done till after she had been shedding copious 
tears, none but herself knowing at what, and 
several times declared that her strength was 
forsaking her, and she must inevitably faint, 
unless supported by frequent doses of wine 
she presented an object highly suggestive of an 
Indian squaw on a high festival. 

When Frau Hillmann had performed her 
arduous duties towards the three brides, the 
whole assembly in the hall, amongst whom were 
the three bridegrooms, were fortified with beer 
(a kind of beer that was not at all like Bass's 
pale ale) and cake, after which four ladder- 
waggons, with four sacks each, and drawn by 
four horses, clattered up to the door to convey 
the party to church. The last of the waggons 
carried the musicians with their brass instru- 
ments, and when all had mounted into their 
seats, they drove off at a merry trot (how it 
must have hurt them on that pavement !), accom- 
panied by the loud and blatant strains of the 
band in the rear. 

During the absence of the bridal party, those 
who remained behind all assisted at the putting 
up and spreading of a long narrow table in the 
shade of the lime-trees, at which the whole 
village, as well as all the in and out-door servants 
of the farm, were to be regaled with a sumptuous 
repast, consisting of milk soups, large legs of 
roast veal, goose, two huge smoked hams, po- 
tatoes and broad beans, and a second course 
of rice boiled in milk, with stewed prunes to 
be washed down with an unlimited supply of 
the above-mentioned home-brewed ale, and the 
contents of a small keg of home-distilled brandy 
for the men. 

Punctually at twelve o'clock the waggons 
returned from church, and at the first sign of 
them the cooks dished up, so that at the same 
moment that the wedding party alighted, the 
dinner stood smoking on the table. As soon 
as the brides had shyly received the congratu- 
lations of the guests, every one took a seat and 
applied him or herself energetically and ex- 
clusively to the business of the hour. At one 
o'clock the dinner was over, and the whole 
crowd hurried to one of the barns, where 
a large space had been cleared and decorated 
with flowers to serve as a ball-room. The ball 
had to be opened by the lord of the manor, 
and in this wise : Herr Hillmann with the eldest 
of the brides, whose young husband had the 
honour of Frau Hillmann's hand for the same 
''Polonaise" a kind of mazy march; I had 



142 [September 2, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by, 



the second bride assigned to me, and her hus- 
band the housekeeper to him ; whilst the third 
bride fell to the share of the coachman a very 

freat dignitary in the household and her 
usband took the lady's-maid: had any lady 
visitors been staying in the house, or had there 
been any daughters in the family, they would 
have taken the places of the housekeeper and 
the lady's-maid. Herr Hillmann and I were re- 
leased after we had danced with the three 
brides, but poorErau Hillmann who happened 
to be a rather stout lady had to perform obli- 
gatory dances, not only with the three bride- 
grooms, but also with the coachman, the hunts- 
man, and the miller I After their etiquette 
dances, the brides were allowed to divest them- 
selves of their crowns, and then the dancing 
commenced in good earnest. Besides the dances 
of society, such as the Polka, the Galop, and 
the Polka-Mazurka, thejr performed a variety of 
national quadrilles, which were characterised 
by much stamping of feet and clapping of hands 
and frequent staccato yells of the men, and as 
the night wore onward the brandy-kegs gradually 
got emptier, every one introduced a "pas" and 
variations of his own into the dance. One couple 
especially received much applause from the 
rest of the company, who left off dancing in 
order to admire their performance. The dance 
was a Polka-Mazurka, and at a certain bar in 
the music the gentleman one of the stable- 
boys lifted his partner, a particularly delicate- 
looking, slender little dairymaid, clean off the 
floor and high above his head into the air, 
promptly setting her down again to go on in the 
dance in perfect time with the music all this 
with the greatest ease of manner on both sides. 
After this feat I left the dancers to retire to 
rest a rest that, until about four o'clock in the 
morning, was every now and then broken by 
the jolly shrieks of the men and the screams 
of women's laughter. 



A DAY WITH HOLIBUT. 

" The treasures of the ocean are greater than 
those of the land." This assertion applies, 
perhaps, with greater force and truthfulness to 
the Pacific than to the Atlantic Ocean. Its in- 
exhaustible store, without any visible decrease, 
and with only a trifling expenditure of labour, 
supplies food, and even luxuries, to the nume- 
rous natives tenanting the islands that every- 
where stud its vast expanse, as well as the 
coasts washed by its blue waters. 

It cannot be the result of mere chance that 
human necessities, and the requisites to supply 
them, are so wonderfully and admirably balanced! 
Whales and seals, together with numerous oily 
inhabitants of the sea, obeying a wise and won- 
derful instinct, regularly visit the coasts and 
island homes of the savage, and thus bring a 
regular supply of heat-yielding matter. So 
deep-sea fish, solid, substantial, and muscular, 
in like manner, furnish material equally needed 
to build up the thew and sinew required by the 



native, to enable him to catch, subdue, and 
secure these leviathans of the deep. 

Of all the deep-sea fish the holibut is by far 
the largest and strongest the savage has to 
grapple with. Holibut fishing, as practised by 
the Indians, in a canoe, on a dangerously rough 
sea, is a sport few have indulged in. 

My story commences at Fort Rupert, a 
trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company, at 
the extreme end of Vancouver's Island; this 
so-called fort is a depot for trading, or, in 
other words, bartering goods of various kinds 
for peltries (fur skins simply sun dried) brought 
for sale by Indian hunters to the fort. A large 
colony of Indians live close by, in a village 
composed of wood sheds, situated on a level 
plateau overlooking a bay, or, more correctly, a 
sheltered roadstead, named Beaver Harbour. 
A regular fleet of canoes are generally to be 
seen on the beach, of all sizes, from the war 
canoe, capable of carrying thirty fighting men, 
down to the shell, paddled by girls and boys. 
I was the guest of the chief trader, and 
having expressed a desire to witness holibut 
fishing, it was arranged that my wishes should 
be gratified, as soon as the requisite nego- 
tiations could be carried out with the chiefs. 
The morning of departure arrived, and as I 
left the fort, and strolled down the slanting 
beach towards the sea, a quaint assemblage of 
disagreeable specimens of humanity preceded 
me, in novel procession savages of every age 
and size, from the stalwart chief to the wad- 
dling brat, all eyes and stomach. 

A chief, particularly a white one, in savage- 
dom is great or little in an exact ratio to 
the amount of pat-a-lech (a word equivalent to 
the bak-sheish of Easterns) he pays or gives 
for service rendered being the trader's 
guest, and the presents being deemed highly 
satisfactory, of course the Long Beard" so 
they styled me was on the topmost pinnacle 
of popularity. 

Alarge canoe, manned by four savages, awaited 
my arrival, and this being a special occasion, they 
were more elaborately painted than is usual. A 
brief description of one will serve to portray the 
other three. Tailors are entirely unknown in 
the land of the red-skin. A small piece of 
blanket, or fur, tied round the waist, constitutes 
the court, evening, and morning costume of both 
chief and subject My crew were kilted with 
pieces of scarlet blanket. Imagine, if you can, 
a dark, swarthy, copper-coloured figure leaning 
on a canoe paddle, his jet black hair hanging 
down nearly to the middle of his back, the front 
hair being clipped close in a straight line across 
the forehead. Neither beard, whisker, nor mous- 
tache ever adorns the face of the red-skin, the 
hair being tweezered out by squaws in early life, 
and thus destroyed. A line of vermilion extends 
from the centre of the forehead to the tip of the 
nose, and from this trunk line others radiate, 
over and under the eyes and across the cheeks. 
Between these red lines, white and blue streaks 
alternately fill the interstices. A similar pattern 
ornaments chest, arms, and back, the frescoing 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 1SG5.] 143 



being artistically arranged to give apparent 
width to the chest ; the legs and feet being 
naked. A fine bag made from the skin of the 
medicine otter, elaborately decorated with beads, 
scarlet cloth, bells, and brass buttons, slung 
round the neck by a broad belt of wampum, 
completed the costume of my coxswain. The 
canoe was what is commonly called a dug-out, 
that is, made from a solid log of wood. The cedar 
(thuga gigantea) is always used by coast In- 
dians for canoe-making. The process of hollow- 
ing out is long and tedious, but when complete 
the requisite bulge at the sides is accomplished 
by a very ingenious method. The canoe being 
filled with water, red hot stones are continually 
plunged into it until nearly boiling, then pieces 
of wood of various lengths are jammed athwart 
the canoe, and thus the sides are pressed out, 
and when cold retain the shape given to them. 
Nothing can be more graceful than the lines of 
the canoes used by the Fort Rupert Indians. 
Coiled round the sharp bow of the canoe like a 
huge snake was a strong line about sixty fathoms 
in length, made from the inner bark of the cy- 
press, rlfeatly twisted. Laying along each side, 
extending far beyond both bow and stern, were 
two light spear hafts about sixty feet long, 
whilst stowed away in the bow were a dozen 
shorter spears, one end being barbed, the other 
constructed to fit on to the longer spear, but so 
contrived that the spearman can readily detach 
it by a skilful jerk. Tied lightly to the centre 
of each of the smaller spears, was a bladder made 
from sealskin blown full of air, the line attach- 
ing it being about three fathoms in length. 

I had hardly completed my investigation of 
the canoe, its crew and contents, when, to my 
intense astonishment, the four Indians who 
were to accompany me lifted me, as they would 
a bale of fur or a barrel of pork, and without a 
word deposited me in the bottom of the 
canoe, where I was enjoined to sit much in 
the same position enforced on a culprit in 
the parish stocks. I may mention, incident- 
ally, that a canoe is not half as enjoyable as 
poets and novelists, who are prone to draw 
imaginary sketches, would lead the uninitiated 
to believe. It would be impossible to trust one- 
self in a more uncomfortable, dangerous, damp, 
disagreeable kind of boat generally designated 
a " Fairy Barque" that " rides, dances, glides, 
threads its silvery course, over seas, and lakes, 
or arrow-like shoots foaming rapids." All a 
miserable delusion and a myth. Getting in, 
unless lifted as I was bodily like baggage, is to 
any but an Indian a dangerous and difficult 
process ; the least preponderance of weight to 
either side, and out you tumble into the water 
to a certainty. Again, lowering oneself into 
the bottom is quite as bad, if not worse, re- 
quiring extreme care to keep an even balance, 
and a flexibility of back and limb seldom pos- 
sessed by any save tumblers and tight-rope 
dancers. Down safely, then, as I have said, 
you are compelled to sit in a most painful posi- 
tion, and the least attempt to alter it generally 
results in a sudden heeling over of the canoe, 



when you find yourself sitting in a foot of cold 
water. 

We are off, and swiftly crossing Beaver Har- 
bour, the beech grows indistinct in the distance ; 
still the dusky forms of the Indians, the rough 
gaudily painted huts, the gleam of many lodge- 
fires, and wreaths of white smoke slowly as- 
cending through the still air, the square sub- 
stantial pickets shutting in the trade fort, its 
roof and chimneys just peeping above all, 
backed by the sombre green of the pine-trees, 
together presented a picture novel in all its 
details, wild and grand as a whole, such as 
Turner would have loved to paint. 

A few minutes and we round the jutting 
headland, keeping close along the rocky shore 
of the island, glide past snug bays and cozey 
little land-locked harbours, the homes and haunts 
of countless wild-fowl ; soon we leave the shore 
and stand away to sea. The breeze is fresher 
here, and a ripple that would be nothing in a 
boat, makes the flat-bottomed canoe what a 
sailor would call unpleasantly lively. Save a 
wetting from the spray and an occasional sur^e 
of water over the gunwale, all goes pleasantry. 
The far-away land is barely distinguishable in 
the grey haze. No canoes are to be seen in 
the dark blue water, the only sign of living 
things a flock of sea-gulls waging war on a 
shoal of fish, the distant spouting of a whale, 
and the glossy backs of the black fish as they 
roll lazily through the ripple. The line at the 
bow is uncoiled, a heavy stone enclosed in a 
net is attached as a sinker, a large hook made 
of bone and hardwood, baited with a piece of 
the octopus, a species of cuttle-fish, is made 
fast to the long line by a piece of hemp cord ; 
then comes the heavy plunge of the sinker, and 
the rattle of the line as it runs over the side of 
the canoe, and we wait in silence for the ex- 
pected bite. While so waiting, it may be as 
well briefly to explain, for the benefit of such 
as are not familiar with fish, what a holibut is. 

The holibut is a flat fish, belonging to the 
genus pleuronectidse of naturalists ; it attains 
a very large size in these seas, from three to 
five hundred-weight. Holibuts are common on 
the banks of Newfoundland, and are frequently 
taken by the cod-fishers; they are also found 
on the west coasts of Norway and Greenland, 
and it is stated are common around the coasts 
of Ireland and Cornwall. In 1828, a holibut, 
seven feet six inches in length, three feet six 
inches in breadth, and weighing three hundred 
and twenty pounds, was taken oh* the Isle of 
Man (Yarrell's B. E.). The holibut is a ground 
feeder ; its favourite diet, small fish, crustaceans, 
and cuttle-fish. It spawns early in the summer. 

A tug, that came unpleasantly near to upset- 
ting us all, let us know that a holibut was bolt- 
ing the tempting morsel, hook and all. A few- 
minutes to give him time to fairly swallow it, 
and now a sudden twick buries the hook deeply 
in the fleshy throat, the huge flat fish finds to 
his cost that his dinner is likely to seriously dis- 
agree with him, whilst in the canoe all are in 
full employ, The bowman, kneeling, holds on 



144 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 2, 18G5J 



tightly with both hands to the line ; the savage 
next him takes one of the long spears, and 
quickly places on to the end of it a shorter one, 
barbed and bladdered ; the other two paddle 
warily. At first the hooked fish was sulky, and 
remained obstinately at the bottom, until con- 
tinued jerks at the line ruffled his temper and 
excited his curiosity sufficiently to induce a 
sndden ascent to the surface perhaps to have 
a peep at his persecutors. Awaiting his appear- 
ance stood the spearman, and when the canoe 
was sufficiently near, in he sent the spear, jerk- 
ing the long haft or handle from the shorter 
barbed spear, which remained in the fish, the 
bladder floating like a life-buoy, marking the 
fish's whereabouts. The holibut, finding his 
reception anything but agreeable, tries to de- 
scend again into the lower regions, a perform- 
ance now difficult to accomplish, as the bladder 
is a serious obstacle. Soon reappearing on 
the surface, another spear was sent into 
him, and so on, nntil he was compelled 
to remain floating. During all this time, 
the paddlers, aided by the line-man, followed 
all the twistings and windings of the fish, as a 
greyhound courses a doubling hare. Eor some 
time the contest was a very equal one, after 
the huge fish was buoyed and prevented from 
diving. On the one side the holibut made des- 
perate efforts to escape by swimming, and on 
the other, the Indians keeping a tight line, 
made him tow the canoe. Evident signs of 
weariness at last began to exhibit themselves, 
his swimming became slower, and the attempts 
to escape more feeble and less frequent. Several 
times the canoe came close up to him, but a 
desperate struggle enabled him once more to get 
away. Again and again we were all but over ; 
the fish literally flew through the water, some- 
times towed the canoe nearly under, and at 
others spun it suddenly round, like a whipped 
top ; nothing but the wonderful dexterity of the 
paddlers saving us from instant shipwreck and 
the certainty of drowning. I would have given 
much to have stood up; but no, if I only 
moved to one side to peep over, a sudden yell 
from the steersman, accompanied with a flourish 
of the braining club mildly admonitory, no 
doubt, but vastly significant ensured instant 
obedience. I forgot cold, wet, fright indeed, 
everything but the one all-absorbing excitement 
attendant on this ocean chase ; the skill and 
tact of uneducated man pitted against a huge 
sea monster of tenfold strength, a sight a lover 
of sport would travel any distance to witness. 

Slowly and steadily the sturdy paddlers 
worked towards the shore, towing the fish, but 
keeping the canoe stern first, so as to be enabled 
to pay out line and follow him should he sud- 
denly grow restive ; in this way the Indians 
gradually coaxed the flat monster towards the 
beach, a weak powerless exhausted giant, out- 
witted, captured, and subdued, prevented from 
diving into his deep sea realms, by, to him, any- 



thing but life-buoys. We beached him at last, 
and he yielded his 'life to the knife and club of 
the red-skin. 

Returning for another foray a like success at- 
tended our efforts, and three fish were thus 
taken during the day. Our three holibut 
weighed collectively over, nine hundred pounds, 
the first taken being by far the largest. I ar- 
rived at this estimate by weighing portions of 
the fish at the Fort the following day. Some 
time was occupied on the beach in cutting them 
up and making temporary stages to pack the 
flesh away on, lest bears or wolves might de- 
molish it ere a fleet of canoes could be sent 
after it on the following day. All these opera- 
tions completed, a fire was lighted, and large 
masses of fish broiled on the glowing embers 
were summarily devoured by the hungry fisher- 
men ; the fish as an edible I did not care much 
about, but the sport I most thoroughly enjoyed. 
Perhaps the element of constant danger enhanced 
the charm of this, to me, new system of fishing. 
It was the first time I had alone, in a canoe 
manned by four savages, speaking an unknown 
language, upon the great try sting- ground of the 
illimitable sea, beheld the perfection of fishing, 
a pleasure considerably increased by the dis- 
covery that in a remote part of the world the sea 
as it ever has been and still is in highly civilised 
countries the nursery of the strong arm and 
defiant spirit. Men taught only lessons of dire 
necessity had hit on a plan, simple but most 
effective, that enabled them to master and land 
a large fish five hundred pounds in weight, to 
battle with a rough sea, in a boat so frail that 
a boy could easily upset it. I have tried cod 
fishing on the banks of Newfoundland, whale 
fishing on the coast of Greenland, sturgeon 
spearing on the Eraser, Lake fishing in Canada, 
salmon fishing in England and elsewhere, but 
not one single day can I recal to my remem- 
brance, that equals in intense delight this red- 
letter day in the annals of my fishing ex- 
periences my day among the holibut. 



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CHAPTER XLVII. A PAGE OF FAMILY HISTORY. 

Every student of English history is familiar 
with the noble and ancient name of Holme- 
Pierrepoint. A more stately race of men and 
women than the bearers of that name never 
traversed the pages of mediaeval chronicle. 
Their famous ancestor, Thierry de Pierrepoint, 
" came over," as the phrase is, with William 
the Bastard ; but he was only the younger son 
of a younger son, and the houses which look 
back to him as their founder are, after all, but 
offshoots from that still more ancient line that 
held lands and titles in Eranche Comte, three 
centuries before the great conquest. 

How Thierry de Pierrepoint came to be lord 
of many a fair and fertile English manor ; how 
his descendants multiplied and prospered, held 
high offices of state under more than thirty 
sovereigns, raised up for themselves great names 
in camp and council, and intermarried with the 
bravest and fairest of almost every noble family 
in the land, needs no recapitulation here. 
Enough that the Holme-Pierrepoints were an 
elder branch of the original Pierrepoint stock ; 
and that Lady Castletowers, whose father was 
a Holme-Pierrepoint, and whose mother was a 
Talbot, had really some excuse for that inor- 
dinate pride of birth which underlaid every 
thought and act of her life as the ground-colour 
underlies all the tints of a painting. 

The circumstances of her ladyship's parentage 
were these. 

George Conde Holme-Pierrepoint, third Lord 
Holmes, of Holme Castle, Lancashire, being no 
longer young, and having, moreover, encum- 
bered a slender estate with many mortgages, 
married at fifty years of age, to the infinite 
annoyance of his cousin and heir-presumptive, 
Captain Holme-Pierrepoint of Sowerby. The 
lady of Lord Holmes' choice was just half his 
age. She was known in Portsmoutli and its 
neighbourhood as '* the beautiful Miss Talbot ;" 
she was the fifth of nine daughters in a family 
of fourteen children; and her father, the 
Honourable Charles Talbot, held the rank of 
Rear-Admiral in the Royal Navy. It is, per- 
haps, almost unnecessary to add that Miss 
Talbot had no fortune. 

This marriage was celebrated some time in 



the summer of 1810; and in the month of 
October, 1811, after little more than one year 
of marriage, Lady Holmes died, leaving an 
infant daughter named Alethea Claude. Well- 
nigh broken-hearted, the widower shut himself 
up in Holme Castle, and led a life of profound 
seclusion. He received no visitors ; he absented 
himself from his parliamentary duties, and he 
was rarely seen oeyond his own park gates. 
Then fantastic stories began to be told of his 
temper and habits. It was said that he gave 
way to sudden and unprovoked paroxysms of 
rage ; that he had equally strange fits of silence ; 
that he abhorred the light of day, and sat 
habitually with closed shutters and lighted 
candles ; that he occasionally did not go to bed 
for eight-and-forty hours at a time ; and a hun- 
dred other tales, equally bizarre and improbable. 
At length, when the world had almost forgotten 
him, and his little girl was between four and 
five years of age, Lord Holmes astounded his 
neighbours, and more than astounded his heir, 
by marrying his daughter's governess. 

How he came to take this step, whether he 
married the governess for her own sake, or for 
the child's sake, or to gratify a passing caprice, 
were facts known only to himself. That he 
did marry her, and that, having married her, he 
continued to live precisely the same eccentric, 
sullen life as before, was all that even his own 
servants could tell about the matter. The 
second Lady Holmes visited nowhere, and was 
visited by none. What she had been as Miss 
Holme-Pierrepoint's governess, she continued 
to be as Miss Holme-Pierrepoint's stepmother. 
She claimed no authority. She called her hus- 
band " my lord," stood in awe of her servants, 
and yielded to the child's imperious temper just 
as she had done at the first. The result was, 
that she remained a cypher in her own house, 
and was treated as a cypher. When, by- 
and-by, she also gave birth to a little daughter, 
there were no rejoicings ; and when, some few 
years later, she died, and was laid beside her 
high-born predecessor, there were no lamenta- 
tions. Had she brought an heir to the house, 
or had she filled her place in it more bravely, 
things, perchance, had gone differently. Bat 
the world is terribly apt to take people at their 
own valuation ; and Lady Holmes, perplexed 

" with the burden of an honour 

Unto which she was not born," 

had rated herself according to the dictates of 



VOL. XIV 



333 



146 [September 9, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



one of the lowliest and most timid hearts that 
ever beat in a woman's breast. 

Thus it was that Lord Holmes became the 
father of two daughters, and was twice a 
widower. And thus it was that Captain Holme- 
Pierrepoint of Sowerby escaped first Scylla and 
then Charybdis, and remained heir presumptive 
to his cousin's coronet after all. 

No two girls ever grew up more unlike each 
other than the Honourable Miss Holme-Pierre- 
pomts. There was a difference of nearly six 
years in their age to begin with ; but this was 
as nothing when compared with the difference 
in their appearance, dispositions, and tastes. 

The elder was tall, stately, and remarkable 
from very early girlhood for that singular re- 
semblance to Marie Antoinette, which became 
so striking in her at a later period of life. The 
younger, on the contrary, was pretty rather 
than oeautiful, painfully sensitive and shy, and 
as unpretending as might have been the lowliest 
peasant girl upon her father's lands. Alethea 
never forgot that she was noble on both sides ; 
but Elizabeth seemed never to remember that 
she was noble on either. Alethea was cold and 
ambitious ; but Elizabeth's nature was as cling- 
ing and tender as it was unselfish. Elizabeth 
looked up to Alethea as to the noblest and most 
perfect of God's creatures; but Alethea, who 
had never forgiven her father's second marriage, 
held her half-sister in that kind of modified 
estimation in which a jeweller might hold a 
clouded diamond, or a sportsman a half-bred 
retriever. 

Years went by; and as the girls grew to 
womanhood their unlikeness became more and 
more apparent. In due time, the Honourable 
Miss Holme-Pierrepoint, being of an age to take 
her place in society, was presented at court by 
her aunt, the Countess of Glastonbury, and 
" brought out" after the sober fashion that pre- 
vailed in the days of George the Third. Before 
the close of that season she was engaged to 
HaroldWynneclyffe, fourth Earl of Castletowers, 
and early in the spring-time of the following 
year, while her young sister was yet in the 
schoolroom, the beautiful Alethea was married 
from her aunt's house in Somersetshire, where 
the ceremony was privately performed by the 
Bishop of Bath and Wells. 

In the mean while, it was arranged that Lord 
Holmes' younger daughter was to be spared 
all those difficulties and dangers that beset a 
matrimonial choice. Her lot was cast for her. 
She was to marry Captain Holme-Pierrepoint 
of Sowerby. 

A more simple and admirable scheme could 
not have been devised. Captain Holme-Pierre- 
point was her father's heir, and it was of course 
desirable that Elizabeth's dowry should remain 
in the family. Then Elizabeth was very young, 
young even for her age, and her character needed 
to be judiciously formed. Captain Holme- 
Pierrepoint was the very man to form a young 
lady's character. He was a man who got 
through a great deal of solid reading in the year ; 
who flighted in statistics ; who talked pom- 



pously, was a strict disciplinarian, and had 
" views" on the subject of education. In ad- 
dition to these qualifications, it may be added 
that Captain Holme-Pierrepoint was still hand- 
some, and only forty-eight years of age. 

Incredible as it may seem, however, Lord 
Holmes' second daughter was by no means so 
happy as she ought to have been in the con- 
templation of her destiny. Like most very 
young girls she had already dreamt dreams, and 
she could not bring herself to accept Captain 
Holme-Pierrepoint as the realisation of that ideal 
lover whom her imagination had delighted to 
picture. Her loving nature sorely needed 
something to cling to, something to live for, 
something to worship ; but she knew that she 
could not possibly live for, or cling to, or wor- 
ship Captain Holme-Pierrepoint. Above all, 
she shrank from the prospect of having her 
character formed according to his educational 
Ci views." 

In order, therefore, to avoid this terrible con- 
tingency, the younger Miss Holme-Pierrepoint 
deliberately rejected her destiny, and ran away 
with her drawing-master. 

It was a frightful blow to the pride of the 
whole Pierrepoint family. The Talbots and the 
Wynneclyffes were of opinion that Lord Holmes 
was simply reaping what he had sown, and that 
nothing better was to be expected from the 
daughter of a nursery governess; but Lord 
Holmes himself regarded the matter in a very 
different light. Harsh and eccentric as he was, 
this old man had really loved his younger child ; 
but now his whole heart hardened towards her, 
and he swore that he would never see her, or 
speak to her, or forgive her while he lived. Then, 
having formally disinherited her, he desired that 
her name should be mentioned in his presence 
no more. 

As for Lady Castletowers, her resentment 
was no less bitter. She, too, never saw or spoke 
to her half-sister again. She did not suffer, it is 
true, as her father had suffered. Her heart was 
not wrung like his probably because she had 
less heart to be wrung ; but her pride was even 
more deeply outraged. Neither of them made 
any effort to recal the fugitive. They merely 
blotted her name from their family records ; 
burned, unread, the letters in whicli she im- 
plored their forgiveness, and behaved in all re- 
spects, not as though she were dead, but as 
though she had never existed. 

In the mean while, Elizabeth Holme-Pierre- 
point had fled to Italy with her husband. He 
was a very young man a mere student rich 
in hope, poor in pocket, and an enthusiast in all 
that concerned his art. But enthusiasm is as 
frequently the index of taste as the touch- 
stone of talent, and Edgar Riviere, with all his 
exquisite feeling for form and colour, his wor- 
ship of the antique, and his idolatry of Raffaelle, 
lacked the one great gift that makes poet and 
painter he had no creative power. He was a 
correct draughtsman and a brilliant colourist ; 
but, wanting " the vision and the faculty divine," 
wanted just all that divides elegant mediocrity 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 1865.] 147 



from genius. He believed in himself, however, 
and his wife believed in him ; and for years he 
struggled on, painting ambitious pictures that 
never sold, and earning a scanty subsistence by 
copying the Raffaelles he so dearly loved. At 
last, however, the bitter truth forced itself upon 
him, and he knew that he had deceived himself 
with hopes destined never to be realised. But 
the discovery came too late. Long years of un- 
requited effort had impaired his health and 
bowed his spirit within him, and he had no spark 
left of that high courage which would once have 
armed him against all " the slings and arrows of 
outrageous fortune." He did not long survive 
the wreck of his ambition. He died in Florence, 
literally of a broken heart, some fifteen years 
after his romantic marriage with Elizabeth 
Holme-Pierrepoint, leaving her and one sur- 
viving child wholly unprovided for. 

Such were the destinies of these half-sisters, 
and such the family history of which William 
Trefalden gave Saxon a meagre outline, after 
his consultation with Abel Keckwitch. 

CHAPTER XLVIII. WHAT THEY SAID AT THE 
CLUB. 

"And now, Saxon," said Mr. Trefalden, "I 
can tell you nothing beyond the fact that Edgar 
Riviere died in Florence some three or four 
years since; but I think we need have no difficulty 
in guessing the parentage and history of your 
distressed damsel. I imagine that her mother 
must have been left simply destitute ; and in this 
case, Lady Castletowers would, of course, do 
something to keep her from starvation. I doubt, 
however, that her charity went beyond that 
point." 

"But, good Heavens !" exclaimed Saxon, who 
was now pacing up and down the room in a fever 
of indignation, "this lady is her own sister, 
cousin William ! her own sister !" 

" Her half-sister ; but even so, it is too bad." 

" Too bad ? Why, it's monstrous ! If I were 
Castletowers . . . ." 

" I do not suppose that Lord Castletowers 
has ever heard of the existence of these people," 
interrupted the lawyer. 

" Then he ought to hear of it !' 

" Not from your lips, young man. You have 
stumbled on a family secret, and, right or wrong, 
you are bound in honour to respect it. If Lady 
Castletowers keeps a skeleton in her private 
closet, it is not your place to produce that 
skeleton at the feast to which she invites you." 

"I am afraid that's true," replied Saxon, 
" but I wish I might tell Castletowers, all the 
same." 

"You must do nothing of the kind," said 
Mr. Trefalden, emphatically. "It is in your 
power to give great assistance to two un- 
fortunate ladies, and with that privilege be 
content." 

