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BLACKWOOD'S ^w 





MAGAZINE. 



VOL. CXIV. 



JULY DECEMBER, 1873. 




WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH ; 



AND 



37 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 



1873. 

All Rights of Translation and Republication reserved. 



:Y/ / 
ro / 





BLACKWOOD'S 

y 

EDINBUKGH MAGAZINE. 



No. DCXCIII. 



JULY 1873. 



VOL. CXIV. 



THE PARISIANS. BOOK EIGHTH. 



CHAPTER 1. 



ON the 8th of May the vote of 
the plebiscite was recorded, be- 
tween seven and eight millions of 
Frenchmen in support of the impe- 
rial programme in plain words, of 
the Emperor himself against a 
minority of 1,500,000. But among 
the 1,500,000 were the old throne- 
shakers those who compose and 
those who lead the mob of Paris. 
On the 14th, as Eameau was about 
to quit the editorial bureau of his 
printing-office, a note was brought 
in to him which strongly excited 
his nervous system. It contained a 
request to see him forthwith, signed 
by those two distinguished foreign 
members of the Secret Council of 
Ten, Thaddeus Loubinsky and Leo- 
nardo Easelli. 

The meetings of that Council had 
been so long suspended that Eam- 
eau had almost forgotten its exist- 
ence. He gave orders to admit the 
conspirators. The two men en- 
tered, the Pole, tall, stalwart, 
and with martial stride the Ital- 
ian, small, emaciated, with skulk- 

VOL. CXIV. NO. DCXCIII. 



ing, noiseless, cat-like step, both 
looking wondrous threadbare, and 
in that state called " shabby gen- 
teel," which belongs to the man 
who cannot work for his livelihood, 
and assumes a superiority over the 
man who can. Their outward ap- 
pearance was in notable discord 
with that of the poet-politician he 
all new in the last fashions of Par-i 
isian elegance, and redolent of Par^" 
isian prosperity and extrait de Mons- 
seline ! 

" Confrere^ 1 said the Pole, seat- 
ing himself on the edge of the table, 
while the Italian leaned against the 
mantelpiece, and glanced round the 
room with furtive eye, as if to de- 
tect its innermost secrets, or decide 
where safest to drop a lucifer-match 
for its conflagration, " confrere" 
said the Pole, " your country needs 
you " 

" Eather, the cause of all coun- 
tries," interposed the Italian, softly, 
" Humanity." 

" Please to explain yourselves ; 
but stay, wait a moment," said 



Tlie Parisians. Boole VIII. 



Rameau j and rising, he went to the 
door, opened it, looked forth, ascer- 
tained that the coast was clear, then 
reclosed the door as cautiously as a 
prudent man closes his pocket when- 
ever shabby-genteel visitors appeal 
to him in the cause of his country, 
still more if they appeal in that of 
Humanity. 

" Confrere," said the Pole, " this 
day a movement is to be made a 
demonstration on behalf of your 
country " 

" Of Humanity," again softly in- 
terposed the Italian. 

" Attend and share it," said the 
Pole. 

" Pardon me," said Rameau, " I 
do not know what you mean. I 
am now the editor of a journal in 
which the proprietor does not coun- 
tenance violence ; and if you come 
to me as a member of the Council, 
you must be aware that I should 
obey no orders but that of its presi- 
dent, whom I have not seen for 
nearly a year ; indeed I know not 
if the Council still exists." 

" The Council exists, and with it 
the obligations it imposes," replied 
Thaddeus. 

"Pampered with luxury," here 
the Pole raised his voice, " do you 
dare to reject the voice of Poverty 
and Freedom 1 " 

" Hush, dear, but too vehement 
confrere" murmured the bland Ita- 
lian ; " permit me to dispel the 
reasonable doubts of our confrere," 
and he took out of his breast-pocket 
a paper which he presented to 
Rameau; on it were written these 
words : 

" This evening, May 14th. De- 
monstration. Faubourg du Temple. 
Watch events, under orders of 
A. M. Bid the youngest member 
take that first opportunity to test 
nerves and discretion. He is not 
to act, but to observe." 

JSTo name was appended to this 
instruction, but a cipher intelligible 



[July 

to all members of the Council as 
significant of its president, Jean 
Lebeau. 

" If I err not," said the Italian, 
"Citizen Rameau is our youngest 
confrere" 

Rameau paused. The penalties 
for disobedience to an order of the 
President of the Council were too 
formidable to be disregarded. There 
could be no doubt that, though his 
name was not mentioned, he, Ram- 
eau, was accurately designated as 
the youngest member of the Coun- 
cil. Still, however he might have 
owed his present position to the 
recommendation of Lebeau, there 
was nothing in the conversation of 
M. de Maule'on which would warrant 
participation in a popular entente 
by the editor of a journal belonging 
to that mocker of the mob. Ah ! 
but and here again he glanced over 
the paper he was asked " not to 
act, but to observe." To observe 
was the duty of a journalist. He 
might go to the demonstration as 
De Mauleon confessed he had gone 
to the Communist Club, a philoso- 
phical spectator. 

" You do not disobey this order ?" 
said the Pole, crossing his arms. 

"I shall certainly go into the 
Faubourg du Temple this evening," 
answered Eameau, drily ; "I have 
business that way." 

" Bon!" said the Pole; "I did 
not think you would fail us, though 
you do edit a journal which says 
not a word on the duties that bind 
the French people to the resuscita- 
tion of Poland." 

"And is not pronounced in de- 
cided accents upon the cause of the 
human race," put in the Italian, 
whispering. 

"I do not write the political 
articles in ' Le Sens Commun,' " an- 
swered Rameau; "and I suppose 
that our president is satisfied with 
them since he recommended me to 
the preference of the person who 



1873.] 



The Parisians. Book VI1L 



does. HaTe you more to say? 
Pardon me, my time is precious, for 
it does not belong to me." 

"Eno!" said the Italian, "we 
will detain you no longer." Here, 
with bow and smile, he glided to- 
wards the door. 

" Confrere^ muttered the Pole, 
lingering, "you must have become 
very rich ! do not forget the wrongs 
of Poland I am their Eepresenta- 
tive I speaking in that character, 
not as myself individually / have 
not breakfasted !" 

Eameau, too thoroughly Parisian 
not to be as lavish of his own money 
as he was envious of another's, 
slipped some pieces of gold into the 
Pole's hand. The Pole's bosom 
heaved with manly emotion : "These 
pieces bear the effigies of the tyrant 
I accept them as redeemed from 
disgrace by their uses to Free- 
dom." 

" Share them with Signer Easelli 
in the name of the same cause," 
whispered Eameau, with a smile he 
might have plagiarised from De 
Mauleon. 

The Italian, whose ear was in- 
ured to whispers, heard and turned 
round as he stood at the threshold. 

"No, confrere of France no, 
confrere of Poland I am Italian. 
All ways to take the life of an 
enemy are honourable no way is 
honourable which begs money from 
a friend." 

An hour or so later, Eameau was 
driven in his comfortable coupe to 
the Faubourg du Temple. 

Suddenly, at the angle of a street, 
his coachman was stopped a rough- 
looking man appeared at the door 
" Descend, mon petit bourgeois." 
Behind the rough-looking man were 
menacing faces. 

Eameau was not physically a 
coward very few Frenchmen are, 
still fewer Parisians ; and still fewer, 
no matter what their birthplace, 
the men whom we call vain the 



men who over-much covet distinc- 
tion, and over-much dread reproach. 

" Why should I descend at your 
summons," said Eameau, haughtily. 
" Bah ! Coachman, drive on !" 

The rough-looking man opened 
the door, and silently extended a 
hand to Eameau, saying gently : 
"Take my advice, mon bourgeois. 
Get out we want your carriage. 
It is a day of barricades every little 
helps, even your coupe / " 

While this man spoke others ges- 
ticulated; some shrieked out, "He 
is an employer, he thinks he can 
drive over the employed ! " Some 
leader of the crowd a Parisian 
crowd always has a classical leader, 
who has never read the classics 
thundered forth, " Tarquin's car ! " 
"Down with Tarquin!" Therewith 
came a yell, "A la lanterne Tar- 
quin ! " 

We Anglo-Saxons, of the old 
country or the new, are not famil- 
iarised to the dread roar of a pop- 
ulace delighted to have a Eoman 
authority for tearing us to pieces ; 
still Americans know what is Lynch 
law. Eameau was in danger of 
Lynch law, when suddenly a face 
not unknown to him interposed be- 
tween himself and the rough-looking 
man. 

"Ha!" cried this new-comer, 
" My young confrere, Gustave Ea- 
meau, welcome ! Citizens, make 
way. I answer for this patriot I, 
Armand Monnier. He comes to 
help us. Is this the way you re- 
ceive him ? " Then in low voice to 
Eameau, " Come out. Give your 
coupe to the barricade. What mat- 
ters such rubbish ? Trust to me 
I expected you. Hist! Lebeau 
bids me see that you are safe." 

Eameau then, seeking to drape 
himself in majesty, as the aristo- 
crats of journalism in a city wherein 
no other aristocracy is recognised, 
naturally and commendably do, 
when ignorance combined with phy- 



Tlte Parisians. Book VIII. 



[July 



sical strength asserts itself to be a 
power, beside which the power of 
knowledge is what a learned poodle 
is to a tiger Rameau then descended 
from his coupe, and said to this 
Titan of labour, as a French marqnis 
might have said to his valet, and as, 
when the French marqnis has be- 
come a ghost of the past, the man 
who keeps a coupe says to the man 
who mends its wheels, " Honest 
fellow, I trust you." 

Monnierled the journalist through 
the mob to the rear of the barricade 
hastily constructed. Here were as- 
sembled very motley groups. 

The majority were ragged boys, 
the gamins of Paris, commingled 
with several women of no reputable 
appearance, some dingily, some gau- 
dily apparelled. The crowd did not 
appear as if the business in hand 
was a very serious one. Amidst 
the din of voices the sound of 
laughter rose predominant, jests and 
bons mots flew from lip to lip. The 
astonishing good -humour of the 
Parisians was not yet excited into 
the ferocity that grows out of it by 
a street contest. It was less like a 
popular emeute than a gathering of 
schoolboys, bent not less on fun 
than on mischief. But still, amid 
this gayer crowd were sinister, 
lowering faces ; the fiercest were 
not those of the very poor, but rather 
of artisans who, to judge by their 
dress, seemed well off of men be- 
longing to yet higher grades. Ra- 
meau distinguished amongst these 
the medecin des pauvres, the philo- 
sophical atheist, sundry young long- 
haired artists, middle-aged writers 
for the Republican press, in close 
neighbourhood with ruffians of vil- 
lainous aspect, who might have been 
newly returned from the galleys. 
None were regularly armed ; still re- 
volvers and muskets and long knives 
were by no means unfrequently 
interspersed among the rioters. The 
whole scene was to Rameau a con- 



fused panorama, and the dissonant 
tumult of yells and laughter, of 
menace and joke, began rapidly to 
act on his impressionable nerves. 
He felt that which is the prevalent 
character of a Parisian riot the 
intoxication of an impulsive sym- 
pathy ; coming there as a reluctant 
spectator, if action commenced, he 
would have been borne readily into 
the thick of the action he could 
not have helped it ; already he grew 
impatient of the suspense of strife. 
Monnier having deposited him safe- 
ly with his back to a wall, at the 
corner of a street handy for flight, 
if flight became expedient, had left 
him for several minutes, having 
business elsewhere. Suddenly the 
whisper of the Italian stole into his 
ear " These men are fools. This 
is not the way to do business ; this 
does not hurt the Robber of Nice 
Garibaldi's Nice : they should 
have left it to me." 

"What would you do 1" 
" I have invented a new machine," 
whispered the Friend of Humanity ; 
" it would remove all at one blow 
lion and lioness, whelp and jackals 
and then the Revolution if you 
will ! not this paltry tumult. The 
cause of the human race is being 
frittered away. I am disgusted witli 
Lebeau. Thrones are not overturned 
by gamins" 

Before Rameau could answer, Mon- 
nier rej oined him. The artisan's face- 
was overcast his lips compressed , yet 
quivering with indignation. " Bro- 
ther," he said to Rameau, " to-day 
the cause is betrayed " (the word 
trahi was just then coming into 
vogue at Paris) "the blouses I 
counted on are recreant. I have just 
learned that all is quiet in the other 
quartiers where the rising was to 
have been simultaneous with this. 
We are in a guet-a-pens the soldiers 
will be down on us in a few min- 
utes; hark ! don't you hear the distant 
tramp 1 Nothing for us but to die 



1873.' 



TJte Parisians. Book VIII. 



like men. Our blood will be avenged 
later. Here," and he thrust a re- 
volver into Eameau's hand. Then 
with a lusty voice that rang through 
the crowd, he shouted " Vive le 
peuple ! " The rioters caught and re- 
echoed the cry, mingled with other 
cries, " Vive la Republique ! Vive 
le drapeau rouge /" 

The shouts were yet at their full 
when a strong hand grasped Mon- 
nier's arm, and a clear, deep, but low 
voice thrilled through his ear 
" Obey ! I warned you. No fight 
to-day. Time not ripe. All that is 
needed is done do not undo it. 
Hist ! the sergens de mile are force 
enough to disperse the swarm of 
those gnats. Behind the sergens 
come soldiers who will not frater- 
nise. Lose not one life to-day. The 
morrow when we shall need every 
man nay, every gamin will dawn 
soon. Answer not. Obey!" The 
same strong hand, quitting its hold 
on Monnier, then seized Eameau by 
the wrist, and the same deep voice 
said, "Come with me." Eameau, 
turning in amaze, not unmixed with 
anger, saw beside him a tall man 
with sombrero hat pressed close over 
his head, and in the blouse of a 
labourer, but through such disguise 
he recognised the pale grey whiskers 
and green spectacles of Lebeau. He 
yielded passively to the grasp that 
led him away down the deserted 
street at the angle. 

At the further end of that street, 
however, was heard the steady thud 
of hoofs. 

" The soldiers are taking the mob 
at its rear," said Lebeau, calmly; 
" we have not a moment to lose 
this way," and he plunged into a 
dismal court, then into a labyrinth 
of lanes, followed mechanically by 
Eameau. They issued at last on the 
Boulevards, in which the usual loun- 
gers were quietly sauntering, wholly 
unconscious of the riot elsewhere. 
" Now, take fh&t fiacre and go home ; 



write down your impressions of 
what you have seen, and take your 
MS. to M. de Mauleon." Lebeau 
here quitted him. 

Meanwhile all happened as Le- 
beau had predicted. The sergens de 
ville showed themselves in front 
of the barricades, a small troop of 
mounted soldiers appeared in the 
rear. The mob greeted the first with 
yells and a shower of stones ; at the 
sight of the last they fled in all di- 
rections ; and the sergens de ville, 
calmly scaling the barricades, carried 
off in triumph, as prisoners of war, 
4 gamins, 3 women, and 1 Irishman 
loudly protesting innocence, and 
shrieking " Murther ! " So ended that 
first inglorious rise against the ple- 
biscite and the Empire, on the 14th 
of May 1870. 

From Isaura Cicogna to Madame 
Grandmesnil. 

"Saturday, May 21, 1870. 
" I am still, dearest Eulalie, under 
the excitement of impressions wholly 
new to me. I have this day wit- 
nessed one of those scenes which 
take us out of our private life, not 
into the world of fiction, but of his- 
tory, in which we live as in the life 
of a nation. You know how inti- 
mate I have become with Valerie 
Duplessis. She is in herself so 
charming in her combination of petu- 
lant wilfulness and guileless naivete 
that she might sit as a model for one 
of your exquisite heroines. Her 
father, who is in great favour at Court, 
had tickets for the Salle des Etats 
of the Louvre to-day when, as the 
journals will tell you, the results 
of the plebiscite were formally an- 
nounced to the Emperor and I ac- 
companied him and Valerie. I felt, 
on entering the hall, as if I had been 
living for months in an atmosphere 
of false rumours, for those I chiefly 
meet in the circles of artists and men 
of letters, and the wits and flaneurs 
who haunt such circles, are nearly all 



G 



TJie Parisians. Book VIII. 



[July 



hostile to the Emperor. They agree, 
at least, in asserting the decline of 
his popularity the failure of his 
intellectual powers; in predicting his 
downfall deriding the notion of a 
successor in his son. Well, I know 
not how to reconcile these state- 
ments with the spectacle I have be- 
held to-day. 