" I cannot be content to stand by and see in- 
justice done," exclaimed Saxon. " They have 
been cruelly wronged." 

"Even so, my dear fellow, you are not Don 
Quixote." 



The young man bit his lip. 

" Don Quixote's name," said he, " is too often 
taken in vain. Heaven forbid that we nine- 
teenth-century people should come to apply it 
to the simple love of right ! It seems to me 
that the world over here thinks a vast deal more 
of politeness than justice. It's not so in Swit- 
zerland. And now, cousin William, how am I 
to help them?" 

" You must allow me time to consider," re- 
plied Mr. Trefalden. " It will require delicate 
management." 

"I know it will." 

" But I can think the matter over, and write 
to you about it to-morrow." 

"The sooner the better," said Saxon. 

" Of course and with regard to money ?" 

" With regard to money, do the best you can 
for them. I don't care how much it is." 

" Suppose I were to draw upon you for a 
hundred thousand pounds !" said the lawyer, 
with a smile. 

" I'm not afraid of that ; but I do fear that 
you may not use my purse freely enough." 

" I will try, at all events," replied Mr. Tre- 
falden ; whereupon Saxon thanked him cordially, 
and put out his hand to say good-bye. 

" You don't inquire how the company is going 
on," said the lawyer, detaining him. 

"I am afraid I had forgotten all about the 
company," laughed Saxon. "But I suppose 
it's all right." 

" Yes, we are making way," replied his cousin. 
" Capital pours in, and the shareholders have 
every confidence in the direction. Our sur- 
veyors are still going over the ground ; and we 
are this week despatching a man of business to 
Sidon. Sidon, you may remember, will be our 
great Mediterranean depot; and we mean to 
open offices, and establish an agent there, with- 
out delay." 

" Indeed !" said Saxon. " Is it still so great 
a secret ?" 

" It is a greater secret than ever." 

"Oh good-bye." 

" You are always in haste when business is 
the topic," said Mr. Trefalden. " Where are 
you going now ?" 

"To the club; and then back to Castle- 
towers." 

" You are making a long stay. What about 
the Colonnas ?" 

But Saxon was already half way down the 
stairs, and seemed not to hear the question. 

He then went direct to the Erectheum, where 
he no sooner made his appearance than he 
found himself a centre of attraction. The 
younger men were eager for news of Italy, 
and, knowing whence he came, overwhelmed 
him with questions. What was Colonna doing? 
Was he likely to go out to Garibaldi ? What 
were Garibaldi's intentions ? Was Victor Em- 
manuel favourable to the Sicilian cause ? Would 
the war be carried into Naples and Rome ? 
And, if so, did Colonna think that the Emperor 
of the Erench would take arms for the Pope ? 
Was it true that Vaughan was about to join the 



148 [September 9, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



army of liberation? Was it true that Lord 
Castletowers would command the English con- 
tingent ? Was it true that Saxon had himself 
accepted a commission ? And so on, till Saxon 
stopped his ears, and refused to hear, another 
question. 

" I am not in Signor Colonna's confidence," 
said he, " and I know nothing of his projects. 
But I do know that I have accepted no such 
commission, and I believe I may say the same 
for Castletowers. 5 ' 

"And Vaughan?" said Sir Charles Bur- 
goyne. 

"Vaughan is going. He starts for Genoa 
to-night." 

" I felt sure that was true," observed Greato- 

rex, with a significant laugh. "Perhaps the 

fair Olimpia has promised to take pity on him." 

Saxon turned upon him as if he had been 

stung. 

"What do you mean?" he said, hotly. 
" What should Miss Colonna have to do with 
the matter ?" 

" Perhaps a great deal," replied the banker. 
" The gentleman gives his arm to the cause, and 
the lady rewards him with her hand. 'Tis a fair 
exchange." 

" And Vaughan has worshipped for years at 
the Olimpian shrine," added Sir Charles. 

" Besides," said another, " what else does he 
go for ? We all know that he doesn't care a 
straw for Italy. It may be a forlorn hope, you 
know." 

" More likely than not, I should say," replied 
Burgoyne. "Olimpia Colonna is a clever 
woman, and knows her own market value. 
She'll fly at higher game than a major of 
dragoons." 

Saxon's face was burning all this time with 
anger and mortification. At last he could keep 
silence no longer. 

" All this may be true," he said. " I don't 
believe it's true ; but at all events it is not in 
my power to contradict it. However, of one 
thing I am certain that a crowded club-room 
is not the place in which a lady's name should be 
passed from mouth to mouth in this fashion." 

"Your proposition is quite unexceptionable 
in a general way, my dear fellow," replied Bur- 
goyne ; " but in the present instance it does not 
apply. When a lady's name has figured for 
years in despatches, petitions, committee-lists, 
and reports of all kinds, civil and military, it 
can surely bear the atmosphere of a crowded 
club-room." 

" I don't think that has anything to do with 
it," said Saxon, sturdily. "Despatches and 
petitions are public matters, and open to general 
discussion." 

" But the probable marriage of a charming 
woman is a private matter, and therefore open 
to particular discussion," laughed the Guards- 
man. "Eor my part, I can only say that I 
mean to hang myself on Miss Colonna's wed- 
ding-day." 

Then the conversation turned again to Gari- 
baldi and Victor Emmanuel; and presently 



Saxon made his escape, and was on his way to 
the station. 

He felt very moody and uncomfortable, as he 
leaned back in his Hansom and sped along the 
Strand. He had heard much that was infinitely 
disagreeable to him during the brief hour spent 
at his club ; much that he could not refute, but 
which he had been obliged to endure with com- 
parative patience. That Olimpia's name should 
be thus familiar to every idle lip seemed like a 
profanation ; but that it should be coupled up 
with that of Vaughan and Castletowers, and 
perhaps who could tell? with the names of 
a hundred other men whose political sympathies 
necessarily brought them into communication 
with her, was sacrilege pur et simple. 

What man on earth was worthy of her, to 
begin with? Certainly not Major Vaughan, 
with . his surface morality, his half-concealed 
cynicism, and his iron-grey beard. Not even 
Castletowers, brave and honourable gentleman 
as he was. No the only fit and appropriate 
husband for Olimpia Colonna would be some 
modern Du Guesclin or Bayard ; some man of 
the old heroic type, whose soul would burn 
with a fire kindred to her own, who should do 
great deeds in the cause she loved, and lay his 
splendid laurels at her feet. But then lived 
there such a hero, young, handsome, daring, 
ardent, successful in love and mighty in battle, 
a man of men, sans peur et sans reproche ? 

Perhaps Saxon was secretly comforted by the 
conviction that only a preux chevalier would 
be worthy of Miss Colonna, and that the preux 
chevalier was certainly not forthcoming. 

In the midst of these reflections, however, he 
found himself once more at the station, with 
the express on the point of starting, and not a 
second to lose. To fling down his shillings, dash 
along the platform, and spring into a first-class 
carriage, just as the guard was running along the 
line and the driver beginning his preliminary 
whistle, was the work of a moment. As the door 
closed behindhim, and he dropped into the nearest 
corner, a friendly voice called him by name, and he 
found himself face to face with Miss Hatherton.. 

CHAPTER XLIX. ON THE PLATFORM. 

" Well met by well, not exactly by moon- 
light, Mr. Trefalden," said she, with that hearty, 
almost gentlemanly way of proffering her hand 
that always put Saxon so delightfully at his 
ease in her society. " Have you been shooting 
any more weathercocks, or winning any more 
races, since I saw you last ?" 

"No," replied Saxon, laughingly; " I have 
been more usefully employed." 

" I rejoice to hear it. May I ask in what 
manner ?" 

" Oh, Miss Hatherton, if you want particu- 
lars, I'm lost ! I'm only pleasantly conscious 
that I have been behaving well, and improving 
myself. I fear it's rather a vague statement to 
put forward, though." 

" Terribly vague. At all events, you have 
not yet donned the red shirt ?" 

" The red shirt !" echoed Saxon, with an 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 1S65.] 149 



involuntary glance at the little blue horseshoes 
besprinkling the bosom of that garment in 
which his person happened to be adorned. 
" What do you mean ?" 

M I mean, that you have not gone over to 
Garibaldi." 

Garibaldi again ! It seemed as if the air was 
full of the names of Garibaldi and Italy to-day ! 
" What you, too, Miss Hatherton !" he said. 
" I have heard more about Italian affairs since 
I have been in town this morning, than I 
ever hear at Castletowers. The men at the 
Erectheum would talk of nothing else." 

" I dare say not," replied the heiress. M The 
lookers-on have always more to say than the 
workers. But has not Miss Colonna enlisted 
you ?" 

" Indeed, no." 

" You amaze me. I could not have believed 
that she would show such incredible forbearance 
towards a man of your inches. But perhaps 
you are intending to join in any case ?" 

" I have no intention, one way or the other," 
said Saxon; "but if any of our fellows were 
going, I should like to join them." 

"There is nothing I should enjoy so much, 
if I were a man," said Miss Hatherton. " Do 
you know how the fund is getting on ? I heard 
they were sorely in want of money the other 
day, and I sent them something not much, but 
as much as I could spare." 

" Oh, I believe the fund is getting on pretty 
well," replied Saxon, with some embarrassment. 
" You are a subscriber, of course ?" 
" Yes I have given something." 
Miss Hatherton looked at him keenly. 
" I should like to know what that something 
was," said she. " I heard a strange rumour to- 
day .... but I suppose you would not tell me 
if I were to ask you ?" 

Saxon laughed, and shook his head. 
" A rumour is generally nothing but a polite 
name for a lie," replied he ; " you should never 
believe in one." 

" Perhaps not," said Miss Hatherton, gravely. 
*' I should be sorry to believe all . . . ." 
She checked herself, and added : 
" If you do go to Italy, Mr. Trefalden, you 
must be sure to let me know. I only marvel 
that Miss Colonna's eloquence has not been 
brought to bear upon you long since." 
" Well, I'm not an Italian." 
Miss Hatherton smiled compassionately. 
" My dear sir," said she, " if you were a 
Thug, and willing to make your roomal useful 
to the cause, the Colonnas would enlist you. 
Nation is nothing to them . All they want is a vo- 
lunteer or a subscriber. Besides, plenty of your 
countrymen have gone over the Alps already." 
" Are you sure of that ?" asked Saxon, 
eagerly. 

" As sure as that you never read the papers." 
"You are quite right there," laughed he, "I 
never do." 

" An English volunteer company is already 
formed," continued Miss Hatherton, " at 
Genoa." * 



"Yes-I know that." 

"There will also, I hear, be a German corps ; 
and both Swiss and Hungarian corps are talked 
about." 

Saxon nearly bounded off his seat. 
"A Swiss corps!" he shouted. "A Swiss 
corps, and nobody ever breathed a word of this 
to me !" 

" It's very odd," said Miss Hatherton. 
"And Miss Colonna was talking to me so 
much about Italy yesterday morning!" 

" Perhaps they do not care to make a soldier 
of you, Mr. Trefalden," said the heiress. 
" But they want soldiers !" 

"True; but " 

"But what?" 

"Perhaps they stand more in need of the 
sinews of war just now, than of your individual 
muscles." 

"The sinews of war!" stammered Saxon. 
" You might get killed, you see." 
"Of course I might get killed; but every 
volunteer risks that. Vaughan may get killed." 
"He may ; but then Major Vaughan has not 
ever so many millions of money." 

Saxon looked blankly in Miss Hatherton's 
face. 

" I I really don't understand," said he. 
"Do you wish me to explain my meaning ?" 
"Undoubtedly." 

"There excuse the illustration it might 
not be politic to kill the goose that lays the 
golden eggs." 

Saxon's face flamed with rage and morti- 
fication. 

"Oh, Miss Hatherton!" he exclaimed, "how 
can you be so unjust and so uncharitable ?" 
Miss Hatherton smiled good temperedly. 
" I am a plain speaker, Mr. Trefalden," said 
she, " and plain speakers must expect to be 
called uncharitable sometimes. You need not 
be angry with me because I speak the truth." 

" But indeed you're mistaken. It's not the 
truth, nor anything like the truth." 

" Nay," she replied, " I know the Colonnas 
better than you know them. Giulio Colonna is 
insatiable where Italy is concerned. I do not 
deny that he is personally disinterested. He 
would give the coat off his back to buy powder 
and shot for the cause ; but he would strip the 
coat from his neighbour's back for the same 
purpose without scruple." 
"But, indeed . . . ." 

"But, indeed, Mr. Trefalden, you may believe 
me when I tell you that he would regard it as a 
sacred duty to fling every farthing of your for- 



tune into this coming war, 

handling of it. You will do well to beware of 



if he could get the 



him. 



Then I am sure that Miss Colonna is 



not 



" Miss Colonna is utterly dominated by her 
own enthusiasm and her father's influence. You 
must beware of her, too." 

" You will tell me to beware of yourself next, 
Miss Hatherton," said Saxon, petulantly. 

" No, my dear sir, I shall do nothing of the 



150 [September 9, 1 865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



kind. I like you very much; but I neither 
want your money, nor .... Do you know 
what people are saying about you and Miss Co- 
lonna ? By the way, is not this your station ?" 

" About me and Miss Colonna !" said Saxon, 
breathlessly. % 

" Yes but this is certainly Sedgebrook. You 
must be quick, for they don't stop one moment.'" 

"For Heaven's sake, Miss Hatherton, tell me 
first !" 

" No, no jump out, or you will be carried 
on. I'll tell you when you are safe outside." 

Saxon jumped out, but clung to the window 
with both hands. 

"Now '."said he. "Now!" 

""Well," replied Miss Hatherton, speaking 
somewhat slowly, and looking him full in the 
face, "they say, Mr. Trefalden -they say you 
are going to squander your fortune on Italy ; 
marry Olimpia Colonna; and break Lord 
Castletowers' heart." 

But Saxon never heard the last five words at 
all. Before Miss Hatherton could bring her 
sentence to an end the shrill whistle drowned 
her voice, and the train began to move. The 
young man stood looking after it for some mo- 
ments in blank bewilderment. 

" Squander your fortune on Italy, and marry 
Olimpia Colonna !" he repeated to himself. 

"My to Castletowers, sir ?" said the solitary 
fly-driver of the place, recognising the Earl's 
visitor. 

But Saxon preferred to walk ; so he took the 
short cut through the fields, and strode on with 
Miss Hatherton's words still ringing in his ears. 

"Marry Olimpia Colonna!" he said, for the 
twentieth time, as he sat down presently upon 
a stile, and proceeded unconsciously to cut off 
the heads of the nearest dandelions with his 
cane. " Marry Olimpia Colonna ! Good God ! 
there isn't a prince on this earth half good 
enough for her ! As for me, I'm only just 
worthy to be one of her slaves. What a mad 
notion ! What a mad, preposterous notion !" 

Mad and preposterous as it was, however, he 
could think of nothing else ; and every now and 
then, as he loitered on his way through the 
pleasant meadows, he repeated, half aloud, those 
wondrous words : 

" Marry Olimpia Colonna !" 



OUR COLONIES. 

Dear old Mrs. Britannia has a family of 
forty-six children. Some members of the family 
are infantine ; some are in lusty early manhood ; 
while others are so matured in age, wealthy in 
pocket, and self-governed in general economy, 
that the tie that binds them to home is a very 
slight one. 

Recently, for the first time, these forty-six 
children, her colonies, have sent in their accounts 
in such form that the mother country knows 
how each has thriven for fourteen consecutive 
years. 

Collectively, these colonies and foreign posses- 



sions of Britannia cover an area of considerably 
more than four million square miles equal to 
the whole of Europe, and a great deal to spare. 
India claims one of these millions, and Western 
Australia nearly another; and so they go down, 
down, down in size, to Gibraltar, which is a 
distinct and isolated British possession although 
not a colony, and barely covers two square miles. 
Several of the others are very small; such as St. 
Helena with its fifty square miles, Hong-Kong 
with thirty, Bermuda with twenty-four, and 
Gambia with twenty; but small as they are, 
each has its own governor. 

Then, as to population, we make up not 
much less than thirty million souls in the 
British islands; and yet Britannia's posses- 
sions over the seas contain two hundred mil- 
lions. India so overwhelmingly exceeds all the 
rest in this particular, that we must leave that 
out if we would compare the growth of the 
colonies proper, between the years 'fifty and 
'sixty-three (the two years which begin and 
end the series). We then see that the North 
American colonies increased from two and a half 
to three and a half millions. But far more 
wonderful were the Australian colonies; they 
had less than half a million inhabitants col- 
lectively in the first of the two years ; they had 
a million and a quarter in the second. When 
we consider that, exception made of the babies 
born on the spot, most of these seven or eight 
hundred thousand additional persons travelled 
ten thousand miles and more to get there, we 
cannot help regarding it as a really wonderful 
migration not so wonderful as that of the 
Irish to America in regard to numbers, but 
more so in regard to the immense distance. 
The world presents few contrasts more remark- 
able than that between the density of population 
in two of these foreign possessions of our old 
mother. British India and Western Australia 
are not far from equal in size; yet the one 
contains as many inhabitants as two-thirds of 
the whole of Europe ; while the other does not 
contain one quarter as many as Clerkenwell 
parish. In the one, the people are obliged to 
pack nearly two hundred to every square mile ; 
in the other, every man, if the population were 
spread evenly, would stand alone in the middle 
of a region of sixty square miles. 

The forty-six colonies have, nearly all of them, 
spent more than they have earned. They have not 
taxed themselves to the extent of their annual 
expenditure ; and, as a consequence, they have 
had to borrow, at a much higher rate of interest, 
too, than the old country pays. India owed 
sixty millions sterling just before her troubles 
began in connexion with the mutiny; by the 
time they were well over, she owed one hun- 
dred millions a token that mutinies are rather 
expensive proceedings. New South Wales 
boasts of six millions of debt, Yictoria of eight, 
Canada of twelve millions. Big Western Aus- 
tralia, the most sleepy and stagnant of all our 
colonies, sets down her debt at precisely seven- 
teen hundred and fifty pounds. Roundly speak- 
ing, % nobody does anything in this last-named 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 18C5.] 151 



place, nobody lias any money, nobody buys or 
sells, nobody lends or borrows, nobody wants 
any workmen, and nobody could find them if 
lie did; but everybody wants to go away, unless 
the government will continue to support the 
place as a penal settlement. 

A great many ships of course visit the forty- 
six colonies in a year, mostly sent out from the 
home country. India doubled the tonnage of 
ships, entered and cleared, between 'fifty and 
'sixty-three. So did Ceylon, and Mauritius, 
and New South Wales, and the North American 
colonies ; but so did not the West Indies, which, 
somehow or other, have never recovered from 
the effects of negro emancipation. New Zea- 
land much more than doubled this item ; while 
Victoria took a giant stride, despatching and 
receiving seven times as many ships, or tons of 
shipping, at the end as at the beginning of this 
period of fourteen years. Only think of ten 
million tons of British shipping, irrespective of 
foreign and colonial, entering and leaving our 
colonies in a year, all of it having to make 
voyages from three to twelve thousand miles to 
get there ! 

Now what have these children bought from 
the old country during the fourteen years? 
How far have they spent their money or bar- 
tered their goods in a way to benefit her ? Here 
the importance of the gold discoveries becomes 
very manifest. Four of the colonies, at any 
rate, have had nuggets and dust to give in 
exchange for bonnets, boots, Bass, buttons, 
brandy, and brad-awls ; and they have shown a 
wonderful capacity for appropriating these and 
other commodities. India and Ceylon, not 
owing to any gold discoveries in those countries, 
but owing to the natural development of every 
kind of commerce, increased their import of 
British cargoes from eight millions to twenty 
millions sterling in three years. The North 
American colonies increased theirs from three 
to six millions. But look at the wonderful 
Australian group. New South Wales bought 
fourfold as much from us in 'sixty-three as in 
'fifty, Victoria fourteen times as much. Only 
imagine that, in one single year, cargoes were 
shipped from the United Kingdom, to go eleven 
or twelve thousand miles over the ocean, and 
landed at some or other of the Australian ports, 
to the value of eighteen millions sterling ; only 
imagine this, and we shall get some remote idea 
of the extent of the trade relations between 
England and those distant colonies. Erom the 
year when gold was discovered in Australia, 
English manufacturers derived almost as decided 
and sudden an advantage as if the precious metal 
had come to light in our own tiny island. All 
the implements for extracting and working the 
gold came from hence ; and when the nuggets 
and dust were exchanged for coined sovereigns, 
these were readily and even lavishly exchanged 
for comforts and luxuries brought from the old 
country. 

How strikingly the prosperity of the colonies 
tells upon the old country is shown as much by 
the negative results in the West Indies as by 



the positive results in Australia. In the former 
no gold has been discovered, no new industrial 
resources developed ; the negro will not work 
hard, now that he is a freeman ; the planters 
have not in them the dash and daring of English 
capitalists; they are frightened at what Cuba 
can do in competition with them ; their sugar 
and rum and molasses do not bring them in so 
much as in bygone years ; they have not much 
money to spend on English commodities ; the 
condition of their islands is not such as to 
attract emigrants from the old country; and 
thus it happens that our dealings with the 
West Indies collectively are not advancing. 
We actually sent over less to Jamaica, Antigua, 
Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Barbadoes, 
Grenada, and Tobago, in 'sixty-three than in 
'fifty. There was one enormous exception to 
this stagnation; the Bahamas imported thirty 
or forty times as much as was her wont. But 
Bahama wanted very little of these good things 
for herself, and could not have paid for them 
if she had; the game of blockade-running 
was being played in 'sixty-three ; and Bahama 
was a house of call for ships whose owners 
and crews were quite ready to make profit 
out of the troubles between Eederals and 
Confederates. 

Of course it follows naturally that the same 
circumstances which enable some of the colo- 
nies to import more largely than heretofore 
operate in augmenting their exports likewise. 
Victoria, for instance, which exported to the 
value of about a million sterling in eighteen 
hundred and fifty, rose to the magnificent figure 
of thirteen millions in 'sixty-three ; and of this 
total more than seven millions were in gold, 
actual gold, either already refined, or in a more 
or less quartzose or granular state. The other 
colonies did not tell up so brilliantly ; but still 
they showed what gold deposits can do : seeing 
that New South Wales raised her exports from 
two to seven millions, New Zealand from a 
mere drop to three millions, South Australia 
from half a million to two millions and a half. 
The Australian group altogether made up thir- 
teen millions sterling of their exports in the 
shape of gold. This is a marvellous thing, cer- 
tainly, in one year. And even Britisli Columbia, 
in America, is beginning to tell upon the gold 
market in Europe. 

Almost equal in commercial interest to the 
Gold question is that which relates to Cotton. 
Here have we been, for four years, hungering 
and thirsting for those delicate little white 
fibres ; the planters of the United States were 
forbidden to send their cotton to us ; and as 
four-fifths of our supply had for many years 
been obtained from them, the result was a 
veritable famine in this commodity. How 
nobly the Lancashire operatives bore their 
sufferings ; how liberally the other classes of 
the country came to their assistance ; how 
wildly the Liverpool merchants speculated on 
the rapidly-rising value of the small quantity of 
cotton it is not here to tell. But it may 
fittingly be told how astonishingly the calamity 



152 [September 9, I860.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



benefited such of our colonies as were able 
to grow this much - coveted substance. In 
eighteen hundred and fifty, three millions 
sterling was paid for all the cotton we obtained 
from the colonies, including India ; whereas in 
'sixty-three we 'paid six times as much to that 
one country alone. Nearly twenty millions 
sterling value of goods and silver (they do not 
want much gold currency in India) were sent 
out in exchange for (say) five hundred million 
pounds of cotton. India ought to have bene- 
fited greatly by this unexpected chance. There 
is too much reason to fear, however, that the 
actual cultivators, the ryots or peasant proprie- 
tors, obtained but a very small share of the 
enormously increased price for this cotton ; it 
was filtered among a number of dealers and 
middlemen, and gave enormous profits to the 
native Bombay merchants Messrs. Booboojee, 
Rumtumjee, Jamtoljee, Wacfoljee, and the rest 
of them. Let the reader remember that cotton 
used to be sold at a fair profit for twopence per 
pound at Bombay ; let him calculate what price 
is denoted by twenty millions sterling for five 
hundred million pounds of cotton ; and then he 
will see how much reason Bombay has had to 
rejoice at the shot which the Southerners fired 
on Fort Sumter. Provoking it is, certainly, to 
be told that in the "West Indies, which used 
to send us a respectable quantity of cotton, the 
commercial arrangements of the planters, and 
the laziness of emancipated negroes, have caused 
the cultivation almost to die out. In our dire 
and sore distress, when we wanted cotton from 
anywhere, everywhere, the West India Islands 
sent us only driblets, telling little in the great 
account. In the Australian colonies labour is 
too high-priced to render the cotton culture 
profitable, except as a partial experiment ; and 
somehow or other, most of the other colonies 
failed in coming to the rescue. Thus it hap- 
pens that India is almost the only foreign pos- 
session of England which has responded to our 
cry for cotton during the late crisis. 

Gold and Cotton thirteen millions' worth of 
the one, twenty millions' worth of the other ; 
these are the mighty items which the forty-six 
children sent to us in one year. But there 
were great doings in other commodities like- 
wise. The Australian colonies sent us wool to 
the value of two millions in eighteen hundred 
and fifty ; but so rapidly did their sheep grow, 
and so well were they attended to, that the ex- 
port more than trebled by the year 'sixty-three ; 
w r hile that of hides and skins multiplied seven- 
fold. Go we to India j there we find that dyes, 
hides, skins, opium, jute, rice, saltpetre, seeds, 
silk, sugar, and wool, made up a magnificent 
total of twenty-five millions sterling not all 
sent to us, certainly; for Pooh Pooh Whang 
Chop is the buyer of the chief item, opium. Go 
we to Ceylon ; there we find coffee and cocoa-nut 
oil, the two chief items, rising nearly threefold 
in amount in the stated fourteen years. Go we 
to Canada, and the other North American 
colonies; there we find that the chief items 
sent to us are timber, dried fish, potash, corn, and 



flour, treble as much in the last-named as in 
the first-named year. So completely fishy is 
Newfoundland, that all the chief articles of ex- 
port smell of fish in some form or other. Look 
at the list : two million cwts. of dry codfish, 
three hundred thousand seals (we beg pardon 
for calling a seal a fish, but he will paddle about 
in the water), three thousand tons of cod-oil 
(perhaps not all cod-liver), and four thousand 
tons of seal oil. Go we to the West Indies; 
there we find coffee, rum, sugar, molasses, and 
cocoa. The three principal islands send us a 
little over two millions' worth of these com- 
modities; but this was not such an increase 
beyond the year 'fifty as ought to have been 
exhibited, or as would have been exhibited if 
those islands were well managed. 

The reader will not be wearied by the above 
few round numbers. It really is interesting to 
see what are the chief articles which our forty- 
six children can sell to us, and how far they 
differ from each other in this matter. 

Nor will it be a waste of time to see what 
sorts of things they are willing to buy from us in 
return. Clothing, and the materials for cloth- 
ing, figure in a remarkable degree. Apparel and 
slops, millinery and haberdashery, hats and 
bonnets, boots and shoes, silks and woollens, 
linens and laces, the work of the needle and 
the spindle and the loom what would the 
reader suppose our colonies took of these in 
sixty -three? Twenty-five millions sterling. 
It really is one of the most astonishing things 
in our commerce ; for these are not merely the 
raw materials of industry ; they are articles on 
which millions of fingers have been employed 
in the old country, millions of mouths fed or 
partially fed. Every throb of success or failure 
in India or Australia is sensibly felt by those 
who work upon textile goods in England. If 
we do not all form one family, more shame to 
us ; for our colonies will buy of us as much 
and as rapidly as we of them. And then, if 
twenty-five millions are spent upon clothing, 
how much upon food and drink ? About 
eighteen millions sterling. Not that it costs 
less to fill the belly than to clothe the back ; 
but that the colonies can do more to grow their 
own food than to grow and make the materials 
for their clothing; and thus the money they 
spend to buy the former from other countries is 
relatively less. The colonials are either thirsty 
souls, or else they think English beer and ale 
paramount to all others ; for they swallow these 
famous beverages to an astonishing extent. Mr. 
Bass, and Mr. Allsopp, and Burton-upon-Trent, 
would be great sufferers if India were suddenly 
swamped ; she takes more than three million gal- 
lons of ale and beer from us yearly ; most of it, we 
may be sure, in the form of pale ale. New South 
Wales swallows two million gallons; Victoria 
two million and a half; New Zealand a million; 
Queensland and South Australia half a million 
between them. Even supposing those colonists 
not to be able to make good malt or grow good 
hops, the freight of those articles from England 
would of course be very much less than that of 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 1865.] 153 



the beverages brewed from them ; and we might 
suppose that the foaming tankards would reason- 
ably be obtained in this way. But no ; free trade 
allows ale and beer to flow hither and thither as it 
will ; and the East Indians and Australians seem 
more willing to pay the market-price for Bass 
and Barclay than to turn brewers themselves. 
Clothing materials, food and drink, metals in 
various forms and stages of preparation these 
are the three great classes of imports from the 
old country ; and considering how weighty 
metals are, we may well be surprised that it 
should be worth while to send them so far and 
in such large quantities. Iron and steel, copper 
and brass, lead and tin, plates and sheets, bars 
and rods, castings and forgings, cutlery and 
tools, millwork and machines, manufactured 
goods from tin-tacks up to steam-engines 
three millions sterling worth of these went to 
India in 'sixty-three ; and indeed all the 
forty-six children show that they understand 
the productions of Birmingham, Sheffield, Low 
Moor, and Wolverhampton, as well as those of 
Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Burton-upon-Trent. 



BIRD-EANCIES. 

Considering the really marvellous character 
of the instinct of migration in birds, and the 
curious circumstances which have been observed 
as resulting from it, it is not wonderful that 
strange conceits should have arisen among 
theorists. 

In the Harleian Miscellany, a curious collec- 
tion of documents printed from some of the 
manuscripts of that name, may be found (vol.ii. 
p. 583) a paper which, although it bears neither 
name nor date, appears to have been written 
about the middle of the last century, by a person 
of no less scientific pretensions than Dr. Charles 
Morton, at that time secretary to the Royal 
Society. It is stated to be the production of an 
eminent professor, for the use of his scholars, 
and now published at the earnest desire of some 
of them ; so that his theory, wild and extrava- 
gant as it was, not only received the countenance 
of his scientific position, but found supporters 
ready to pin their faith to their professor's 
sleeve. The paper is entitled, An Inquiry into 
the Physical and Literal sense of that Scrip- 
ture, Jeremiah viii. 7 " Yea, the stork in the 
heaven knoweth her appointed times ; and 
the turtle and the crane and the swallow ob- 
serve the time of their coming." The author 
commences by a critical examination of the 
passage, and discovers that the expression " the 
stork in the heaven," is proof that the bird had 
left the earth. He also calls attention to the 
phrase, "the time of their coming," remarking 
that it might more properly be rendered tempus 
itineris the time of their journey. He then 
goes on to remind his readers that the 
birds had never been seen upon that journey, 
and hence deduces this marvellous result: 
" Therefore the stork (and the like may be said 
of other season-observing birds, till some place 



more fit can be assigned to them) does go unto, 
and remain in some one, of the celestial bodies ; 
and that must be the moon, which is most 
likely, because nearest, and bearing the most 
relation to this our earth, as appears in the 
Copernican scheme ; yet is the aistance great 
enough to denominate the passage thither an 
itineration or journey." Very true. 

However we may be disposed to look upon 
the theory, this last position may safely be 
granted, and even Hans Pfall, in Edgar Poe's 
ingenious story, who is the only person whose 
journey to that satellite we have distinctly 
traced, was supposed to have consumed nearly 
nineteen days in the transit, even by means 
of his swiftly-moving balloon. The astute 
professor, however, felt himself bound to meet 
certain objections and difficulties which oc- 
curred even to his aspiring mind. He pre- 
sents them manfully before his disciples, and 
meets them boldly, if not scientifically. And, 
first, the distance a serious matter, truly, but 
not such as to daunt him. The distance is un- 
doubtedly formidable. It is calculated, however, 
that the extreme velocity of a bird's flight would 
accomplish it in two months; the travellers 
would spend three months in the moon, and two 
more months in their descent to this sublunary 
sphere ; and then there would remain just five 
months which they could pass with us. Could 
anything be more neatly calculated, and does 
it not bear the impress of truth upon the very 
front of it? But an objector might be so bold 
as to remark that they would surely starve upon 
such a long journey or itineration. Why, no, 
observes the professor. Eor it is to be noticed 
that " at their departure they are very succu- 
lent and sanguine, and so may have their pro- 
vision laid up for the voyage in their very 
bodies." Objector remembers that hibernating 
animals do thus consume their own fat, and the 
professor, perhaps, bearing in mind the same 
fact, goes on triumphantly, "besides, they would 
probably be asleep all the way, which spares 
provisions." Objector being so satisfactorily 
met by the theorist in that quarter, timidly ven- 
tures to imagine that the poor birds could never 
go on flying for two months at a stretch ! Well, 
it does appear an extraordinary flight. But let 
us meet that difficulty by supposing that there 
are between this and the moon " many globules 
or ethereal islands," of which we can take no 
cognisance, but of which the birds might well 
avail themselves as so many landings in their long 
aerial staircase. Suddenly the objector remem- 
bers an insuperable obstacle, and triumphantly 
reminds the theorist that the moon revolves, 
round the earth every twenty-eight days, and, 
fly as fast as they may, the birds would never 
catch it. Dolt ! exclaims the professor, fairly 
losing his temper at the puerility of the objec- 
tion ; do you not perceive that if they set out 
at full moon, they will, after flying just two 
months, arrive also at full moon, when the 
satellite is just in the same position with regard, 
to the earth as when they started ? After this,, 
objector falls into despair, and makes no further 



154 [September^ 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



attempt to shake the firmly settled fancy. The 
eminent professor has it all his own way, and 
his pupils earnestly desire that his extravagance, 
thus triumphantly vindicated, may be immor- 
talised. 

A theory, which is little less physically im- 
possible than that of Dr. Morton, has long 
found acceptance with dispassionate and scien- 
tific observers, and even now is not so thoroughly 
exploded but that it exercises influence over 
the minds of some. The fancy is, that in winter, 
some birds, at all events the swallow tribe, re- 
tire to the bottoms of lakes and rivers, and 
pass the dead months in a torpid condition 
under water. Olaus Magnus was one of the 
earliest, if not the first to adopt this strange 
notion. He was followed by Etmiiller, and 
afterwards by Derham, who quotes in confirma- 
tion of the theory a communication made to the 
Royal Society in 1712, " from Dr. Colas, a per- 
son very curious in these matters. He, speak- 
ing of their way of fishing in the northern parts, 
by breaking holes, and drawing their nets under 
the ice, saith, that he saw sixteen swallows so 
drawn out of the lake of Samrodt, and about 
thirty out of the king's great pond in Rose- 
neilen ; and that at Schlebittin, near an house of 
the Earl of Dohna, he saw two swallows, just 
come out of the waters, that could scarce stand, 
being very wet and weak, with their wings 
hanging on the ground; and that he hath 
observed the swallows to be often weak for 
some days after their appearance." The Swedish 
naturalist, Alexander Berger, in the Calendar of 
Mora, kept at Upsal, speaks of the swallow re- 
tiring under water as a matter of course, and to 
be expected at the proper season like any other 
every-day event. September 17th, he enters, 
"Hirundo submergitur." The swallow goes 
under water. It has been suggested, indeed, 
that the Upsal naturalist meant to write the 
leech (Hirudo) and not the swallow (Hirundo), 
in the entry in question, but we fear that 
this is the suggestion of some wag, for the 
evidence is too strong to be got over by 
a mere printer's error. That wise and good 
old naturalist, Gilbert White, half inclined to 
the same opinion, and when he was residing at 
Sunbury, on the banks of the Thames, he tells 
us that in autumn he could not help being much 
amused with the myriads of the swallow tribe 
which assemble in those parts. "But what 
struck me most," he adds, " was the fact that 
from the time they began to congregate, for- 
saking the chimneys and houses, they roosted 
every night in the osier-beds of the aits of the 
river. Now this resorting towards that ele- 
ment, at that season of the year, seems to give 
some countenance to the northern opinion 
(strange as it is) of their retiring under water." 
.Even the illustrious Cuvier appears to have 
added the weight of his authority to the notion 
of submergence, for, speaking oi' the martin, he 
says : " That it becomes torpid during the winter, 
and even passes that season under water at the 
bottom of marshes, appears to be certain." 

It is scarcely necessary to use many argu- 



ments to convince unbiased persons of the un- 
tenabilityof this fancy. It is true that certain 
animals hibernate ; that is, remain in a state of 
torpidity during the cold weather. But they do 
so under peculiar circumstances, having first 
secured ' a warm and sheltered retreat in which 
their animal heat is economised, and which is 
within full reach of the effects of the returning 
sun of spring. If such an animal be disturbed 
during the cold weather, it may be prematurely 
revived by the approach of warmth, or if left 
exposed to the cold, it would infallibly die, 
without recovering from its torpid condition. 
The torpidity of hibernation, therefore, is a 
natural physiological condition dependent upon 
the diminution of temperature up to a certain 
point, beyond which it is fatal. Nor could such 
an animal revive in spring if its retreat were in 
such a situation that the gradually increasing 
heat of the sun in spring could not be felt. 
Now, it is an established fact, that all places 
situated at eighty feet below the surface of the 
earth are constantly of the same temperature. 
In these situations, therefore, the sun can have 
no influence, and nothing else could call forth 
dormant organs into action. The same cold 
which benumbed them would evidently per- 
petuate their slumbers. 

But perhaps the best way to show the 
fallacy of such a fancy is to examine the 
statements of those who honestly believe that 
they have been eye-witnesses of the supposed 
fact ; and such there are even now. It was 
only five or six years ago that a lady of respect- 
able social position, living at Stockton-on-Tees, 
wrote to the Darlington and Stockton Times, 
asserting, that without any preconceived 
opinions concerning the submergence theory, 
she was herself a witness of the fact, and goes 
on to relate that she, and a person with her, 
saw a number of swallows dip under the water 
at Middleton, a village on the banks of the 
Tees, never rising from under it again. She 
watched them most closely for a great length of 
time, and was certain of the fact. Now, here 
we have a positive observation, made by an 
educated lady, who, however, confesses that 
"she is no adept in natural history," and 
nothing can convince her that she was in any way 
deceived, inasmuch as she not unnaturally pre- 
fers the testimony of her own senses to the 
dictum of closet naturalists. 

Now, in examining into this statement, the 
first thing which strikes us is the positiveness 
of the observation. It is not easy to prove a 
negative. We may say that the thing is im- 
possible. We may declare that no air-breathing 
animal could exist beneath an element so un- 
fitted for its respiration as water. We may 
strengthen our argument by calling to mind the 
very active respiration of the class of birds, and 
their very exalted animal heat. We may dwell 
upon the necessary suddenness of the change 
from air to water. We may argue that no ani- 
mals known to hibernate are believed to sub- 
merge themselves ; and we may clench the 
matter by appealing to John Hunter's assertion, 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 1865.] 155 



that independent of any observation the sub- 
mergence of birds in a living state was not a 
possible thing. Still, if any properly and duly 
authenticated case, which, when rigorously ex- 
amined, proves to be out of the reach of fallacy, 
should occur, then by the laws of just evidence 
must theory fall like ice before the sun. 

Let us, therefore, briefly examine the cir- 
cumstantial account given by a credible witness, 
and corroborated by a second. Is it possible 
that it can be without foundation ? Imperfect 
observation, arising from a want of special in- 
formation upon the subject observed, has per- 
petuated many an error, and retarded many a 
truth. Let us only recal the circumstantial 
account of an eye-witness, given us by the good 
old Gerarde, in his Herbal, with regard to the 
origin of Barnacle geese : " But what our eyes 
have seene, and what our hands have touched, 
we shall declare." And after this solemn pre- 
amble, he goes on to tell how, in an island in 
Lancashire, are found cast up the trunks and 
bodies of old rotten trees, whereon is found a 
certain spume or froth, that in time breedeth 
unto certain shells, wherein is a lump which in 
time cometh to the shape and form of a bird, 
which, after it cometh to full maturity, falls 
into the sea, where it gathereth feathers and 
groweth to a fowl bigger than a mallard, and 
lesser than a goose ! which the people of Lanca- 
shire call by no other name than tree-goose. 
And he ends his account by asseverating: 
" For the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it 
please them to repaire unto me, and I shall 
satisfie them by the testimonie of good wit- 
nesses." Great names might be brought for- 
ward in support of this portent even, for Saxo 
Grammaticus, Scaliger,Torquemada,01aus Mag- 
nus, and others, no less than Gerarde, were 
profound believers in this tree origin of Barnacle 
geese, and in order that there may be no mis- 
take, the Herbal contains a woodcut of the 
tree with the geese falling from it, and some of 
them already swimming about in safety beneath. 

Returning now to the swallows, and bearing 
in mind that the fair disputant disclaims any 
special knowledge of natural history, let us 
hear her further. She next goes on to say 
triumphantly, " I can give you the exact day 
indeed ; it was the 6th of September." Now, 
here she has proved too much in her anxiety to 
support the credit of her statement. In the 
Swedish Calendar of Alexander Berger, kept at 
Upsal, in latitude sixty degrees, it is not pre- 
tended that the swallow goes under water until 
September 17th. Why should English swallows 
take to their water-bed eleven days sooner than 
their brethren six and a half degrees further 
north ? Indeed, it is well known to ornitholo- 
gists that the swallow does not leave us until 
the beginning of October. Jenyns, from twelve 
years' observations, deduces a mean of October 
14th the earliest date being September 28th. 

It is not difficult to offer an explanation of 
this and other stories of the kind which are 
prevalent among certain classes in this country, 
and which are widely spread and deeply rooted 



among the common people of Sweden. The 
University of Upsala has long offered large 
rewards for the discovery of submerged birds, 
but, notwithstanding the prevalent belief, they 
have never been claimed. That swallows dip 
in the water in their rapid flight is certain, and 
it is said, upon the authority of Mr. Couch, that 
they are capable of resting for a few seconds 
with outstretched wings upon the still surface 
of the water, and then flying off again. Let us 
suppose now that it is late on an autumnal 
afternoon ; the shades of evening are gathering 
round, and the active birds are skimming the 
surface of a quiet pool or river, crossing and 
re-crossing, interweaving and intertwining in the 
mazes of their rapid flight. Under the most 
favourable circumstances, it is difficult to trace 
the course of any particular bird. But if dusk 
imperceptibly steals over such a scene, how- 
easy would it be for an observer to imagine 
that the birds, when they dipped or rested 
themselves upon the water, really submerged 
themselves. It would be next to impossible to 
recognise these birds among the rest upon re- 
suming their flight, while, as they retired by 
degrees to their roosting-places for the night, 
the gradual diminution of their numbers would 
most readily confirm the impression that those 
birds which were in reality only momentarily 
lost to view, had sunk beneath the protective 
bosom of the still, deceitful pool. 

A modification of the submergence fancy, 
but which was an improvement upon it, inas- 
much as it did not at once drown the birds, has 
for that reason received wider credence, as 
being more in analogy with recognised pheno- 
mena. This was the idea : that migrating birds, 
during their absence from us in winter, went 
into hiding after the fashion of hibernating 
quadrupeds. This fancy is at least as old as the 
days of Aristotle, who tells us that "many 
birds, and not a few, as some imagine, hide 
themselves in holes," and he enumerates the 
swallow, kite, thrush, starling, owl, crane, 
turtle, blackbird, and lark, as undoubtedly thus 
disposing of themselves. Pliny also infers that 
kites lie concealed in holes for some months. 
Nor has the doctrine of hibernation been with- 
out support from more modern naturalists. 
Schceffer, Hevelius, Derham, Ellis, Daines 
Barrington, Pennant, Gilbert White, and the 
Swedish naturalists, Kleni and Kalm, may be 
mentioned as all more or less in favour of their 
hiding rather than migrating. White, an ex- 
cellent specimen of a philosophic observer, 
mentions that the sight, early in April, of some 
sand-martins playing in and out, and hanging 
before some nest-holes in a sand-hill, gave him 
great reason to suppose that they do not leave 
their wild haunts at all, but are secreted amidst 
the clefts and caverns of those abrupt cliffs 
where they usually spend their summers ; for, 
since the previous weather of that year (1793) 
had been very severe, he thought it not very 
probable that they should have migrated so 
early from a tropical region, through all the 
cutting winds and pinching frosts. But, he adds, 



156 [September 9, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



" It is easy to suppose that they may, like bats 
and flies, have been awakened by the influence 
of the sun, amidst their secret haunts, where 
they have spent the uncomfortable foodless 
months in a torpid state, and the profoundest of 
slumbers." Still he speaks cautiously, for im- 
mediately after he remarks: "That they can 
retire to rest,and sleep away these uncomfortable 
periods, as bats do, is a matter rather to be 
suspected than proved." But the great Lin- 
nseus himself lent his countenance to this fancy, 
and it became in the last century a common 
mode of expression among those who were 
accustomed to derive their ideas from contem- 
porary authorities. Thus Sturm, in his Reflec- 
tions (April 28), says : "The mild air of spring 
awakens the swallow from his benumbed state." 

It is worthy of remark, however, that, al- 
though numerous stories are recorded of torpid 
birds being turned up from their winter retreats, 
they are always, or nearly always, upon hearsay 
evidence, and doubtless have lost nothing in 
the transmission from one person to another. 
There is scarce an instance of a person describ- 
ing such a circumstance from his own observa- 
tion, unless, indeed, it were " a great many years 
ago, when he was a boy," and probably, there- 
fore, incapable of judging of the evidence before 
him. White tells us two such tales one of a 
clergyman of an inquisitive turn, who assured him 
that when he was a great boy, some workmen, in 
pulling down the battlements of a church tower 
early m spring, found two or three swifts among 
the rubbish, which were, at first appearance, 
dead, but, on being carried towards the fire, re- 
vived. And another " intelligent person" (every 
one is an intelligent person who has seen some- 
thing that no one else has seen) stated that while 
he was a schoolboy at Brighton, a great fragment 
of the chalk cliff fell down one stormy winter 
on the beach, and that many people found 
swallows among the rubbish ; but, adds White, 
" on my questioning him whether he saw any of 
those birds himself, to my no small disappoint- 
ment he answered me in the negative, but that 
others assured him they did." Although, there- 
fore, he leaned to the theory of hiding, he is 
forced to confess that he never heard any such 
account worth attending to. And with regard 
to the other soft-billed and short-winged birds 
of passage, against the possibility of whose 
migration there seemed to be many difficulties, 
he declares that, "as to their hiding, no man 
pretends to have found any of them in a torpid 
state in winter." He himself tested the truth of 
the theory by digging out the nest of the sand- 
martins from the holes in a bank, and satisfied 
himself that they were entirely deserted. 

Markwick, a contemporary of White, and who 
was rather disposed to put faith in the hiding 
of birds in winter, very candidly reviews the 
circumstances which have led to that idea. In 
very early spring, and sometimes immediately 
after very cold, severe weather, on its growing 
a little warmer, a few swallows suddenly make 
their appearance long before the generality of 
them are seen. These appearances, he observes, 



certainly favour the opinion of their passing the 
winter in a torpid state, but do not absolutely 
prove the fact; for who ever saw them reviving 
of their own accord from their torpid state, 
without being first brought to the fire, and, as 
it were, forced into life again ? Soon after which 
revivification they constantly die. This is, indeed, 
the key to any occasional cases of benumbed 
birds which may possibly have been found early 
in the season. Their condition is not a natural 
and physiological one, but an unnatural and 
dangerous one, produced by unwonted cold, from 
which the probability is they cannot recover. 

The real state of the case is, that migrating 
birds are subject to certain evils arising from 
their instinct, which are of two kinds one 
met with on their arrival in this country, an- 
other likely to be encountered at the time of 
their departure one, that is, in early spring, 
the other in late autumn. We cannot in the 
present paper indicate the principle of migra- 
tion at any length ; but it will be sufficient to 
remark that the movements of birds being regu- 
lated by the seasons, and proximately by the 
heat of the sun, and both our climate and solar 
heat being proverbially uncertain and liable to 
variation, the delicate birds, which winter in a 
warm climate, return to this country only to 
encounter the unseasonable weather, cold, wet, 
and it may be frost and snow, which occasion- 
ally make their appearance even in April. To 
such inclement weather they soon succumb, and, 
retiring to their roosting-places, become be- 
numbed and thrown into a helpless condition, 
which is only the precursor of their death ; and 
in that condition they may have been sometimes 
found. Or it may even happen that they have 
arrived in March, or much earlier than the 
usual time, owing to an advanced season in the 
country they have left, when the results would 
be still more marked. Occasionally, the bad 
weather being transitory, they may be little 
seen for a few days after their first appearance, 
when, fine and mild weather returning, they re- 
cover themselves, and come out as usual. 

With regard to the accidents of their autumnal 
migration, they are of a more limited character, 
and do not affect the species in the wholesale 
manner of those just alluded to. That it fre- 
quently happens that a bird has been seen long 
after its companions have quitted their summer 
residence, there can be no doubt. Such a cir- 
cumstance, indeed, is one of those exceptional 
cases which prove the rule. Some defect of 
flight may have prevented it from accompany- 
ing the main body, recovering which, it would 
make the attempt to follow them, for the in- 
stinct is strong upon them at that season of the 
year ; but we may safely conclude that such a 
bird, if it was forced to remain, would not be 
able either to subsist or to exist through the 
winter. The swallow produces two and even 
more broods during the season, the second 
brood being brought out about the middle or 
end of August. But if the second brood be re- 
tarded from any cause, or if a third brood be 
hatched late in the season, the impulse of mi- 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 1865.] 157 



gration will not be stayed by the other great 
impulse, usually so powerful, of love to their 
offspring ; and such late broods are left behind 
if they are not matured enough to accompany 
their parents. In these cases, then, the young 
are pitilessly deserted, and, if very helpless, 
they necessarily and rapidly perish, and their 
putrid carcases or mouldering skeletons may be 
sometimes found on searching the nests in late 
autumn. If, on the other hand, they are more 
advanced, though not sufficiently so to under- 
take migration, they may subsist for some 
weeks, if the weather remain mild, for food is 
in sufficient abundance. But ultimately, if still 
unable to leave, they succumb, and fall into the 
torpidity, which is not, as has been imagined, 
their protection during winter, but only the 
first stage of their certain destruction. 



MOTHERS. 

Some one has said, that a young mother is 
the most beautiful thing in nature. Why 
qualify it ? Why young ? Are not all mothers 
beautiful? The sentimental outside beholder 
may prefer youth in the pretty picture ; but I 
am inclined to think that sons and daughters, 
who are most intimately concerned in the mat- 
ter, love and admire their mothers most when 
they are old. How suggestive of something 
holy and venerable it is when a person talks 
of his "dear old mother." Away with your 
mincing "mammas," and "mam-mas" sug- 
gestive only of a fine lady, who deputes her 
duties to a nurse, a drawing-room maternal 
parent, who is afraid to handle her offspring for 
fear of spoiling her fine new gown. Give me 
the homely mother, the arms of whose love are 
all embracing, who is beautiful always, whether 
old or young, whether arrayed in satin, or 
modestly habited in bombazine. Though I have 
lately glorified aunts somewhat at the expense 
of mothers, I am not insensible to the supreme 
claims which the latter have upon our love, our 
gratitude, and our respect. There are more 
ways than one of looking at things : and there 
are many aspects of mothers which are entirely 
beautiful. 

Maternal love is a mystery which human 
reason can never fathom. It is altogether above 
reason ; it is a holy passion, in which all others 
are absorbed and lost. It is a sacred flame on 
the altar of the heart, which is never quenched. 
That it does not require reason to feed it and 
keep it alive is witnessed in the instinctive 
maternal love which pervades all animal nature. 
Every one must have instinctively felt the apt- 
ness of the scriptural illustration of maternal 
solicitude, which likens a great love to a hen, 
which gathers her chickens under her wing. 
The hen's maternal care, so patient, so unsel- 
fish, is a miniature replica of Nature's greatest 
work. No doubt, it is carried on and on ad 
infinitum, until we want a microscope to see it. 
There are myriads of anxious mothers in a leaf, 
whose destiny is to live for a single day and then 



die for ever ; as there are millions of anxious 
mothers in the human family whose span of 
life is threescore years and ten, with a glorious 
eternity lying beyond. The mother is the main- 
spring of all nature, the fountain of all pure 
love the first likeness on earth of God himself. 
Man did not deserve to have the first entry 
into the garden of Eden. Burns, with his great 
sympathetic soul, seems to have felt this when 
be sang of Dame Nature, 

Her 'prentice han' 

She tried on man, 

And then she made the lasses, ! 

It was the only way of explaining the matter 
while adhering to the Mosaic history. If I 
were a follower of Dr. Colenso, and ventured 
to interpret these things in my own way, I 
should say that if the writer of that history 
had been a woman, she would have brought 
Eve on the scene first and devoted a rib to 
Adam ; and if I were a Frenchman, I should 
say, that it was not polite of Adam to take the 
pas of a lady. But I am neither, and I will 
say none of these things, for I am 

Orthodox, orthodox, 

Wha cam' in vvi' John Knox, 

and I will not sound an alarm to my conscience 
with any " heretic blast," whether it come from 
the " west" or the south. I will not even say 
that 

What is nae sense maun be nonsense. 

The theory that we derive our intellectual 
qualities from our mothers, while we are in- 
debted to our fathers only for our physical 
attributes, is most agreeable to all the natural 
instincts of man. It is so rational a theory 
that one wonders why those clever old fellows 
the " ancients" did not perceive it. It is upon 
this theory that we trace the genius of our 
great men to the influence of their mothers. 
The same theory, taken inversely, would also 
account for the fact that great men very rarely 
have great sons. Genius is not hereditary 
through the fathers, but through the mothers. 
The popular perception of this law of nature 
finds expression in the common remark that a 
child is " the image of his father," and has the 
" amiable disposition of his mother," or perhaps 
vice versa as to the disposition. 

It is not altogether because our mothers are 
of the " gentler" sex that we fly to them for 
sympathy instead of to our fathers. It is be- 
cause there is a more intimate relationship 
between us, because the strings of our nature 
are more in unison ; because we are more nearly 
flesh of their flesh, and blood of their blood. In 
the old patriarchal times the father was the 
principal person, the sole and undivided head of 
the family. The mother was a secondary person 
altogether. One cannot help feeling that the 
mothers of the Old Testament occupied a some- 
what undignified position in the family. The 
state of affairs in patriarchal society is fully ex- 
plained when we call to mind that the head of 
the family was generally a " sad Turk." 



158 [September 9, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAE ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



It is a fact, which may not be generally known, 
that a remnant of the patriarchal system still 
lingers in the midst of the new dispensation 
which inculcates love and equality. And the 
country (of all countries in the world) where 
this autocratic paternal government is to be 
met with is Scotland. In the Catholic countries 
of Europe, the love and duty of children centre 
in the mother. In Spain, Italy, and Germany, 
and particularly in France, the mother is the 
guiding star of the family. The German mother 
is a sacred idea ; the Erench mother is a poetical 
one. When a Frenchman gets sentimental, he 
never fails to rave about his mother. When he 
goes into battle, he invokes the name of " ma 
mere." When he lies dying on the field, his 
last words are for "ma mere." When he 
escapes this fate and returns to Erance, vic- 
torious, his first desire is to embrace "ma 
mere." When he gets tipsy which, to his 
credit, is seldom he maunders about "ma 
mere." Toujours ma mere ! The German is 
not so high-flown on the subject, but possibly 
he is more in earnest in his affection. When 
you meet him abroad in the world, he has 
always pleasant recollections of his " moder" to 
impart to you. How rarely you hear him talk 
about his " fader !" 

As you come north, however, among Celts, 
Saxons, and Scandinavians, the father rises in 
importance and the mother sinks. I cannot 
believe that race is the sole cause of this diffe- 
rence in feeling ; for while in Scotland you find 
the father pre-eminent in the affections of the 
children, in Ireland it is the mother who attracts 
the largest share of attachment. In England 
the mother is of less importance than in Erance, 
less even than in Ireland. This may be ex- 
plained partly by the difference in religion, 
partly by the laws of succession and primogeni- 
ture. In the Catholic religion, the material idea 
is quite as sacred as the paternal one, while it 
has the additional attributes of humanity im- 
parted to it. The Virgin Mary, with the 
Saviour of the World at her breast, is the ever 
present symbol of maternal origin and maternal 
love. In Protestant England this is wanting to 
the great mass of the people ; and the aristocracy, 
who set the fashion even in social habits, incul- 
cate the idea of inheritance from the father, 
naturally inviting duty, if not love, towards the 
male head of the family. In English aristo- 
cratic society it matters little so far as name 
and property are concerned who your mother 
is. She may be a washerwoman or a dancing- 
girl. You, the eldest son, are as much a Duke 
and a Montmorency as if your mother had been 
a scion of the noblest house in the land. It is 
your father from whom you get all your glory 
and all your possessions. Such is the sub- 
ordination of the sons of the aristocratic classes 
to the paternal idea, that they will even take 
their politics from their fathers, against their 
own convictions. In a purely domestic way, 
however, the English mother occupies a most 
honourable position. She is loved, respected, 
and looked up to, and the usages of society, no 



less than the dictates of natural reverence, esta- 
blish her claim to the most delicate and chival- 
rous consideration. In one department of the 
household she is all supreme. 

This is not quite the case in Scotland. The 
Scotch father is sternly patriarchal. The wife 
is in a great measure subordinate to him even 
in domestic matters. In England and Ireland, 
and indeed in most other Christian countries, 
the children take their religion and their piety 
from their mothers ; in Scotland they take them 
from their fathers. This is chiefly to be observed 
among the middle and lower classes. You will 
find many Scotch households in the rural dis- 
tricts, where the father is a sort of potentate in 
his house. He has the best room, the best 
chair, the best knife and fork, the silver spoon. 
The tit-bits and the luxuries are reserved for 
him. His wife speaks of him with awe and 
reverence, and calls him " Mister," even to her 
own relations. When this majestic father ex- 
presses his views, his wife sits mum, never 
daring to put in a word. If he be given to 
religion, he will have his way in that ; if he be 
given to whisky-toddy, he will have his way in 
thatalso. He will decide the doctrine of pre- 
destination, and equally determine for himself 
how many tumblers are good for him after 
dinner. Education, I fancy, is at the bottom 
of this Scotch singularity. The men are better 
educated than the women. Intellectually they 
are not companions for each other. The result 
of this state of things is, that the children " take 
to" the father rather than to the mother. You 
will rarely see a Scotch boy kissing his mother ; 
yet it is common to see him caressing his 
father. I believe that, if a Scotch father and 
mother were to come out from their home to 
seek fortune elsewhere, and one were to turn to 
the right and the other to the left, the children 
would, in most cases, follow the father. In 
Ireland and Erance, I believe they would follow 
the mother. In England, probably some would 
follow the father and some the mother. But 
the influence in each case would be different. 
Yet in all Christian countries the primary idea 
of a mother is one that instinctively associates 
itself with love and tenderness and sympathy. 
However important the father may make him- 
self, there are matters which he cannot assist 
us in. We may consult him on the affairs 
of life and the world, but it is to the mother 
that we go for advice, sympathy, and consola- 
tion in the affairs of the heart and the sensi- 
bilities. It is on her bosom that we pillow 
the weary head, into her ear that we pour 
the tale of our soul's woe, from her lips that 
we hear the sweet spoken words of comfort and 
consolation. 

And how little can we return to her for all 
her patience with us, all her care, all her love 
for us. When we are young unfledged birds in 
the nest, we cling close to her, taking her warm 
breast and her protecting wings as our birth- 
right as yet unconscious of our debt of grati- 
tude. And when our feathers grow, we fly away 
and leave her fly away to build nests of our 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 1865.] 159 



own. We pass from one care to another, never 
sharing it, but always the objects of it. 