" In the chorus of acclamation 
amidst which the Emperor entered 
the hall, it seemed as if one heard 
the voice of the France he had just 
appealed to. If the Fates are really 
weaving woe and shame in his woof, 
it is in hues which, to mortal eyes, 
seem brilliant with glory and joy. 

"You will read the address of the 
President of the Corps Legislatif ; 
I wonder how it will strike you. I 
own fairly that me it wholly carried 
away. At each sentiment I mur- 
mured to myself, ' Is not this true 1 
and, if true, are France and human 
nature ungrateful 1 ?' 

" * It is now,' said the President, 
' eighteen years since France, wearied 
with confusion, and anxious for secu- 
rity, confiding in your genius and the 
Napoleonic dynasty, placed in your 
hands, together with the Imperial 
Crown, the authority which the pub- 
lic necessity demanded.' Then the 
address proceeded to enumerate the 
blessings that ensued social order 
speedily restored the welfare of all 
classes of society promoted ad- 
vances in commerce and manufac- 
tures to an extent hitherto unknown. 
Is not this true 1 and if so, are you, 
noble daughter of France, ungrate- 
ful] 

" Then came words which touched 
me deeply me, who, knowing no- 
thing of politics, still feel the link 
that unites Art to Freedom : * But 
from the first your Majesty has looked 
forward to the time when this con- 
centration of power would no longer 
correspond to the aspirations of a 
tranquil and reassured country, and, 
foreseeing the progress of modern so- 



ciety, you proclaimed that " Liberty 
must be the crowning of the edifice." * 
Passing then over the previous 
gradual advances in popular govern- 
ment, the President came to the 
' present self-abnegation, unprece- 
dented in history,' and to the vin- 
dication of that plebiscite which I 
have heard so assailed, viz., Fi- 
delity to the great principle upon 
which the throne was founded, re- 
quired that so important a modifica- 
tion ofapower bestowed by the people 
should not be made Avithout the par- 
ticipation of the people themselves. 
Then, enumerating the millions who 
had welcomed the new form of gov- 
ernment the President paused a se- 
cond or two, as if with suppressed emo- 
tion and every one present held his 
breath, till, in a deeper voice, through 
which there ran a quiver that thrilled 
through the hall, he concluded with 
'France is with you; France 
places the cause of liberty under the 
protection of your dynasty and the 
great bodies of the State.' Is France 
with him 2 I know not ; but if the 
malcontents of France had been in 
the hall at that moment, I believe 
they would have felt the power of 
that wonderful sympathy which com- 
pels all the hearts in great audiences 
to beat in accord, and would have 
answered, ' It is true.' 

" All eyes now fixed on the Em- 
peror, and I noticed few eyes which 
were not moist with tears. You 
know that calm unrevealing face of 
his a face which sometimes disap- 
points expectation. But there is 
that in it which I have seen in no- 
other, but which I can imagine to 
have been common to the Romans 
of old, the dignity that arises from 
self-control an expression which 
seems removed from the elation of 
joy, the depression of sorrow not 
unbecoming to one who has known 
great vicissitudes of Fortune, and is- 
prepared alike for her frowns or her 
smiles. 



1873.] 



Tie Parisians. Boole VIII. 



" I had looked at that face while 
M. Schneider was reading the ad- 
dress it moved not a muscle, it 
might have been a face of marble. 
Even when at moments the words 
were drowned in applause, and the 
Empress, striving at equal compo- 
sure, still allowed us to see a move- 
ment of her eyelids, a tremble on 
her lips. The boy at his right, heir 
to his dynasty, had his looks fixed 
on the President, as if eagerly swal- 
lowing each word in the address, 
save once or twice, when he looked 
round the hall curiously, and with 
a smile as a mere child might look. 
He struck me as a mere child. Next 
to the Prince was one of those coun- 
tenances which once seen are never 
to be forgotten the true Napoleonic 
type, brooding, thoughtful, ominous, 
beautiful. But not with the serene 
energy that characterises the head 
of the first Napoleon when Empe- 
ror, and wholly without the restless 
eagerness for action which is stamped 
in the lean outline of Napoleon when 
Eirst Consul : no, in Prince Napo- 
leon, there is the beauty to which, 
as woman, I could never give my 
heart were I man, the intellect 
that would not command my trust. 
But, nevertheless, in beauty it is 
signal, and in that beauty the ex- 
pression of intellect is predominant. 

" Oh, dear Eulalie, how I am 
digressing ! The Emperor spoke 
and believe me, Eulalie, whatever 
the journals or your compatriots 
may insinuate, there is in that man 
no sign of declining intellect or 
failing health. I care not what may 
be his years, but that man is in mind 
and in health as young as Caesar 
when he crossed the Rubicon. 

" The old cling to the past they 
do not go forward to the future. 
There was no going back in that 
speech of the Emperor. There was 
something grand and something 
young in the modesty with which 
he put aside all references to that 



which his Empire had done in the 
past, and said with a simple earnest- 
ness of manner which I cannot ade- 
quately describe : 

" ' We must more than ever look 
fearlessly for ward to the future. Who 
can be opposed to the progressive 
march of a regime founded by a 
great people in the midst of politi- 
cal disturbance, and which now is 
fortified by liberty?' 

" As he closed, the walls of that 
vast hall seemed to rock with an ap- 
plause that must have been heard 
on the other side of the Seine. 

" ' Vive I'JEmpereur / ' 

" ' Vive I'lmperatrice /' 

" ' Vive le Prince Imperial ! ' 
and the last cry was yet more pro- 
longed than the others, as if to 
affirm the dynasty. 

"Certainly I can imagine no 
Court in the old days of chivalry 
more splendid than the audience in 
that grand hall of the Louvre. To 
the right of the throne all the am- 
bassadors of the civilised world in 
the blaze of their rich costumes and 
manifold orders. In the gallery at 
the left, yet more behind, the dresses 
and jewels of the dames d'lwnneur 
and of the great officers of State. 
And when the Empress rose to de- 
part, certainly my fancy cannot pic- 
ture a more queen-like image, or one 
that seemed more in unison with 
the representation of royal pomp 
and power. The very dress, of a 
colour which would have been fatal 
to the beauty of most women equally 
fair a deep golden colour (Valerie 
profanely called it buff ) seemed so 
to suit the splendour of the cere- 
mony and the day ; it seemed as if 
that stately form stood in the midst 
of a sunlight reflected from itself. 
Day seemed darkened when that 
sunlight passed away. 

"I fear you will think I have 
suddenly grown servile to the gauds 
and shows of mere royalty. I ask 
myself if that be so I think not. 



8 



The Parisians. Book VIII. 



[July 



Surely it is a higher sense of great- 
ness which has been impressed on 
me by the pageant of to-day : I feel 
as if there were brought vividly 
before me the majesty of France, 
through the representation of the 
ruler she has crowned. 

" I feel also as if there, in that 
hall, I found a refuge from all the 
warring contests in which no two 
seem to me in agreement as to the 
sort of government to be established 
in place of the present. The l Liber- 
ty ' clamoured for by one would cut 
the throat of 'the Liberty' wor- 
shipped by another. 

"I see a thousand phantom forms 
of LIBERTY but only one living 
symbol of ORDER that which spoke 
from a throne to-day." 



Isaura left her letter uncompleted. 
On the following Monday she was 
present at a crowded soiree given by 
M. Louvier. Among the guests 
were some of the most eminent 
leaders of the Opposition, including 
that vivacious master of sharp say- 
ings, M. P , whom Savarin en- 
titled "the French Sheridan;" if 
laws could be framed in epigrams 
he would be also the French Solon. 

There, too, was Victor de Mau- 
le*on, regarded by the Republican 
party with equal admiration and 
distrust. For the distrust, he him- 
self pleasantly accounted in talk with 
Savarin. 

" How can I expect to be trusted i 
I represent * Common Sense ;' every 
Parisian likes Common Sense in 
print, and cries ' Je suis tralii ' when 
Common Sense is to be put into 
action." 

A group of admiring listeners had 
collected round one (perhaps the 
most brilliant) of those oratorical 
lawyers by whom, in France, the 
respect for all law has been so often 
talked away: he was speaking of 
the Saturday's ceremonial with elo- 



quent indignation. It was a mock- 
ery to France to talk of her placing 
Liberty under the protection of the 
Empire. 

There was a flagrant token of the 
military force under which civil 
freedom was held in the very dress 
of the Emperor and his insignificant 
son : the first in the uniform of a 
General of Division ; the second, 
forsooth, in that of a sous lieu- 
tenant. Then other liberal chiefs 
chimed in : " The army," said one, 
" was an absurd expense ; it must 
be put down:" "The world was 
grown too civilised for war," said 
another : " The Empress was priest- 
ridden," said a third : " Churches 
might be tolerated ; Voltaire built 
a church, but a church simply to 
the God of Mature, not of priest- 
craft," and so on. 

Isaura, whom any sneer at re- 
ligion pained and revolted, here 
turned away from the orators to 
whom she had before been listening 
with earnest attention, and her 
eyes fell on the countenance of De 
Mauleon who was seated opposite j 
the countenance startled her, its ex- 
pression was so angrily scornful ; 
that expression, however, vanished 
at once as De Maule"on's eye met 
her own, and drawing his chair near 
to her, he said, smiling : " Your look 
tells me that I almost frightened 
you by the ill-bred frankness with 
which my face must have betrayed 
my anger, at hearing such imbecile 
twaddle from men who aspire to 
govern our turbulent France. You 
remember that after Lisbon was 
destroyed by an earthquake, a quack 
advertised 'pills against earth- 
quakes.' These messieurs are not 
so cunning as the quack ; he did not 
name the ingredients of his pills." 

"But, M. de Mauleon," said 
Isaura, "if you, being opposed to 
the Empire, think so ill of the wis- 
dom of those who would destroy it, 
are you prepared with remedies for 



1873.] 

earthquakes more efficacious than 
their pills?" 

"I reply as a famous English 
statesman, when in opposition, re- 
plied to a somewhat similar ques- 
tion, 'I don't prescribe till I'm 
called in.'" 

" To judge by the seven millions 
and a half whose votes were an- 
nounced on Saturday, and by the 
enthusiasm with which the Emperor 
was greeted, there is too little fear 
of an earthquake for a good trade 
to the pills of these messieurs, or 
for fair play to the remedies you 
will not disclose till called in." 

"Ah, mademoiselle ! playful wit 
from lips not formed for politics, 
makes me forget all about emper- 
ors and earthquakes. Pardon that 
commonplace compliment remem- 
ber I am a Frenchman, and cannot 
help being frivolous." 

" You rebuke my presumption too 
gently. True, I ought not to in- 
trude political subjects on one like 
you I understand so little about 
them but this is my excuse, I so 
desire to know more." 

M. de Mauleon paused, and 
looked at her earnestly with a 
kindly, half -compassionate look, 
wholly free from the impertinence 
of gallantry. " Young poetess," he 
said, softly, " you care for politics ! 
Happy, indeed, is he and whether 
he succeed or fail in his ambition 
abroad, proud should he be of an 
ambition crowned at home he who 
has made you desire to know more 
of politics ! " 

The girl felt the blood surge 
to her temples. How could she 
have been so self-confessed 1 ? She 
made no reply, nor did M. de 
Maule'on seem to expect one ; with 
that rare delicacy of high breeding 
which appears in Erance to belong 
to a former generation, he changed 
his tone, and went on as if there 
had been no interruption to the 
question her words implied. 



The Parisians. Book VIII. 



9 



"You think the Empire secure 
that it is menaced by no earthquake 1 
You deceive yourself. The Em- 
peror began with a fatal mistake, 
but a mistake it needs many years 
to discover. He disdained the slow 
natural process of adjustment be- 
tween demand and supply em- 
ployer and workmen. He desired 
no ignoble ambition to make Paris 
the wonder of the world, the eternal 
monument of his reign. In so 
doing, he sought to create artificial 
modes of content for revolutionary 
workmen. Never has any ruler 
had such tender heed of manual 
labour to the disparagement of in- 
tellectual culture. Paris is embel- 
lished ; Paris is the wonder of the 
world : other great towns have fol- 
lowed its example ; they, too, have 
their rows of palaces and temples. 
Well, the time comes when the 
magician can no longer give work 
to the spirits he raises ; then they 
must fall on him and rend : out of 
the very houses he built for the 
better habitation of workmen will 
flock the malcontents who cry, 
' Down with the Empire ! ' On 
the 21st of May you witnessed the 
pompous ceremony which announces 
to the Empire a vast majority of 
votes, that will be utterly useless to 
it except as food for gunpowder in 
the times that are at hand. Seven 
days before, on the 14th of May, 
there was a riot in the Faubourg du 
Temple easily put down you 
scarcely hear of it. That riot was 
not the less necessary to those 
who would warn the Empire that 
it is mortal. True, the riot dis- 
perses but it is unpunished : 
riot unpunished is a revolution 
begun. The earthquake is nearer 
than you think ; and for that earth- 
quake what are the pills yon 
quacks advertise ? They prate of an 
age too enlightened for war; they 
would mutilate the army nay, 
disband it if they could with 



10 



The Parisians. Boole VIII. 



Prussia next door to France. Prussia, 
desiring, not unreasonably, to take 
that place in the world which 
France now holds, will never chal- 
lenge France ; if she did, she would 
be too much in the wrong to find a 
second : Prussia, knowing that she 
has to do with the vainest, the most 
conceited, the rashest antagonist 
that ever flourished a rapier in the 
face of a spadassin Prussia will 
make France challenge her. 

" And how do ces messieurs deal 
with the French army? Do they 
dare say to the ministers, * Reform 
it'? Do they dare say, * Prefer for 
men whose first duty it is to obey, 
discipline to equality insist on 
the distinction between the officer 
and the private, and never confound 
it ; Prussian officers are well edu- 
cated gentlemen, see that yours are"? 
Oh no; they are democrats too 
stanch not to fraternise with an 
armed mob ; they content them- 
selves with grudging an extra sou 
to the Commissariat, and winking 
at the millions fraudulently pocketed 
by some ' Liberal contractor.' Dieu 
des dieux! France to be beaten, 
not as at Waterloo by hosts com- 
bined, but in fair duel by a single 
foe ! Oh, the shame ! the shame ! 
But as the French army is now 
organised, beaten she must be, 
if she meets the march of the Ger- 
man." 

" You appal me with your sinis- 
ter predictions," said Isaura ; " but, 
happily, there is no sign of war. 
M. Duplessis, who is in the confi- 
dence of the Emperor, told us only 
the other day that Napoleon, on 
learning the result of the plebiscite, 
said : ' The foreign journalists who 
have been insisting that the Empire 
cannot coexist with free institu- 
tions, will no longer hint that it can 
be safely assailed from without.' 



[July 

And more than ever I may say,. 
U Empire c'est la paix ! " 

Monsieur de Mauleon shrugged 
his shoulders. " The old story 
Troy and the wooden horse." 

"Tell me, M. de Mauleon, why 
do you, who so despise the Opposi- 
tion, join with it in opposing the 
Empire ? " 

"Mademoiselle, the Empire op- 
poses me; while it lasts I cannot 
be even a Depute; when it is gone, 
heaven knows what I may be, 
perhaps Dictator; one thing you 
may rely upon, that I would, if not 
Dictator myself, support any man 
who was Wtter fitted for that task." 

"Better fitted to destroy the 
liberty which he pretended to fight 
for ! " 

" Not exactly so," replied M. de 
Mauleon, imperturbably " better 
fitted to establish a good govern- 
ment in lieu of the bad one he had 
fought against, and the much worse 
governments that would seek to 
turn France into a madhouse, and 
make the maddest of the inmates 
the mad doctor ! " He turned away, 
and here their conversation ended. 

But it so impressed Isaura, that 
the same night she concluded her 
letter to Madame de Grantmesnil 
by giving a sketch of its substance, 
prefaced by an ingenuous confession 
that she felt less sanguine confidence 
in the importance of the applauses 
which had greeted the Emperor at 
the Saturday's ceremonial, and end- 
ing thus : "I can but confusedly 
transcribe the words of this singular 
man, and can give you no notion of 
the manner and the voice which 
made them eloquent. Tell me, can 
there be any truth in his gloomy 
predictions 1 I try not to think so, 
but they seem to rest over that 
brilliant hall of the Louvre like an 
ominous thunder-cloud." 



1873.] 



TJie Parisians. Book VIII. 



11 



CHAPTER II. 



The Marquis de Rochebriant was 
seated in his pleasant apartment, 
glancing carelessly at the envelopes 
of many notes and letters lying yet 
unopened on his breakfast - table. 
He had risen late at noon, for he 
had not gone to bed till dawn. The 
night had been spent at his club 
over the card-table by no means 
to the pecuniary advantage of the 
Marquis. The reader will have 
learned, through the conversation 
recorded in a former chapter between 
De Mauleon and Enguerrand de 
Vandemar, that the austere Seig- 
neur Breton had become a fast 
viveur of Paris. He had long 
since spent the remnant of Louvier's 
premium of .1000, and he owed a 
year's interest. For this last there 
was an excuse M. Collot, the con- 
tractor to whom he had been ad- 
vised to sell the yearly fall of his 
forest-trees, had removed the trees, 
but had never paid a sou beyond 
the preliminary deposit ; so that the 
revenue, out of which the mortgagee 
should be paid his interest, was not 
forthcoming. Alain had instructed 
M. Hebert to press the contractor ; 
the contractor had replied, that if 
not pressed he could soon settle all 
claims if pressed, he must declare 
himself bankrupt. The Chevalier 
de Finisterre had laughed at the 
alarm which Alain conceived when 
he first found himself in the condi- 
tion of debtor for a sum he could 
not pay creditor for a sum he could 
not recover. 

"Bagatelle!" said the Chevalier. 
" Tschu ! Collot, if you give him 
time, is as safe as the Bank of 
France, and Louvier knows it. 
Louvier will not trouble you 
Louvier, the best fellow in the 
world ! I'll call on him and ex- 
plain matters." 

It is to be presumed that the 



Chevalier did so explain ; for though 
both at the first, and quite recently 
at the second default of payment, 
Alain received letters from M. Lou- 
vier's professional agent, as re- 
minders of interest due, and as 
requests for its payment, the Che- 
valier assured him that these appli- 
cations were formalities of conven- 
tion that Louvier, in fact, knew 
nothing about them; and when 
dining with the great financier him- 
self, and cordially welcomed and 
called " Mon clier" Alain had taken 
him aside and commenced explana- 
tion and excuse, Louvier had cut 
him short. " Peste ! don't mention 
such trifles. There is such a thing 
as business that concerns my 
agent; such a thing as friendship 
that concerns me. AHez!" 

Thus M. de Rochebriant, con- 
fiding in debtor and in creditor, 
had suffered twelve months to glide 
by without much heed of either, 
and more than lived up to an in- 
come amply sufficient indeed for the 
wants of an ordinary bachelor, but 
needing more careful thrift than 
could well be expected from the 
head of one of the most illustrious 
houses in France, cast so young 
into the vortex of the most ex- 
pensive capital in the world. 

The poor Marquis glided into tho 
grooves that slant downward, much 
as the French Marquis of tradition 
was wont to slide ; not that he 
appeared to live extravagantly, but 
he needed all he had for his pocket- 
money, and had lost that dread of 
being in debt which he had brought 
up from the purer atmosphere of 
Bretagne. 

But there were some debts which, 
of course, a Rochebriant must pay 
debts of honour and Alain had, 
on the previous night, incurred such 
a debt, and must pay it that day. 



12 



Frisians. Boole VIII. 



He had been strongly tempted, 
when the debt rose to the figure it 
had attained, to risk a change of 
luck ; but whatever his imprudence, 
he was incapable of dishonesty. 
If the luck did not change, and he 
lost more, he would be without 
means to meet his obligations. As 
the debt now stood, he calculated 
that he could just discharge it by 
the sale of his coupe and horses. 
It is no wonder he left his letters 
unopened, however charming they 
might be ; he was quite sure they 
would contain no cheque which 
would enable him to pay his debt 
and retain his equipage. 

The door opened, and the valet 
announced M. le Chevalier de Finis- 
terre a man with smooth counte- 
nance and air distingue, a pleasant 
voice and perpetual smile. 

"Well, mon cher" cried the 
Chevalier, "I hope that you re- 
covered the favour of Fortune before 
you quitted her green table last 
night. When I left she seemed 
very cross with you." 

" And so continued to the end," 
answered Alain, with well-simulated 
gaiety much too bon gentilhomme 
to betray rage or anguish for pe- 
cuniary loss. 

"After all," said De Finisterre, 
lighting his cigarette, "the uncertain 
goddess could not do you much 
harm; the stakes were small, and 
your adversary, the Prince, never 
goes double or quits." 

"Nor I either. ' Small,' how- 
ever, is a word of relative import ; 
the stakes might be small to you, 
to me large. Entre nous, cher ami, 
I am at the end of my purse, and I 
have only this consolation I am. 
cured of play ; not that I leave the 
complaint, the complaint leaves me ; 
it can no more feed on me than a 
fever can feed 011 a skeleton." 

" Are you serious ?" 

"As serious as a mourner who 
has just buried his all." 



[July 



"His all? Tut, with such an 
estate as Rochebriant !" 

For the first time in that talk 
Alain's countenance became over- 
cast. 

" And how long will Rochebriant 
be mine? You know that I hold 
it at the mercy of the mortgagee, 
whose interest has not been paid, 
and who could, if he so pleased, 
issue notice, take proceedings 
that " 

"Peste!" interrupted De Finis- 
terre ; " Louvier take proceedings ! 
Louvier, the best fellow in the 
world ! But don't I see his hand- 
writing on that envelope? No 
doubt an invitation to dinner." 

Alain took up the letter thus 
singled forth from a miscellany of 
epistles, some in female handwrit- 
ings, unsealed but ingeniously 
twisted into Gordian knots some 
also in female handwritings, care- 
fully sealed others in ill-looking 
envelopes, addressed in bold, legible, 
clerk-like caligraphy. Taken alto- 
gether, these epistles had a charac- 
ter in common ; they betokened the 
correspondence of a viveur, re- 
garded from the female side as 
young, handsome, well - born ; on 
the male side, as a viveur who had 
forgotten to pay his hosier and 
tailor. 

Louvier wrote a small, not very 
intelligible, but very masculine 
hand, as most men who think 
cautiously and act promptly do 
write. The letter ran thus : 

" Cher petit Marquis" (at that 
commencement Alain haughtily 
raised his head and bit his lips). 

" Cher petit Marquis, It is an 
age since I have seen you. No 
doubt my humble soirees are too 
dull for a beau seigneur so courted. 
I forgive you. Would I were a 
beau seigneur at your age ! Alas ! 
I am only a commonplace man of 
business, growing old, too aloft 



1873.] 



The Parisians. Boole VIII. 



from the world in which I dwell. 
You can scarcely be aware that I 
have embarked a great part of my 
capital in building speculations. 
There is a Rue de Louvier that 
runs its drains right through my 
purse. I am obliged to call in the 
moneys due to me. My agent in- 
forms me that I am just 7000 louis 
short of the total I need all other 
debts being paid in and that there 
is a trifle more than 7000 louis 
owed to me as interest on my hypo- 
tlieque on Eochebriant : kindly pay 
into his hands before the end of 
this week that sum. You have 
been too lenient to Collot, who must 
owe you more than that. Send 
agent to him. Desole to trouble 
you, and am au desespoir to think 
that my own pressing necessities 
compel me to urge you to take so 
much trouble. Mais que faire ? 
The Rue de Louvier stops the way, 
and I must leave it to my agent to 
clear it. 

" Accept all my excuses, with the 
assurance of my sentiments the most 
cordial. PAUL LOUVIER." 

Alain tossed the letter to De 
Finisterre. " Read that from the 
best fellow in the world." 

The Chevalier laid down his 
cigarette and read. " Diable f " he 
said, when he returned the letter 
and resumed the cigarette "Diable ! 
Louvier must be much pressed for 
money, or he would not have 
written in this strain. What does 
it matter? Collot owes you more 
than 7000 louis. Let your lawyer 
get them, and go to sleep with both 
ears on your pillow." 

" Ah ! you think Collot can pay 
if he will ?" 

" Ma foi ! did not M. Gandrin 
tell you that M. Collot was safe to 
buy your wood at more money than 
any one else woukLgive 1 " 

" Certainly," said Alain, com- 
forted. " Gandrin left that impres- 



sion on my mind. I will set him 
on the man. All will come right, 
I daresay ; but if it does not come 
right, what would Louvier do 1 " 

" Louvier do ! " answered Finis- 
terre, reflectively. " Well, do you 
ask my opinion and advice 1 " 

"Earnestly, I ask." 

" Honestly, then, I answer. I am 
a little on the Bourse myself most 
Parisians are. Louvier has made 
a gigantic speculation in this new 
street, and with so many other irons 
in the fire he must want all the 
money he can get at. I daresay 
that if you do not pay him what you 
owe, he must leave it to his agent 
to take steps for announcing the 
sale of Rochebriant. But he detests 
scandal ; he hates the notion of 
being severe ; rather than that, in 
spite of his difficulties, he will buy 
Rochebriant of you at a better price 
than it can command at public sale. 
Sell it to him. Appeal to him to 
act generously, and you will flatter 
him. You will get more than the 
old place is worth. Invest the sur- 
plus live as you have done, or 
better and marry an heiress. 
MorUeu! a Marquis de Rochebriant, 
if he were 60 years old, would rank 
high in the matrimonial market. 
The more the democrats have sought 
to impoverish titles and laugh down 
historical names, the more do rich 
democrat fathers-in-law seek to dec- 
orate their daughters with titles and 
give their grandchildren the heri- 
tage of historical names. You look 
shocked, pauvre ami. Let us hope,, 
then, that Collot will pay. Set 
your dog I mean your lawyer at 
him ; seize him by the throat ! " 

Before Alain had recovered from 
the stately silence with which he 
had heard this very practical counsel, 
the valet again appeared and ushered 
in M. Frederic Lemercier. 

There was no cordial acquaintance 
between the visitors. Lemercier was. 
chafed at finding himself supplanted 



14 



The Parisians. Boole VIII. 



[July 



in Alain's intimate companionship 
by so new a friend, and De Finis- 
terre affected to regard Lemercier 
as a would-be exquisite of low birth 
^nd bad taste. 

Alain, too, was a little discom- 
posed at the sight of Lemercier, 
remembering the wise cautions which 
that old college friend had wasted 
on him at the commencement of his 
Parisian career, and smitten with 
vain remorse that the cautions had 
been so arrogantly slighted. 

It was with some timidity that 
lie extended his hand to Frederic, 



and he was surprised as well as 
moved by the more than usual 
warmth with which it was grasped 
by the friend he had long neglect- 
ed. Such affectionate greeting was 
scarcely in keeping with the pride 
which characterised Frederic Le- 
mercier. 

"Ma foil" said the Chevalier, 
glancing towards the clock, "how 
time flies ! I had no idea it was so 
late. I must leave you now, my dear 
Rochebriant. Perhaps we shall meet 
at the club later I dine there to- day. 
Au plaisir, M. Lemercier." 



CHAPTER III. 



"When the door had closed on the 
Chevalier, Frederic's countenance 
became very grave. Drawing his 
chair near to Alain, he said : " We 
have not seen much of each other 
lately, nay, no excuses ; I am 
well aware that it could scarcely be 
otherwise. Paris has grown so 
large and so subdivided into sets, 
that the best friends belonging to 
different sets become as divided 
as if the Atlantic flowed between 
them. I come to-day in conse- 
quence of something I have just 
heard from Duplessis. Tell me, 
have you got the money for the 
wood you sold to M. Collot a year 
ago?" 

" No" said Alain, falteringly. 

" Good heavens ! none of it 1 ?" 

" Only the deposit of ten per 
cent, which of course I spent, for 
it formed the greater part of my 
income. What of Collot? Is he 
really unsafe ? " 

"He is ruined, and has fled the 
country. His flight was the talk 
of the Bourse this morning. Du- 
plessis told me of it." 

Alain's face paled. "How is 
Louvier to be paid? Bead that 
letter ! " 

Lemercier rapidly scanned his 



eye over the contents of Louvier's 
letter. 

"It is true, then, that you owe 
this man a year's interest more 
than 7000 louis ? " 

" Somewhat more yes. But 
that is not the first care that 
troubles me Rochebriant may be 
lost, but with it not my honour. I 
owe the Russian Prince 300 louis, 
lost to him last night at ecarte. I 
must find a purchaser for my coupe 
and horses ; they cost me 600 louis 
last year, do you know any one 
who will give me three ? " 

" Pooh ! I will give you six ; 
your alezan alone is worth half the 
money ! " 

" My dear Frederic, I will not 
sell them to you on any account. 
But you have so many friends 



" Who would give their soul to 
say, 'I bought these horses of 
Rochebriant.' Of course I do. Ha ! 
young Rameau, you are acquainted 
with him?" 

" Rameau ! I never heard of 
him!" 

" Vanity of vanities, then what 
is fame ! Rameau is the editor of 
' Le Sens Commun* You read that 
journal !" 



1873.] 



The Parisians. Book VIII. 



15 



" Yes, it has clever articles, and 
I remember how I was absorbed in 
the eloquent roman which appeared 
in it." 

"Ah! by the Signora Cicogna, 
with whom I think you were some- 
what smitten last year." 

"Last year was I? How a 
year can alter a man ! But my 
debt to the Prince. What has 
4 Le Sens Gommun ' to do with my 
horses?" 

" I met Eameau at Savarin's the 
other evening. He was making 
himself out a hero and a martyr ; 
Ms coupe had been taken from him 
to assist in a barricade in that sense- 
less emeute ten days ago ; the coupe 
got smashed, the horses disap- 
peared. He will buy one of your 
horses and coupe. Leave it to me ! 
I know where to dispose of the 
other two horses. At what hour 
do you want the money ? " 

"Before I go to dinner at the 
club." 

"You shall have it within two 
hours ; but you must not dine at 
the club to-day. I have a note 
from Duplessis to invite you to 
dine with him to-day ! " 

" Duplessis 1 I know so little of 
him ! " 

"You should know him better. 
He is the only man who can give 
you sound advice as to this difficul- 
ty with Louvier, and he will give 
it the more carefully and zealously 
because he has that enmity to 
Louvier which one rival financier 
has to another. I dine with him 
too. We shall find an occasion to 
consult him quietly ; he speaks of 
you most kindly. What a lovely 
girl his daughter is ! " 

" I daresay. Ah ! I wish I had 
been less absurdly fastidious. I 
wish I had entered the army as a 
private soldier six months ago ; I 
should have been a corporal by 
this time ! Still it is not too late. 
When Rochebriant is gone, I can 



yet say with the Mousquetaire in 
the melodmme : ' I am rich I have 
my honour and my sword ! ' " 

"Nonsense ! Eochebriant shall be 
saved ; meanwhile I hasten to Ea- 
meau. Au revoir, at the Hotel Du- 
plessis seven o'clock. 

Lemercier went, and in less than 
two hours sent the Marquis bank- 
notes for 600 louis, requesting an 
order for the delivery of the horses 
and carriage. 

That order written and signed, 
Alain hastened to acquit himself of 
his debt of honour, and contem- 
plating his probable ruin with a 
lighter heart, presented himself at 
the Hotel Duplessis. 

Duplessis made no pretensions to 
vie with the magnificent existence 
of Louvier. His house, though 
agreeably situated and flatteringly 
styled the Hotel Duplessis, was of 
moderate size, very unostentatiously 
furnished ; nor was it accustomed 
to receive the brilliant motley 
crowds which assembled in the 
salons of the elder financier. 