When we consider what the life of a mother 
is from first to last, we should learn to be grate- 
ful, and strive to show our gratitude. It seems 
almost a hard doctrine that a man should leave 
his mother and cleave to his wife. As a matter 
of social polity, it may be necessary that he 
should do so ; but in purity and sacredness, no 
love can exceed that which a man feels for his 
mother. No other love should be allowed to 
interfere with this. It is the love of Heaven 
itself. 

When we reflect upon what mothers have to 
endure, we may allow that novelists are right in 
making the culminating point of happiness the 
marriage of their heroines. After that their 
trouble begins. Man, in his self-importance, 
has applied the proverb to himself; but it should 
be, ' When a woman marries her trouble begins." 
It is she who feels the needles and pins of life. 
Man it is, rather, who sharpens their points. 
Woman's is a subjective life from first to last. 
No man knows what a woman suffers in bearing 
and bringing up a family of children. Only 
Heaven knows Heaven which has endowed 
her with that wondrous love which redeems her 
existence from being an intolerable slavery. 
And when the task is done, and the children 
have gone forth into the world, how hard it is 
to be left alone with a full heart with love 
still warm and sympathy still unexhausted. Ah 
me ! ah me ! my heart bleeds when I think of 
the widowed mother wafting her loving thoughts 
across the seas upon the wings of sighs, nursing 
us again in thought, fondling us once more in 
the arms of her imagination. This is the 
mother's fate often ; the father's seldom. The 
father, when he becomes a widower, is never too 
old to begin his life all over again. The mother, 
in most cases, holds the old love too sacred to 
pollute it with another. She is content to live 
upon the memories of the past to wait patiently 
until God calls her to that land, where the love 
of the mother is known, though there is neither 
marrying nor giving in marriage. 



CHINESE THOUGHTS. 

Next to Confucius stands Mencius, in the 
estimation of the Chinese. Like Confucius, he 
was a great traveller, and visited many of the 
states adjacent to and dependent upon China. 
He was generally accompanied by his disciples. 
Remusat says that his style, though less con- 
cise and elevated than that of " the prince of 
letters," is equally noble, and more adorned and 
elegant. His conversations have more variety 
than is to be found in the apophthegms and 
maxims of Confucius who is always grave and 
sometimes austere. He raises virtue into ideal 
regions, and repulses vice with cold indignation. 
Mencius, with an equal love of virtue, speaks of 
vice with more of scorn than of horror; he 
reasons with it, even seeks to make it ridiculous. 
He has a sort of a Socratic irony. He ventures 



to utter the boldest and bitterest truths to 
princes and grandees who sought his laudation. 
He exhibits nothing of Oriental servility. He 
is rather Diogenes than Aristippus, but with 
more of sagacity and decorum ; he is always in- 
spired by zeal for the public good. Extracts 
from his writings are to be found in the second 
volume of the Melanges Asiatiques, and some 
of them will serve to illustrate his merits, and 
at the same time the highest reach of wisdom 
in the thoughts of the Chinese. 

"If you will have robes of silk, you must plant 
the mulberry-tree." A Chinese proverb prettily 
says, "A splendid garment is in the leaf of the 
mulberry." Mencius thus reproved a prince: 
"What avails it that your kitchen overflows 
with food, and that your stables are filled with 
fat horses, if your people are pale with hunger, 
and their famished corpses cover your fields ?" 

" As water subdues fire, the humane prin- 
ciple subdues the non-humane. But if a man 
threw without effect a cup of water to extin- 
guish chariots filled with burning wood, can he 
say, f Water will not subdue fire ?' The 
humane must not bring feebleness to the rescue 
of those who suffer. Humanity must, therefore, 
not be weak, but energetic." 

"Gold is heavier than feathers. Is a cart- 
load of feathers, therefore, weightier than a 
button of gold ?" 

Mencius thus describes the habits of his day : 
"In the spring-time the emperor visits the 
labourers who prepare the soil, and assists 
those who are in want. In autumn he visits 
the harvesters who gather in the fruits, and 
aids those who have not a sufficiency." 

"When the emperor entered the boundaries of 
his (vassal) princes, if he found the land free 
from weeds, if the fields were well cultivated, if 
the old were provided for from the public re- 
venues, if the sages were honoured, if the most 
distinguished were called to public employments, 
he rewarded the prince by an extension of his 
domains. 

"But if he found none of these things, he 
punished the (vassal) princes. If they failed to 
pay their visit of homage, and to produce their 
accounts and tribute, he lowered them one de- 
gree in dignity; if they failed twice, he di- 
minished the extent of their territory ; if thrice, 
he sent six military bodies, who removed them 
from their government. 

" The federal compact was proclaimed by the 
highest of the vassal princes, in the presence of 
the rest. The victim was tied to the sacrificial 
altar; the book containing the compact was 
placed upon the victim. These were the de- 
crees : 

" 1. Let the children who are wanting in filial 
piety be put to death. Deprive not the legiti- 
mate son of his inheritance to give it to another. 
Make not a wife of your concubine. 

" 2. Honour the sages. Give recompenses to 
the men of talent and genius. Bring forward 
virtuous men. 



160 [September 9, 1SG5.J 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



" 3. Respect the aged. Cherish little children. 
Be hospitable to guests and travellers. 

" 4. Let the Literati have no hereditary charges 
or magistracies. Let not different (inconsistent) 
functions be imposed upon the same person. In 
selecting public officers, let merit alone deter- 
mine your choice. Let not the administrators 
of cities be put to death by your arbitrary au- 
thority. 

" 5. Let there be no dirt-heaps in your fields 
(i.e. waste no manure). Prevent not the sale 
(transfer) of the fruits of the earth (free trade). 
Confer no principality without imperial au- 
thority. 

"After the compact, the principal vassal 
prince said, c You who with me have bound 
yourselves by this treaty, sanctioned by all, 
carry each with you sentiments of concord and 
harmony.' " 

" Seek and you will find ; neglect anything, 
you will lose everything ; but we must seek what 
is to be found within (our grasp), for we shall 
not find what we seek if we seek what is bejond 
(our reach)." 

" If your lessons are listened to, preserve 
your serenity ; if they are not listened to, pre- 
serve your serenity, for if you know your truth- 
fulness, why should you not be serene ?" 

"The (intellectual) nature of the superior 
man is fixed and immutable, not augmented by 
a wide sphere of action, not diminished by 
poverty and nakedness." 

"If with five acres you cultivate the mul- 
berry-tree, if your women raise silkworms, your 
old men may be clad in silken garments ; with 
five fowls and two sons, and watching the 
seasons, your old men will have food. One 
labouring man will suffice for eight mouths." 

" He who looks upon the ocean thinks little of 
streams and rivers. He who has passed the 
portal of the saints (who has been instructed 
by the sages), will not value highly the teach- 
ings of ordinary men." 

" Yang thinks only of himself ; he would not 
pull a hair out of his head for the public good. 

" Sue loves everybody ; he would bend his 
head to the dust if by so doing he could render 
any benefit to the emperor." 

Mencius quotes with high praise the "man 
of eminent virtue," the Emperor Yaou, who 
said to his brother, " Go, comfort ye the people, 
gather them around you; correct them, assist 
them, teach them to be prosperous, encourage 
them by their own impulses to return to good- 
ness. Shower upon them many benefits." 

It was of Yaou that Confucius said, " What 
is so great as Heaven ? Who but Yaou ever re- 
sembled its greatness ?" 

" Sages have been known to change the 
manners of barbarians, but a sage was never 
converted to barbarism by barbarians." 

" To dwell habitually in the great domicile of 
humanity, to sit constantly in the becoming 
seat (i.e. to be observant of the appropriate 



ceremonies), to walk in the broad pathway (i.e. 
to obey the great moral rules), to spread among 
the people the harvests of your own good for- 
tune, and if good fortune fail you, to confer all 
the benefits at your disposal, to be incorruptible 
by riches, impassible under poverty and humi- 
liation, to show no fear in the presence of danger 
and of an armed force, this is to be a great 
man." 

The prime minister of the kingdom of Sung 
consulted Mencius, and told him that being 
convinced of the oppressive character of a tax 
that bore heavily upon the people, he thought 
he should diminish it, and at the end of the 
year abolish it altogether. Mencius answered, 
" There was a man who was accustomed to 
steal every day the poultry of his neighbours, 
and was reproached for his dishonesty. c Well,' 
he answered, c I will amend little by little. I 
will only steal one fowl a month for a year to 
come, and then I will abstain altogether.' No," 
said Mencius, " no, when you know that what 
you do is unjust, cease at once to do it. Why 
wait a year ?" 

" Men talk idly about empire, nation, family. 
The foundation of the empire is in the nation, 
of the nation in the family, of the family in the 
individual; in fine, government is founded on 
the people, the people on the family, the family 
on its chief." 

" Win a people and the empire is won ; win 
their hearts and their affections, and you win the 
people ; you win their hearts by meeting their 
wishes, by providing for their w T ants, and im- 
posing upon them nothing that they detest." 

" As the fish hurries away from the otter to 
the protection of the deep waters, as the little 
bird flies to the thick forest from the hawk, so 
do subjects fly from wicked kings." 

" You cannot reason with the passionate, you 
cannot act with the feeble or the capricious." 

" Sure and sincere truth is heaven's pathway ; 
to meditate on truth in order to practise it is 
to discover the pathway and the duty of man." 

" No man who has been consistently true and 
sincere has failed to win the confidence and 
favour of other men. No man in whom truth 
and sincerity have been wanting has ever long 
possessed their confidence and favour." 

" The good man needs not impose on himself 
the obligation of truthful words (truth being 
natural to him), he needs no special resolution 
(in a particular case), for equity and justice are 
his habitual guides." 

"The benevolent man loves mankind; the 
courteous man respects them. He who loves 
men will be loved by them; he who respects 
men will be respected by them." 

" If I am treated rudely, let me examine into 
the cause, and if I cannot discover any sort of 
impropriety in my own conduct, I may disregard 
the rudeness, and consider him who displays it 
as no better than a brute, and why should the 
conduct of a brute disturb me ?" 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 1865.] 161 



When Mencius was asked his opinion as to 
the conduct of two individuals, one of whom 
had fled, and the other had remained at home 
when their house was attacked by robbers, and 
the person who had taken flight was severely 
condemned by the questioner, Mencius went 
into all the circumstances of the two cases, and 
declared that each had been influenced by the 
same prudential considerations, and that each 
would have acted as the other did had their 
positions been changed. 

Mencius relates what follows, and it is cha- 
racteristic of the manners ancT customs of his 
time. 

" There was a man of Tsi who had a legiti- 
mate wife and a concubine, who dwelt together 
in his house. 

"Whenever the husband went out he re- 
turned gorged with wine and food, and when 
his wife inquired where he had been eating and 
drinking, he answered, * With the rich and the 
noble.' 

" The wife said to the concubine, e Whenever 
my husband goes out he returns satiated with 
wine and food. If I ask him with whom he eats 
and drinks, he answers, " With the rich and the 
noble." Now, never has one illustrious person 
visited Our abode. I will secretly learn where 
he goes/ 

" So she rose early, and followed her husband 
to the places he visited. He passed through 
the locality, but not a soul saluted or spoke to 
him. Reaching the western suburb among the 
tombs was one who devoured the remains of the 
ancestral sacrifices, but without being satisfied. 
He went to other places and did the same, and 
thus he habitually gratified his appetite. 

" His lawful wife returned home, and said to 
the concubine, ( We placed our future hopes in 
our husband, and lo, what are we doing ?' She 
told the concubine what she had seen, and they 
wept together in the women's apartment (over 
the profligacy of the man). He returned not 
knowing what had taken place with a gay 
countenance, boasting of his good fortune to 
the wife and the concubine. 

1 ' Such are the means," says the sage, " by 
which many pursue wealth and honour, profits 
and advancement. How few those are who 
blush and moan for this misconduct !" 

" Who by a tortuous example has ever made 
men straightforward and sincere ? Who by dis- 
honouring himself can render others honour- 
able ? Holy men do not necessarily resemble 
one another; some seek solitude and retire- 
ment ; others exhibit themselves, and approach 
the neighbourhood of authority; some are 
exiled, others remain at home. The object of 
all perfect men is to be pure, free from stains, 
and this alone." 

Mencius thus describes a good public func- 
tionary : " Lien did not blush to serve a worth- 
less prince, nor disdain a petty magistracy. But 
in the exercise of his functions he drew forth 
sages from their obscurity, and himself walked 
in the straight path. If he was disesteemed or 



neglected he felt no resentment; even when 
suffering from want and misery he neither com- 
plained nor was afflicted. If he dwelt in a 
village he was always satisfied, had a serene 
look, and sought no other abode. His language 
was, 'You are you, and I am I' (i.e. we all 
pursue our own purposes). 'You approach me 
with naked arms, your bodies unclad (it is un- 
becoming), but to me it is no defilement.' The 
reproof thus conveyed has given courage to the 
pusillanimous, and the cold and insensible have 
become earnest and affectionate." 

He gave the following description of one of 
the ancient governments of China (Khi) : 

" The people were taxed to the amount of one- 
ninth of their earnings, the public functionaries 
were regularly paid, the frontiers were well 
guarded, but no (import) duties were levied. 
There was no interference with the fisheries in 
the lakes and ponds, criminals were not punished 
in the presence of their wives and children. 
Widowers, widows, and those who had lost their 
parents, were under the special charge of the 
state." And he quotes the verse from the Book 
of Odes : 

Riches and power are blessings but to those 
Who soothe the widow's and the orphan's woes. 

Upon which the king exclaimed, " What ad- 
mirable words!" And the sage replied, "O 
king ! if you find them admirable, why do you 
not practise them ?" 

" Some labour with their intellect, some with 
their hands. Those who labour with their in- 
tellect govern men, those who labour with their 
hands are governed by men. Those who are 
governed by men produce the food of man, and 
those who govern men have their food produced 
by men." 

" Not by superiority of age or honour, not by 
the virtues and power of your brother, is friend- 
ship to be secured. Friendship must be allied 
with virtue. Yirtue is its only bond. 

" The virtuous literate of a village sponta- 
neously links himself in friendship with the 
(other) virtuous literates of that village; the 
virtuous literate of a kingdom allies himself 
spontaneously with the virtuous literates of that 
kingdom, the virtuous literate of an empire with 
the virtuous literates of that empire. But this 
is not enough ; he must mount higher ; he must 
study the works of the ancient sages, recite their 
verses, read and explain their books, and he 
must make himself acquainted with these sages 
to accomplish this. He must examine the era 
in which they lived (to learn what they accom- 
plished). It is by ascending ever higher that the 
noblest friendships are accomplished." 

When the King of Tsi consulted Mencius as 
to the mutual duties of princes and ministers, 
he replied : 

" If the prince commit great faults, the mi- 
nister should remonstrate. If he repeat them, 
if he turn a deaf ear to these representations, 
the minister should replace him, and deprive him 
of his power." 



162 [September 9, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



The king changed colour when he heard these 
words, and Mencius added : " The king must 
not deem my words extraordinary. If the king 
interrogate his subject, his subject dares say 
nothing which is opposed to right and truth." 

Once he said to the prince : " If a man were 
commanded to carry off a great mountain and 
fling it into the sea, he might well answer, c I 
cannot do this ;' but if he were told to tear away 
the branch of a young tree, and replied, ' I can- 
not, 5 he would exhibit indisposition, but not im- 
potence. Now a monarch who governs amiss 
should not compare himself to the man who is 
expected to throw the big mountain into the 
ocean, but to one who refuses to pluck the 
branch from the tree." 

Again he told his sovereign: "There was 
little substantial glory in splendid repasts or 
in costly robes, in crowds of vassals, or in 
military renown; but in good government, in 
the choice of virtuous ministers, in the en- 
couragement of the labourers in the field, and 
the artisan in the workshop, in the courtesies to 
foreign guests, in the pure administration of jus- 
tice, in the education of the people, and in the 
strengthening of all the social and domestic re- 
lations." 

Again he said : " The love of music is be- 
coming, of the chase is blameless, but he is the 
best ruler who enables his people to participate 
in his pleasures. If the prince rejoice in the 
joys of his people, the people will rejoice in his 
joy. If he fee saddened with their sadness, they 
will be sad when he is sad; and if he rejoice 
with everybody, everybody will rejoice with 
him." 

In a conversation with Mencius, Kaou-tze said : 
" The nature of man resembles running water, 
turn it towards the east it runs towards the 
east, turn it towards the west it runs towards 
the west. Man's nature does not distinguish 
good from evil, any more than the water distin- 
guishes the east from the west." 

Mencius : " True ! the water does not distin- 
guish the east from the west, but can it not dis- 
tinguish height from depth ? Man's nature is 
naturally good, as the water runs naturally 
downward. There is no man who is not natu- 
rally good, as there is no water that does not 
naturally descend. 

"But if you stop the course of the water 
you may make it mount above your forehead. 
Place obstacles in its way, it will flow back to 
its source, nay, you may carry it over a moun- 
tain. But is this the nature of the waters ? No ! 
it is constraint. 

" And so men may be constrained to evil, this 
their nature permits. 

"Man's natural tendency is towards good. 
Our nature is good. If we commit vicious acts, 
it is not because the faculty (of doing good) is 
wanting. All men have the feelings of mercy 
and pity, all the sense of shame and hatred of 
vice. All have the sentiments of deference and 
respect, all the sense of praise and blame. 

" The sentiment of mercy and pity is hu- 
manity, that of shame and hatred of vice is 



equity, that of deference and respect is urbanity, 
that of approbation and blame is wisdom. Hu- 
manity, equity, urbanity, and wisdom are not of 
outward growth, they are in us and from within 
us, though we do not think of this." 

" If," says Mencius, " in abundant years good 
actions predominate, if in sterile years evil 
actions, it is not that man's nature is different, 
but that passion has attacked and submerged 
the heart and led it away to evil." 

" The passions which cause man to abandon 
the noble sentiments of the heart are like the 
axe and the scythe, which cut down the beau- 
tiful vegetation of the mountain." 

"Princes have their precious possessions, 
their territory, their people, and a good admi- 
nistration. Those who consider pearls and 
precious stones as their treasures will be over- 
taken by calamity." 

"All men have the sense of commiseration. 
To extend it to all pain and suffering is huma- 
nity. All men have the sentiment of what is 
not right to be done. To extend this to all they 
do is equity." 

" Simple words of sound sense are the best." 

"Men abandon their own fields to remove 
tares from the fields of other men." 

" When pulse and corn are as plentiful as fire 
and water, what should prevent the people from 
being virtuous ?" 

" While you listen to a man's words, watch 
the movement of his eyes, and you will pene- 
trate his disguises." 

" Being without blame, he went forth to be 
executed."* 

"Diffuse knowledge, interchange employ- 
ments, so that the deficiencies of some may be 
filled up by the superfluities of others." 

" Sacrifice not in an unclean vessel." 

" A beggar will not value what is trampled 
on." 

"The courage of the impetuous is far less 
virtuous than the courage of the thoughtful." 



* Self-sacrifice for the benefit of one's family or 
country, is field in China to be a merit of the 
highest order. In cases where substitution is 
allowed, there is no difficulty in finding an innocent 
man to be executed, who sells himself for about a 
hundred ounces of silver (30/. to 40/.), and so pro- 
vides for his widow and family. I knew of a case 
in which a distinguished literary graduate wrote a 
petition to the emperor representing the grievances 
of his people, who were in a state of insurrection. 
The grievances were acknowledged and redressed, 
but their eloquent exponent delivered himself over 
to the Mandarins to be dealt with as the authorities 
should deem fit. The nails were torn from his 
fingers as a punishment for having writteu the 
petition, and he was ordered for execution, and was 
decapitated. A temple was built in his honour, a 
pension was awarded by the people to his family, 
and everybody seemed satisfied that everything 
right and proper was done on the occasion. 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 1S65.] 163 



"All men have in them the sentiments of 
compassion and sympathy. In a crowd that 
should see a child falling into a well, there 
would not be one who would not feel fear and 
pity." 

"Nothing is nobler than to afford to others 
the means of exercising their virtues." 

" Markets were established to enable men to 
exchange what they possessed for what they did 
not possess. He was a worthless man who first 
levied taxes upon this interchange." 



HOBBY-HORSES. 

Is there any one among us who does not keep 
a hobbv-horse ? to whom the pleasure of parad- 
ing a favourite toy, material or intellectual, is 
unknown ? If there is I should like to see the 
man, as a curiosity not equalled even by a living 
specimen of the dodo, or a yearling ichthyosaurus 
making its first clumsy essays towards am- 
phibious perfection. But I do not believe in 
him, and will not allow that a being absolutely 
hobby-horseless exists ; that there lives the man 
or woman whose days pass away without the 
indulgence of a toy, or the dandiing of a doll. 
No, we may be sure that, whether we confess 
it or deny it, we all have our particular beast 
at home, our dapple or our roan, our black, our 
chesnut, our mouse-colour, or our bay, capering 
somewhere about the establishment, though we 
all choose different keeping-places, and have 
idiosyncrasies in the matter of airing-grounds. 
Some of us, for instance, keep our hobby-horse 
under lock and key, in the closet opposite to 
that wherein the family skeleton lives, taking 
him out to air occasionally privately and sur- 
reptitiously as it were and under close disguise, 
so that he may pass for a dog or a sheep, 
perhaps for a wolf or a lion ; for something use- 
ful and to be encouraged, or for something 
dangerous and to be put down ; but in no wise 
to be discovered as a hobby-horse with two 
false legs and a ewe neck stuffed artistically, 
good only as a plaything and pastime. Others, 
on the contrary, have him in the court-yard, 
caracolling about the premises without the least 
attempt at concealment; the first thing seen 
by a stranger, the last by a guest ; the whole 
domain given up to hobby-horsemanship, and 
the whole world his pasture-ground. And 
others again show him warily to private friends ; 
just the tip of his nose snuffing the morning 
air, or the end of his tail whisking off the flies 
from his housings ; but honestly, if warily, con- 
fessing him for what he is, and not masking him 
in pasteboard vizors sheepish or leonine, and 
making believe that his entertainment means 
sacrifice or crusade for the world at large. This 
kind air him in home-paddocks well defended, 
with only a chosen few to see the fun, and cry 
bravo ! at the proper moment. Too honest to 
deny that their hobby is just a hobby and nothing 
more, they yet are sensitive as to the ridicule 
the poor beast may get ; and so they keep him 



to close quarters and private airing-grounds, and 
put plenty of water into his soup. But whether 
close or open, confessed or denied, walled pad- 
docks or public thoroughfares, we all do keep 
a hobby-horse if not horses, and all do feel 
supreme delight when we get inside the trap- 
pings, and display our horsemanship to frienas 
and not impartial judges. 

One of the most charming bits of hobby- 
horsemanship on record was that of my Uncle 
Toby and Corporal Trim, when they besieged 
forts and cities in the back garden, and fought 
out extinct battles, with different issues, on the 
tablecloth. They were of the class which keeps 
its hobby-horses undisguised, and is not ashamed 
of its stable is indeed rather proud of it than 
otherwise, and gently solicitous for all friends 
to witness the dexterity of its manege, and the 
ease with which it can take flying leaps and 
clear all manner of five-barred gates. The world 
would be somewhat the gainer if all hobby- 
horses were of the same innocency of com- 
plexion as that of my Uncle Toby and Cor- 
poral Trim, and if nothing more vicious or ag- 
gressive ever stood on its hind legs and made 
snaps at the passers-by. 

Louis the Sixteenth of Erance luckless 
Louis ! had his hobby-horse stalled in a black- 
smith's shop, and was never so happy as when 
filing at locks and keys, and dabbling his royal 
fingers in sweet-oil and blacklead ; while Danton 
and Robespierre, Marat and Saint-Just, were 
sketching out their grim hobby in garrets and 
court-yards, in a short time to hammer him out 
of the wood and iron of the guillotine, cemented 
with the tears and blood of the best in Erance. 
Charles the Eifth of Spain had his swinging to 
innumerable pendulums trying to make time- 
pieces synchronous, with the distracting results 
usually allotted to the would-be regulators of 
circumstance and the meddlers with undis- 
covered laws. And all through history we find 
the footprints of various hobbies which the 
great ones of the earth bestrode and made to 
dance upon high places. Sometimes they were of 
rather fiercer aspect and rougher manners than 
was quite agreeable to the beholders ; as Nero's 
for one example; Procrustes' for another; 
Gessler's hobby done up in an old hat for a 
third; the Duke d'Alva, bestriding one cut out 
of the same block as Charles the Eifth's but 
with different garniture and bloodier pasturage, 
trying to make souls uniform instead of time- 
pieces synchronous, for a fourth ; while Cathe- 
rine de Medicis, the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, 
the Borgias, and the Thugs, are a quartet taken 
at random from among the thick-coming memo- 
ries of hobby-horses historical. Our own " far- 
mer George 5 ' had one of a peaceful and bucolic 
order ; which is more than can be said of the 
hobbies owned by Carlyle's favourite Eritz and 
Fritz's papa, by that slovenly old witch-finder 
King James, by Tippoo Sahib, or, in later days, 
by the Nana. But the Eastern hobbies gene- 
rally are of the tigerish order; though it is not 
for us to cast stones at our neighbour's stable 
windows, when our own reveal such ugly brutes 



164 [September 9, 1865. ] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



tied up by the head and tail to the steps of the 
imperial throne. 

Many are the hobby-horses of men passing 
away from history and going now into private 
pastures to note what toys and playthings 
are attached to domestic and personal establish- 
ments. One man has the hobby-horse of fishing. 
He will sit on a rock the whole day through, get- 
ting sunburnt and blistered, throwing a minnow 
at the end of a line into the water and watching 
the rare bobbing underneath of a float, or whip- 
ping a stream with an artificial fly, and getting 
a wet jacket for the pleasure of a handful of 
trout weighing an ounce and a fraction each. 
Another man wears out his strength and his 
buckskins in the saddle, and thinks life not 
worth having without a fox scouring across the 
country and a pack of hounds in full cry after 
him. A third hangs his hobby-horse about with 
old masters, with which the first requisite is 
faith and the desideratum a picture-cleaner. 
He has a Rembrandt as black as soot and 
utterly impossible to decipher, which he values 
next thing to his life, but about which Wardour- 
street could tell some queer tales if it chose ; 
he has a Jordaens loaded with fleshy fruit not 
half so good as Lance's, and dotted about 
with flowers as fleshy as the fruit which Miss 
Mutrie would be ashamed to own ; yet his Jor- 
daens comes only second to his Rembrandt, 
though a trifle more authentic. Then he has 
an ugly bit of ugly life by Jan Steen, also un- 
approachable ; and an olive-green landscape by 
Berghem, for which in his estimation a king's 
crown would not be too much to pay ; all of 
which pieces of canvas make the garniture of 
his hobby, whereof he cannot be sufficiently 
proud or appreciative. This was dear old 
Savage Landor's hobby ; as was the possession 
of rare books and Spanish manuscripts that of 
Southey. Another man has his hobby of pictures 
certainly, but pictures of all ages and botlikinds 
modern and ancient " my collection, sir," as if 
his copies of La Cenci and La Seggiola, and his 
originals by Brown and Smith, represented the 
last results of civilisation and the extremest 
point of human knowledge. However, these are 
innocent hobbies, if a little wearisome to us the 
spectators by the monotony of their caperings. 

Another man drives his hobby into the 
fields and hedges and makes it browse on 
ferns and wild flowers botany in the con- 
crete ; parading his Wardian case, or his hortus 
siccus, or his open-air fernery with the latest 
varieties which need a magnil'ying-glass to see 
how they are varieties at all, or his newly dis- 
covered species of stinging-nettle, as the finest 
and most beautiful of the hobbies cherished by 
man as, indeed, the only hobby worth dandling, 
and almost the only object in life worth living 
for. Another has his stuck all about with but- 
terflies' wings and beetles' backs; another 
clothes his with feathers ; another with horns ; 
another with skins of foreign beasts ; and a few 
devote theirs to the raising of monster rhubarb 
or magnificent cabbages to roses as big as 
peonies, and to strawberries as fat as plums. 



Any of these are better than the hobby of 
grand friends which afflicts certain people the 
" my lord" and " my lady," and " the eminent 
Mr. This," and " the celebrated Mrs. That," 
whose names are hung like bells round the col- 
lar of the hobby, making a fine jingling and a 
tinkling in the ears of the grosser multitude. 
This is not at all an uncommon hobby, but one 
of which it is no ill nature to say, that the sooner 
it is cut up into firewood whenever found caper- 
ing and braying, the better for all rational in- 
dividuals within earshot and eyeshot. Moral 
philosophy makes also a hobby of formidable 
dimensions, and with a collar of jangling bells 
heralding its approach, of graver tones and 
heavier metal than those which tell the world 
that we are snobs and patronised by swells. So 
does physiology ; so does phrenology ; so do, in- 
deed, all the 'ologies when used as hobbies and 
not as carriers as playthings wherewith to 
amuse a vacant hour, and not as cart-horses for 
ploughing up the stiff loam and preparing good 
ground for the reception of fertile seed. Per- 
haps of these phrenology, as a hobby, is the 
biggest bore of all, and the most irritating ; ex- 
citing in one an ardent desire to knock the 
rider down the organ of combativeness being, 
as a rule, pretty well developed behind most 
Anglo-Saxon ears, and its manner of action law- 
fully demonstrable to men riding their phreno- 
logical hobby over one's own skull. One of the 
greatest bores I know, or ever wish to see, is a 
man who is always astride a phrenological hobby, 
and to whom the most subtle and complex work- 
ings of character are so many cut and dried 
manifestations of organs with no more mystery 
about them and no more wonder, than that a 
thread jerked across a loom should present it- 
self in the result as so much cloth, with or with- 
out pattern according to the cards. It may be 
so ; but to those who are not phrenologists this 
exposition of the genesis of character is but a 
cold study and a comfortless side-blow of Tate. 