Before that year, indeed, Duples- 
sis had confined such entertain- 
ments as he gave to quiet men of 
business, or a few of the more de- 
voted and loyal partisans of the 
Imperial dynasty ; but since Valerie 
came to live with him he had 
extended his hospitalities to wider 
and livelier circles, including some 
celebrities in the world of art and 
letters as well as of fashion. Of 
the party assembled that evening at 
dinner were Isaura, with the Signora 
Venosta, one of the Imperial Minis- 
ters, the Colonel whom Alain had 
already met at Lemercier's supper, 
Deputes (ardent Imperialists), and 
the Duchesse de Tarascon ; these, 
with Alain and Frederic, made up 
the party. The conversation was 
not particularly gay. Duplessis 
himself, though an exceedingly well- 
read and able man, had not the 
genial accomplishments of a bril- 



16 



The Parisians. Book VIII. 



liant host. Constitutionally grave 
and habitually taciturn though 
there were moments in which he 
was roused out of his wonted self into 
eloquence or wit he seemed to-day 
absorbed in some engrossing train of 
thought. The Minister, the Depu- 
tes, and the Duchesse de Tarascon 
talked politics, and ridiculed the 
trumpery cmeute of the 14th; ex- 
ulted in the success of the plebis- 
cite; and admitting, with indigna- 
tion, the growing strength of Prus- 
sia, and with scarcely less indigna- 
tion, but more contempt, censuring 
the selfish egotism of England in 
disregarding the due equilibrium of 
the European balance of power, 
hinted at the necessity of annexing 
Belgium as a set-off against the 
results of Sadowa. 

Alain found himself seated next 
to Isaura to the woman who had 
so captivated his eye and fancy on 
his first arrival in Paris. 

Remembering his last conversa- 
tion with Graham nearly a year ago, 
he felt some curiosity to ascertain 
whether the rich Englishman had 
proposed to her, and if so, been re- 
fused or accepted. 

The first words that passed be- 
tween them were trite enough, but 
after a little pause in the talk, Alain 
said 

"I think Mademoiselle and my- 
self have an acquaintance in com- 
mon Monsieur Yane, a distin- 
guished Englishman. Do you know 
if he be in Paris at present 1 I have 
not seen him for many months." 

" I believe he is in London at 
least Colonel Morley met the other 
day a friend of his who said so." 

Though Isaura strove to speak in 
a tone of indifference, Alain's ear 
detected a ring of pain in her voice ; 
and watching her countenance, he 
was impressed with a saddened 
change in its expression. He was 
touched, and his curiosity was 
mingled with a gentler interest as 



[July 

he said : " When I last saw M. 
Vane I should have judged him to 
be too much under the spell of an 
enchantress to remain long without 
the pale of the circle she draws 
around her." 

Isaura turned her face quickly 
towards the speaker, and her lips 
moved, but she said nothing audibly. 

" Can there have been quarrel or 
misunderstanding ? " thought Alain ; 
and after that question his heart 
asked itself, " Supposing Isaura were 
free, her affections disengaged, could 
he wish to woo and to win her 1 ?" 
and his heart answered " Eighteen 
months ago thou wert nearer to her 
than now. Thou wert removed 
from her for ever when thou didst 
accept the world as a barrier between 
you ; then, poor as thou wert, thou 
wouldst have preferred her to riches. 
Thou wert then sensible only of the 
ingenuous impulses of youth, but the 
moment thou saidst, ' I am Roehe- 
briant, and having once owned the 
claims of birth and station, I can- 
not renounce them for love,' Isaura 
became but a dream. How that 
ruin stares thee in the face now 
that thou must grapple with the 
sternest difficulties of adverse fate 
thou hast lost the poetry of senti- 
ment which could alone give to 
that dream the colours and the form 
of human life." He could not again 
think of that fair creature as a prize 
that he might even dare to covet. 
And as he met her inquiring eyes, 
and saw her quivering lip, he felt 
instinctively that Graham was dear 
to her, and that the tender interest 
with which she inspired himself was 
untroubled by one pang of jealousy. 
He resumed : 

" Yes, the last time I saw the 
Englishman he spoke with such 
respectful homage of one lady, whose 
hand he would deem it the highest 
reward of ambition to secure, that I 
cannot but feel deep compassion for 
him if that ambition has been foiled ; 



1873.] 



and thus only do I account for his 
absence from Paris." 

" You are an intimate friend of 
Mr Vane's 1 " 

" No, indeed, I have not that 
honour ; our acquaintance is but 
slight, but it impressed me with 
the idea of a man of vigorous in- 
tellect, frank temper, and perfect 
honour." 

Isaura's face brightened with the 
joy we feel when we hear the praise 
of those we love. 

At this moment, Duplessis. who 
had been observing the Italian and 
the young Marquis, for the first time 
during dinner, broke silence. 

" Mademoiselle," he said, address- 
ing Isaura across the table, " I hope 
I have not been correctly informed 
that your literary triumph has in- 
duced you to forego the career in 
which all the best judges concur 
that your successes would be no less 
brilliant ; surely one art does not 
exclude another." 

Elated by Alain's report of Gra- 
ham's words, by the conviction that 
these words applied to herself, and 
by the thought that her renunciation 
of the stage removed a barrier be- 
tween them, Isaura answered, with 
a sort of enthusiasm 

"I know not, M. Duplessis, if 
one art excludes another ; if there 
be desire to excel in each. But I 
have long lost all desire to excel in 
the art you refer to, and resigned 
all idea of the career in which it 
opens." 

"So M. Vane told me," said 
Alain, in a whisper. 

"When?" 

11 Last year, on the day that he 
spoke in terms of admiration so 
merited of the lady whom M. Du- 
plessis has just had the honour to 
address." 

All this while, Valerie, who was 
seated at the further end of the 
table beside the Minister, who had 
taken her into dinner, had been 

VOL. cxiv. NO. DCXCIII. 



The Parisians. Book VIII. 



17 



watching, with eyes, the anxious 
tearful sorrow of which none but 
her father had noticed, the low- 
voiced confidence between Alain 
and the friend, whom till that day 
she had so enthusiastically loved. 
Hitherto she had been answering in 
monosyllables all attempts of the 
great man to draw her into conver- 
sation; but now, observing how 
Isaura blushed and looked down, 
that strange faculty in women, 
which we men call dissimulation, 
and which in them is truthfulness 
to their own nature, enabled her to 
carry off the sharpest anguish she 
had ever experienced, by a sudden 
burst of levity of spirit. She caught 
up some commonplace the Minister 
had adapted to what he considered 
the poverty of her understanding, 
with a quickness of satire which 
startled that grave man, and he 
gazed at her astonished. Up to 
that moment he had secretly ad- 
mired her as a girl well brought up 
as girls fresh from a French con- 
vent are supposed to be ; now, 
hearing her brilliant rejoinder to his 
stupid observation, he said inly : 
" Dame I the low birth of a finan- 
cier's daughter shows itself." 

But, being a clever man himself, 
her retort put him on his mettle, 
and he became, to his own amaze- 
ment, brilliant himself. With that 
matchless quickness which belongs 
to Parisians, the guests around him 
seized the new esprit de conversation 
which had been evoked between 
the statesman and the childlike girl 
beside him ; and as they caught up 
the ball, lightly flung among them, 
they thought within themselves how 
much more sparkling the financier's 
pretty, lively daughter was than 
that dark-eyed young muse, of whom 
all the journalists of Paris were 
writing in a chorus of welcome and 
applause, and who seemed not to 
have a word to say worth listening 
to, excepting to the handsome young 



TJie Parisians. Book VIII. 



Marquis, whom, no doubt, she 
wished to fascinate. 

Valerie fairly outshone Isaura in 
intellect and in wit ; and neither 
Valerie nor Isaura cared, to the 
value of a bean -straw, about that 



[July 

distinction. Each was thinking 
only of the prize which the humblest 
peasant women have in common 
with the most brilliantly accom- 
plished of their sex the heart of 
a man beloved. 



CHAPTER IV. 



On the Continent generally, as we 
all know, men do not sit drinking 
wine together after the ladies retire. 
So when the signal was given all 
the guests adjourned to the salon ; 
and Alain quitted Isaura to gain 
the ear of the Duchesse de Taras- 
con. 

"It is long at least long for 
Paris life," said the Marquis "since 
my first visit to you, in company 
with Enguerrand de Vandemar. 
Much that you then said rested on 
my mind, disturbing the prejudices 
I took from Bretagne." 

" I am proud to hear it, my kins- 
man." 

" You know that I would have 
taken military service under the 
Emperor, but for the regulation 
which would have compelled me 
to enter the ranks as a private sol- 
dier." 

" I sympathise with that scruple; 
but you are aware that the Emperor 
himself could not have ventured 
to make an exception even in your 
favour." 

" Certainly not. I repent me of 
my pride ; perhaps I may enlist still 
in some regiment sent to Algiers." 

" No ; there are other ways in 
which a Eochebriant can serve a 
throne. There will be an office at 
Court vacant soon, which would 
not misbecome your birth." 

"Pardon me; a soldier serves 
his country a courtier owns a mas- 
ter ; and I cannot take the livery 
of the Emperor, though I could 
wear the uniform of France." 

" Your distinction is childish, my 



kinsman," said the Duchesse, impet- 
uously. " You talk as if the Em- 
peror had an interest apart from 
the nation. I tell you that he has 
not a corner of his heart not even 
one reserved for his son and his 
dynasty in which the thought of 
France does not predominate." 

" I do not presume, Madame la 
Duchesse, to question the truth of 
what you say ; but I have no reason 
to suppose that the same thought 
does not predominate in the heart 
of the Bourbon. The Bourbon 
would be the first to say to me : ' If 
France needs your sword against 
her foes, let it not rest in the scab- 
bard.' But would the Bourbon say, 
'The place of a Eochebriant is 
among the valetaille of the Corsi- 
can's successor ' ? " 

" Alas for poor France ! n said 
the Duchesse ; " and alas for men 
like you, my proud cousin, if the 
Corsican's successors or successor 

" Henry V. 1 " interrupted Alain, 
with a brightening eye. 

" Dreamer ! No ; some descend- 
ant of the mob -kings who gave 
Bourbons and nobles to the guil- 
lotine." 

While the Duchesse and Alain 
were thus conversing, Isaura had 
seated herself by Valerie, and, un- 
conscious of the offence she had 
given, addressed her in those pretty 
caressing terms with which young- 
lady friends are wont to compli- 
ment each other; but Valerie an- 
swered curtly or sarcastically, and 
turned aside to converse with the 



1873.] 

Minister. A few minutes more and 
the party began to break up. Le- 
mercier, however, detained Alain, 



TJie Parisians. Boole VIII. 



19 



whispering, " Duplessis will see us 
on your business so soon as the 
other guests have gone." 



CHAPTER V. 



" Monsieur le Marquis," said 
Duplessis, when the salon was 
cleared of all but himself and the 
two friends, " Lemercier has con- 
fided to me the state of your affairs 
in connection with M. Louvier, and 
flatters me by thinking my advice 
may be of some service ; if so, com- 
mand me." 

" I shall most gratefully accept 
your advice," answered Alain, " but 
I fear my condition defies even 
your ability and skill." 

" Permit me to hope not, and to 
ask a few necessary questions. M. 
Louvier has constituted himself 
your sole mortgagee ; to what 
amount, at what interest, and from 
what annual proceeds is the interest 
paid?" 

Herewith Alain gave details al- 
ready furnished to the reader. Du- 
plessis listened, and noted down the 
replies. 

"I see it all," he said, when 
Alain had finished. " M. Louvier 
had predetermined to possess him- 
self of your estate : he makes him- 
self sole mortgagee at a rate of in- 
terest so low, that I tell you fairly, 
at the present value of money, I 
doubt if you could find any capital- 
ist who would accept the transfer of 
the mortgage at the same rate. This 
is not like Louvier, unless he had 
an object to gain, and that object is 
your land. The revenue from your 
estate is derived chiefly from wood, 
out of which the interest due to 
Louvier is to be paid. M. Gandrin, 
in a skilfully-guarded letter, encour- 
ages you to sell the wood from your 
forests to a man who offers you 
several thousand francs more than 
it could command from customary 



buyers. I say nothing against M. 
Gandrin, but every man who knows 
Paris as I do, knows that M. Louvier 
can put, and has put, a great deal of 
money into M. Gandrin's pocket. 
The purchaser of your wood does 
not pay more than his deposit, and 
has just left the country insolvent. 
Your purchaser, M. Collot, was an 
adventurous speculator; he would 
have bought anything at any price, 
provided he had time to pay ; if his 
speculations had been lucky he 
would have paid. M. Louvier knew, 
as I knew, that M. Collot was a 
gambler, and the chances were that 
he would not pay. M. Louvier al- 
lows a year's interest on his hypo- 
theque to become due notice there- 
of duly given to you by his agent 
now you come under the operation 
of the law. Of course, you know 
what the law is ? " 

" Not exactly," answered Alain, 
feeling frostbitten by the congeal- 
ing words of his counsellor; "but 
I take it for granted that if I cannot 
pay the interest of a sum borrowed 
on my property, that property it- 
self is forfeited." 

"JN"o, not quite that the law is 
mild. If the interest which should 
be paid half-yearly remains unpaid 
at the end of a year, the mortgagee 
has a right to be impatient, has he 
not?" 

" Certainly he has." 

"Well then, on fait un com- 
mandement fondant a saisie immobi- 
liere, viz. : The mortgagee gives a 
notice that the property shall be put 
up for sale. Then it is put up for 
sale, and in most cases the mort- 
gagee buys it in. Here, certainly, 
no competitors in the mere business 



20 



Tlie Parisians. Book VIII. 



[July 



way would vie with Louvier ; the 
mortgage at 3|- per cent covers more 
than the estate is apparently worth. 
Ah ! but stop, M. le Marquis j the 
notice is not yet served : the whole 
process would take six months from 
the day it is served to the taking 
possession after the sale; in the 
meanwhile, if you pay the interest 
due, the action drops. Courage, M. 
le Marquis ! Hope yet, if you con- 
descend to call me friend." 

" And me," cried Lemercier ; " I 
will sell out of my railway shares 
to-morrow, see to it, Duplessis, 
enough to pay off the damnable in- 
terest. See to it, mon ami." 

"Agree to that, M. le Marquis, 
and you are safe for another year," 
said Duplessis, folding up the paper 
on which he had made his notes, 
but fixing on Alain quiet eyes half 
concealed under dropping lids. 

" Agree to that ! " cried Koche- 
briant, rising " agree to allow even 
my worst enemy to pay for me 
moneys I could never hope to repay 
agree to allow the oldest and most 
confiding of my friends to do so 
M. Duplessis, never ! If I carried 
the porter's knot of an Auvergnat, 
I should still remain gentilhomme 
and Breton" 

Duplessis, habitually the driest 
of men, rose with a moistened eye 
and flushing cheek " Monsieur le 
Marquis, vouchsafe me the honour 
to shake hands with you. I, too, 
am by descent gentilhomme, by 
profession a speculator on the 
Bourse. In both capacities I ap- 
prove the sentiment you have ut- 
tered. Certainly, if our friend Fre- 
deric lent you 7000 louis or so this 
year, it would be impossible for you 
even to foresee the year in which 
you could repay it ; but," here 
Duplessis paused a minute, and then 
lowering the tone of his voice, which 
had been somewhat vehement and 
enthusiastic, into that of a colloquial 
good-fellowship, equally rare to the 



measured reserve of the financier, 
he asked, with a lively twinkle of 
his grey eye, " Did you never hear, 
Marquis, of a little encounter be- 
tween me and M. Louvier?" 

" Encounter at arms does Lou- 
vier fight?" asked Alain, innocently. 

" In his own way he is always 
fighting; but I speak metaphori- 
cally. You see this small house of 
mine so pinched in by the houses 
next to it, that I can neither get 
space for a ball-room for Valerie, 
nor a dining-room for more than a 
friendly .party like that which has 
honoured me to-day. Eh bienf I 
bought this house a few years ago, 
meaning to buy the one next to it, 
and throw the two into one. I went 
to the proprietor of the next house, 
who, as I knew, wished to sell. 
1 Aha,' he thought, ' this is the rich 
Monsieur Duplessis ; ' and he asked 
me 2000 louis more than the house 
was worth. We men of business 
cannot bear to be too much cheated ; 
a little cheating we submit to 
much cheating raises our gall. 
Bref this was on Monday. I 
offered the man 1000 louis above 
the fair price, and gave him till 
Thursday to decide. Somehow or 
other Louvier hears of this. l Hil- 
lo ! ' says Louvier, ' here is a finan- 
cier who desires a hotel to vie with 
mine ! ' He goes on Wednesday to 
my next-door neighbour. ( Friend, 
you want to sell your house. I 
want to buy the price ? ' The 
proprietor, who does not know him 
by sight, says : ' It is as good as 
sold. M. Duplessis and I shall 
agree.' ' Bah ! What sum did you 
ask M. Duplessis.' He names the 
sum ; 2000 louis more than he 
can get elsewhere. * But M. Du- 
plessis will give me the sum.' * You 
asked too little. I will give you 
3000. A fig for M. Duplessis ! I 
am Monsieur Louvier.' So when 
I call on Thursday the house is sold. 
I reconciled myself easily enough 



1873.] 