Their health is a grand hobby with some 
people ; or rather their belief in their diseased 
and unhealthy condition, and their proximity to 
and fitness for "the bourne whence," &c. I 
know certain people, who, if they were sud- 
denly translated to a state of health so robust 
and vigorous that even they themselves could 
not possibly bemoan their afflicted state, would 
have positively nothing to do, nothing to talk 
of, and not the ghost of a hobby to ride. These 
hobby-riders are terrible companions, even to 
doctors accustomed to the hospital and the 
" theatre ;" but to the uninitiated, who speak 
of symptoms and ailments with a lowered voice 
and the undefinable accent belonging to a for- 
bidden subject, they are appalling; habit in- 
ducing a familiarity with painful subjects (re- 
volting would be a better term), from which we 
who are exempt shrink in dismay. And the funny 
part of the matter is, that the more horrible the 
disease, and the more distressing the symptoms, 
the prouder they are of their hobby ; the higher 
the capers they make him cut, and the louder 
his neighings and his brayings : distinction, in 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 1SG5.] 165 



fact, being the foremost passion of the human 
mind, so that when we cannot be distinguished 
for wit, beauty, wealth, or renown, we grasp 
even at the pitiful decoration of monstrous dis- 
ease that being better than the dead level of 
an undistinguishable likeness with the vulgar 
crowd. 

Another hobby of a kind akin is our own 
woeful sorrow. Heaven help us ! we have all 
of us material enough to make that hobby from 
mane to tail, if we have a mind, though we may 
not all desire such public riding as what some 
of us delight in. The black housings of death, 
the tattered ones of poverty, the tear-laden of 
disappointment, the flame-coloured of domestic 
strife, the crushed and crumpled of oppression 
and injustice, who is without one or other, 
and some with all at once, and more to the 
back of them shut up in the closet with the 
skeleton, and able to be made into the trap- 
pings for a hobby at a moment's notice, if so 
willing? Women are, for the most part, the 
riders of this hobby men not often breaking 
down the home fence to show off the family 
skeleton in the court-yard, pranked out as a 
hobby, and ridden about the roads for the whole 
outside world to see. But women, to whom 
concealment is a thing abhorrent from Fatima's 
time and before, build up a hobby out of the 
dry bones ; and when they do so, they are 
second in unpleasantness only to those who 
dandle their diseases like pet dolls, and drag you 
through a pathological museum every time you 
spend half an hour in their company. For 
sorrows make up the pathology of the soul ; 
and suffering is a disease, whether of the mind 
or the body. 

Another hobby capers about with a pill-box 
at the saddle-bow and black draughts in the 
holsters, where the pistols of fighting men should 
be. Fortunately for mankind, many of this sort 
(also generally women) have of late years taken 
to Hahnemann and infinitesimals, so that they 
are not likely to do the amount of grave mischief 
common in the days when men and women were 
prescribed for like horses, and little children 
underwent the treatment which would now be 
considered too severe for a Life Guardsman. 
Else, if not homoeopathic, they are great patrons 
of patented medicines, and have always some 
wonderful salve or pill on hand, able to heal all 
sores and to cure all disorders. This is a useful 
hobby enough if held with a tight rein and 
given but scanty housings ; also if pastured 
among the poor, to whom a doctor's bill would 
be destruction, and self-management worse de- 
struction still ; else, if suffered to go caracolling 
about unchecked, and with a generous profusion 
of silver trappings, it is one of the runaway 
nuisances of the hobby genus to be caught hold 
of and tethered in the pound the soonest and 
most rigorous possible. 

Akin to this, in a far away sense, is that pro- 
voking creation which goes about the world put- 
ting things to rights. Some people think that 
they have a mission to set their neighbours' 
houses straight ; that they were born to sweep 



souls clean with their own moral brooms ; and 
that whatever they think to be good and wise 
what special Numbo Jumbo they vow to be 
Apollo and Jove in one, is so absolutely, let 
who will hold opinions diverging. These are 
the people who, while hotly combating for 
truth and its righteous absolutism, change their 
creed twenty times in their lives, yet who are 
passionate and perhaps intolerant proselytisers 
for each and all in turn, learning nothing by ex- 
perience, and learning self-diffidence least of all ; 
yet so passionate and so intolerant that they will 
denounce the wilful blindness of even their own 
former disciples, who have remained faithful to the 
special hoboy to whose tail they were the means 
of attaching them. These are the people who 
take up every superstition and every delusion as 
it appears, and who always go beyond their 
master, out-Heroding Herod, more Lutheran than 
Luther, and Calvinistic beyond Calvin; they 
form the pabulum on which each new craze feeds, 
and change their hobbies as often as new delu- 
sions arise. But they keep faithful to one their 
hobby in chief, and the bell-wether of the rest 
namely, reforming and converting every mise- 
rable individual for ill luck fallen within their 
sphere ; attempting to clothe all in the special 
livery adopted at the moment, and signing them 
to the creed which is to be the regeneration of 
the world. They are a well-meaning set, these 
hobby-riders ; but truth, if not politeness, com- 
pels me to assign them to the region of illimi- 
table bores ; and were I compelled to make a 
choice from which the kind fates defend me ! 
I would rather accept the quack medicines 
than the quack faiths, and would prefer to 
swallow strange pills by the hundred than new 
faiths by the score. The riders of the hobby 
ticketed Moral Physic, have had a fine field in 
that Salt Lake city we have all heard some- 
thing about ; also in certain other cities nearer 
home, where the banner of new lights has been 
unfurled for crazy fools to gather under its 
folds. 

A hobby-horse made after the pattern of a 
will-o'-the-wisp, jumping here and there and 
everywhere, capering up and down over every 
kind of pasture, even over places usually held 
sacred, and sometimes running down hill with 
the bit between his teeth masterless, is the 
hobby-horse of the punster. I know a man with 
whom the habit is so inveterate, the hobby so 
domesticated, that he would pun at the funeral 
of his own mother, and find occasions for flashes 
of wit on the most sorrowful event of his or any 
other person's life. It is not that he is heart- 
less on the contrary, he is a warm-hearted, 
genial fellow but that he has ridden his hobby 
for so long he cannot dismount now; hobbies 
having a certain power of adhesion when one 
has been long inside the housings. It is an 
irritating kind of hobby, and plagues one as 
much as the buzzing of a fly, or the shrill piping 
of a gnat, or anything else that is restless, pur- 
poseless, and intrusive. For the punning hobby 
is never still. Go where you will, or do what 
you willchant psalms, sob threnodies, make 



166 [September 9, 1SG5.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



battle speeches or love -songs, whatever the 
work in hand grave, earnest, tender, mournful, 
no matter what the punning hobby thrusts his 
snub nose into your face and neighs out a jingle 
that scatters all your threads of thought or 
snatches of song like broken cobwebs to the 
wind. Yet on occasions this is a merry hobby 
enough, and one to be patted and fed with sweet 
food liberally; and when ridden by such men 
as Sydney Smith, Ingoldsby, Hood, Hook, or 
Jerrold, is worth a golden field for pasturage. 
But in general it is a hobby with impertinent 
proclivities, and to be ridden warily, and with a 
rein well gathered up in hand. 

Politics is a graver-visage d hobby and often 
ends in a game at thumps more vigorous than 
pleasant a hobby to be a little afraid of, and 
not ride openly in an enemy's camp, nor aggres- 
sively anywhere. Of late days we have had 
many such of ferocious aspect enough ; and even 
now there are caracollings in drawing-rooms, 
with the irrepressible negro holding one bridle- 
rein, and the representatives of state rights the 
other, which make a stir and a pother little 
suited to the ordinary character of those locali- 
ties. Criticism too is much ridden by certain 
men, who expect that all the world shall bow its 
thousand necks for their hobby to caper over at 
its pleasure, and who carve the wooden legs 
into sceptres, which every human mind must 
recognise and obey. The riders of the critical 
hobby count among the bores of society, being 
generally gifted with a loud voice, a dictatorial 
manner, a profound acquaintance with unplea- 
sant adjectives, and a self-complacency which if 
it have a beginning, has assuredly no end. 

Then come a crowd of smaller hobbies, such 
as the hobby of dreaming dreams and telling 
them ; the hobby of collecting old china Japa- 
nese, Wedgwood, old Chelsea, Dresden, Gris de 
Elandre, or what not ; the hobby of turning the 
house into the bad likeness of an old curiosity 
shop, which be sure you call brie a brae ; the 
hobby of my family my daughter's beauty, or 
my son's talent, the fine match that Emily 
Jane has made, and the one still finer that Mary 
Anne is about to make the hobby, in short, of 
all our own grey geese being swans superlatively 
white; the hobby of good dinner-giving; the 
hobby of expensive party-giving ; the hobby of 
fine dressing, and that of the newest fashions. 
The running after preachers and preachments, 
and the belief that salvation is to be secured by 
taking sittings in a certain church, is also a 
hobby much bestridden by many, but one of 
a grave and sober manner of being ; to read all 
the magazines the instant they appear, and to 
have the first cut of a new novel before any one 
else has seen it, and before it has even been 
reviewed, is a hobby. A hobby is lion hunting, 
both of the social and feral sort ; though just 
now I am thinking of the social kind, and of 
all the pitiful shifts to which the hunters are 
put in spreading their nets and stalking out 
their runs. To be seen at certain grandee 
houses is again a hobby not unknown to the 
dwellers in the nineteenth century ; and to be 



able to stick cards of invitation and visiting 
cards, coroneted, on one's chimney-piece is a 
hobby the softness of whose sleek velvet muzzle 
few are Spartan enough to withstand. In fact, 
society is peopled and overrun with hobbies ; 
but we are not always honest enough to confess 
that what we are riding is a hobby only a 
stuffed thing made of wood, and for the most 
part useless and without meaning ; which we, 
however, do our best to persuade our neigh- 
bours is a real and undeniable charger, bearing us 
to battle or to the plough-field, as our pretence 
is heroism or usefulness. Hobbies! hobbies, 
my friend ! almost all things well bestridden ; 
but why not confess the parentage and acknow- 
ledge the plaything honestly, without pretence 
and without disguise ? 



SPANISH POLITICAL TYPES. 

One reason why so little interest has been 
directed towards Spanish affairs by the poli- 
tical information sent from Spain, has been the 
ignorance of what section of public opinion was 
meant by the terms Moderado, Neo-Catholic, 
&c. As we have been favoured by Darnagas 
with a definition of these and other terms, this 
ignorance need exist no longer. To begin : 

The Liberal de Corazon is a citizen with a 
severe expression of countenance. His hair is 
rough and straggling, and covers a large skull ; 
he shaves all the hair off his face, with the ex- 
ception of his moustaches. His eyes are sombre. 
His neck moves freely in the unstarched, turned- 
down collar of his shirt; his clothes fit him 
loosely ; he walks gravely and slowly. You are 
in doubt whether you see in him the good, 
honest, and methodical workman, or the retired 
soldier ; sometimes he is an artisan, possibly he 
is a capitalist. 

He is brave and self-denying. You will see 
him in the street defending an irrational animal 
against the rational brute his master. At a fire 
he is the first you will see in the midst of the 
flames, endeavouring to save whatever there is 
to save, whether life or property. His house is 
well known to borrowers and the unfortunate. 
His sympathies are inexhaustible, and his purse 
is not unfrequently drawn upon, even by the 
holder of state securities, and he who is deaf to 
matters affecting his own interests feels keenly 
for those of others. His political ideas con- 
verge round a single principle, that of frater- 
nity, of which liberty and equality are the ine- 
vitable consequences. As to the form of go- 
vernment he desires, he is undecided. He has 
an ideal, but he does not like to pain his queen ; 
on the other hand, he does not wish it to rest 
entirely with the people. His mind is con- 
stantly engaged in the consideration of this 
matter, to the neglect of his personal interests. 

The Moderado. He is somewhat advanced 
in years. He gets himself up with care and 
taste, but without pretension ; he is commonly 
bald ; wears bristling moustaches and whiskers, 
after the pattern worn by the Frenchman of 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 1865.] 167 



1830. His eyes are quick and penetrating, 
and his forehead broad. This citizen, if he was 
not a Liberal de Corazon ten years ago, has the 
most advanced political ideas. But he was, 
probably, a capitalist, interested in business, 
and has been subdued by their influences ; or 
else he held some post in the public service, 
and had to consider his advancement; or he 
was an artisan, or foreman, required privileges 
from the government, and had, therefore, to 
submit to the influence of those who had the 
conferring of these privileges, and had need of 
his services. He has earnest desires, but they 
are kept down by the exigencies which weigh 
upon him. He quibbles in stating his opinions, 
and while letting you see that he is neither fish 
nor flesh nor good red-herring, he loudly pro- 
claims his independence. He utters sounding 
platitudes on the advantages of a constitutional 
government, but never defines what he means. 
He declares he does not like all priests, but he 
does not consider them dangerous ; he goes to 
mass, and allows his wife to go to confession, 
He proclaims equality before the law, but not 
before the privileges it confers. At bottom, he 
is a fairly honest man and a good citizen. 

The Red Republican. His physiognomy is 
severe, but you can see very little of it, on 
account of the hair with which it is covered ; 
which neither scissors nor razor ever touch. 
His eyes are oval and expressive, and gleam 
beneath a pair of thick eyebrows. His mouth 
is invisible, and the sounds which issue from it 
are of a deep bass ; he generally speaks slowly, 
but when he is excited and speaks quickly, the 
deep utterance of his words has an imposing 
and powerful effect. 

He will not hear of tergiversation in politics, 
he has no sympathy for any form of government 
but one the republican. The Neo-Catholics, 
the Catholics who would resort to the old system 
of burning opponents, he regards as vipers, and 
he asserts that the only way of preventing them 
from stinging is to crush them. His politics 
are of the homoeopathic kind ; he would destroy 
those who would rejoice in destruction. To 
attack public liberty, to force society back to- 
wards the middle ages, are crimes which he 
considers worthy of death. He will not yield a 
hair's breadth to the arguments of his friends 
the Progresistas, he is immovably opposed to 
anything which looks like reactionism. For the 
rest, he emulates the probity of Marat the French- 
man, the scrupulousness of Robespierre, and the 
bravery of men like Hoche and Marceau. Faces 
like his must have been seen looking out through 
many a loophole in the walls of Saragossa. 

The Socialista. His face would be pro- 
nounced haggard on account of the expression 
of his eyes, which show how deeply he revolves 
the liberal ideas of the first type described. Like 
the Liberal de Corazon, his movements are free 
and unconstrained, his dress is simple ; his hair, 
often rough and unkempt, denote the constant 
occupation of his mind on an absorbing idea. 
He seldom shaves, except when he is more 
content than usual ; this philanthropic thinker 
is constantly seeking the solution of one of the 



greatest problems of humanity the extinction 
of pauperism. His ideas revolve in this laby- 
rinth, and he suffers keenly before a frightful 
conviction which he constantly repels ; he sees 
and understands that egotism, ambition, and 
greed, are the great obstacles to the friendship 
and welfare of peoples ; he is alarmed by the 
evils which these maintain ; he dwells on the 
misery which elbows riches, and forgets his own 
in the efforts he makes in seeking a remedy 
for these evils. His manner becomes fierce, 
and he terrifies the fortunate of Madrid, who 
endeavour to debase him by asserting that his 
desire is to plunder them. 

Progresista. He is the extinct volcano. He 
is generally as much of a republican as the 
Liberal de Corazon, but he maintains that the 
Socialista does not endeavour to solve the most 
urgent questions. He desires to moderate the 
Republicano Rojo, or Red Republican, but he 
does not like the Moderado. He tells you that 
the time has not come for attacking the evil at 
its roots. His labours must yield prompt and 
peaceful results. He is not exclusive ; he will 
occasionally admit liberty and progress in union 
with ancient traditions. He will be a monarchist 
with the Bourbons or any other, while waiting for 
the republic suited to the manners of his coun- 
try. The only methods he will consent to are 
pacific, while he will be severe on ministers and 
institutions. He avers that in Spain there are 
questions requiring immediate solution of far 
greater importance than those which engage the 
attention of other liberals. He has a sly and 
confident smile when he says that it is impos- 
sible to construct a monument by beginning at 
its summit. His appearance is indicative of the 
methodical man ; his hair is carefully attended 
to, and his beard is rounded off in a particular 
manner; he wears a satin necktie, which he 
fastens with care, and has a preference for white 
waistcoats and black clothing. 

Unionista. Ambitious of territorial aggran- 
disement, he would like the kingdom of Spain 
to include the whole peninsula. He considers 
the difference in the characters of the Spaniards 
and Portuguese of no account. He avers that the 
moral soldering of Portugal and Spain is possible 
under the sceptre of the king of the former 
country. This citizen has, probably, been at 
Lisbon, he has seen Hesler, and kissed the hand 
of the Lusitanian Dubarry, and vowed to her a 
solemn fidelity. To say that the celebrated 
courtesan has given Mm her hand to kiss, implies 
that he is a lion : he parts his hair in the fashion- 
able style, and is particular as to his whiskers and 
moustaches. He attempts to be fascinating in 
his manner, and while waiting for the union of 
the two peoples, he mingles the scents of Bar- 
celona with those of Portugal, and uses them 
profusely. 

Pancista. The indifferent. He is immense, 
never bald, fleshy in body and mind. His hair 
is combed over his large ears and gives him the 
appearance of a horsedealer at a fair. He wears 
a flowered waistcoat, and a red or blue cra- 
vat. Financial companies are brimful of his 
species. He tells you with a fatuous air that 



1GS 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 9, 18G5.} 



public affairs are matters of little moment to 
him provided his private- affairs prosper. 

The Dissidente. He has a large head and 
nose, and a mouth to correspond. His eyes 
are round, and move from side to side beneatli 
arched eyebrows. He wears his hair curled, 
and thus gives a distinctive character to his 
head. It *" might be supposed that he labours 
under an infirmity of some kind, for he has 
a constant habit of clearing his throat, and 
disputing every statement made in his presence. 
With him nothing goes right; his political 
opinions may be summed up in the one word 
contradiction. Tell him he is unjust, and ask 
him the reason why, and he will be troubled 
with his usual huskiness, and growl out some 
disconnected, words of which you cannot by 
any possibility catch the meaning. If he be a 
deputy, he is the terror of the chamber. The 
most careful estimate of the number who will 
vote on a particular side on a division is upset 
by the unexpected manner in which he gives his 
vote. Remonstrate with him, and you will get 
no more satisfactory answer than " You must 
make the best of it the thing is done." Some- 
times he is more or less of an orator, generally 
a good deal less than more, but the questions 
he takes up are mostly trivial, and he will work 
himself into a high state of excitement on the 
subject of a new frame for a Velasquez or a 
Murillo, or some matter equally unimportant. 

Carlista. He is dry, rough, and tanned to 
an olive colour. His forehead is low, and his 
black greasy hair is flattened down on it after 
the fashion of Hogarth's line of beauty. His 
whiskers are enormous, and united to his mous- 
taches. He has deeply-set eyes, which gleam 
on each side of an enormous aquiline nose. He 
He has a large heart, and his ideas are exalted, 
but they are narrow. He is devoted body 
and soul to his cause, which be believes good 
because it has root in the doctrines of legiti- 
macy. The true Carlist is for one alone, whom 
he believes to be impeccable. So long as the 
father lives he does not acknowledge the son as 
his king. He construes hereditary rights in the 
strictest manner ; for liim there is but one Carlos, 
and the Carlos whom the Neo-Catholics pro- 
pose to him has none of his sympathy. Apart from 
his obstinacy he is not much to be feared, except 
in the hands of others more cunning than he. 

Neo-Catholic. He has straight black hair, 
which he combs straight down over his forehead. 
He is not precisely a hypocrite, nor has he the 
cunning of a man capable of setting the Thames 
on fire ; he is an incarnate non possumus. 

Absolutista Inquisitorial. This is merely a 
fuller development of the preceding. His hair 
is sleek and thin, his complexion of a reddish- 
brown, and his face bony ; his eyes are deeply set, 
and are constantly moving from side to side. His 
aspect is stern, and no child would be tempted 
to play, still less to offer to play with him. 

All his inclinations are towards the middle 



ages, and he would feel the greatest satisfaction 
in seeing the Inquisition and the stake in full 
work; burnt flesh would be a sweet-smelling 
odour in his nostrils. He is a leader who has 
the Neo-Catholic for his officer, and the Carlista 
for his soldier. He despairs of hooking the 
Dissidente, despises the Pancista, and has hopes 
of, one day or another, harpooning the Moderado. 

There is one more type which is more or 
less common among all continental nations; 
the man who is secretly paid by the govern- 
ment. Sometimes he is a journalist, or he 
may be a barrister, or employed in a public 
office, or a member of the chamber; in the 
latter case he is bought, if he be clever, of 
necessity ; if he be a nonentity, because his head 
counts on a division. In his dress he is neat 
and precise, wears a Ratazzi necktie and a 
Prince of Wales collar. He parts his hair in 
the middle, after the style in fashion at Madrid, 
" frizzes" the ends, and puts them behind his 
ears. As the recognised creature of Narvaez 
or O'Donnell, he is met with everywhere in 
society, but is generally regarded as a bore. 
Occasionally, however, he tells an anecdote 
worth listening to, such as the following, for ex- 
ample. A grand dinner was given by the queen 
just previous to the departure of O'Donnell for 
the war, at which she spoke as follows in a 
voice of deep emotion : 

" General, my heart beats impatiently for the 
arrival of the news of the victories you are 
about to gain; you will shortly return to us 
with fresh laurels for our beloved country. How 
great would be my joy if I could command the i 
valiant army who awaits your arrival with such 
great ardour. Oh ! how deeply I regret that I 
am not a man ! " 

The emotion of the queen overpowered her. 
She was silent, and everybody else was silent 
too, waiting for her to recover herself and 
continue her address. All at once the deep 
silence was broken by a soft voice, tremulous 
with emotion, which exclaimed : " Ah ! so do 
I !" It was the king who spoke. 



Just published, bound in cloth, price 5s. 6d., 

THE THIRTEENTH VOLUME. 



NEW WORK BY MR. DICKERS, 

In Monthly Parts, uniform with the Original Editions of 

"Pickwick," "Copperfield," &c. 

Now publishing, Part XVII., price Is., of 

OUE MUTUAL FEIEND. 

BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

IN TWENTY MONTHLY PARTS. 

With Illustrations by Marcus Stone. 
London: Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly. 



A new Serial Novel, by CHARLES COLLINS, entitled 

AT THE BAE, 

Will be commenced in No. 335, for September 23rd, in 
addition to HALF A MILLION OF MONEY, by Amelia 
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until completed. 



The Eight of Translating Articles fr cm Kul the Year Round is reserved ly the Authors. 



;h!ishRd a? the 0!B< 



No. 26. 'UVNinsrroa S'.reet. Strand. Printed by C. Whitixg, Beaufort House. Strand. 



THE STORY OF OUR LIVES FROM YEAR TO YEAR." Shakespeare. 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 

A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. 

WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. 



N- 334.] 



SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1865. 



[Price U. 



HALF A MILLION OE MONEY. 

BY THE AUTHOR OF " BARBARA'S HISTORY." 



CHAPTER L. HIGH ART. 

As Saxon's cab turned in at the gates of the 
South- We stern Railway station, Mr. William 
Trefalden, who chanced to be in the occupation 
of a very similar Hansom, was driving rapidly 
down the Waterloo-road. The two vehicles 
with their unsuspecting occupauts had been 
almost side by side on Waterloo Bridge, and, 
by one of those curious coincidences which 
happen still oftener in real life than in fiction, 
the one cousin was going down into Surrey as 
the honoured guest of Lady Castletowers, while 
the other was rattling over to Camberwell 
in search of her ladyship's disinherited hall- 

oic'fpv 

" Six, Brudenell Terrace." 

Mr. Trefalden took the card from his pocket- 
book, and read the address over once or twice. 
It was the same card that Miss Riviere had 
given to Saxon, and which Saxon had entrusted 
to the lawyer's keeping a couple of hours 
before. Mr. Trefalden was a prompt man of 
business, and was showing himself to be, in the 
present instance, better than his word. He had 
promised to act for his young kinsman in this 
matter ; but he had not promised to set about 
the task that same afternoon. Yet here he was 
with his face already turned southwards, and 
Miss Riviere's address in his hand. 

The fact was, that Mr. Trefalden took more 
interest in this piece of family history than he had 
chosen to express, and was bent on learning all 
that might be learnt about the Rivieres without 
an hour's unnecessary delay. No man better 
appreciated the value of a family secret. There 
might, it is true, be nothing very precious in 
this particular specimen; but then one could 
never tell what might, or might not, be useful 
hereafter. At all events, Mr. Trefalden was 
not slow to see his way to possible advantages ; 
and though he had asked time for consideration 
of what it might be best to do, he had half a 
dozen schemes outlined in his mind before 
Saxon left the office. Mr. Trefalden's plans 
seldom needed much elaboration. They sprang 
from his fertile brain like Minerva from the 
head of Zeus, armed at all points, and ready for 
the field. 



Leaning back thoughtfully, then, with folded- 
arms, and a cigar in his mouth, Mr. Trefalden 
drove past the Obelisk and the Elephant and 
Castle, and plunged into the very heart of that 
dreary suburban district which might with 
much propriety be called by the general name 
of Transpontia. Then, dismissing his cab at a 
convenient point, he proceeded in search of 
Brudenell Terrace on foot. 

Transpontia is a district beset with diffi- 
culties to the inexperienced explorer. There 
dust, dissent, and dulness reign supreme. The 
air is pervaded by a faint odour of universal 
brick-field. The early muffin-bell is audible at 
incredible hours of the day. Files of shabby- 
genteel tenements, and dismal slips of parched 
front-garden, follow and do resemble each other 
with a bewildering monotony that extends for 
long miles in every direction, and is only 
interrupted here and there by a gorgeous gin- 
palace, or a depressing patch of open ground,, 
facetiously called a " green," or a "common." 
Of enormous extent, and dreary sameness, the 
topography of Transpontia is necessarily of the- 
vaguest character. 

Mr. Trefalden was, however, too good a 
Londoner to be greatly baffled by the intricacies 
of any metropolitan neighbourhood. He pursued 
his way with a Londoner's instinct, and, after 
traversing a few small squares and by-streets, 
found himself presently in face of Brudenell 
Terrace. 

It was a very melancholy terrace, built ac- 
cording to the strictest lodging-house order of 
architecture, elevated some four feet above the 
level of the street, and approached by a dilapi- 
dated flight of stone steps at each extremity. It 
consisted of four-and-twenty dingy, ekht-roomed 
houses, in one or other of which, take them at 
what season of the year one might, there was 
certain to be either a sale or a removal going 
forward. In conjunction with the inevitable van, 
or piece of stair-carpeting, might also be found 
the equally inevitable street organ that " most 
miraculous organ," which can no more be 
silenced than the voice of murder itself; and 
which in Trauspontia hath its chosen home. 
The oldest inhabitant of Brudenell Terrace 
confessed to never having known the hour of 
any day (except Sunday) when some interesting 
native of Parma or Lucca was not to be heard, 
grinding his slow length along from number 
one to number twenty-eight. On the present. 



VOL. XIV. 



334 



170 [September 16, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



occasion, however, when Mr. Trefalden knocked 
at the door of the house for which lie was bound, 
both van and Italian boy were at the further end 
of the row. 

A slatternly servant of hostile bearing opened 
six inches of the door, and asked Mr. Trefalden 
what he wanted. That gentleman intimated 
that he wished to see Mrs. Riviere. 

"Is it business?" said the girl, planting 
her foot sturdily against the inner side of the 
door. 

Mr. Trefalden at once admitted that it was 
business. 

" Then it's Miss Rivers you want/' said she, 
sharply. " Why didn't you say so at first ?" 

Mr. Trefalden attempted to explain that he 
should prefer to see Mrs. Riviere, if she would 
receive him; but the belligerent damsel re- 
fused to entertain that proposition for one 
moment. 

It's nothing to me what you prefer," said 
she, with prompt indignation. " You can't ee 
Mrs. Rivers. If Miss Rivers won't do, you 
may as well go away at once." 

So the lawyer was fain to enter the citadel 
on such terms as he could get. 

He was shown into a front parlour, very 
poorly furnished. The window was partially 
darkened by a black blind, and close beneath 
it stood a table strewn with small photographs 
and drawing materials. A bonnet and shawl 
lay on the sofa behind the door. Three or four 
slight sketches in water-colours were pinned 
against the walls. An old-fashioned watch in 
a bronze stand of delicate foreign workmanship, 
occupied the centre of the mantelshelf; and in 
the further corner of the room, between the 
fireplace and window, were piled a number of 
old canvases with their faces to the wall. Mr. 
Trefalden divined the history of these little 
accessories at a glance. He knew, as well as if 
their owners had told him so, that the watch 
and the canvases were relics of poor Edgar 
Riviere, and that the little water-colour sketches 
were by the artist's daughter. These latter 
were very slight mere outlines, with a dash of 
colour here and there but singularly free 
and decisive. One represented a fragment of 
Cyclopean wall, tapestried with creeping plants ; 
another, a lonely mediaeval tower, with ragged 
storm-clouds drifting overhead; another, a group 
of stone pines at sunset, standing up, bronzed 
and bristling, against a blood-red sky. All were 
instinct with that open-air look which defies 
imitation; and in the background of almost 
every subject were seen the purple Tuscan hills. 
William Trefalden was no indifferent judge of 
art, and he saw at once that these scrawls had 
genius in them. 

While he was yet examining them, the door 
opened noiselessly behind him, and a rustling 
of soft garments near at hand warned him that 
he was no longer alone. He turned. A young 
girl, meanly dressed in some black material, 
with only a slip of white collar round her throat, 
stood about half way between the window and 
the door a girl so fair, so slight, so transparent 



of complexion, so inexpressibly fragile-looking, 
that the lawyer, for the first moment, could 
only look at her as if she were some delicate 
marvel of art, neither to be touched nor spoken 
to. 

" You asked to see me, sir ?" she said, with 
a transient flush of colour ; for Mr. Trefalden 
still looked at her in silence. 

" I asked to see Mrs. Riviere," he replied. 

The young lady pointed to a chair. 

" My mother is an invalid," she said, " and 
can only be addressed through me. Will you 
take a seat ?" 

But Mr. Trefalden, instead of taking a seat, 
went over to the corner where the dusty 
canvases were piled against the wall, and 
said : 

" Are these some of your father's pictures ?" 

Her whole face became radiant at the mention 
of that name. 

" Yes," she replied, eagerly. " Do you know 
his works ?" 

Mr. Trefalden paused a moment before an- 
swering this question. Then, looking at her 
with a grave, almost a tender courtesy, he 
said: 

"I knew his works, my dear young lady 
and I knew him." 

" You knew him ? Oh, you knew a good 
man, sir, if you knew my dear, dear father !" 

" A good man," said Mr. Trefalden, " and a 
fine painter." 

Her eyes filled with sudden tears. 

" If the world had but done him justice !" 
she murmured. 

Mr. Trefalden thought he had never seen 
eyes so beautiful or so pathetic. 

" The world never does justice to its finer 
spirits," said he, " till they have passed beyond 
reach of its envy or hearing of its praise. But 
his day of justice will come." 

u Do you think so ?" she said, drawing a 
little nearer, and looking up at him with the 
half-timid, half-trusting candour of a child. 
" Alas ! I have almost given up hoping." 

" Never give up hoping. There is nothing 
in this world so unstable as its injustice no- 
thing so inevitable as its law of reward and 
retribution. Unhappily, its laurels are too often 
showered upon tombs," 

u Did you know him in Italy ?" 

* No in England." 

" Perhaps you were one of his fellow- 
students ?" 

Mr. Trefalden shook his head. 

" No ; I am a true lover of the arts," he 
replied, "but no artist. I had a sincere ad- 
miration for your father's genius, Miss Riviere, 
and it is that admiration which brings me here 
to-day. I am anxious to know what pictures 
of his may still be in the possession of his 
family, and I should be glad to purchase some, 
if I might be allowed to do so." 

A look of intense gladness, followed by one 
of still more intense pain, flashed over the girl's 
pale face at these words. 

" I trust I have said nothing to annoy you," 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 16, 1865.] 171 



said Mr. Trefalden, as deferentially as if this 
fragile young creature were a stately princess, 
clad in cloth of gold and silver. 

" Oh no, thank you," she replied, tremulously. 
" We shall be very glad to to sell them." 

"Then I have your permission to look at 
these ?" 

" I will show them to you." 

But Mr. Trefalden would not suffer Miss 
Riviere to show him the pictures. They were 
too heavy, and too dusty ; and he was so glad 
to have the opportunity of seeing them, that he 
considered nothing a trouble. Then he begged 
to be allowed to remove the black blind from 
the window; and when that was done, 
he dragged out the first picture, dusted 
it carefully with his own white handkerchief, 
and placed it in the best light the room 
afforded. 

"That was one of his last," said the daughter, 
with a sigh. 

It represented Apollo and Daphne Apollo 
in an attitude expressive of despair, looking 
very like a fine gentleman in an amateur play, 
elegantly got up in the Greek style, and rather 
proud of his legs ; with Daphne peeping at him 
coquettishly from the leaves of a laurel-bush. 
It was not a vulgar picture, nor even a glaringly 
bad picture ; but it had all the worst faults of 
the Trench school with none of its vigour, 
and was academic and superficial to the last 
degree. 

Mr. Trefalden, who saw all this distinctly, 
retreated, nevertheless, to the further side of 
the room, shaded his eyes with his hands, and 
declared that it was an exquisite thing, full of 
poetry and classical feeling. 

Then came a Cupid and Psyche on the point 
of leading off a pas de deux; a Danse in a 
cataract of yellow ochre ; an Endymion sleeping, 
evidently, on a stage-bank, by the light of a prac- 
ticable moon ; a Holy Family ; a Cephalus and 
Procris ; a Caractacus before Claudius ; a Diana 
and Calisto, and about a score of others 
enough to fill a gallery of moderate size ; all 
after the same pattern ; all repeating the same 
dreary round of hackneyed subjects ; all equally 
correct and mediocre. 

Mr. Trefalden looked patiently through the 
whole collection, opening out those canvases 
which were rolled up, and going through the 
business of his part with a naturalness that was 
beyond all praise. He dwelt on imaginary 
beauties, hesitated over trifling blemishes, re- 
verted every now and then to his favourites, and, 
in short, played the enlightened connoisseur to 
such perfection that the poor child by his side 
was almost ready to fall down and worship him 
before the exhibition was over. 

" How happy it would have made him to hear 
you, sir," she said, more than once. " No one 
ever appreciated his genius as you do !" 

To which Mr. Trefalden only replied with 
sympathetic courtesy, that he was " sorry to 
hear it." 

( Finally, he selected four of the least objec- 
tionable of the lot, and begged to know on 



what terms he might be permitted to possess 
them. 

This question was referred by Miss Riviere to 
her mother, and Mr. Trefalden was finally en- 
treated to name his own price. 

" Nay, but you place me in a very difficult 
position," said he. " What if I offer too small a 
sum ?" 

" We do not fear that," replied the young girl, 
with a timid smile. 

"You are very good; but . . . the fact is 
that I may wish to purchase several more of 
these paintings perhaps the whole of them, if 
Mrs. Riviere should be willing to part from 
them." 

" The whole of them !" she echoed, breath- 
lessly. 

" I cannot tell at present ; but it is not im- 
probable." 

Miss Riviere looked at Mr. Trefalden with 
awe and wonder. She began to think he must 
be some great collector perhaps Rothschild 
himself ! 

" In the mean while," said he, " these being 
only my first acquisitions, I must keep my ex- 
penditure within a moderate limit. I should 
not like to offer more than two hundred pounds 
for these four paintings." 

Two hundred pounds ! It was as if a tributary 
of Pactolus had suddenly flowed in upon that 
humble front parlour and flooded it with gold. 
Miss Riviere could hardly believe in the 
actual existence of so fabulous a sum. 

" I hope I do not seem to under-estimate their 
value," said the lawyer. 

Oh no indeed !" 

" You will, perhaps, submit my proposition to 
Mrs. Riviere?" 

" No, thank you I I am quite sure your 
great liberality. . . ." 

" I beg you will call it by no such name," 
said Mr. Trefalden, with that little deprecatory 
gesture that showed his fine hand to so much 
advantage. " Say, if you please, my sense of 
justice, or, better still, my appreciation of ex- 
cellence." 

Here he took a little roll of bank-notes from 
his pocket-book, folded, and laid them on the 
table. 

" I trust I may be permitted to pay my 
respects to Mrs. Riviere when I next call," he 
said. " She will not, perhaps, refuse the favour 
of an interview to one who knew her husband 
in his youth." 

" I am sure mamma will be most happy," 
faltered Miss Riviere. " She is very delicate ; 
but I know she will make the effort, if possible. 
We we are going back soon to Italy." 

And her eyes, as she said this, wandered 
involuntarily towards the packet of notes. 

" Not very soon, I hope ? Not immediately?" 

" Certainly not immediately," she replied, 
with a sigh. " Mamma must be much better 
before she can travel." 

Then Mr. Trefalden made a few politely 
sympathetic inquiries ; recommended a famous 
West-end physician; suggested a temporary 



172 [September 16, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



sojourn at Sydenham or Norwood ; and ended 
by requesting that the hostile maid-servant 
might fetch a cab for the conveyance of his 
treasures. He then took his leave, with the 
intimation that he would come again in the 
course of a few days, and go over the pictures 
a second time. 

The door had no sooner closed behind him, 
than Miss Riviere flew up to her mother's bed- 
room, with the bank-notes fluttering in her 
hand. 

" Oh, mamma! mamma!" she cried, flinging 
herself on her knees beside the invalid's easy- 
chair, and bursting into sobs of joy, " he has 
taken four of papa's paintings, and given oh ! 
what do you suppose? given two hundred 
pounds for them ! Two hundred pounds, all in 
beautiful, real bank-notes and here they are ! 
Touch them look at them ! Two hundred 
pounds enough to take you to Italy, my dar- 
ling, six times over !" 

CHAPTER LI. BRADSHAW'S GUIDE FOR MARCH. 

William Trefalden sat alone in his private 
room, in a somewhat moody attitude, with his 
elbows on his desk, and his face buried in his 
hands. A folded deed lay unread before him. 
To his right stood a compact pile of letters 
with their seals yet unbroken. Absorbed in 
profound thought, he had not yet begun the 
business of the day, although more than an hour 
had elapsed since his arrival in Chancery-lane. 

His meditations were interrupted by a tap at 
the door ; and the tap was instantaneously fol- 
lowed by Mr. Keckwitch. The lawyer started 
angrily from his reverie. 

" Why the deuce do you come in like that ?" 
he exclaimed. " What do you want ?" 

M Beg your pardon, sir," replied the head 
clerk, with a rapid glance at the pile of unopened 
letters, and the unread deed. "Messenger's 
waitin' for Willis and Barlow's bond; and you 
said I was to read it over to you before it went 
out." 

Mr. Trefalden sighed impatiently, leaned back 
in his chair, and bade his clerk "go on;" 
whereat the respectable man drew the back of 
his hand across his mouth, and began. 

" Know all men by these presents that we, 
Thomas Willis of number fourteen Charlcote- 
square in the parish of Hoxton in the County 
of Middlesex and John Barlow of Oakley villa 
in the parish of Brompton in the county of 
Middlesex Esquire, are jointly and severally 
holden and firmly bounden unto Ebenezer Foster, 
and Robert Crompton of Cornhill in the parish 
of St. Peters upon Cornhill in the County of 
Middlesex Bankers and copartners in the sum 
of five thousand pounds of lawful British money 
to be paid to the said Ebenezer Eoster and 
Robert Crompton their executors administrators 
and assigns or their lawful attorney and attor- 
nies for which payment to be well and faithfully 
made we bind ourselves jointly and severally 
and our and any two or one of our heirs execu- 
tors and administrators firmly by these presents 



sealed with our respective seals. Dated .... 
which I have left blank, sir, not knowing when 
the signatures will be made." 

"Quite right," said Mr. Trefalden, dreamilv. 
" Go on." 

The head clerk then proceeded in the same 
thick, monotonous tone, wading on from stage 
to stage, from condition to condition, till he 
came at length to" Then and in such case the 
above written bond or obligation shall become 
void and of no effect, or else shall remain in full 
force, power, and virtue ;" having read which, 
he came to a dead pause. 

And then again, for the third time, Mr. Tre- 
falden said : 

"Goon." 

Mr. Keckwitch smiled maliciouslv. 

" That's the end of the deed, sir," he replied. 

"The end of the deed?" 

" Yes, sir. It struck me that you didn't hear 
much of it. Shall I go through it again r" 

Mr. Trefalden bit his lip with unconcealed 
annoyance. 

" Certainly not," he said, sharply. " That 
voice of yours sends me to sleep. Leave the 
bond with me, and I will glance over it my- 
self." 

So saying, he snatched the paper from the 
hand of his clerk, pointed to the door, and com- 
pelled himself to go through the document from 
beginning to end. 

This done, and the messenger despatched, he 
dropped again into his accustomed seat, and 
proceeded mechanically to examine his diurnal 
correspondence. But only mechanically ; for 
though he began with the top letter, holding it 
open with his left hand, and shading his eyes 
with his right, there was that in his thoughts 
which blotted out the sense of the words as 
completely as if the page were blank before 
him. 

By-and-by, after staring at it vacantly for 
some ten minutes or more, William Trefalden 
crushed the letter in his hand, flung it on the 
table, and, exclaiming half aloud, " Fool that I 
am !" pushed his chair hastily back, and began 
walking up and down the room. 

Sometimes fast, sometimes slowly, sometimes 
stopping short in his beat for a minute at a 
time, the lawyer continued for the best part of an 
hour to pace to and fro between the window 
and the door, thinking earnestly. 

Of what ? Of a woman. 

He could scarcely bring himself to confess it 
to his own thoughts ; and yet so it was a fact 
not to be evaded, impossible to be ignored. 
William Trefalden was in love for the first time 
in his life ; utterly, passionately in love. 

Yes, for the first time. He was thirty-eight 
years of age, and he had never in his life known 
what it was to feel as he felt now. He had 
never known what it was to live under the 
despotism of a single idea. He was not a good 
man. He was an unscrupulous and radically 
selfish man. A man of cultivated taste, cold 
heart, and iron will. A man who set his own 
gratification before him as the end for which he 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 16, 1865.] 173 



lived, and who was content to labour for that 
end as untiringly and steadfastly as other men 
labour for honour, or freedom, or their soul's 
salvation. A man who knew no law save the 
law of his own will, and no restraint save the 
restraint of his own judgment. 

Up to this time he had regarded love as a 
taste, and looked upon women much in the same 
light as he looked upon fiue wines, fine pictures, 
costly books, or valuable horses. They were 
one of the enjoyments of life rather more 
troublesome, though perhaps not much more 
expensive than some other enjoyments ; need- 
ing to be well dressed, as books to be well 
bound, or pictures well framed ; needing also, 
like valuable horses, to be kindly treated ; but, 
like horses, to be held or changed at the pleasure 
of their owners. 

Such was the theory, and such (for the secret 
may as well be told here as elsewhere) was the 
practice of William Trefalden's life. He was 
no gamester. He was no miser. He was no 
usurer. He was simply that dangerous pheno- 
menon a man of cold heart and warm imagina- 
tion ; a refined voluptuary. 

And this was the secret which for long years 
he had guarded with such jealous care. He 
loved splendour, luxury, pleasure. He loved 
elegant surroundings, a well-appointed table, 
well-trained servants, music, pictures, books, 
fine wines, fine eyes, and fine tobacco. For 
these things he had toiled harder than the 
poorest clerk in his employ. For these things 
he had risked danger and disgrace; and yet 
now, when he held the game on which he had 
staked his whole life already in his hand now, 
in the very moment of success this man found 
that the world contained one prize to obtain 
which he would willingly have given all the 
rest nay, without which all the rest would be 
no longer worth possession. 

Only a girl ! Only a pale, pretty, dark-haired 
girl, with large, timid eyes, and a soft voice, 
and a colour that came and went fitfully when 
she spoke. A girl with ancient blood in her 
veins, and a certain child-like purity of bearing, 
that told, at the first glance, how she must be 
neither lightly sought nor lightly won. A girl 
who, though she might be poor to beggary, 
could no more be bought like a toy, than could 
an angel be bought from heaven. 

It was surely madness for William Trefalden 
to love such a girl as Helen Riviere ! He knew 
that it was madness. He had a dim feeling 
that it might be ruin. He struggled against 
it he fought with it he flung himself into 
work, but all in vain. He was no longer master 
of his thoughts. If he read, the page seemed 
to have no meaning for him ; if he tried to think, 
his mind wandered; if he slept, that girlish 
face troubled his dreams, and tormented him 
with despair and longing. For the first time 
in his life, he found himself the slave of a 
power which it was vain to resist. Well 
might he pace to and fro in utter restlessness 
of mind and body ! Well might he curse his 
fate and his folly, and chafe against the chain 



that he was impotent to break ! He had known 
strong impulses, angry passions, eager desires, 
often enough in the course of his undis- 
ciplined life ; but never, till now, that passion 
or desire which was stronger than his own im- 
perial will. 

In the mean while the soul of Abel Keckwitch 
was disquieted within him. His quick ear caught 
the restless echo in the inner room, and he felt 
more than ever convinced that there was "some- 
thing wrong somewhere." Mr. Trefalden had 
not opened his letters. Mr. Trefalden had not 
read the deed which awaited him upon his desk. 
Mr. Trefalden had not attended to a word of 
the important bond which he, Abel Keckwitch, 
notwithstanding his asthma, had laboriously 
read aloud to him from beginning to end. Nor 
was this all. Mr. Trefalden looked pale and 
anxious, like a man who had not slept the night 
before, and was obviously troubled in his mind. 
These were significant facts facts very per- 
plexing and tormenting; and Mr. Keckwitch 
sorely taxed his ingenuity to interpret them 
aright. 

In the midst of his conjectures, Mr. Tre- 
falden, who had an appointment in the Tem- 
ple for half-past twelve, came out of his 
private room, and, glancing round the office, 
said : 

" Where are those paintings that I brought 
home the other day ?" 

Mr. Keckwitch tucked his pen behind his 
ear, and coughed before replying. 

" In the cupboard behind the door, sir," said 
he. " I put 'em there to be out of sight." 

Mr. Trefalden opened the cupboard door, saw 
that the pictures were safe within, and, after a 
moment's hesitation, said: 

" I took them for a bad debt, but they are 
of no use to me. You can have them, Keck- 
witch, if you like." 

" I, sir !" exclaimed the head clerk, in 
accents of virtuous horror. " No, thank 
you, sir. None of your heathen Yenuses for 
me. I should be ashamed to see 'em on the 
walls." 

" As you please. At all events, any one who 
likes to take them is welcome to do so." 

Saying which, Mr. Trefalden, with a slightly 
scornful gravity, left his clerks to settle the 
question of ownership among themselves, and 
went on his way. The pictures were, of course, 
had out immediately, and became the objects of 
a good deal of tittering, tossing up, and wit of 
the smallest kind. In the mean while, the head 
clerk found a pretext for going to his master's 
room, and instituted a rapid search for airy- 
stray scrap of information that might turn up. 

It was a forlorn hope. Mr. Keckwitch had 
done the same thing a hundred times before, 
and had never found anything ; save, now and 
then, a few charred ashes in the empty grate. 
But it was in his nature to persevere doggedly. 
On the present occasion, he examined the papers 
on the table, lifted the lid of William Trefalden's 
desk, peered between the leaves of the blotting- 
book, and examined the table drawers in which 



174 [September 16, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



the lawyer kept his stationery. In the latter he 
found but one unaccustomed article an old 
continental Bradshaw for the month of March. 

" It wasn't there this morning," mused this 
amateur detective, taking up the Guide and 
turning it over inquisitively. " It's the same 
he had when he went to that place in Switzer- 
land page turned down and all." 

And then Mr. Keckwitch uttered a suppressed 
exclamation, for the turned-down page was in 
the midst of the Italian itinerary. 

" Lucca Magadino Mantua Mentone 
Milan." 

What, in Heaven's name, could "William 
Trefalden have to do with Lucca, Magadino, 
Mantua, Mentone, or Milan? How was it 
possible that any one of these places should be 
mixed up with the cause of his present restless- 
ness and preoccupation ? 

The clerk was fairly puzzled. Finding, how- 
ever, no further clue in any part of the volume, 
he returned to his desk, and applied himself to 
a diligent search of the financial columns of the 
Times. 

He would have been still more puzzled if, at 
that moment, he could have seen William Tre- 
falden, with the same weary, half-impatient look 
upon his face, leaning over the parapet of the 
Temple Gardens, and staring down idly at the 
river. It was just one o'clock the quietest 
hour of the day in nursemaid-haunted squares 
and the lawyer had the place to himself. All 
was still and dreamy in the old gardens. Not 
a leaf stirred on the trees. Not a sound dis- 
turbed the cloistered silence. The very sky 
was grey and uniform, unbroken by a sunbeam 
or a cloud. Presently a barge drifted by with 
the current; while far away, from crowded 
bridge and busy street, there rose a deep and 
distant hum, unlike all other sounds with which 
the ear of man is familiar. 

It was a dreamy day and a dreamy place, and, 
busy man as he was, Mr. Trefalden was, to all 
appearance, as dreamy as either. But it is 
possible to be dreamy on the surface, and wake- 
ful enough beneath it; and Mr. Trefalden's 
dreaminess was of that outward sort alone. All 
moody quiet without, he was all doubt, fever, 
and perturbation within. Project after project, 
resolution after resolution, kept rising like 
bubbles to the troubled surface of his thoughts 
rising, breaking, vanishing, and giving place to 
others. Thus an hour went by, and Mr. Tre- 
falden, hearing the church clocks strike two, 
roused himself with the air of a man whose 
course is resolved upon, and went out through 
Temple Bar, into the Strand. His course was 
resolved upon. He had made up his mind 
never to see Helen Riviere again ; and yet ... . 

And yet, before he had reached the gates of 
Somerset House, he had hailed a cab, and de- 
sired the driver to take him to Brudenell Terrace, 
Camberwell. 

In the mean while, Mr. Keckwitch, who had 
been anxiously studying the closing prices of all 
sorts of Italian Railway, Banking, Telegraphic 
and Land Companies' Stock, believed that he 



had found the key to his employer's trouble 
when he read that the Great Milanese Loan and 
Finance Company's Six per Cent Bonds were 
down to sixteen and a half in the official list. 



AN OGRE. 

There are two kinds of leopards found in 
India. One is the cheetah, the common leopard 
of the plains of Hindostan. This creature con- 
fines his attacks chiefly to small antelopes, bark- 
ing deer, and jungle-sheep. He is frequently 
caught when young, and tamed by the native 
shikarees, who teach him to assist them in 
hunting and driving game within shot of the 
guns of the sportsmen. The other kind of Indian 
leopard is the " luckabugga," a much larger and 
fiercer animal, who, when he has once tasted 
human blood, becomes an ogre, with a frightful 
appetite for children, He is chiefly found in the 
lower ranges of the Himalayas and vast jungles 
of the Terai. 

One summer's evening I was out with a 
couple of friends on a shooting excursion, from 
Almora into Nepal. Our tents were pitched 
on the banks of the Kala-nuddee, a river which 
parts the British possessions in the hills, from 
those of the Nepal rajah. We were getting our 
guns ready to go out after some black par- 
tridges for supper, when the head man of the 
neighbouring British village of Petoragurh 
came up to entreat our assistance in killing a 
leopard, which had haunted some neighbouring 
villages for many months, and had already 
carried off twelve children. Traps and pitfals 
had been set for him in vain. He had evaded 
all. A poor Zemindar had just come into 
the village with a woful story about his 
six-year-old boy his only boy who, when 
playing before the door of his father's hut in 
the dusk of the evening, had been seized by 
the leopard and carried off before his father's 
eyes. The poor man followed the animal 
and struck it repeatedly with an iron hoe, but 
it held on and vanished in the jungle. At day- 
light he had hunted on the track with some 
friends, but found only a few bones and some 
bloody hair, remains of his child, that a jackal 
was picking at, and a vulture watching. The 
man said he had watched the place every night, 
but had never again seen the leopard. 

The recital of this tragedy excited us, and we 
pledged ourselves not to leave the district until 
this cruel ogre was destroyed. Ram Bux, our 
head shikaree, was called, and ordered to make 
every inquiry as to his present whereabouts, 
and to offer a reward of ten rupees to any native 
who should give such information as -would give 
us a shot at him. 

It would be endless to relate the many false 
alarms we had. We sat up all night in trees, 
with a goat tied below as a bait, near the place 
where the leopard had been last seen. One night, 
while sitting in a tree with a gun-coolie who 
held my weapons, I fell into a doze. A friend 
in a tree about twenty yards off with a goat 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 16, 1865.] 175 



below, roused me by the discharge of his rifle. 
My coolie seized me by the arm, and shrieked, 
" Sahib, sahib, luckabugga aya !" " Where, 
where ?" I asked, seizing the double rifle he held 
out to me. "There," said he, pointing to a 
dark object moving through the trees about 
thirty yards off. Bang bang went both my 
barrels, followed immediately by unearthly yells. 
We descended from our trees, and found a 
large rough yellow pariah dog shot through 
both hind legs. He was yelling like a fiend, 
and snapping like a crocodile. I borrowed 
a large Ghoorkha kookrie from our shikaree, 
and, baring my right arm, brought it down with 
all my weight on the dog's neck, behind the 
head, in the way I had seen Ghoorkhas kill 
oxen. The dog was at once out of his pain. 

One of my friends was very fat, and, as he 
found a branch of a tree rather inconvenient, 
had a common native charpoy (sort of bed- 
stead) fixed up in a fork of a tree. On this 
he reclined, with a gun-coolie, and a large 
double-barrelled gun loaded with slugs. We 
were tired of the goat bait, so he had got a 
monkey, thinking that a child-eater might be 
more readily tempted by its flesh. I was 
posted in a tree, from which I could watch 
the approaches to my friend's post. About 
midnight the moon went down, and it was 
almost dark. Half an hour later I heard the 
monkey begin to chatter, so I cocked both 
barrels, and watched the foot of my friend's 
tree. The chattering increased. Then came a 
blaze of light and a loud report, followed by 
breaking of branches, and a perfect Babel of 
noise. I had a pine-torch with me, and, clam- 
bering down from my tree, lit it and rushed 
to the spot. There, on his face, lay my friend, 
screaming out for me. He had upset his bed. 
On his back sat the monkey, tearing at his 
hair like a wild-cat. A few yards off lay his 
coolie, with the charpoy on him smashed in half. 
He was roaring out, "The leopard is eating 
me." A little further on lay a jackal, writhing 
with a dozen slugs in him. I kicked up the 
coolie, and helped my friend by knocking the 
monkey over with the broken leg of the charpoy. 
After this little upset we lit cheroots and walked 
back to our tents, which were pitched about 
two miles off. 

Ram Bux, our shikaree, had given notice to 
all the natives round about that if the leopard 
appeared and carried off anything, information 
was to be sent to our camp before any pursuit 
was made. One evening we were at our tent 
doors after dinner, smoking, when we observed, 
on the other (Nepal) side of the river, a 
Ghoorkha coming down the hills at great 
speed. At the river bank he inflated a sheep- 
skin which he carried, and crossed the rapid 
stream on it just as we see on their wall 
carvings that the old Assyrians did being car- 
ried down about a quarter of a mile by the 
current. On landing he was met by Ram Bux, 
who had run out on seeing him approach. They 
walked towards us, the Ghoorkha gesticulating 
violently, and we heard the following story : 



The Ghoorkha lived in a hut about a mile 
from our camp, higher up the river, and only a 
hundred yards from the water. He had been 
out for the day on his duty, which was that of 
a government runner, leaving at home his wife, 
a baby in arms, and a little girl about six years 
old. The wife had gone to the stream for 
water, leaving the two children at the hut door. 
As she returned she had heard a scream, and, 
throwing down her pitcher, ran forward, and 
found at the hut door only her baby. The 
little girl had disappeared, and, without doubt, 
had been carried off by the leopard. The 
Ghoorkha found its footmarks on a soft bit of 
ground, and hastened to us without attempting 
a pursuit in the dense jungle. Ram Bux de- 
cided that it was too late to start that night, 
but asked us to be ready one hour before day- 
light. In the mean time he sent to the next 
village for twenty coolies, who were engaged 
as beaters at fourpence a head. 

On turning out in the starlight next morn- 
ing, I saw that our followers and beaters had 
each got some instrument for making noise. 
There were tin-kettles, tom-toms, bells, and an 
old matchlock or two. I and my two friends 
crossed the river on a plank lashed across two 
inflated buffalo skins, which kept our guns and 
powder high out of water. The beaters came 
over in all sorts of ways, some swimming, some 
clinging to inflated sheepskins. 

When we reached the Ghoorkha's hut, the 
whole of our beaters were extended in a line, 
I standing in the middle, at the spot where 
the Ghoorkha had found traces of the leopard. 
The poor Ghoorkha himself, and Ram Bux, 
leading a Brinjarry dog in a string, were with 
me : each of them carried a spade. At a 
given signal the whole line started. The beaters 
yelled, whistled, rang bells, and beat tom-toms, 
making noise enough to drive away every leo- 
pard within five miles. The dog kept steadily 
to the scent ; but our progress at times was 
very slow through the dense bamboo jungle. 

After proceeding about a mile, the dog 
became very eager, dashed forward, and was 
not easily held in. In fifty more yards we 
came to the place where the brute had been 
supping. The mangled remains of the little girl 
lay about, only half eaten, and the ogre must 
have been scared by our noise. Without losing 
a moment, the Ghoorkha and Ram Bux set to 
work and dug a trench under a tree to lee- 
ward of the child's remains, piling up some 
branches between them and the trench. Ram 
Bux and I jumped into this trench. The 
Ghoorkha departed with the dog in the direction 
taken by the rest of our party; who kept up 
the same discordant din as they moved away. 

Ram Bux now told me that the leopard 
doubtless listening a mile off would think, 
from the passing away of the noise, that the 
whole party had gone on, and would be sure 
to return in an hour or two to go on with his 
interrupted feast. We must be" quiet, for the 
brute was very cunning, and the slightest sound 
or smell would send him off and destroy our 



176, [September 16, I860.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



chance of getting a shot at him. After waiting 
an hour I pulled out my cigar-case, but Ram Bux 
forbade smoking by energetic gestures ; neither 
of us speaking. I had a large double-barrelled 
smooth bore No. 12, loaded with slugs, at full cock 
in my hand. Ram Bux had my breech-loading 
rifle, with a large conical shell in it. In addition 
to these, I and Ram Bux had each a Ghoorkha 
kookrie, and I a revolving pistol. It was now 
nine in the morning. The noise of our party 
had died away over the hills for an hour or 
more. I had my eyes fixed on the movements 
of a regiment of white ants, that were piling 
themselves over a bloody fragment of the poor 
child that lay about ten yards before me. 
Suddenly Ram Bux put one finger on my lips, 
both as a sign to look out and to keep per- 
fectly still. My fingers sought the triggers, 
and my eyes were strained in every direction. I 
could see nothing, until, in about two minutes, 
I discerned that the grass waved, and the next 
instant, with a tread of velvet, the leopard 
glided in front of me. The suddenness of his ap- 
pearance took my breath away for some seconds, 
but, recovering myself, I raised my gun to the 
shoulder, and in doing this snapped off a little 
twig from a branch of the brushwood we had 
piled in front of us. 