Tlie Parisians. Book VIII. 



21 



to the loss of space for a larger din- 
ing-room ; but though Valerie was 
then a child at a convent, I was 
sadly disconcerted by the thought 
that I could have no salle de ball 
ready for her when she came to re- 
side with me. "Well, I say to my- 
self, patience; I owe M. Louvier a 
good turn ; my time to pay him off 
will come. It does come, and very 
soon. M. Louvier buys an estate 
near Paris builds a superb villa. 
Close to his property is a rising 
forest ground for sale. He goes to 
the proprietor : says the proprietor 
to himself, ' The great Louvier 
wants this/ and adds 5000 louis 
to its market price. Louvier, like 
myself, can't bear to be cheated 
egregiously. Louvier offers 2000 
louis more than the man could fairly 
get, and leaves him till Saturday 
to consider. I hear of this spec- 
ulators hear of everything. On 
Friday night I go to the man and I 
give him 6000 louis, where he had 
asked 5000. Fancy Louvier's face 
the next day ! But there my re- 
venge only begins," continued Du- 
plessis, chuckling inwardly. " My 
forest looks down on the villa he is 
building. I only wait till his villa 
is built, in order to send to my ar- 
chitect and say, Build me a villa at 
least twice as grand as M. Louvier's, 
then clear away the forest trees, so 
that every morning he may see my 
palace dwarfing into insignificance 
his own." 

" Bravo ! " cried Lemercier, clap- 
ping his hands. Lemercier had the 
spirit of party, and felt for Du- 
plessis against Louvier much as in 
England "Whig feels against Tory, 
or vice versa. 

" Perhaps now," resumed Duples- 
sis more soberly, " perhaps now, 
M. le Marquis, you may understand 
why I humiliate you by no sense 
of obligation if I say that M. 
Louvier shall not be the Seigneur 
de Eochebriant if I can help it. 



Give me a line of introduction to 
your Breton lawyer and to Made- 
moiselle your aunt let me have 
your letters early to-morrow. I 
will take the afternoon train. I 
know not how many days I may be 
absent, but I shall not return till I 
have carefully examined the nature 
and conditions of your property. 
If I see my way to save your estate, 
and give a mauvais quart d'heure to 
Louvier, so much the better for you, 
M. le Marquis ; if I cannot, I will 
say frankly, ' Make the best terms 
you can with your creditor.' " 

" Nothing can be more delicately 
generous than the way you put it," 
said Alain ; " but pardon me, if I 
say that the pleasantry with which 
you narrate your grudge against M. 
Louvier does not answer its purpose 
in diminishing my sense of obli- 
gation." So, linking his arm in 
Lemercier's, Alain made his bow 
and withdrew. 

When his guests had gone, Du- 
plessis remained seated in meditation 
apparently pleasant meditation, 
for he smiled while indulging it ; 
he then passed through the recep- 
tion-rooms to one at the far end, 
appropriated to Valerie as a boudoir 
or morning-room, adjoining her bed- 
chamber ; he knocked gently at the 
door, and, all remaining silent with- 
in, he opened it noiselessly and 
entered. Valerie was reclining on 
the sofa near the window her head 
drooping, her hands clasped on her 
knees. Duplessis neared her with 
tender stealthy steps, passed his arm 
round her, and drew her head 
towards his bosom. " Child ! " he 
murmured ; " my child ! my only 
one!" 

At that soft loving voice, Valerie 
flung her arms round him, and wept 
aloud like an infant in trouble. He 
seated himself beside her, and wisely 
suffered her to weep on, till her 
passion had exhausted itself; he 
then said, half fondly, half chid- 



22 



The Parisians. Book VIII. 



ingly: "Have you forgotten our 
conversation only three days ago ? 
Have you forgotten that I then drew 
forth the secret of your heart 1 ? 
Have you forgotten what I promised 
you in return for your confidence 1 
and a promise to you have I ever 
yet hroken ? " 

" Father ! father ! I am so wretched, 
and so ashamed of myself for being 
wretched ! Forgive me. No, I do 
not forget your promise ; but who 
can promise to dispose of the heart 
of another? and that heart will 
never be mine. But bear with me 
a little, I shall soon recover." 

" Valerie, when I made you the 
promise you now think I cannot 
keep, I spoke only from that con- 
viction of power to promote the 
happiness of a child which nature 
implants in the heart of parents; 
and it may be also from the experi- 
ence of niy own strength of will, 
since that which I have willed I 
have always won. Now I speak on 
yet surer ground. Before the year 
is out you shall be the beloved wife 
of Alain de Rochebriant. Dry your 
tears and smile on me, Vale'rie. If 
you will not see in me mother and 
father both, I have double love for 
you, motherless child of her who 
shared the poverty of my youth, and 
did not live to enjoy the wealth 
which I hold as a trust for that heir 
to mine all which she left me/' 



[July 

As this man thus spoke you would 
scarcely have recognised in him the 
cold saturnine Duplessis, his coun- 
tenance became so beautified by the 
one soft feeling which care and con- 
test, ambition and money-seeking, 
had left unaltered in his heart. 
Perhaps there is no country in 
which the love of parent and child, 
especially of father and daughter, is 
so strong as it is in France ; even 
in the most arid soil, among the 
avaricious, even among the profli- 
gate, it forces itself into flower. 
Other loves fade away : in the heart 
of the true Frenchman that parent 
love blooms to the last. 

Valerie felt the presence of that 
love as a divine protecting guardian- 
ship. She sank on her knees and 
covered his hand with grateful 



" Do not torture yourself, my 
child, with jealous fears of the fair 
Italian. Her lot and Alain de 
Rochebriant's can never unite ; and 
whatever you may think of their 
whispered converse, Alain's heart, 
at this moment, is too filled with 
anxious troubles to leave one spot 
in it accessible even to a frivolous 
gallantry. It is for us to remove 
these troubles ; and then, when he 
turns his eyes towards you, it will 
be with the gaze of one who beholds 
his happiness. You do not weep 
now, Yale"rie!" 



1873.' 



French Home Life. 



FRENCH HOME LIFE. 



NO. VIII. MARRIAGE. 



ONE of the effects of the individ- 
ual self-confidence which is so gen- 
eral an attribute of us Anglo-Saxons, 
is to incline us to face marriage 
without calculating its cost. We 
do it because it tempts and interests 
us at the moment, trusting to luck 
and to our strong arms for the means 
<of keeping our wife and children. 
There is something manly and vig- 
orous in this way of acting : of course 
it is rash and dangerous, of course it 
often leads to all kinds of worry, 
&nd it sometimes ends in downright 
misery; but there is a pluckiness 
-about it which commends itself to 
our natures. Politicaleconomistsand 
philosophers go on attacking it with 
unavailing arguments and uncon- 
vincing proofs. Right as they may 
be in theory, they do not influence 
our practice ; " improvident mar- 
riages" are as numerous as ever. 
We are not a prudent people in this 
respect, and neither earnest books 
nor eloquent discourses are likely to 
change our tendencies. Most of us 
believe, in varying degrees, in our 
own innate power of overcoming 
obstacles as they arise. We do not 
shrink from matrimony because it 
may involve us in risks and diffi- 
culties; we rush at it because it 
attracts us at the moment, and be- 
cause we are surrounded by crowds 
-of people who have done the same 
before us, and have struggled some- 
how through the consequences of 
their hurry or their error. 

The process of the French, on 
this point as on so many others, is 
in absolute contradiction with our 
own. Where we decide and act, 
they weigh, and calculate, and hesi- 
tate, and consider. They reach no 



resolve until they fancy they have 
exhausted the measurement of ad- 
vantages and disadvantages, until 
they have pondered over probabili- 
ties and possibilities, until they ima- 
gine they have united as many ele- 
ments of success as human foresight 
can collect. It can scarcely be said 
that even in England marriage is 
regarded as a purely personal ar- 
rangement, concerning only the two 
immediate parties to it. We admit, 
in our upper classes at least, that it 
involves considerations of a varied 
nature, which justify and sometimes 
even require the intervention of 
parents and families. But the 
French carry this intervention to 
a length which we could not sup- 
port : they leave no liberty and 
no action to the coming couple : 
the whole thing is taken out of 
their hands : they are treated as if 
they were incompetent in the ques- 
tion : their parents undertake the 
negotiation for them, and handle 
it as governments deal with inter- 
national treaties. Glaringly evident 
as are the emotionality and the mo- 
bility of the French in other phases 
of their conduct, they have no ap- 
plication here. They find their use 
abundantly in superficial sentiments, 
in the forms and thoughts and words 
of outside existence, in the mani- 
festation of already existing affec- 
tions; but, with rare exceptions, they 
have nothing to do with the prepar- 
ation of a marriage. Their place is 
taken, on that one occasion, by a dry, 
arithmetical computation of practi- 
cal results, with no excitement and 
with no distractions. Where we so 
ordinarily listen to what we under- 
stand by love, to the temptations of 



French Homo Life. 



[July 



the young heart in all their forms 
(however transitory), to our indi- 
vidual impressions and to our own 
opinions, the French consult fit- 
nesses of relative situation, recipro- 
cities of fortune and position, and 
harmonies of family intercourse. 
They seek to insure the future, in 
some degree, in its social as well as 
its pecuniary forms. They lay it down 
that passion is no guide to perman- 
ent satisfaction, and that other peo- 
ple than the two directly interested 
have, both in law and reason, a right 
of judgment in so grave a case. This 
does not absolutely mean that pre- 
existing sympathies are considered 
to be unnecessary for marriage in 
France ; but it does mean, in the 
distinctest language, that such sym- 
pathies alone are not admitted there 
as a sufficient motive for an associ- 
ation which is to last till death. 
Sympathies wear out sometimes; 
new ones grow up from other con- 
tacts ; eternal attachments are very 
rare between people who have not 
managed to get married, and have 
not the aid of the wedded tie to 
hold them steadily together: but 
the necessities of life never fade 
away; they never weaken ; they re- 
main in force with pitiless persist- 
ence, and French parents pay more 
attention to them than to what may 
be only a passing inclination in their 
sons and daughters. 

And it must be borne in mind 
that this view of marriage is not 
solely a development of the national 
disposition towards prudence ; it is 
also, to some extent at all events, a 
consequence of the legal enactments 
contained in the Code Napoleon. 
The law forbids all marriages with- 
out either the consent of the father 
and mother, or proof that they are 
both dead. It is very troublesome 
to get married in France -; the opera- 
tion is surrounded by difficulties 
and formalities which would make 



an Englishman stamp with rage. 
It is true that if parents refuse to 
allow their children to follow their 
own wishes, the latter are permitted, 
provided they have attained their 
majority, to go through a process 
called " a respectful summons to 
consent," after which, if the parents 
persist in their rejection of the 
appeal, marriage may be at last 
attained. No matter at what age a 
man or a woman marry, even if they 
are sixty, they must either produce 
the written consent of their father 
and mother, or show that they have- 
applied for it in due legal form and 
that it has been denied them with- 
out sufficient cause, or prove that 
they are orphans. The object of 
this legislation is not only to pre- 
vent bigamy (which, under such 
conditions, is naturally rare in 
France), but, even more, to maintain 
parental authority, and to insure a 
due subjection of children. So far 
there is something to be said in its 
favour, especially as, in many cases, 
it really does protect young people 
against their own folly. But as, 
after all, marriage is a complex 
state, requiring something more 
than a father's approbation to con- 
duct it to success, it is natural that 
we, who regard the entire subject 
from a very different point of view, 
should have a good many objections 
to urge. 

The question, however, is not mere- 
ly one of legal forms and parental 
privileges ; it contains a vast deal 
more besides. As marriage is the 
real starting-point of home life as 
the happiness of husbands, wives, 
and children depends, in a great 
degree, on the conditions under 
which it is realised and worked out 
it is fair, and even necessary, to 
judge it not only in its beginnings 
and its organisation, but in its 
results as well. Indeed it would be 
rather difficult in such a case to* 



1873.] 



No. VIII. Marriage. 



consider causes without effects. "We 
look, instinctively, from one to the 
other, and, half-unconsciously, esti- 
mate the value of the commence- 
ment by the value of the end. But 
how are the results of marriage to 
be correctly measured 1 ? We all 
know how difficult it is to make a 
definite opinion for ourselves on the 
point even in the case of the friends 
with whom we live in constant 
intimacy, whose interiors we know 
in detail, whose, quarrels, whose 
special sympathies, whose qualities 
and defects, we have had some means 
of testing. How then, if it be so 
hard a task to reach a conviction 
in the few cases round us, can we 
hope to form a judgment fairly 
applicable to an entire nation 1 
Vague ideas are of no use here ; 
prejudices mislead; facts are im- 
possible to collect on so large a 
scale. And yet there is a guide, an 
incomplete and insufficient one, but 
still a safe one so far as it can lead 
us ; that guide is the impression 
which a nation entertains about 
itself. If we consult it carefully we 
get the accumulated experience of 
the mass in the only form in which 
it manifests itself on such a subject 
as this. There are no returns, no 
reports, no statistics to refer to ; but 
there are drawing-room talks, and 
half-confidences, and village rumours, 
and the gossip of the market-place, 
and the wise head-shakings of the 
old people ; and with their aid, if 
we listen closely, we can compose 
a tolerably approximate picture of 
what all these indications describe. 
But we can only do it fairly on 
condition of being scrupulously exact, 
of effacing from our memory all pre- 
disposition towards special shades 
and special forms, of marking down 
absolutely nothing of what our own 
imagination so easily suggests, and 
of strictly limiting our colouring to 
what we are quite certain that we 



distinctly see. And, even then, we 
have to reconcile bitter contradic- 
tions, to group together the most 
opposite results, to institute a com- 
parison of causes. 

But before we consider the evi- 
dence thus obtainable as to the 
moral results of marriage in France, 
it may be useful to cast a glance at 
the material comparison which it- 
is possible to make between the- 
quantity of marrying which takes 
place amongst the French, and the- 
corresponding figures on the same 
subject which other nations offer. 
In his ' Elements de Statistique,' 
M. Moreau de Jonnes gives a table 
of the number of marriages which 
are effected annually in the princi- 
pal countries of Europe. Ireland 
comes first with one marriage for 
each ninety inhabitants ; France is- 
sixteenth with 1 for 122; England 
twenty-seventh with 1 in 137 ; Tus- 
cany twenty -eighth and last, with 1 
in 143. Now if this be true and 
the well-known name of M. Moreau 
de Jonnes may be accepted as a 
guarantee for the exactness of the 
numbers it seems to follow that, 
notwithstanding our headstrong im- 
prudence, we English actually marry 
less, proportionately, than the pru- 
dent, calculating French, who look 
before they leap. This is an un- 
expected fact to start with, but, 
if it be a fact, it indicates, with 
tolerable distinctness, that the hesi- 
tations which precede all marriages 
in France do not really stop mar- 
riage, for the French stand in the 
middle of the table which has just 
been quoted, below the Northern 
races, which (excepting England) 
head the list, but above all the 
Southern States, which close it. 
The position thus indicated for 
France is the very one which would 
appear to be the most desirable to- 
occupy ; it is a fair average, showing 
neither too little nor too much. 



26 



French Home Life. 



[July 



And France retains the same ap- 
proximate position if we look back- 
wards and carry the comparison into 
the eighteenth century. A hundred 
years ago, marriages were every- 
where more frequent than they are 
now : subsistence was more easy to 
obtain, it was not so difficult to pro- 
vide for children, and we conse- 
quently find that the number of an- 
nual marriages, relatively to the then 
population, was, throughout Europe, 
about ten per cent above its present 
rate. But the diminution which 
has since occurred has been univer- 
sal ; it is not special to France or to 
any other land. The French con- 
tinue to take wives in the same pro- 
portion as they have always prac- 
tised towards their neighbours ; 
they have diminished matrimony 
only as it has been diminished all 
around them. 

If, however, they have held their 
own in the rate of marrying, they 
have diminished largely, since the 
Revolution, in the fecundity of mar- 
riage. In 1770 the children born 
in France were in proportion to the 
whole population, 1 in 25 ; now 
they have come down to 1 in 35 ; 
the falling off has consequently 
reached the enormous figure of forty 
per cent. Here lies the real expla- 
nation of the strange fact which has 
so astonished Europe after each 
census recently taken in France; 
the fact that the French have almost 
ceased to increase in numbers. It 
is not, however, as a statistical cu- 
riosity that the subject is referred to 
here, but because it is most inti- 
mately connected with the entire 
question of French marriages, be- 
cause it bears closely on their mo- 
ral organisation, because it opens 
the door to considerations which 
would be almost incomprehensible 
if it were omitted. We will pre- 
sently come back to it. ' Meanwhile 
we can leave dry figures and return 



to the more interesting study of 
opinions, impressions, and personal 
experiences. 

The French are certainly con- 
vinced that they are a happy people. 
And so they are, if gaiety and cheeri- 
ness and mutual good-will can be 
taken as satisfactory and sufficient 
evidence on the point. No nation 
has more laughter; neither Irish- 
men nor Negroes surpass them there ; 
and it is generally good, honest 
laughter, resulting from a motive, 
not mere senseless giggling. But 
happiness and laughter are not 
synonymous; the latter is not neces- 
sarily a symptom of the existence 
of the former ; the saddest of us 
may laugh sometimes, while the 
most thoroughly contented may be 
constitutionally inclined to gravity. 
It is not, then, on this one outward 
sign that either practically or logi- 
cally the French can base their 
claim to be regarded as a really 
happy nation. If the claim be 
founded, the grounds on which it 
rests must be looked for elsewhere 
in deeper, less superficial, and less 
apparent proofs. It is especially in 
their use of married life that the 
evidence, if really it exists, should 
be looked for and be found. And 
here it is that we must take up the 
testimonies alluded to just now and 
try to measure what they reveal to 
us. If marriage, as a rule, is found 
to produce success if the men and 
women that it brings together gene- 
rally assert that they are satisfied 
with what they have extracted from 
it if lookers-on, all round them, con- 
firm their declarations, and tell us 
that their married friends so far 
as they can judge them have no 
home difficulties and no home re- 
grets, then we may, without im- 
prudence, recognise that the French 
are really a happy people, and that 
the marriage system on which their 
home life is based, is proved to be 



1873.] 



No. VIIL Marriage. 



27 



well adapted to their character and 
their needs, for the simple reason 
that it leads them on to joy. 

It may be said at once, subject 
to exceptions, explanations, and 
reservations, that this result is gen- 
erally attained by the French, that 
they* really are, in-doors, a happy 
nation, and that their marriages, as 
a whole, present enviable results. 

It may be as well, however, be- 
fore going further, to attempt to 
give a definition of married happi- 
ness as it is sometimes comprehend- 
ed and pursued in its highest form 
across the Channel. It is not al- 
ways quite the same condition. It 
not unfrequently implies, amongst 
the educated classes, a ceaseless 
employment of intelligence and 
skill, such as we rarely know of 
here. The mass in France, of 
course, acts like the mass elsewhere ; 
it takes life as it finds it ; it " lets 
it rip," as the Americans say. It 
seeks no improvement; it crawls 
on with what it has. But there is 
a theory of marriage which some 
French men and women understand 
and realise a theory which not 
only leads them to distinguish the 
highest uses to which the married 
state may tend, but which enables 
them to detect the means by which 
those uses can be reached. In cases 
such as these, the life which two 
lead together becomes a constant, 
ever-growing pursuit of forms and 
shades of happiness which are be- 
yond the thought, and even beyond 
the faculty of comprehension, of the 
crowd. The basis of their practice 
rests on the wise precept, that as 
our longings, our necessities, and 
our fancies, change with time and 
age, and with position too, the 
attempts we make to satisfy those 
longings and those fancies should 
vary their nature and their character 
in sympathy with the modifications 
which occur in the object to be 



attained. What pleases us at 
twenty, begins to lose its charm at 
thirty, and wearies us at forty. 
And if this be true of men, it is 
truer still of women, who, as a 
natural result of the home-life they 
lead, are fatally condemned to aspire 
after variety of indoor emotions, be- 
cause they can find none outside. 
The husband who has studied the 
philosophy of home happiness, who 
has entered marriage with a true 
sense of its dangers and its powers, 
will not wait for his wife to mani- 
fest fatigue ; from the first hour of 
their common existence he will begin 
to teach her that the tie between 
man and woman cannot preserve 
its vigour and its first eager truth 
unless the elements which compose 
it are skilfully replaced and thought- 
fully renewed as they successively 
wear out and gradually cease to 
.produce their old effect : he will try 
to show to her, while she is still 
in the enthusiasm of early wedded 
joy, that happiness, like all other 
states and perhaps even more than 
all the rest is, by its very nature, 
but a passing, transitory condition ; 
that what gave it to us yesterday may 
fail to create it for us to-day; that 
the sympathies which seem to us so 
ardent and so durable in the inex- 
perience of our beginnings, will be 
but fading brightnesses if we do not 
watch over each fluctuation of their 
aspects, each faint symptom of their 
change. Young wives may hesitate 
when first such theories as these are 
laid before their astonished eyes : it 
causes pain to their earnest fondness 
of the moment to be assured that, 
according to the laws of probability, 
that fondness will not last unless new 
nourishment, new starting points, 
new stimulants be provided for it as 
years pass on. But when once they 
have grown accustomed to the argu- 
ment when once they have been 
led to an appreciation of its unvary- 



French Home Life. 



[July 



ing and universal application then, 
if they do love their husband truly, 
they become his active aid, his con- 
vinced co-operator in the delicate 
but inestimable labour of maintain- 
ing, in all its strength of origin, of 
developing to its fullest growth of 
perfectness, the first object of their 
united life joint happiness. 

And yet examples seem to indi- 
cate that frequently women do not 
possess the faculty of understanding 
the profound utility of this crafty 
handling of their lives ; when once 
they have really grasped it they are 
capable of contributing to the result 
with even more power than men ; 
but their appreciation of the neces- 
sity of the effort is of ten sluggish, and, 
as a rule, they have to be dragged 
to it either by entreaty or necessity. 

The general tendency of wives 
in France as elsewhere is to regard 
happiness as a vested right, as a 
natural fact, as a permanent condi- 
tion, as a self-sufficing, self-main- 
taining state, which ought to go on 
and last because it has once begun. 
Most of them violently revolt the 
first time they are asked to own 
that married happiness may be, on 
the contrary, and by its very es- 
sence, the most ephemeral of all 
short-lived creations. They take 
man's love as a property and a due ; 
they fancy that it is the husband's 
duty to keep up that love without 
any special aid from themselves ; 
they let themselves be loved, but 
they do not help love to last ; as 
Johnson said, "they know how to 
make nets, but not how to make 
cages." In cases such as these and, 
unfortunately, they constitute the 
majority of experiences in all lands 
there is small hope of permanent 
contentment : if the husband is ig- 
norant enough^ as indeed the 
greater part of husbands are to 
view the case exactly as the wife 
does to imagine that he can leave 



the future to take care of itself, and 
to allow the early rush of mutual 
satisfaction to struggle to its end, 
without providently preparing, in 
good time, the elements of the 
second act of married life, then he 
reaches the usual emptiness and 
disappointment in ignorance of the 
causes which have produced them, 
and ends by regarding them as a 
natural consequence of matrimony. 
But if he is a thinking man, if he 
has given some of his attention to 
a calculation of the conditions ne- 
cessary for the conservation of home 
delight, then he does indeed suf- 
fer if he finds himself tied for all 
life to a woman who is incapable of 
helping him to attain, by mutual 
labour and mutual watchfulness, 
that rare but admirable result per- 
manent and increasing joy in mar- 
riage. 

In France there are certainly a 
good many people who rise to these 
higher views who look on mar- 
riage as a serious occupation, which 
requires absorbing thought who 
ceaselessly endeavour to improve its 
form, and to lift its consequences 
and its products above the level of 
humdrum existences. And often 
they succeed. Now success, in such 
a case, implies that they distil, from 
contact with each other, a degree, 
an elevation, a thoroughness, a per- 
petuity, and a reality of happiness 
which less able and less careful 
manipulators of home-life are inca- 
pable of producing. They show us 
what skill and science can elaborate 
from ordinary sources ; they show 
us the height of satisfaction to 
which we are capable of climbing, 
in the relation between man and wife, 
if we will but regard that relation as 
a plant to be sedulously cultivated, 
and not as a weed to be left to com- 
bat unaided for existence. Many 
an example might be given in sup- 
port of this rough indication of 



1873.] 



No. VIII. Marriage. 



29 



what marriage may be when it is 
rightly understood. In the higher 
ranks of French society there are 
men who merit to be called profes- 
sors of the art of happiness ; who 
have analysed its ingredients with 
careful fingers and scrutinising eyes ; 
who have consummated their expe- 
rience of means and ends ; who, 
like able doctors, can apply an 
immediate remedy to the daily 
difficulties of home - life ; whose 
practice is worthy of their theory, 
and who prove it by maintaining in 
their wives' hearts and in their own 
a perennial never- weakening senti- 
ment of gratitude and love. But, 
alas ! these cases are exceptions. 
Most French people content them- 
selves, like their neighbours in 
other countries, with rumbling care- 
lessly through marriage, making no 
attempt to improve it, and not even 
suspecting that it is capable of 
improvement. And yet, thanks to 
their light, laughing natures, they 
generally keep clear of gloom. 
They bring into married life the 
bright cheeriness which is so fre- 
quently an attribute of their race ; 
they stave off worry by insouciance; 
they support annoyances with a 
coolness, which in their case is not 
indifference, but which, to an un- 
practised foreign eye, looks so sin- 
gularly like it, that it is difficult at 
first to fix the point where calm 
patience appears to end, and indif- 
ference seems to begin. 

There are, however, contradictions 
in abundance to this rule of quietly 
supporting cares. Frenchmen have 
sometimes in their character so 
many of the faults which elsewhere 
are supposed to be the property of 
women only, that they are capable 
of growing fidgety and nervous to a 
scarcely credible degree ; and woe to 
the unlucky wife who stumbles on 
a husband of that species ! he wears 
her out with teazing. Gentle and 



affectionate as the men ordinarily 
are, there are some among them who 
are absolutely intolerable at home. 
Luckily they form an infinitely 
small minority ; otherwise it would 
be nonsense to pretend that French 
marriages, on the whole, are happy. 
The evidence which can be collected 
by listening to opinions, including 
ill-natured scandal in all its forms, 
tends certainly to show that, accord- 
ing to their impressions of each 
other, most Frenchmen are singu- 
larly forbearing towards their wives ; 
they do not make the most of them 
that effort is limited to the rare 
examples which were alluded to 
just now but their habit is to treat 
them with much softness, with 
constant consideration, with defer- 
ence and courtesy. They generally 
come together, in the origin, with- 
out much passion, or, indeed, much 
love ; the conditions under which 
their marriages are arranged make 
that fact easily comprehensible; 
but love does grow up between 
them in nearly every case, and they 
end by feeling for each other an 
attachment quite as real, as tho- 
rough, and as deep, as we find in 
countries where other systems are 
in use. It is far from easy to dis- 
cover really unhappy marriages in 
France ; here and there are isolated 
instances, evident to every one, for 
they have terminated in voluntary 
separation ; but the testimony of 
society, and particularly of the 
women, who are not more charitable 
towards each other in France than 
they are in other lands, in no way 
indicates any multiplicity of failures. 
The impossibility of divorce creates 
a strong motive for mutual conces- 
sions, with the object of soothing 
away asperities, and of rendering 
obligatory companionship support- 
able, if not agreeable. As for abso- 
lute infidelity, on either side, it is 
now so rare that it is often possible 



30 



French Home Life. 



[July 



to look round a large circle of in- 
timate acquaintance without being 
able to point out one example of it. 
This assertion may seem absurd and 
false to that large group of English 
people, which, though in total ig- 
norance of the facts, grows up, lives, 
and dies in the contrary conviction 
but the assertion is strictly, liter- 
ally true. The marriage-tie is vig- 
orously felt in France : husbands 
and wives cleave ' there to each 
other, and do not now seek for 
illicit joys, whatever some of them 
may have done in days gone by. 
Indeed, they point to England at 
this moment as the country which 
produces palpably the largest amount 
of conjugal irregularity, and quote 
in proof, with bitter justice, the 
shameless details of the Divorce 
Court which are given in our news- 
papers. We have grown accus- 
tomed to this odious publicity ; 
habit blinds us to its dangers and 
its indecency ; but if we could hear 
foreigners talk about it if we knew 
the impression of disgust which it 
creates in France, where the rare 
cases of co-respondency are treated 
criminally, and are always pleaded 
with closed doors ; where husbands 
do not receive money-damages for 
their wife's dishonour we should 
perhaps be led to recognise that, 
in this question, we do not offer a 
satisfying spectacle to Europe, and 
that we have lost all right to throw 
stones at others. We are unable to 
judge ourselves on such a subject ; 
we must submit to the verdict of 
lookers-on ; and a very painful one 
it is for us to support. 

But if the French are less at- 
tackable than we are on this ele- 
ment of the workings-out of mar- 
riage, they are open in another 
direction to a founded imputation, 
to which allusion has been already 
made, and which is almost graver 
still, because its application, instead 



of being exceptional, is universal. 
Their marriages produce scarcely 
any children. Here discussion is 
needless ; here differences of opinion 
cannot exist ; here prejudices cannot 
apply, for the fact is proved by 
their own official returns. Before 
the revolution of 1789 the popula- 
tion of France amounted to about 
24,000,000, and the annual number 
of births was about 970,000. At 
this moment the population is about 
37,000,000, and the average num- 
ber of births is only 950,000 per 
annum. In other words, though 
the population is one-half larger 
than it was a hundred years ago, it 
begets absolutely fewer children 
now than then. The present yearly 
birth-rate in France is the lowest 
in the world. In Germany it repre- 
sents 1 in 25 of the entire popula- 
tion, in England it is 1 in 30, in 
France it is only 1 in 39. And it 
must be borne in mind that this 
diminution does not result from any 
falling off in the proportionate rate 
of marriage, which, as has been 
stated, keeps up its place in com- 
parison with other countries. It is 
solely brought about by the wilful 
refusal of married people to become 
fathers and mothers, as married 
people do elsewhere. A topic of 
such a nature is awkward to dissect, 
but it constitutes one of the salient 
facts of the subject, and it could 
not be omitted without leaving a 
great gap in the discussion; it 
forms one of its striking features, 
and it necessarily exercises an im- 
portant influence on the opinion 
to be formed. The rejection of pa- 
ternity is a consequence of the 
excessive prudence with which the 
entire subject is handled by the 
French ; they do not marry unless 
they think they can afford it ; they 
do not have children unless they 
think they can provide for them. 
It in no way affects the attachment 



1873.] 



No. VIII. Marriage. 



31 



between man and wife; it in no 
way diminishes their affection for 
their children, when they have them. 
On the contrary, their family ten- 
derness is demonstrative and exces- 
sive, as has been repeated many 
times throughout these sketches 
of their home-life. But the mere 
existence of this resolute unwilling- 
ness to have children, places France 
in a low position before Europe, 
and suggests grave doubts as to the 
moral value and efficacy of a system 
which, whatever be its merits and 
its qualities, whatever be the hap- 
piness which it produces, results in 
so flagrant a negation of the first 
object and first duty of marriage. 
It may perhaps be denied that it 
forms an inherent part of the entire 
scheme ; it may perhaps be argued 
that it is an accident, a temporary 
tendency ; it may perhaps be urged 
that the general organisation of 
married life in Trance should not 
be held responsible for it ; but to 
such objections it may be fairly 
answered, that the tendency in 
question, instead of assuming a 
temporary aspect, has gone on 
steadily gaining strength for a hun- 
dred years ; that during the present 
generation its development has coin- 
cided with an increase of wealth, 
which ought, apparently, to have 
brought about an exactly opposite 
effect ; and that it is, consequently, 
quite reasonable to regard it as a 
definitely adopted policy. 