The leopard turned his face full on me. 
Thinking tnat he would jump off, I pulled 
at his chest, letting off, in my nervousness, 
both barrels. He sprang into the air with a 
yell, and fell backward. Ram Bux was out 
and by his side before I had risen from my 
knees, and had discharged the rifle in the direc- 
tion of his heart. When I got up with revolver 
in one hand and kookrie knife in the other, the 
brute was tearing up the grass and roots with 
all four paws, and dangerous to approach. My 
slugs had entered his chest and eyes, and he 
was blind. I discharged my revolver at his 
hind quarters; but he writhed and leaped 
about so violently, that it was impossible to 
take good aim. Ram Bux, with his kookrie 
drawn, was dodging about for an opportu- 
nity of coming close enough to cut at the 
dangerous hind legs and sever the tendons. I 
went back to the trench to load my gun. As I 
was capping, the grass opened, and the Ghoorkha 
with his dog rushed up. He had evidently 
been waiting near, and hearing the guns fire, 
had hurried to revenge his child. He gave a 
shout of joy when he saw the animal kicking 
and bleeding, let go his dog, who darted at the 
throat of the leopard, and then himself, disre- 
garding claws and teeth, rushed in upon him. 
With two strokes of his kookrie he cut the 
hind tendons, and the formidable hind legs were 
harmless. At the same moment I stepped up 
and discharged one barrel into the monster's 
gaping and bleeding mouth. This shot killed 
it. Ram Bux and the Ghoorkha began skinning, 
while I lighted a cheroot. On taking the skin 
off the back we came upon two fresh-healed 
cuts which went right through the skin, and re- 
membered what the poor Zemindar told us a 
week ago of his following and hacking with a 



hoe at the monster, who was carrying off his 
child. 

After a hot march of an hour or more, we 
got into camp before noon, and had an ovation 
from the people of the adjacent villages. Every 
one who had lost a child by the leopard asked 
for one of its claws, which was hung round the 
neck of the mourner as an amulet. 

The skin now lies on the floor of the billiard- 
room of a castle in the North of England. 



ILL IN A WORKHOUSE. 

Ill in a workhouse! How many of our 
readers are there, we wonder, who would form 
a guess, even near the truth, as to the num- 
ber of the unfortunates who might be thus 
described. The eighteen London voluntary 
hospitals provide three thousand seven hundred 
and thirty-eight beds ; but the metropolitan 
workhouses contain, according to the Lancet, 
twenty-six thousand six hundred and twenty- 
two sick and infirm persons, besides one thou- 
sand six hundred and ' eighty-three insane. 
Humanity demands that these poor creatures 
should be rightly tended ; and, even if we could 
lose sight of humanity altogether, the dictates 
of policy would guide us in the same direction. 

We all know that the great requisites for the 
sick are skilful medical attendance, good food, 
good nursing, and pure air. These things are all 
so essential that it would be difficult to estimate 
their relative importance ; but perhaps pure air 
ought to come first. In the voluntary hospitals 
of London the number of cubic feet of space al- 
lotted to each patient ranges from one thousand 
three hundred to two thousand, in different in- 
stitutions. In military hospitals one thousand 
two hundred feet is the regulation minimum ; 
but, in workhouse hospitals for some unex- 
plained reason, the Poor Law Board sanctions 
a minimum of five hundred cubic feet. . It is not 
too much to say that sick persons cannot get 
well in so confined a space. They may survive. 
They may struggle through the acute stage of 
disease, or through the earlier effects of an 
accident, into a state of chronic feebleness ; but 
they will never get well, not even if they are 
kept tolerably clean. Windows may be opened 
in the daytime, if the weather be fine; but the 
patients will poison one another at night. 

The wisdom of the legislature places the 
practical administration of the poor law into 
the hands of guardians, who are mostly elected 
because they are prominent men as local poli- 
ticians, and who very seldom have any know- 
ledge of what is really involved in the ques- 
tions with which they have to deal no real 
practical knowledge of the poisonous effect of 
foul air upon the sick, or, for that matter, 
upon the sound. But they know perfectly 
well that space costs money, and they are 
apt to think that their office of guardianship 
calls upon them to guard the poor's rates, 
rather than the poor themselves. The Poor 
Law Board order five hundred cubic feet of 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 16, 1865.] 177 



space, and the guardians think they can save 
a few pounds by keeping a little below this very 
humble standard. We have heard somewhere 
that the whole workhouse space of the metro- 
polis gives an average of only three hundred 
cubic feet to each inmate. According to the 
Lancet, which medical authority has been doing 
vast service in this matter of late, there are 
many wards in which the space does not exceed 
four hundred and fifty feet per bed ; and some 
in which it falls to four hundred and twenty- 
nine ; and, in such places as these, cases of 
contagious fever are scattered about among the 
other patients. 

In the voluntary hospitals of London, the 
number of surgeons and physicians, for the in- 
patients alone, ranges from eight to ten for each 
institution, and these find their duties to be no 
sinecure, although assisted in their performance 
by an army of house-surgeons, dressers, clinical 
clerks, and pupil-assistants of various kinds. 
A workhouse hospital, containing, perhaps, 
one hundred and fifty or two hundred beds, 
will be under the sole charge of a " medical 
officer," who is sometimes a general practitioner 
in the vicinity, sometimes a young man debarred 
from private practice and holding his appoint- 
ment only until something more eligible offers 
itself. In the former case, the medical officer 
cannot have the time, and in the latter case 
he can scarcely ever have the knowledge, ne- 
cessary for the proper management of the 
various and numerous forms of sickness that 
fall under his care. Medical officers of work- 
houses are only human ; and, when human 
creatures are placed in such a position that 
their duties altogether transcend their powers, 
they invariably fall as much below; the standard 
of what is possible, as their ideal or nominal 
standard is placed above it. No man can 
undertake a hospital with two hundred inmates, 
and really exercise his mind about them all, 
watch the changes in their conditions, and trace 
out the causes of their sufferings. If he begin 
by an honest attempt to achieve this utter im- 
possibility, he will soon break down ; and will 
in most cases speedily reconcile himself to a 
merely formal discharge of his duties in out- 
ward show ; going among his people and asking 
them trivial or customary questions, without 
bringing his faculties to bear upon the signifi- 
cance of their replies, and giving them only the 
deceptive seeming of attendance, in lieu of the 
living reality. 

In all cases of serious illness, the best efforts 
of the medical practitioner will be of no avail, 
unless seconded by proper and careful nursing ; 
and the necessity for such nursing will be 
greater, the less the doctor is able to superin- 
tend the manner in which his orders are carried 
out. In voluntary hospitals, where such super- 
intendence may be constant and unremitting, it 
has been found necessary or useful to supersede 
the paid nurses of a few years ago by a higher 
class of persons, specially trained to the right 
discharge of their respective duties, and fitted, 
by intelligence and moral character, to exer- 



cise authority and maintain discipline in their 
wards. In the majority of cases, the so-called 
(and sadly mis-called) " nurses" of a workhouse 
hospital are simply some of the able-bodied 
paupers who happen to be inmates at the time. 
As a rule, able-bodied paupers, male or female, 
are persons who, by some kind of misconduct, 
have ceased to be able to maintain themselves 
honestly. Either they are too stupid, or too 
lazy, or too immoral, to earn a living at the 
business to which they have been brought up. 
And on this account they are employed by 
guardians on a business which requires a special 
training, a trustworthy character, and an apti- 
tude for obtaining a moral ascendancy over 
others. It appears, however, that a system of 
paid nursing is gradually creeping in and gain- 
ing ground at several workhouses, and that it 
must in time supersede the present arrangement. 
The chief fear is lest the paid nurses, like the 
paid doctors, should be numerically insufficient 
for the discharge of their onerous duties. 

With regard to the question of proper food 
there is no difficulty with tjie actually sick, if 
the doctor will assert and use the power which 
the law gives him. It not unfrequently hap- 
pens that very great difficulties are thrown in 
his way by officials whose primary object is to 
" keep down the rates," and who are not suffi- 
ciently far-sighted to discover the eventual loss 
entailed by the careful saving of the present 
sixpence. The master of a workhouse has much 
power to thwart and annoy a medical officer, 
and the guardians have still more. Any con- 
tests with these officials on the question of diet 
or extras seldom fails to impair the efficiency 
of the medical service of the institution, and 
to recoil at last upon the sick. Where the 
medical officer possesses tact and firmness to 
use his authority without giving offence, he 
may in most cases succeed in obtaining any 
diet he pleases for cases actually in the hos- 
pital; but, where he is wanting in these im- 
portant qualities, it is not at all uncommon to 
find a considerable official pressure brought to 
bear upon " sick diets." 

The diet of the so-called " infirm" is, in most 
cases, very unsuitable. " At present," says the 
Lancet, " the mischievous anomaly remains of 
allowing the guardians to pretend to feed aged 
and feeble persons upon the tough boiled beef 
and the indigestible pea-soup and suet-pudding 
of the house diet." 

And again : 

" Having carefully observed the infirm pa- 
tients of many workhouses at their dinners, we 
are confident that the charge against the ordi- 
nary house dinners that, from one cause or 
another, a very considerable portion of the 
materials is rejected by infirm persons is cor- 
rect. In one workhouse we were very much 
struck with a perfect heap of leavings which 
the nurse of an infirm ward was collecting at 
the end of dinner-time ; and we have heard many 
bitter complaints of the pea-soup as causing 
pain and spasm in the stomach. Now clearly, 
whether the house diet be or be not theoreti- 



178 [September 16, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



cally adequate to support ordinary nutrition, it 
will not bear any serious diminution (from the 
rejection of a portion) without becoming en- 
tirely insufficient; and it is certain that such 
diminution will happen in the case of all persons 
who from any cause are at all delicate. It is 
true that the surgeon lias the power to order 
for all such persons a proper special diet ; but 
the labour of carrying this out in large work- 
houses is very great, and the temptation is 
consequently strong to adopt the laissez-faire 
system, and' allow these poor folks to struggle 
with their nutritive difficulties as best they 
may." 

"An objection has been raised, in our hear- 
ing, to the idea that the infirm are at all fre- 
quently underfed, on the score of the very great 
age to which many of them attain in work- 
houses. The fact of the frequent longevity of 
the infirm is undeniable, but the inference 
drawn therefrom is a mistaken one. True, 
these persons live long, but they live a life of a 
most low grade, with the minimum of mental 
and bodily activity ; in fact, they subside more 
and more into a vegetative existence; and a 
part of this change is distinctly traceable to the 
persistent under - nutrition which they expe- 
rience. An intelligent workhouse master has 
described to us a most interesting phenomena, 
which we have ourselves subsequently recog- 
nised, and which he calls the 'ward fever.' 
This is neither more nor less than a low febrile 
excitement which marks the transition from 
their old habits of occasional plenty and occa- 
sional starvation to the grim monotony of a 
diet which is, for the reasons above given, uni- 
formly insufficient." 

The first of the above-cited paragraphs con- 
tains an allusion to one great cause of dietetic 
mismanagement ; namely, the trouble that all 
alterations or extras entail upon the medical 
officer. 

The Poor Law Board is not sparing in the 
amount of book-keeping and form-filling exacted 
from all its officials ; but, in very many cases, the 
books required answer some useful purpose, and 
are essential to the framing of some necessary or 
desirable account. The Workhouse Medical 
Relief Book is, however, little more than an in- 
genious contrivance for wasting the time of the 
surgeon. It professes to contain the name of 
every sick person, with the days on which he has 
been visited, and with the diet ordered for him ; 
and it is so arranged that one entry of the name 
suffices for visits and diets for a week. It is sup- 
posed to be kept by the surgeon himself; and he 
is, at all events, required to initial every separate 
entry in it. In a workhouse where there are 
nine hundred sick the surgeon has to sign his 
initials in this book nine hundred times every 
week ; and as the smallest change of diet would 
render it necessary to put the name of the 
pauper upon this dreadful list, there will seldom 
be any disposition to make the nine hundred into 
nine hundred and one, so long as even that small 
increase can be prevented. The ordinary plan 
is for the book to be kept by a clerk in the 



master's office, or by one of the inmates, the 
surgeon paying some gratuity to this irregular 
assistant. When the book-keeper hears that the 
doctor has "been round the house," he puts 
down a visit against the name of every sick in- 
mate (although perhaps not one-fourth of them 
have been spoken to), and he also records all 
changes of diet, of which information is sent to 
him from the wards. Then, before the " board 
day," he waylays the doctor with, " Please, sir, 
to initial the book before you go." To " initial" 
nine hundred entries takes some time, and that 
time is deducted from the period allotted to the 
patients. 

So much is the augmentation of the list 
dreaded, that it is the practice in many work- 
houses to provide the master with a big bottle 
of "house medicine," of "cough mixture," of 
"chalk mixture," and of other abominations, 
and to make every one who aspires to the dignity 
of being ill submit to a sort of probationary 
physicking from one or other of these bottles 
before he is admitted as a bona fide patient, 
and permitted to appear upon "the book." 
Common sense suggests that if a register of 
medical visits be required, it should not be kept 
by the doctor himself, and that the master is the 
person upon whom the registry of diets should 
devolve. If an authoritative medical order were 
required, it might be written (as in voluntary 
hospitals) upon a card at the bed-head of each 
patient. 

A writer in the Lancet affirms that at St. 
Leonard's, Shoreditch, "Medicines are admini- 
stered with shameful irregularity. Our in- 
quiries showed that, of nine consecutive pa- 
tients, only four were receiving their medi- 
cines regularly. A poor fellow lying very 
dangerously ill with gangrene of the leg, had 
had no medicines for three days, because, 
as the male " nurse" said, his mouth had been 
sore. The doctor had not been made ac- 
quainted with the fact that the man's mouth 
was sore, or that he had not had the medicines 
ordered for him. A female, also very ill, had 
not had her medicine for two days, because the 
very infirm old lady in the next bed, who, it 
seemed, was appointed by the nurse to fulfil 
this duty, had been too completely bedridden 
for the last few days to rise and give it to her. 
Other patients had not had their medicines be- 
cause they had diarrhoea; but the suspension 
had not been made known to the doctor, nor 
had medicine been given to them for their 
diarrhoea. The nurses generally had the most 
imperfect idea of their duties in this respect. 
One nurse plainly avowed that she gave me- 
dicine three times a day to those who were very 
ill, and twice or once a day as they improved. 
The medicines were given all down a ward in a 
cup ; elsewhere in a gallipot. The nurse said 
she ' poured out the medicine, and judged ac- 
cording/ 

" In other respects," continues the report, 
"the nursing was equally deficient;" and we 
regret that the details of the deficiencies are too 
graphic to be reproduced. In a general review 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 16, 1865.] 179 



of the question, however, there occurs the fol- 
lowing passage : 

" Let us picture to ourselves an infirmary 
where many of the wards are without tables, 
even for the dinners ; where the medicine 
bottles are kept in a mass at the end of the 
ward with the food ; where there are no pre- 
scription cards over any of the beds ; where the 
sole medical officer, in addition to the cares of 
his private practice, has to perform, unaided, the 
whole medical service of about three hundred 
and forty sick patients, besides an equal total 
number of imbeciles and infirm prescribing for 
them, dispensing for them, and being solely 
responsible for their entire medical care; being 
non-resident, and without either assistant or 
dispenser. Let any human being, who will 
calmly consider the case, suppose the position 
of patients in such a state of affairs : the medical 
officer having, in the course of the time which 
he can daily spare for his round, some three 
hours, to pass through all the wards, to carry 
in his memory the actual treatment employed, 
say for the three hundred and forty patients 
only, to determine what changes are necessary, 
to remember the alterations which he desires to 
make, and then set to work in his dispensary to 
send up the medicines. If the wretched state 
of the patients consequent upon the inevitable 
and entire failure of any one man to perform 
duties so extravagant were not terribly tragic, 
there would be something almost ludicrous in 
the assumption of the guardians that these poor 
sick people could possibly be tended by the 
ignorant (and usually lazy and vicious) pauper 
nurses under such a system. It is not to be 
wondered at that, in such an infirmary, abuses 
of the most saddening character are the rule 
rather than the exception." 

When we know that the workhouse doctor 
is everywhere overworked, that the workhouse 
nurse is everywhere incompetent or scanty, that 
decent comforts for the sick are scarcely ever 
provided, that the occasional external cleanliness 
is the cleanliness of a whited sepulchre, it is 
surely time for the legislature to intervene be- 
tween the sick poor and their so-called ** guar- 
dians," who err, probably, in most cases, more 
from ignorance than from cruelty. The question 
is one of great importance to the public, on 
grounds of utility as much as on grounds of 
humanity. While the sick do not get well, the 
sound languish, and children pine and dwindle, 
among the noisome smells, the confined atmo- 
sphere, the unscientific diet, and the intolerable 
monotony, of workhouse life ; and all these evils 
are of the most costly character to the commu- 
nity. A labouring man, working at a distance from 
home, falls ill and is sent into the house. There 
he either dies, or at best makes a tedious and 
imperfect convalescence, which still leaves him 
unable to maintain his family. His wife and 
children follow him ; the first to lose all self- 
respect and self-reliance, the latter to exchange 
the liberty, and the comparatively wholesome 
dirt of the street and the gutter, for the 
confinement and the unwholesome dirt of 



a place from which they at last emerge, 
verminous and blear-eyed, with stupid faces, 
cadaverous skins, and shambling walk, unwilling 
to labour, unable to learn, and only fit, paupers 
themselves, to be the parents of paupers like 
unto them. If the father had chanced to go 
into a voluntary hospital, his family and the 
public might have been spared this evil and 
this cost. If the original sufferer were not a 
man, but a girl some poor servant sent to the 
workhouse by her employers as soon as disease 
attacked her then we can only draw a veil over 
the probable consequences of her admission, 
and say that sometimes, perhaps, death would 
be a greater mercy to her than recovery. 

In conclusion, we have only to mention the 
waste of material for teaching medicine which 
the present system involves. The cases ad- 
mitted into a workhouse infirmary are types and 
patterns of those met with in daily life. In a 
voluntary hospital the cases are above the ave- 
rage of severity, they are discharged if they are 
found to be incurable, and large classes of 
disease are altogether excluded. A young sur- 
geon or physician who has been educated, at 
unusual cost, entirely at a hospital, may have 
distinguished himself greatly in some depart- 
ments, and may enter upon practice with a high 
reputation, without having ever seen a case of 
measles or of whooping-cough, without being 
familiar with the treatment of many of the 
slight maladies that make up so much of the 
sum of human discomfort, and without having 
any practical bedside knowledge of the methods 
of relieving and palliating a variety of chronic 
and incurable ailments. These deficiencies 
would not exist if workhouse hospitals were 
available for the purposes of medical instruction. 
To make them available, they must be raised 
from their present state of dirt and squalor, 
and must be made to approximate, in cleanli- 
ness, in diet, in nursing, in medical and surgical 
attendance, to those noble hospitals, which are 
as much a national glory as our workhouses are 
a national disgrace. 



SIXTY YEARS' CHANGES. 

Among the happiest hours of my happy youth 
were those spent at a farm-house in Devonshire, 
near the mysterious mountain called Blackin- 
stone, a huge granite tor, on whose top stands 
an enormous separate crowning stone, of which 
tradition says it was flung there by the Devil 
from Moreton Hampstead, being the result of 
a game at quoits, to which he was challenged 
by some bold fellow they called him Dr. 
Faustus who denied or doubted his satanic 
power, but whose defeat and humiliation are 
testified by another granite quoit, weighing 
some tons, which lies half way in the valley be- 
tween the town and the tor. Its shape no doubt 
closely resembles that of the stone which his 
infernal majesty lodged safely on the Blackin- 
stone's head. 

The heathery, furzy, stony ridge of Dartmoor 



ISO [September 16, 1S65.] 



ALL THE YEAR HOUND. 



[Conducted by 



runs down to the farm, whose name is Kings- 
well. It has its traditions too, and the monarch 
who honoured it with his visitations was no less 
than the King of the Fairy Elves, yclept 
Pixies in this neighbourhood. The oral re- 
corders of their presence and their prowess are 
departed and almost forgotten now, but it was 
not so "when I was young woful wdien!" 
which I re-echo to the plaints of the Devonian 
poet, who, being of an earlier generation, knew 
more about the Pixies than I. 

But in this region of romance I have seen 
the heaven-roofed hall in which the Pixies as- 
sembled, the green turf on which they danced, 
the granite fountains in which they bathed, and 
the buttercups out of which they drank. I have 
heard from the lips of the believing peasantry 
tales of their moonlight gatherings, their sportive 
wicked tricks; and though to my childish, 
and half-credulous inquiries, somewhat timidly 
urged, "Have you seen them, you yourself?" 
the answers were somewhat pitying and re- 
proachful, as if doubt were sin : " Zure, us 
have yeard all about 'em from our vathers it 
is as true as truth !" In later life I have known 
grave men, great authorities, look down upon 
Boulters as these rustics looked down upon me, 
and who have added to the pity and the re- 
proach the condemnation and the anathema ! 

Brightly shone the sunshine when the tenant 
of Kingswell came to my father and asked him 
to allow me to pass part of my holidays at the 
farm. In those days a journey to Moreton 
(Moortown) was a somewhat perilous under- 
taking. No wheeled vehicle had ever traversed 
the road to Exeter. The "well-to-do" farmer 
came on horseback, generally carrying his 
wife or daughter on a pillion behind, who held 
themselves fast by a leathern belt round the 
waist of the rider indeed, every precaution 
was needful to their safety, for the ways were 
rough, steep, and stony; slips from the high 
banks often brought down roots, earth, heavy 
blocks, and heaps of pebbles to interrupt the 
passage, which was sometimes darkened by the 
intertanglings of the branches above. Some 
of the hills to be ascended or descended 
were so sharp and abrupt, and the ground so 
shaky and shifting, that it was the custom 
to dismount and lead the horse. All com- 
modities were then conveyed in "crooks" or 
"panniers," which were attached to wooden 
pack-saddles. They brought potatoes (highly 
valued for their superior quality, for they are 
said to flourish best in an ungrateful arid soil), 
barley, and other agricultural produce, to be sold 
in the uncovered market then held in the main 
street of Hexon, or Hexter, the name by which 
the provincial city was usually known. The 
manufacturing interest was not unimportant. 
In the times I speak of, the productions of the 
loom were nearly equal in value to those of the 
land. In every cottage the noise of the shuttle 
was heard, and when father, or mother, or 
grown-up children were not engaged in the field, 
they were occupied in the spinning of yarn, or 
the weaving of woollens principally long ells 



for the trade with China, where they have re- 
tained their reputation to the present time. The 
same farmer who employed the labourer on his 
estate, distributed to him the weft and the warp, 
and collected the woven stuffs for account of the 
manufacturer and merchant in Exeter, who 
fulled, dyed, dressed, and packed them for ex- 
portation. The honest farmer, whose name was 
Smale, was one of my father's representatives, 
and every Friday the results of the week's gather- 
ing were brought to our mills. My affections had 
been warmed towards our friend by his hearty, 
loud-voiced greeting, the grasp of liis hard hand 
was like that of a vice, and his " How bee 'e ? 
How glad I be to zee 'e !" had all the ring of 
eloquence in my ears. Moreover, he frequently 
brought in a bag of what he called " waste stuff," 
which was barley, excellent for the use of my 
cocks and hens, and which I calculated gave me 
a considerable number of pence, when, having 
been paid by my mother for all the eggs con- 
sumed in the family, I made up the debtor 
and creditor account of the poultry -yard, which 
I was allowed to manage for my own personal 
pecuniary benefit. 

Consent being obtained, and some clothes 
tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, I was 
trotted off, gay and happy as a goldfinch in 
spring, to the inn in the St. Thomas outskirt of 
the city, where a pack-saddled horse was se- 
lected for my accommodation. Off we trotted, 
but it was not long before I found the sharp 
wooden ridge of the saddle somewhat uncom- 
fortable. I fancied it would be cowardly and 
unbecoming to utter a word of complaint ; but 
a shaking and stumbling, and my balance more 
than once nearly lost, and a hand suddenly 
placed now behind and now before me for the 
sake of a little extra support, and no doubt a 
visible anxiety in my countenance, induced my 
protector to ask whether I might not like to 
walk a little : and great was my joy to think 
that the suggestion should come from him and 
not from me. I walked and walked till I was 
weary made many an excuse for not getting 
up again but in utter exhaustion consented 
to resume my seat on the uneasy edge, whose 
painful impressions did not abandon me for 
many a day. 

After about eleven miles of weary travel we 
came to a narrow lane, which, opening from the 
highway^ led to the valley below. We crossed 
a crystal brook filled with water-cresses, passed 
through a rude gate or two, reached the farm- 
yard, and at the door of the house two rosy- 
cheeked damsels were waiting to welcome us 
with a welcome so cordial, that their bright eyes 
looked brighter, their faces glowed with a still 
richer red, and their smiles, how sweet, how 
very sweet, how very kind they were ! Scarcely 
seated, when a plate of bread and cream was 
produced ; they said the rule of the house was, 
that the bread "was not to be thicker than the 
cream. O that rich clouted Devonshire cream ! 
The Phoenicians (many thanks to them !) taught 
our forefathers to make it, and I can say, from 
personal knowledge, that the scholars now far 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR HOUND. 



[September 16, 18C5.] 181 



outstrip their masters in the art and craft. The 
depth of the slice from the loaf exceeded half 
an inch, covered with solid substantial cream. 
The rest may be fancied. 

How I ran after the rabbits among the rocks, 
how I gathered whortleberries and blackberries, 
what nosegays I made of heath and honeysuckle, 
what a friend I found in the dog M Shepherd," 
who had a tail so short that it could scarcely be 
called a tail, and who was the most licking, 
loving, docile creature in the world, how I re- 
joiced in the blaze of the dry gorse which I was 
allowed to fling into the kitchen chimney ; above 
all, how I obtained the favour of the good old 
father of the family, seated in his arm-chair by 
the rustic fire is it not all written in the book 
of memory ? 

Many were the jokes which our Moortownian 
country cousins had to bear from the more re- 
fined citizens of the county capital, who some- 
times honoured "the outer barbarians" with a 
visit, or more rarely invited them " to see life" 
in the western metropolis. "Why, you knOw 
very well who built your place, and how he for- 
got to make any road to it after the building !" 
"Who taught your fathers to make the cob 
walls, and brought the clay and the straw and 
the mortar to help you, long before you had a 
paved street or a glass window ?" And then 
the rude rough idiom of Dartmoor was flung 
into the crucible of criticism by those whose own 
mother-English was not of the purest. " What 
d'ye call this ?" said a young Exonian vagabond, 
when running away with a handful of oats from 
the sample-bag of a Moreton farmer, who 
vociferated to the passers-by : " Hum ! burn 
arteren ! he'th steyld my wets !" 

It is a pity the hundreds of old Saxon words 
and forms of speech have been so imperfectly 
collected from the rural regions of Devon. 
Here is a conversation between a judge on the 
Exeter bench and a witness from DartmOor : 

Witness. Thof the doctor komm'd wei the 
trade (medicine), but a kudn' zee'n vur the pillem. 

Judge. Pillem, man! What d'ye mean by 
pillem ? 

Witness. Lor ! Not knaw what pillem be ? 
Why, pillem be mucks a drow'd. 

Judge. Mucks a drow'd ! What's that ? 

The man lifted up his hands, astounded at his 
lordship's ignorance, which he thus helped to 
enlighten : " Why, mucks be pillem a wet !" 

Once, when sitting on the bench, I noted 
down more than twenty obsolete words from 
the evidence of a single shepherd on a case of 
sheep-stealing. 

But again looking back over two generations, 
I know not how order was preserved or autho- 
rity maintained. I never heard of police, con- 
stable, nor watchman. Crimes were committed 
with which the devil he has not yet disap- 
peared from our indictments or the witch 
who is still a living existence in Devonshire 
had always something to do. Yet everybody 
trusted everybody, and the doors of the houses 
were seldom locked or bolted by day or by 
night. Sheep-stealing was a common offence ; 



hanging followed as a matter of course ; and at 
every assize men suffered for it at the Exeter 
" new drop." Here the farmers combined their 
detective operations with infinite zeal, and were 
delighted to help one another's servants to the 
gallows which they had so well " desarved." I 
recollect seeing a poor wretch hanged, of whom 
it was given in evidence that his family was in 
such a state of starvation that they devoured 
the mutton raw when he brought the sheep 
into his hovel ; but even for him there was no 
pity or sympathy. A farmer returning from 
market one day, reached Moreton in a most dis- 
tracted and disordered state, his horse at full 
gallop, his waistcoat torn open ; they said his 
hair stood on end. He declared that he had been 
riding quietly on in the dark, when the devil 
jumped up behind him, seized him round the 
waist, and treated him in the most unbrotherly 
way. He was reported to have lost his money, 
and not to have been moderate in his tipple at 
the mn where he had " put up ;" but nobody 
doubted his veracity, and many new frights aud 
fears accompanied the farmers on their lone- 
some, gloomy, homeward way. Sometimes a 
murder took place, generally committed by a 
stranger, a wandering pedlar, a hanger-on about 
country fairs, and now and then a woman was 
convicted of poisoning her husband or killing a 
child; but there were no newspapers seeking 
sensational pabulum for their columns, and the 
surface of the social stream was not much or 
long rippled by these disturbances. 

A stove or grate was a rare luxury then. Stone 
coal was never seen ; charcoal rarely. Turf from 
the marshes, gorse from the moor, and now and 
then a wooden log, were the materials of the 
cottage fires. People generally sat on stools 
within the chimney-hearth, where the scorching 
from the blazing furze was sometimes intole- 
rable ; but the occupiers of the inner seats 
especially in winter-time were more disposed 
to put up with the annoyance than to surrender 
their places. In truth, the vicinity of the moor 
is often bitterly cold, the snow lies deep, the 
hail and storm rage furiously. Persons well 
off in the world ate barley bread, and tea 
was made of balm or peppermint. A cat 
and a dog usually formed part of the fireside 
group. The old men wore scarlet nightcaps, 
the women mob caps tied under their chins. The 
labourers took their meals with their masters, 
but at a respectful distance. The pay of the 
out-door peasant did not exceed a shilling a day ; 
a hale girl might gain a shilling a week. 