Now, whatever be the value, in 
political economy, of the principle 
of " circumspection in marriage " 
Avith which Malthus has associated 
his name, there are but few of us 
who can look at it with approbation 
from a moral or a social point of 
view ; and though he himself, if he 
were still alive, might be immensely 
gratified to find that an entire nation 
is realising his ideas on the largest 
scale, we, who in this case are but 



simple critics of the results of mar- 
ried life in their natural and habitual 
form, may be allowed to view the 
matter otherwise. Abstract theories 
about movements of population, and 
about proportions between demand 
and supply, can never be got into 
the heads of people who regard mar- 
riage as we all do, not only as an 
institution destined to give personal 
contentment to those who profit by 
it, but, quite as much, as a link be- 
tween successive generations. How, 
then, can we help recoiling, with a 
good deal of really felt disgust, from 
the insufficient use of marriage which 
is so evident in France 1 And yet, 
strong as this feeling may be in us, 
it must not lead us to exaggeration. 
The rule is proved by the figures 
which have been quoted; tkere is 
no doubt about its application in the 
majority of cases ; but there are ex- 
ceptions in abundance; the whole 
nation is not infected; there are still 
in France a good many people who 
trust in God, and not in Mr Malthus. 
That too intelligent Englishman is 
not, however, the inspirer of French 
peasants in the matter; scarcely any 
of them have ever heard his name ; 
they execute what he advised ; they 
work out his teaching, butjwithout 
knowing what he taught. Their 
motive is individual, not national ; 
they have no idea that they are prac- 
tising political philosophy when they 
tell you, as they do, that " il faut 
faire la soupe avant de faire 1'enfant." 
The exceptions are, happily, suffi- 
ciently numerous to give some little 
brightness to a picture which would 
otherwise be so dark. There are, 
here and there, large families in 
France, and nowhere can more ad- 
mirable illustrations of pure home- 
life be found than those they offer. 
It is, perhaps, especially in the 
upper sections of society that those 
examples are to be found ; the trad- 
ing and working classes have, ordi- 



32 



French Home Life. 



[July 



narily, so little religion and so little 
elevation of moral convictions that 
they abound the other way; and, 
as they constitute the mass, it is 
they, almost alone, who have brought 
about the decline in the progress of 
population. It is, therefore, not 
unjust to say, in principle, subject 
of course to reservations on both 
sides, that the higher ranks are now 
multiplying in France more rapidly 
than the lower strata. This progress 
is of course imperceptible materially, 
but, in its degree, it certainly exists. 
Another, but a very different 
question, which it is worth while to 
look at, is the influence of society, 
or, more exactly, of social relations 
on the results of marriage. Evi- 
dence upon it is very plentiful and 
easy to collect ; for we have but to 
listen to the talk when half-a-dozen 
people are together. Whatever be 
the class which we observe, we find 
on this head a general similarity of 
action and effects. Notwithstanding 
their great love of home, French- 
women live a good deal with each 
other and with men : their form of 
life is so free from the restrictions 
and the obstacles which we impose 
upon ourselves there is generally so 
much liberty and facility of visiting 
at all hours of the day and evening 
that the contact between acquaint- 
ances attains a frequency of which 
we have no idea. In the higher 
classes some few husbands go to 
clubs, or live somewhat in their own 
rooms ; but such cases are excep- 
tions ; with them, as in the middle 
groups, husbands are ordinarily 
with their wives, accompany them 
wherever they can, and share their 
friendships and their distractions. 
With so eminently sociable a race 
it is natural that this should be so, 
and the disposition is confirmed 
by the original conditions of mar- 
riage, which always as much as 
possible, at least provide for the 



maintenance of family connections 
afterwards. The French do not re- 
gard marriage as a state in which two 
people are to be tied up by them- 
selves ; they view it as an associa- 
tion, which should in no way affect 
the habitual contact between the 
parties to it and the rest of the 
world outside. Of course, in prac- 
tice, everybody remains free to select 
his or her own system of existence. 
There are examples, and a good 
many too, of married people who 
stop at home, " qui vivent en sau- 
vages," as their neighbours say of 
them; but they constitute the excep- 
tions the rule is the other way. The 
facility of making visits, and walk- 
ing about alone, and going to parties 
without a chaperon, is proper to all 
girls who marry, whatever be their 
country ; the French have no mono- 
poly of it. It is not therefore as an 
act of freedom that newly-married 
Frenchwomen go into society ; they 
do it because they like it, because 
their husbands like it, because it is 
the habit of their nation. The idea 
that marriage confers any special 
liberty on Frenchwomen is most 
erroneous ; they have neither more 
nor less of it than women possess 
elsewhere; it is, however, compre- 
hensible that the contrast between 
that degree of liberty and the ex- 
treme reserve in which the girls are 
kept (which we perhaps should do 
well to imitate) should have pro- 
voked amongst us the false impres- 
sion that a French wife acquires a 
greater emancipation than other 
European wives enjoy. She re- 
mains bound by the universal laws 
which regulate the conduct and the 
attitude of women ; she obtains no 
peculiar rights ; she shakes off no 
chains ; she does but gain the posi- 
tion and the power which enable 
her to discharge the new duties 
which devolve upon her. Fore- 
most amongst those duties is the 



1873.] 



No. VIII. Marriage. 



33 



obligation to maintain her social 
place. She likes the obligation ; it 
costs her no effort to discharge it ; 
and, in most cases, she would annoy 
and disappoint her husband if she 
neglected it. So they go about to- 
gether and amuse themselves, as a 
right and proper thing to do ; it is 
one of the objects for which they 
married. 

In limits such as these it can 
scarcely be alleged that the habit 
of social intercourse, highly devel- 
oped though it be in France, con- 
stitutes a danger for home peace. 
There are crowds of married people 
there who never stop at home, 
whose life is almost exclusively 
passed with others : but if they all 
like it, there is no harm in that ; it 
is only when one side is discontented 
with the practice, while the other 
wilfully continues it, that it grows 
into an obstacle. This case exists, of 
course, but it is rare : most French 
men and women like society too 
much for either of them to shrink 
away from it. 

This constant contact with other 
people has, however, the inconve- 
nience of provoking vanities and 
envies, and consequently of leading 
women to expense. There lies, per- 
haps, the only serious objection to 
it which can be urged as regards its 
influence on married life. It cannot 
be seriously said, by any one who 
knows the French, that it at all 
affects their regular attention to 
their home duties, especially towards 
their children, who are thought of 
and cared for before all else ; but 
it is not possible to deny that it 
tempts the women on to dress, and 
to the other rivalries which drawing- 
rooms provoke. But most French 
husbands rather like their wives to 
shine, and look on complacently at 
the effect which they produce, and 
at the triumphs which they achieve. 
The association between them is 

VOL. CX IV. NO. DCXCIII. 



generally intimate enough for each 
of them to find satisfaction in the 
other's glories, even if they take 
only the tiny form of a successful 
gown. So, if they can afford it, 
the additional outlay which is 
induced by much going out, does 
not become a source of difficulty 
between them. Whether it does 
them any good, whether it aids 
them to really love each other better, 
whether it elevates their views, may 
certainly be doubted; but as it 
amuses and contents them as it 
gives them a common object in life, 
such as it is we may admit that, 
with their ideas, they are right 
to hold to it. 

Even in the trading classes there 
is a good deal of this seeking for 
society, in a small way. There, 
however, the wife usually assumes 
a position of a pecular kind. She 
does not visit so much with her 
husband at night, but she is his 
companion throughout the day, 
wherever the nature of his occupa- 
tion makes it possible that she should 
remain with him ; she participates 
in his life, she shares his cares, she 
helps him in his work. At the top 
of the scale, the French wife is a 
woman of the world ; at the bottom 
of it she is a drudge, as is the case 
in other lands; but in the lower 
middle strata she takes a special 
place by her husband's side, so 
sympathetic, so cordially real, that 
to many of us she presents a high 
realisation of the idea of what a 
wife should be. It is only in 
the central ranks of population 
that we find fair average national 
examples ; above and below those 
ranks, both wealth and poverty 
come into play, and introduce con- 
ditions of existence which diminish 
the teaching value of the classes 
which they influence. But in the 
bourgeoisie, which constitutes in its 
various degrees so large an element 
c 



French Home Life. 



[July 



of the French nation, we find the 
unadulterated type of France. It is 
there that we should look for the 
speaking signs of a general state; 
and if these signs are cheering, if they 
indicate success, if they testify that 
satisfactory ends are reached, we may 
surely conclude that good causes are 
at work ; and we may, consequently 
and fairly, arrive at the opinion that, 
whatever be its faults, the system is 
not all bad, and that, on the contrary, 
it renders possible a form of home 
unity which is peculiar to the race. 
It is not by mere c comparison with 
the results obtained elsewhere that 
we can safely judge this question. 
Each people has its own special 
needs, its own special means of sat- 
isfying them. A great many of us 
are disposed to positively deny that 
the thorough oneness of existence, 
which is so distinctive a character- 
istic of married life in the French 
middle and trading classes, is, in re- 
ality, a merit. The subject has been 
many times discussed from the Eng- 
lish point of view, and it has been 
generally alleged that the absorption 
of women into the hourly details of 
their husbands' lives involves more 
disadvantages than advantages. It 
has been argued frequently that it 
leaves no time for the discharge of 
the duties which specially devolve 
on women ; that it diverts their 
thoughts to subjects which are for- 
eign to their natures; that it leads 
them to neglect their children. But 
are these objections founded? Are 
they not mainly, if not entirely, a 
product of the widely different hab- 
its under which we live 1 And, even 
if they are based on fact, do they ex- 
press a just and serious criticism of 
conditions of home life, which, from 
the widely opposite practices in 
which we grow up, we are unable 
to appreciate with fairness ? Surely 
it may be urged that every act 
which fortifies the tie between man 
and wife is not only respectable in 



theory but desirable in practice. 
Surely a true appreciation of the 
relative values of the different ser- 
vices which a wife can render, of 
the different joys which she can 
provoke, can be more surely reached 
by the husband himself than by 
distant lookers - on, who, uncon- 
sciously perhaps, bring all their 
own prejudices into the discussion. 
If, then, we find, as we distinctly 
do, that the French themselves pro- 
claim the merit of the adjunction of 
the wife to her husband's labours ; 
if we see that the association which 
is entailed by marriage is regarded 
by them as applicable not only to 
sentimental ends, but to the practi- 
cal details of life as well ; if wo- 
men, as a consequence of this view, 
sit by the side of men in offices and 
shops, instead of leaving them to 
work through the day alone, we 
ought, injustice, to acknowledge not 
only that the persons directly in- 
terested must be better able to de- 
cide than we are, but, furthermore, 
that such constant presence, such 
constant sympathy of object and of 
thought, must tend to strengthen 
the bond between them, and must 
augment their friendship. On this 
point, therefore, we may admit that 
the French habit is a wise one. 

As regards intellectual progress, 
marriage ordinarily leads the French 
to nothing. The notion that wife 
and husband may usefully help each 
other on such a road seems not to 
enter their heads, unless, in special 
cases, where the acquirement of 
knowledge, or its distribution to 
others, constitutes the occupation 
of life. When once they have left 
off schooling, the French cease to 
study; they continue what they 
call their " education," but they 
give up " instruction." The two 
words are here employed in the 
sense which is peculiar to France 
the former meaning moral and social 
teaching only, the latter implying 



1873.] 



No. VIII. Marriage. 



35 



solely book-learning in its various 
forms. They continue to improve 
themselves as men and women, as 
towards their soul (when they think 
they have one) or towards the world 
at large ; but they abandon the at- 
tempt to add to what they learned 
in youth. These descriptions are 
of course general, not universal ; but 
their application is so usual that they 
need not be accompanied by any spe- 
cial reservations. With such views 
and practices, it is natural enough 
that marriage should introduce no 
new ideas of action. A husband may 
push his wife towards art, though 
that depends on his or her proclivi- 
ties ; but scarcely ever will he think 
of leading her to read, or of commu- 
nicating to her what he may know 
himself. In quantities of drawing- 
rooms in France an open book is 
never seen ; in some of them even 
newspapers are exceptional objects. 
This does not refer to the higher 
classes, where, frequently, there does 
exist some desire for new facts ; 
but the want of books on the tables 
of the bourgeoisie creates a cheerless 
blank which no profusion of plants 
or flowers can fill up. Sometimes 
one observes two or three stately 
volumes in red morocco, which evi- 
dently are never looked at, and 
probably have never been read ; 
all they do is to confirm the thought 
that their proprietors look to other 
people, and not to print, for fresh 
impressions. But conversation, 
whatever be its merit, whatever be 
the clever uses made of it, does not 
replace reading as a developer of 
knowledge ; all it does is to enable 
us to use knowledge if we have it. 
In this direction French married 
life is far inferior to our own. Our 
women read ; our men generally feel 
some sort of interest in what their 
wives are learning; and without pre- 
tending that marriage is, with us, 
an aid to study, it is so certainly 
when we compare it to what occurs 



in France. Music, on the contrary, 
is more general in French houses 
than in ours; art is more keenly 
felt and more naturally utilised. 
There marriage serves an end, for it 
is particularly after marriage that 
Frenchwomen attain the skill which 
distinguishes them in all the forms of 
indoor adornment, wliich means the 
daily application of the home shapes 
of art. To this the husbands con- 
tribute a good deal ; in this they 
help their wives. But, whatever 
be the value of such action, what- 
ever be the additional attraction 
bestowed on home by this common 
effort to add charm to it, the absence 
of the higher tendencies of intelli- 
gence implies an inferiority of ob- 
ject which is one of the weak points 
of the entire system. The senti- 
ments find full satisfaction in most 
French marriages the affections are 
contented family duties are at- 
tentively and even eagerly perform- 
ed home is decorated, so far as the 
purse allows, with the wise ambi- 
tion of rendering it more seductive; 
but there is little culture of the in- 
telligence, and the pleasures which 
that culture is capable of producing 
in marriage are relatively unknown. 
Even in the country reading does 
not assume an important place 
amongst the occupations of the day : 
there is more of it than in the towns, 
but not enough to justify the state- 
ment that it constitutes an element 
of life. As there is less society in 
the chateau and the village than in 
the centres of population, wives 
have to look for something else than 
gossip to enable them to pass their 
hours. Home cares absorb a consi- 
derable portion of their time visits 
to the sick and poor, which few 
women of the better sort neglect, 
contribute to employ it ; but read- 
ing seldom becomes a constant ob- 
ject, even when it rains. The 
' Eevue des Deux Mondes,' or the 
' Correspondant/ according to the 



36 



French Home Life. 



[July 



opinions of the house, and transla- 
tions of a few English novels, con- 
stitute the habitual limit of female 
study. With all their inventive- 
ness, the French have not discovered 
that reading is not only the most 
natural, but also the most useful of 
home occupations; so, as a rule, 
their marriages do without it. 

There is one more point to glance 
at. What is the influence of re- 
ligion on married life in France, 
and how does marriage influence the 
practice of religion ? The solution 
of such a question depends on per- 
sonal opinion in every case, but it 
is not, perhaps, impossible to give a 
proximately correct reply to it as a 
whole. All French children begin 
by faith ; many of the girls preserve 
it, most of the boys abandon it, in 
varying degrees on both sides. The 
result is, that when a man and a 
woman come together in marriage, 
the woman frequently believes, the 
man habitually docs not. They 
therefore pretty often start in life 
with a tolerably 'complete divergence 
on a grave subject, which, if they 
thought alike upon it, would serve, 
on the contrary, to create a further tie 
between them. But there is abun- 
dant evidence to show that this di- 
vergence exercises but small effect on 
the sentiments of wife and husband 
towards each other, and even that 
the divergence itself is often more 
apparent than real. If we apply to 
the better sort of women for infor- 
mation, we are generally informed 
that their husbands leave them 
alone, do not interfere with their 
discharge of their religious duties, 
and even, in certain cases, accom- 
pany them to church as a matter 
of propriety. In the educated 
classes it is rare to meet with men 
who are actively hostile to religion. 
Many of them say that they regard 
it as a worn-out means of civilisa- 
tion, as an unnecessary complica- 
tion, as a bar to progress ; but, what- 



ever they may say in words, scarcely 
any of them go beyond passive in- 
difference in acts. No simpler or 
more conclusive proof of this can 
be adduced than the fact that one 
hardly ever sees a father, whatever 
be the intensity of his views, pre- 
vent his son from making his 
first communion. Full of incredu- 
lity as the majority of them are, 
the upper French feel, in spite of 
themselves, a sort of vague respect 
for what they believed as boys. 
However complete be their loss of 
faith, they unconsciously retain, in 
most cases, a sentiment of hesitating 
deference for religion which makes 
it difficult for them to take up a 
strong attitude about it towards 
their wives. The result is, that the 
distance between their respective 
views, however considerable it be, 
is not unfrequently bridged over 
by mutual forbearances and conces- 
sions; so that, really, no practical 
dissentiment arises, and no home 
difficulty results from the want of 
community of faith. This sort of 
negative contentment is, however, 
possible only in cases where no 
passion is displayed on either side 
upon the subject ; when husbands 
and wives are eager in the matter, 
when they set actively to work to 
convert each other, then they gene- 
rally end in worry. But if they are 
patient, and wait for the effect of 
all the influences which the con- 
stant contact of married life places 
at their disposal, then, not unfre- 
quently, they do end by conversion 
that is, the conversion of the 
husband; for, though there are- 
quantities of men who are led by 
their wives to faith, there is hardly 
a woman to be found who has-- 
been led by her husband to infi- 
delity. 