The principal sports of the people were 
Fives played against the church tower, foot- 
ball in the sentry field, and ninepins in the 
barns. Each had their distinguished repre- 
sentatives, who were becomingly honoured. 
But bell-ringing seemed the great ambition, for 
here the contests extended beyond the paro- 
chial bounds, and the prowess of the More- 
tonians was to be contrasted and compared with 
that of other adjacent belfries. The names of 
the prize-winners are they not chronicled in 
the annals of the past ? 



182 [September 16, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUKD, 



[Conducted by 



Other great men there were few. There was 
a gentleman rejoicing in the name of Bragg, who 
kept a pack of hounds, but of whom I never 
heard anything boastful or pretentious; and 
there were generations of clergymen called 
Clacks, the echoes of whose outpourings were 
not known to resound beyond the aisles of the 
church in which they hereditarily ministered. 

In the very first house on entering the town 
of Moreton Hampstead there was a maniac 
woman, whose screams and howls were heard at 
a great distance, from a barred window. 

Whence she came, or how she fared, 
Nobody knew and nobody cared. 

There were no commissioners of lunacy, no 
asylums then accessible to the poor, no intru- 
sive inquirers ; it was nobody's business. " Every 
man's house is his castle. Why should I get 
into trouble for what don't consarn me ?" 

So in the streets there were idiots wandering 
about. Their names were familiar such as 
Crazy Fan and Eoolish Bett. They served to 
amuse the children, who played with them, 
laughed at them, tormented them; but the 
older passengers looked on as if they enjoyed, 
as they sometimes encouraged, the ribaldry of 
the younger. Benevolence has now directed its 
solicitude even towards these unfortunates. 

Moreton had its celebrities. What town has 
not ? Our school cobbler was a man of mark. 
His name was Ptolomy ; he wrote it Tollomy ; 
but we insisted, and he did not deny it, that he 
was directly descended from the great astro- 
nomer. We discovered in him an innate dignity 
betokening illustrious ancestry, and while he 
vigorously beat his leather on his lapstone, he 
smiled and said that perhaps we might not be 
far from the truth. 

There were two rival barbers, brothers. They 
neither agreed in politics nor in religion. One 
was grave, the other gay. They were leading 
men in their separate factions. One had a 
singularly emphatic way of laying down the 
law. It was, " Dip my head, sir, if it is not 
so !" Had he heard of Sterne's grandiloquent 
coiffeur ? " Dip my wig, sir, in the ocean, not 
a hair will turn !" But the whiggery was on 
the side of the serious Presbyterian. The other 
was a jolly churchman. 

^ It is a remarkable circumstance in the reli- 
gious history of our country, that while the 
Independents, who in the time of the Common- 
wealth were the most liberal and the most 
heterodox of our dissenting sects, have become, 
in the progress of time, one of the most ortho- 
dox and exclusive, the Presbyterians, who 
were Calvinistic, intolerant and even persecu- 
ting, are now the representatives of the most 
advanced of the Christian creeds. The religion 
of the staple woollen trade of the west that 
professed by the leading merchants and manu- 
facturers was Unitarianism or Arianism under 
the Presbyterian name. There were three 
churches, called meeting - houses George's, 
James's, and the Mint in Exeter, where the 
great Dissenting schism, which repudiated the 



doctrines of the Trinity, broke out nearly a 
century and a half ago, and almost every town 
in the neighbourhood had its Unitarian chapel, 
most of which have endowments, due to the 
prosperity of the now decayed, but then most 
prosperous, woollen manufacture, under the 
central patronage of a company holding royal 
charters as the " Incorporated Guild of Tuckers, 
Weavers, and Shearmen," who still possess a 
hall in Exeter. Moreton Hampstead had two 
such meeting-houses, one called the Presby- 
terian, the other the Baptist. A vacancy had 
taken place in the first, and a young man, 
J. H. B., was elected to fill the post. He 
determined at the same time to open a school, 
and I was not displeased when my father 
told me that I was to return to the old 
haunts which were very dear to me to the 
tors, the moors, and the mountain streams, with 
which I had become familiar. The first sermon 
of the new minister was like the outburst of a 
first love. The text was, " Eulfil ye my joy," 
and it spoke of links never to be broken. Alas ! 
for human frailty; its name is not always 
Woman : for within a few short months, " before 
the shoes were old" which had so glibly 
mounted the pulpit stairs, "a wider field of 
usefulness," to say nothing of a larger salary, 
enticed the faithless one away to Dudley, where 
he afterwards came to grief, and his history had 
better be buried in oblivion. But the good 
people of Moreton were very angry somewhat 
bitter in their condemnation. The Baptist con- 
gregation was under the care of a gentle Welsh- 
man, named Jacob Isaacs. His father may 
have been Isaac Jacobs, for shiftings and trans- 
positions of christian names and surnames were 
then, and may still be, a Cambrian usage ; but 
he was not without his renown. He had written 
a book called The Apiarian, and was very fond 
of a quiet joke, declaring that he was one of the 
most ancient of monarchs, being king of the 
Hivites, though their associations with the 
patriarch Jacob were not of a very creditable 
character. On grand occasions a cupboard was 
opened for his guests, and the produce of the 
hive introduced honey, mead, metheglin and 
he carefully explained the essential differences 
between the two drinks, which I believe are 
absolutely the same the one being the Saxon, 
the other the Welsh name. However, he in- 
sisted that the bee furnished the classical 
ambrosia and the nectar of the gods, and that 
neither gourmand nor gourmet could have 
tasted anything superior to either. Yet, strange 
to say, though so much of his life and his 
thoughts were devoted to his bees, they ex- 
hibited no affection, no partiality, but much ill 
will towards him. Instead of a protector and a 
friend, they deemed him an intruder and a foe, 
and when he approached his hives, he always 
covered his hands with gloves and his face with 
a veil, and did not hesitate to call his subjects 
unjust and ungrateful. Have bees no more 
discernment ? Have they their preferences and 
their prejudices ? Eor I have lately seen a bee- 
master open his hives, take out every separate 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 16, 1865.] 183 



comb, lay them on the ground, hunt out the 
queen, and having discovered her amidst the 
bustle and the buzz of thousands, restore the 
combs to the hive, and again close it un- 
stung and unmolested by any of the commu- 
nity. 

Our school consisted of eight boarders, all of 
Unitarian families, of whom Exeter furnished 
four, Bridport two, and Sidmouth two. One- 
half of them the three oldest and the youngest 
have been gathered to their fathers. One 
died lately : Joseph Hounsell, a most lovable 
and excellent man, to whose memory his fellow- 
townsmen have erected a laudatory monument. 
Another, Edmund Butcher, was the son of the 
author of some of the most beautiful hymns in 
our language, among which is that beginning 

Stand still, refulgent orb of day, 

A Jewish hero cries, 
So shall at last an angel say, 

And tear it from the skies. 
A flame, intenser than the sun, 

Will melt the golden urn. 

The school was not without its recommenda- 
tions, but the teaching was carried on at one 
house, while we were domiciled and were fed 
(under contract) at another. But unfortunately 
our master fell in love with the daughter of the 
Apiarian. * She was no favourite, and the rude 
rustics sometimes inquired of the enamoured 
minister, "How'z Miss Saucer-eyes?" I re- 
member a dreadful burst of indignation when 
one of his own congregation put to him the 
question ; but the " love-affair" did undoubtedly 
tend to the neglect of the duties of the school. 
The boys were hypercritical ; on one occasion, 
when the master did not make his appearance 
at the proper time, they blackened all the desks 
With ink, and when he entered and inquired 
what it meant, a boy had the boldness, the 
effrontery, to say : " They have gone into 
mourning for your absence, sir!" Another 
time a still graver practical joke gave a more 
emphatic lesson to the teacher. He was, as 
usual, non inventus " gone a courting." Under 
the schoolroom was a cellar, to which you de- 
scended by a dark steep flight of stairs. In the 
centre was a pump, used to supply the wants of 
the house, and in one corner a heap of coals 
for winter use. To the cellar the boys re- 
treated. They cut off the two bottom steps, 
and pumped and pumped till there was a foot 
or two of water in the cellar. They then en- 
sconced themselves on the coal-heap, and waited 
for the master's return. He came at last : it was 
night ; found the school vacant, and, hearing a 
noise below, seized a candle and dashed down 
the staircase; he of course fell face foremost 
into the water, which was thoroughly saturated 
with coal-dust. The candle was extinguished ; 
the boys escaped in the darkness, and left their 
drenched, disordered, and dismayed master to 
recover himself and reach the upper regions as 
best he could. He had his revenge, as far as 
a good flogging of the whole school could give 
it, but I thought the boys almost enjoyed the 



castigation, and consoled themselves with having 
had the best of the sport. 

How are discipline and dignity lost in schools! 
Mainly by want of firmness and truthfulness. 
Respect always, affection generally, must con- 
nect the scholar with the teacher. One more 
example in illustration it may be traced to 
the blindness of love. 

We were accustomed, accompanied by our 
master, to take country walks, and those walks 
had rare attractions. The beauty and brightness 
of the Devonian rivers, of which the pebbly Teign 
was in our immediate neighbourhood; the charms 
of tracing the brooks and streamlets to their 
sources in the hills ; the wild woodland scenery ; 
the cascades, of which one of the most pictu- 
resque is that of Becky fall, reached through the 
pretty village of Manaton; the many crom- 
lechs and dolmens, with their Druidical associa- 
tions ; the lofty tors ; the granite boulders which 
seem to girdle the edges of the moor ; Cran- 
brook and its supposed Roman intrenchment ; 
ruined bridges ; perilous fords ; mountain passes, 
known to local but not to general fame : all in 
turn were visited those afar on our half- 
holidays those near in our every-day rambles. 
One afternoon the master led us off for a long 
excursion. When about a mile from the town, 
he told us that he had slipped over a stone, had 
seriously sprained his ankle, must return home 
without delay to seek some appliance for 
the mitigation of his suffering; and, having 
strictly enjoined us to return over the same 
road by which we had come, he left us, limping 
and with an expression of sore anguish on his 
countenance. What evil genius tempted us to 
disobedience I know not, but fearing no be- 
trayal and no discovery, we circumambulated 
the road to enter it by the very opposite end 
to that through which we had made our sortie, 
when, coming near a stile, we heard the words, 
" Humid seal of soft affection !" and saw 
strange and perplexing discovery, equally so to 
him and to us, saw our late-disabled master 
with his arm round the waist of his beloved, 
reading to her, with touching emphasis, the final 
lines of Rogers's charming song : 

Love's first snowdrop virgin kiss ! 

There was more blushing than kissing on that 
memorable occasion. We received no repri- 
mand for our aberrations. Our sin was covered, 
if not by charity, by condonation. Our master, 
in fact, was at our mercy. 

And yet I never think of those meannesses 
without a certain sneaking fondness for the 
man. I remember the encouragement he gave 
me when, in an essay on Death, he found the 
line, "Monarchs must die as well as meaner 
men." I had pilfered the phrase from a book 
I had been reading; but though I was half 
ashamed of the undeserved praise, I had not 
courage enough to own the plagiarism. But 
I do remember how one of the boys was put 
to open shame when, after receiving enthusiastic 
eulogiums for an autograph MS. poem on 
orchard robbery, which he read vehemently as 



1S4- [September 16, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



his own, the printed original was discovered, 
with one only variation, that apples had been 
introduced instead of pears. 

WILL YOU TAKE MADEIRA? 

Stretching out my hand in a desultory 
manner the other morning towards a mass of 
periodicals which lay on the table beside me, 
I was attracted by the title of a paper in 
one of the Reviews, on The Dangers # of 
Madeira. Having passed five months during 
the winter and spring '63-64 in that island, my 
curiosity and interest were awakened, and I 
turned eagerly to the page indicated. I must 
confess, the title in no way prepared me for the 
contents. My experience led me to believe that 
the chief dangers of Madeira consisted in the 
risks incurred by break-neck expeditions on 
steep and stony mountains, or difficult landings 
and embarkings from pitching and tossing 
steamers, in the unsheltered little bay we accept 
as an apology for a harbour. I had yet to learn 
that the island of Madeira was dangerous 
because the medical profession in England 
"heedlessly" and "recklessly" send their pa- 
tients, and the resident practitioners "attract" 
them thither, through " a professional system of 
puffing," founded on self-interest. 

That there are physicians who are both super- 
ficial and mercenary, I doubt not ; but my own 
experience, and the evidence of competent wit- 
nesses, have inclined me to believe that the 
leading characteristics of the class (so far as the 
characteristics of any one class may be admitted) 
are skill, devotion, and charity. Most assuredly 
a residence in Madeira has confirmed me in this 
belief, as, in so confined a space, it is difficult to 
hide good works, however willingly the right 
hand that effected them would do so. That 
there are some cases of pulmonary disease to 
which the climate of Madeira is unfavourable, 
I have heard asserted over and over again by 
medical men; but that physicians are not to be 
found in England who have made climate their 
especial study, and that there are none suffi- 
ciently disinterested in Madeira to let the 
patient stay, or go, without reference to their 
own pockets, I stoutly deny. Also, from per- 
sonal experience and observation, that the 
healthy subjectbecomes enfeebled and depressed, 
although, like all other climates, that of Madeira 
is suitable to some constitutions and unsuitable 
to others. That Madeira is six hundred miles 
distant from Europe at the nearest point, I 
take for granted, as my globe and quadrant are 
not at hand; that the invalid above all, the 
hypochondriacal invalid who contemplates 
passing a winter there, should bear this in mind, 
and several other stubborn facts contingent on 
this one fact such as the scarcity of posts, the 
intervals that must elapse between the arrival 
of the Times, the Morning Post, and other 
periodicals I am willing to admit, although, 
having carefully studied my Postal Guide before 
my departure, I was not unprepared for the 



conditions. But that there is "no society," 
"no public questions to discuss," that all is 
"stagnation," once more I enter my protest 
against such assertions. 

So far, indeed, from nothing being heard of 
the "public questions of the day," the American 
war, for instance, the gentlemen in our quinta* 
heard the latest news from North and South 
on board a Federal and a Confederate ship the 
same day ; and their pugnacious propensities 
were greatly excited by the prospect of a bona 
fide fight between the Florida and the St. Louis 
men-of-war, through the best telescopes in their 
possession. 

Lengthened questions of a pecuniary nature 
would be misplaced here. Every kind of habita- 
tion is let by the season. The traveller, on alight- 
ing at hotel or boarding-house, is allowed a week 
to make up his mind whether he will remain 
there, or go away. Ten pounds a head per 
month with bedroom and general sitting-room, 
an extra charge for private ditto of from three 
to five pounds these are the hotel terms. 
Private houses vary from fifty to one hundred and 
fifty pounds for the season ; Payne or Wilkinson, 
the principal tradesmen, will provide everything, 
servants, food, &c. (linen and plate excepted), 
at the rate of twenty-five pounds per month for 
two persons ; one child not counting. Hire 
of horse, hammock, or bullock-car ^au English 
invention), fifteen-pence per hour. Custom- 
house duties are enormously high. The travel- 
ler should, as far as possible, take all requisite 
clothing with him. The writer of the article I 
complain of gives us his experience of a tedious, 
wearisome day in Madeira ; we will make a few 
annotations thereon. The physician visits you 
early, makes observations on your health, and 
probably reports on that of your friends and 
acquaintance. One might imagine this a subject 
not devoid of interest to those who have tra- 
velled so far in search of health; although in 
what we might term a sick colony, it is not likely 
to form a cheerful topic. Whether it might prove 
profitable in any degree, to consider the changes 
and chances that surround you, and the noble in- 
stances of skill and sympathy and warm human 
love which " sorrow, sickness, and death" daily 
and hourly elicit, is a grave question; perhaps 
it may be considered an impertinent one. 

To proceed. You come down to, or after 
breakfast, and if you reside in a quinta (although 
the name of the month may be December) you 
find the windows open to the ground, the air frag- 
rant within and without ; the girls have brought 
down baskets full of violets and wood strawber- 
ries from the mountains, and the invalid steps by 
the side of his healthy companion into the gar- 
den, or, if he be unable to do so, his chair or 
hammock is settled for him in a sheltered nook, 
to breathe the air, to inhale the perfume, to 
read or converse with his fellows. Even if 
suffering, or at best languid, he finds himself 
doing more or less as others do ; neither cruelly 
cut off, nor excommunicated (as is necessarily the 

* Villa. 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUTED. 



[September 16, 1865.] 185 



case in a chilly northern climate), not only from 
the pursuits and occupations, but often from 
the society of his healthy associates. This, in 
my opinion, is one of the many advantages of 
Madeira to the invalid. " About mid-day," the 
writer goes on to say, f< you proceed in your 
hammock to the Commercial Rooms." That de- 
depends mainly on the orders you give your 
bearers; you might bid them carry you up a 
winding road between hedges of sweet gera- 
niums and thickets of cacti, under arches that 
connect rival gardens, golden with the hanging 
branches of bignonia, or purple with the regal 
blossoms of the Bougainvillceas, to a spot as 
sheltered as your own verandah, and there you 
may read or listen (if fortunate enough to have 
a companion) to something more genial than 
" the conversation of Brown, Jones, and Robin- 
son." We take it for granted we are speaking 
to a traveller who has provided himself with a 
few books for his edification in " exile." More 
especially as we are told, that conversation turns 
on the same melancholy subject which your 
physician exhausted in the morning. Although, 
be it remembered, in Madeira there is a daily 
struggle for life going forward, and it is no 
more surprising that the results should be dis- 
cussed, than that soldiers should count up the 
numbers of those w T ho fall, and who survive, in 
a military campaign. The question naturally 
arises, Why repair to the reading-room at all ? 
The joys of a small reading-room in any small 
place appear to us problematical, even in that 
island we proudly call our home. At all 
events, this daily visit is optional. " The 
same two miles of level ground," although 
the view it commands is ever varying, ever 
new, must, we should conceive, become weari- 
some on the one hundred and tenth repeti- 
tion of the ride; but, as a good canter is 
usually the chief reason adduced for frequenting 
the new road, 1 should advise the invalid who 
is restricted to a foot's pace, to turn his horse's 
head up one or other of the innumerable roads 
which intersect Madeira, and I promise him that 
every new point of view, will offer some new and 
startling feature of picturesque beauty. 

The nights are balmy, the sky usually so clear, 
that the heavenly bodies gain in apparent size 
and brilliancy. It is true that the invalid is 
usually ordered home a little before sunset, and 
of course if he be so unfortunate as to have 
contracted no domestic ties before, or formed no 
friendships since his arrival, his evening will be 
solitary, as it would be in any other latitude 
with this difference, that in Madeira (on most 
evenings) his chair may be placed within reach 
of the open window, where the breath of 
the night-smelling flowers is laden with soft 
messages from the sweet season, even on the 
vigil of the holy Christmas festival. 

The town of Funchal is squalid and poverty- 
stricken. Beggars abound, and lepers are in- 
deed plentiful ; but if the invalid be too hypo- 
chondriacal to bear such sights, let him turn his 
horse's hoofs, or his bearers' steps, away from 
the town altogether. 



And now I would be allowed a few words on 
the subject of hired horses, which the article 
calls " miserable hacks from the livery-stables 
at Lisbon" where it happens that there are no 
livery-stables. In the quinta where I resided 
there were several Englishmen, good judges of 
horses ; and although we changed our hacks 
once or twice before we were suited, yet at the 
expiration of a very short period our stable 
boasted a very (for hired horses) fair stud. As 
to the ^ hammock, naturally this is a matter 
of opinion, whether as a means of transport it 
be tedious and wearisome, or luxurious. 

But to proceed to the meteorological and 
scientific observations adduced by the writer, 
who appears to ^ regard the late Dr. Mason 
as the only reliable authority respecting the 
climate of the place. He talks of personal 
abuse and futile objections, as the only an- 
swers vouchsafed to Mason's statements. The 
critical remarks I have met with on the 
subject, tend to show what the doctor him- 
self wished to be clearly understood that 
the results of his hygrometrical observations, 
the principal point at issue, cannot be regarded 
as applicable to Funchal in general, but only to 
the locality where they were made. For infor- 
mation respecting this locality, I would refer 
the writer of the article, and rny readers, to a 
very able pamphlet on the climate of the island, 
by James Mackenzie Bloxam, who, be it observed 
is neither a " principal tradesman," nor a " pro- 
fessional puffer." In this essay, Dr. Mason's 
inferences are discussed and reduced to their 
true value in a calm and philosophical spirit, 
worthy of imitation. For our present purpose 
it suffices to state, that it is fully proved that 
Mason's hygrometrical results most certainly do 
not apply to the parts of Funchal, or the class of 
tenements, in which invalids are now recom- 
mended to reside. Dr. Mason's observations were 
made in 1835, and since the posthumous publica- 
tion of his book in 1850, many able men have 
been at work, the result of whose labours may be 
found in White's excellent guide-book, and the 
well-known works of Barral, and Mittermaier. 
None of these writers deny that the climate 
of Madeira belongs to the moist section, but 
they fully prove Dr. Mason's inferences as to 
its extreme humidity, to be overrated. The 
author of the article, in a paragraph nearly 
copied word for word from the same source, 
speaks of iron oxydised, of boots and shoes 
covered with fungus, and of damaged clothes. 
He gives an extract, showing how Dr. Mason 
suffered from extreme lassitude, and many 
other symptoms of malaria, when resident at 
Funchal ; but, from some unaccountable cause, 
he entirely suppresses the latter part of the 
paragraph, in which the doctor himself as- 
cribes all this mischief to the existence of the 
tank in his own garden, and complains that his 
landlord would not believe that the water which 
had been kept in it for two months, could pos- 
sibly become offensive. This is what we should 
call half evidence. The climate of Madeira is 
humid; but (let it be clearly understood we 



186 [September 16, 1865.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[Conducted by 



are speaking in general terms, and not of the 
occasional seasons of heavy rains, and conse- 
quent close muggy atmosphere, which visit 
Madeira in common with all semi-tropical cli- 
mates) there is none of the danger and discomfort 
of damp ; dampness does not cling to us or to 
our clothes. 

A friend of my own (not an invalid) wrote 
from the island : " I feel as if I were floating 
in liquid velvet." Dr. Mason himself says : " It 
would be difficult to persuade many of the resi- 
dents that the climate is damp, notwithstanding 
the instrumental indications of a considerable 
per-centage of humidity." To this I can bear 
witness, as I was rather obstinate on this 
point for some time, and was always feeling my 
own silk gown or my own hair to corroborate my 
assertions. Also my own experience goes to 
prove that in all the various materials of silk, 
linen, woollen, and velvet that go to furnish a 
woman's wardrobe, the least sign of damp was 
never detected ; nor was one particle of rust the 
medical friend who resided under the same roof, 
assures me ever detected on his surgical instru- 
ments ; although in our respective apartments 
there were no fire-places, and the windows were 
left open day and night for five months, with the 
exception of one or two nights during some 
heavy rains. 

A word more, and we have done. One of the 
concluding paragraphs in the article speaks in 
such favourable terms of the hygienic properties 
of Iceland and Greenland, that we cannot but 
fancy the writer may be induced to escape " the 
dangers" of a winter in Madeira, by a visit to 
one of these countries. If so, we sincerely 
trust he will favour us with his new experiences, 
written in a more genial and less hypochon- 
driacal spirit, than that which characterises his 
notes on the Flower of the Atlantic ! 



COLONEL AND MRS. CHUTNEY. 

IN FIVE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER I. 

" It won't do, Wilson," said Mrs. Chutney ; 
"five and nine are fourteen, and seven are 
twenty-one ; the currie powder three shillings, 
and the chillies three and fourpence. You are 
eightpence short." And she looked up into the 
severe functionary's face anxiously. 

" Well, 'm," returned the injured cook, " I 
have lived in the best of families, and kep' the 
books, and I must say it's discouraging to have 
insinuations " 

"I am sure, Wilson," interrupted Mrs. 
Chutney, timidly, " I have no intention of in- 
sinuating anything. I am rather nervous this 
morning. I cannot count up coolly now, for 
Colonel Chutney will be down directly. I will 
try again after breakfast. And oh, Wilson, do 
make the toast crisp." 

" The toast !" repeated Wilson, in a high key. 
" Well, 'm, I did think you knew as that's the 
page's business." 

" Oh ! it is the page's business ? I didn't 
know," said Mrs. Chutney, slightly humiliated. 



"You may go now, Wilson, and take those 
books with you." 

But before Wilson could obey, Colonel Chut- 
ney entered and cut off her retreat. I 

The colonel was accurately attired in a morning 
suit of dark brown ; a fresh-looking, dark-haired, 
dark-eyed man, with broad shoulders and a 
powerful frame. A quick frown came and went 
habitually on his brow, against which was often 
balanced a smile of some sweetness. A super- 
ficial observer would say he was a very energetic 
person. _ A deeper insight suggested irritability 
and preciseness. 

He walked silently to the breakfast-table, 
while Mrs. Chutney rang the bell, and then 
hastily regulated her writing materials. 

"Louisa," began the colonel, portentously, 
"whose duty is it to attend to my dressing- 
things, hey ?" 

" Why, Sophia's, dear. Nothing wrong, I 
hope ?" 

" Wrong ! When is anything right in this 
house ? There are my boot-hooks on the wrong 
side of the table again a second time, by Jove ! 
If I had these lazy vagabonds in the East, egad, 
I'd give them stick enough. But I was a fool 
to leave Rudnuggadhar for the misery and ne- 
glect of this wretched rat-hole !" 

" But, my love, I am sure everyone tries all 
they can to make you comfortable. Do not 
talk of that horrid hot place. See how nice and 
cool " 

" Cool ?" repeated the colonel. " I tell you, 
I never suffered so much from heat in all my 
life, as I endure in England. Everything is 
arranged here for winter, and, when a few hot 
days come, phew! you are melted, scorched, 
burnt up. Hot clothes, hot streets, hot houses, 
and, confound it, worse than all, hot beer !" 

Disgusted, he seated himself at the breakfast- 
table. 

"Where is that confounded boy? And" 
(pointing to cook) " what is she doing here ?" 

Mrs. Wilson, who had been waiting for her 
turn to come, hastily retreated. 

" You see," began Mrs. Chutney, hesitatingly, 
" I thought I should have time to go over the 
books with her before you came down, dear." 

" Ha ! Just your usual way. Everything 
out of place ; everything out of time. There 
you are, hurrying over your books that require 
the utmost deliberation, keeping Wilson here 
while the hall is in disgraceful confusion." 

The page entered and set on the breakfast, 
while the irate colonel continued : " I stumbled 
over a broom and a mat ! a mat and a broom, 
by Jove ! as I came down. Lift this," pointing 
to the cover, and addressing the page. " Ha ! 
bloaters again !" 

"But you said you liked bloaters," urged 
Mrs. Chutney. 

"Who said I didn't?" returned her hus- 
band, "but the next time I get them twice 
in the same week, I'll go and breakfast at the 
club." 

The repast now proceeded in peace that is, 
silence for a while, when the page. re-entered, 



Charles Dickens.] 



ALL THE YEAR ROUND. 



[September 16, 1865.] 187 



and iu formed Colonel Chutney that his tailor 
had waited on him by appointment. 

" Show him into the dining-room. I will be 
with him directly," returned the colonel. 
" Louisa," he continued, " write a note to Sam- 
perton ; ask him to come and dine on Thursday, 
or to fix his own day. We'll get Thompson 
and Mango, and Mr. and Mrs. Bullion to meet 
him. Nice woman Mrs. Bullion ! Quite a woman 
of the world ; has her wits about her. I would 
not mind laying long odds that Bullion never 
stumbles over mats and brooms when he comes 
down to breakfast." 

" I wish Tom was in town ; he is always so 
agreeable at dinner," said Mrs. Chutney, wisely 
ignoring the disparaging conclusion of the 
colonel's speech. 

u Where is that scamp of a brother of yours ?" 
asked her husband. 

" Oh, he is improving greatly ! He has gone 
out of town somewhere to study; and is so 
determined to work, that he will not give his 
address to any one, fearing to be interrupted." 

" Ha ! he may have other reasons. How- 
ever, you have finished breakfast, so sit down, 
write to Samperton, and I will post the note 
myself." Mrs. Chutney rose obediently, and 
seated herself at the writing-table. "Don't 
forget," continued the colonel, " to ask him for 
an answer." 

u Why, of course he will send an answer 
if " 

" There's no of course in the case," said 
Colonel Chutney, sharply. "Just write as I 
tell you ;" then turning at the door, he added, 
"and be sure you write to Deal about that 
ottoman. It is too big. It is disgraceful!" 
And he left the room. 

Mrs. Chutney dipped her pen in the ink and 
began. She was a gentle timid woman, and 
had been early left an orphan to the care of a 
severe, strong-minded maiden aunt, her father's 
sister. Although she had a trifling independence, 
enough to pay for her maintenance and educa- 
tion, her aunt, nevertheless, treated her as if she 
was the most abject dependent. Her brother, 
a year or two older than herself, had, for no 
particular reason, selected medicine as his pro- 
fession, and was the very type of a medical 
student. He was a source of constant anxiety 
to his sister, whose principal comfort lay in the 
society of her cousin, Mary Holden, a girl about 
her own age, who was also a ward of the for- 
midable aunt, Miss Barbara Bousfield. 

Both these girls had been placed at the 
respectable establishment of Mrs. and the Misses 
Monitor by their guardian while yet children. 
Here they remained for nearly ten years, happy, 
with the inalienable joy of youth, despite the 
frowns of Aunt Bousfield, the monotony of 
school life, and the absence of future prospects ; 
especially for Mary Holden, whose little all did 
not afford more than enough to pay for her 
preparation for more mature years, when she 
had nothing but her own exertions to look to. 

Yet so much more depends on character than 
circumstance, that Mary Holden, the poorer of 



the cousins, successfully held her own against 
the formidable aunt ; while both Louisa and 
Tom Bousfield trembled even at the shadow of 
her coal-scuttle bonnet. 

Mrs. Chutney had scarcely finished one of 
her notes when the door opened, and a young 
lady entered in bonnet and shawl a graceful- 
looking girl, shorter and slighter than Mrs. 
Chutney, with large dark grey eyes, shaded 
by black lashes, and brown, wavy, glossy hair, 
a pert li