These considerations apply main- 
ly to the upper classes. The 
case presents a different aspect if 
we examine it in the strata whera 



1873.] 



No. VIII. Marriage. 



socialism is at work. There the 
desire to root out all religion is re- 
solute and active; there we find 
that many husbands use the power 
which marriage gives them to de- 
stroy faith in their wives ; the ex- 
ceptions are, however, numerous, 
even in the towns. It is naturally 
very difficult to arrive at any reli- 
able figures 011 such a subject ; but 
it seems to result from private ob- 
servations made by the clergy, and 
extending over many years, that 
about one-tenth of the entire popu- 
lation of France goes to Commu- 
nion at Easter, which is the test 
of Catholic practice. It seems, 
furthermore, that, on that occasion, 
the women are about eight times 
as numerous as the men. So that, 
uniting these two calculations, and 
allowing for the number of young 
children whose age excludes them 
from participation in the act, it 
would appear as if about one-quar- 
ter of the women and about one 
twenty-fifth of the men discharge 
this obligatory religious duty. But 
it must be repeated that these 
averages apply to the nation as a 
whole; the proportions are of course 
much higher amongst the educated, 
and lower still amongst the working 
classes. These figures show (even if 
they be only approximately correct) 
how limited is the influence which 
the practice of religion is exercising 
on married life in France; and as the 
averages are certainly not improv- 
ing, it may be inferred from them 
that marriage is not now aiding the 
progress of religion. The French 
are growing out of faith, as out of 
the other convictions which they 
formerly possessed ; and even mar- 
riage, with all its subtle means of 
action, does not appear to be leading 
them back to it. 

If from consideration of the 
separate phases of the subject we 
turn back to it as a whole and re- 
view its elements in their relation 



to each other, we find ourselves in 
the presence of contradictions which, 
at first sight, do not seem easy to 
reconcile, and which might induce 
us to suppose that the question can 
only be safely judged in its isolated 
elements, and not in its entirety. 
But, notwithstanding the conflict- 
ing nature of the evidence, notwith- 
standing the hostility of the main 
facts between themselves, it ought 
not to be impossible to disentangle 
the opposing details from each other, 
and to reach a general impression. 

We find that marriages in France 
are surrounded by peculiar obstacles, 
both personal and legal; that in- 
dividual predilections form but a 
small element in their origin ; that 
antecedent attachments are not con- 
sidered indispensable ; that the pre- 
cept " increase and multiply " is not 
admitted as a binding law. So far 
the system looks unhealthy, accord- 
ing to our appreciation of what 
marriage should be. On the other 
hand, we see that the French marry 
rather more than we do ; that, in 
nineteen cases out of twenty, the 
love which did not exist beforehand 
grows up afterwards ; that there is 
little material misery resulting from 
imprudent marrying; that separa- 
tions are rare and divorce impossible ; 
that French homes, in almost every 
rank, are generally attractive models 
of gentleness and kindness; that, 
in certain cases, the pursuit of mu- 
tual happiness is based on theories 
and practices in which the highest 
forms of skill are successfully em- 
ployed; that children, few though 
they be, are fondly cherished ; that 
the association between man and 
wife assumes, in the lower middle 
classes, an intensity of partnership 
for which it is not easy to find a 
parallel elsewhere ; that religion, if 
it does no good to marriage, can- 
not be said to really suffer harm 
from it. 

In endeavouring to estimate the 



38 



French Home Life. 



[July 



real bearings on each other of these 
two different categories of facts, 
we may remain convinced that 
French parents interfere too much 
in the marrying of their sons and 
daughters ; we may reject as insuffi- 
cient and illusory, from our point of 
view, the arguments which they in- 
voke in favour of that intervention 
we may point with unanswerable 
logic to the relatively childless fire- 
sides of France as evidence that, 
whatever be their love for children, 
the French shrink purposely from 
having them; but, with all this 
before us, we are obliged to own 
that they do extract large results 
from matrimony. The love of 
home, which we observe so univer- 
sally amongst them, is, in itself, a 
proof of the existence of attraction 
between man and wife; and at- 
traction implies sympathy. This 
symptom should suffice alone to re- 
move all reasonable doubt as to the 
reality of the affection which unites 
most French families. But if affec- 
tion is a consequence of marriage, 
it seems to follow that the system 
on which marriages are based can- 
not be a very bad one for those 
who use it. A somewhat similar 
argument may be employed with 
reference to the children ; the 
moral wrong of avoiding them can- 



not be explained away ; but, when, 
they do come, they are tenderly- 
cherished, and aid in strengthening 
the bond between their parents. If r 
then, as is incontestably the case,, 
the great majority of French mar- 
ried people love each other and their 
offspring, it may not unreasonably 
be deduced therefrom that the dif- 
ficulties and contradictions which/ 
seem at first sight to result from 
the opposing elements of the posi- 
tion, do not bring about the effects 
which, with our ideas, we should, 
expect them to produce. 

Questions such as these depend 
a good deal on temperament. The 
French are not organised as we are ' r 
they differ from us in the composi- 
tion of their character and their ten- 
dencies to a degree which it is scarce- 
ly possible to realise without close 
comparison. The same beginnings 
do not necessarily result in the same 
ends in England and in France. As 
was observed at the commencement 
of this article, it is fair to judge a 
system by its fruits ; and if we ap- 
ply that principle to French mar- 
riages, we ought to own that a sys- 
tem which leads to so much fondness, 
to so much happiness, to such true 
home life, cannot be fundamentally 
wrong, whatever certain of its de- 
tails may incline us to suppose. 



1873.] 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



39 



THE CURE" SANTA CRUZ AND THE CARLIST WAR. 



GUIPUZCOA, one of the three Basque 
provinces and the most picturesque 
of them consists, with the excep- 
tion of a few valleys, such as those of 
Aspeitia, Eeal de Leniz, Lagaspia, 
the vega or rich plain lying be- 
tween Lescano and Beasain, of hills 
covered with orchards, and of off- 
shoots of the great Pyrenean . chain. 
On the slope of one of these, called 
Mount Hernio, about half a league 
from Tolosa, the old capital of the 
province, and close to the shaded 
spot where the Oria receives the 
waters of its little tributary, the 
Berastegui, stands Hernialde, which, 
though its population does not ex- 
ceed 360 souls, claims to rank as a 
villa, taking precedence of the lugar, 
and coming immediately after the 
ciudad or city. With pardonable 
vanity, it moreover displays on its 
shield the device, "Noble y leal 
A 7 ilia," which in truth is hardly a 
distinction, as there are few towns 
in the Peninsula that do not bear 
the same designation. The ground 
slopes down to the Oria, with which 
the streamlet just mentioned mingles 
its waters, and is usually clothed 
with soft and tender verdure, or 
planted over with fruit-trees and 
with Indian corn, which constitute 
the chief agricultural produce of the 
province. The village church is of 
the simplest architecture, and is pro- 
portioned to the requirements of the 
population, many of whom, on the 
great festivals, resort to the more 
sumptuous structure of Tolosa, re- 
markable for the colossal statue of 
its patron, St John. 

One morning, in the month of 
June 1870, the parish priest, a young 
man of eight-and-twenty, was cele- 
brating mass at the usual hour. 
The attendants were few, for it was 
not Sunday nor a holiday of obliga- 
tion, and the majority of the par- 



ishioners were employed in the field. 
The ceremony was more than half 
over when a party of soldiers, led 
by an officer, entered the building 
with fixed bayonets, advanced to 
the steps of the altar, and there 
took their stand. When the mass 
was said and the priest about to 
retire, the officer announced in a 
loud voice that he was his prisoner, 
and ordered him " in the name of 
the law " to follow him there and 
then. The priest, thus rudely in- 
terrupted, manifested no surprise or 
irritation; he merely requested to 
be allowed time to lay aside his 
vestments. The party followed him 
to the sacristy, where he disrobed. 
"Am I really to consider myself 
your prisoner ? " he asked, looking 
fixedly, but with no indication of 
alarm, at the officer ; " and if so, 
may I ask what offence I am charged 
with 1 It must, indeed, be serious, 
to justify your intrusion into this 
place, and to arrest a minister of reli- 
gion at the foot of the altar, and in 
the act of performing his sacred 
functions. Of course I must submit 
but, once more, what is my of- 
fence 1 " " Of that you shall hear," 
said the officer, "in the proper place, 
and from competent authority ; my 
duty is simply to execute the orders 
of my superiors, before whom you 
will soon appear, and who will, 
doubtless, give all the explanation 
you desire." "Very good, sir," said 
the priest, in a gentle and resigned 
tone ; " but I have not yet broken 
my fast. It wants but half an hour 
to noon. I have been up since day- 
break, and on foot, attending to the 
wants of my people; and I presume, 
and hope, that your orders do not 
compel you to take me to prison 
half famished. My house is but a 
few steps off, and I shall be satis- 
fied if you give me a few minutes 



40 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



[July 



to swallow a cup of chocolate." 
" Certainly," answered the officer, a 
young man of about five-and-twenty, 
and of courteous manner. The guard 
followed him, and drew up at the 
door. "I shall detain you but a 
very short time. You will do me a 
favour -by coming up -stairs to my 
room, and share my refreshments." 
" Many thanks ; but we remain 
here." The priest appeared so quiet 
in tone and manner, so utterly un- 
conscious of having done anything 
to merit harsh treatment, that the of- 
ficer, and probably his men, thought 
that, towards a person so inoifensive 
and so zealous, it was an act of wan- 
ton tyranny. This favourable opin- 
ion was strengthened when a young 
man, the sacristan of the parish, 
brought out on a small tray six or 
seven cups of thick chocolate, with 
the indispensable glasses of spark- 
ling cold water, azucarillas, and 
cigarettes. Twenty minutes, half 
an hour soon passed by; three-quar- 
ters; and the officer was growing 
impatient. He was about to sum- 
mon his prisoner to descend, and 
had mounted a few steps, when 
he was met by a peasant on the 
staircase, bearing on his head a large 
basket of apples and maize-stalks, 
who stepped aside respectfully to 
make way for him. Ten minutes 
more elapsed, and the officer called 
out to the priest to come down. 
There was no answer. He called 
still louder; still no answer. He 
made a sign to two of his men 'to 
follow. They ascended the creak- 
ing staircase, and entered the little 
room where the prisoner was sup- 
posed to be taking his repast. On a 
small round table there was indeed a 
cup of chocolate, flanked by a bit of 
dry toast and a glass of water, but 
no one was there. The officer darted 
into the next room ; it was empty. 
He searched every hole and corner 
of the house which was a small 
but in vain. The windows 



one 



were shut, and there was no sign on 



the balcony of any person passing 
that way. The officer came to the 
conclusion that the peasant with 
the fruit-basket, who had made way 
for him on the staircase, and the 
priest, were one and the same. The 
peasant was he whose name is now 
so well known in the north of Spain, 
among the foremost and most daring 
of the Carlist chiefs, MANUEL SANTA. 
CRUZ, Cure of Hernialde. 

Santa Cruz was born in 1842 in 
Elduayen, a village of Guipuzcoa 
not much more populous than that 
of which he was parish priest. 
It is four miles from Tolosa, and 
half that distance from the Navar- 
rese border. Like Gil Bias, he was 
indebted to his uncle, an ecclesiastic, 
for the rudiments of Latin ; and as 
he evinced a vocation for the Church, 
he was placed in a seminary at 
Bergara, and, by the generosity of 
the same relation, was enabled to 
complete his studies. He received 
orders at the usual canonical age. 
He said his first mass in 1866, and 
two years afterwards was appointed 
Cure" of the parish of Hernialde. By 
those who knew him while a stu- 
dent, he is said to have been quiet 
and unassuming, of blameless life, 
and even austere in morals, a 
fanatic, if you will, in what ,he be- 
lieved to be the cause of religion 
and the cause of legitimacy, but 
sincere and disinterested. Next in 
love for the Prince whom he regards 
as the true heir to the crown of 
Spain, is his admiration of Zuma- 
lacarreguy, the famous champion 
of the Carlists in the former war, 
and who, like himself, was a na- 
tive of Guipuzcoa. The compan- 
ions of his school-days tell how 
he used to pore over the story of 
the combats and the triumphs of the 
man whom he looked on as a hero ; 
and how his pale features flushed 
and his eyes glowed when he read 
of "Judas," as he called Maroto, 
betraying the king to whom he 
had sworn fidelity, and the army 



1873.] 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



who implicitly trusted him, in 
Bergara, But in all probability, 
were it not for the events which 
followed the downfall of Isabella 
II., Santa Cruz would have lived 
and died the pastor of his village, 
devoting himself to study and the 
performance of his priestly duties. 

In the early part of 1870 he was 
informed that a rising was imminent 
in the north-west, in favour of the 
grandson of the Don Carlos about 
whom he had read so much in the 
history of the seven years' war. It 
did not occur to him that there 
was anything irregular in an ec- 
clesiastic taking active part with 
arms in the field, in defence 
of religion, and of legitimate 
monarchy against the enemies of 
both. ' He was conversant with the 
history of the priests and monks, 
and even nuns, who roused the 
enthusiasm of the Spanish people 
against the French invaders in the 
war of independence, and who led 
the guerillas against the foreign 
traitors and rebels who had mur- 
dered their king ; of the friars of 
Saragossa, whose memory is pre- 
served in poetry and painting, who 
braved the terrors of the battle- 
field, and, indifferent to danger and 
to death, with the crucifix in their 
hand, pointed the cannon against 
the enemies of mankind. There 
was, too, the famous Cure* Merino, 
who, after figuring in that war of 
giants, reappeared, after years of 
retirement, at the head of his free 
companions, and long roamed over 
the plains of Old Castile. Zuma- 
lacarreguy himself had renounced 
the clerical profession, for which he 
was originally intended, to combat 
the French, as he many years after 
combated for the legitimate king; 
and, more than all, was not the 
Bishop of Leon foremost among the 
most daring partisans of Charles 
F.I 

I have observed that, but for the 
military insurrection of 1868, an 



insurrection plotted and carried out 
by men noted for the blackest in- 
gratitude that our times have wit- 
nessed, some of whom retributive 
justice has already overtaken, the 
name of the priest of Hernialde 
would not have been known beyond 
the precincts of his native province. 
In 1870 a first attempt was made in 
favour of Don Carlos, and failed, 
owing, according to his friends, to 
the treachery of one or two of the 
chiefs, but also, doubtless, to the 
imperfect preparations for the cam- 
paign, and the scanty armament. 
There were men enough, at all 
events, for an opening probably 
6000 but arms and ammunition 
were wanting ; and when the com- 
bat of Orosquieta ended in the de- 
feat of the insurgents, there were 
2000 more ready to take part in it, 
but they had not a single musket 
among them. It had been settled 
after long deliberation in Paris (Rue 
Chauveau-Lagarde) and in Geneva, 
that the proclamation of Don Carlos 
as King of Spain should be made 
simultaneously in the four northern 
provinces, Navarre, Guipuzcoa, Bis- 
cay, and Alava, in each of which 
depots of arms were established. It 
happened that a couple of hundred 
stand of muskets, of the old pattern 
the greater part, were hid in the 
village of Hernialde : one of the 
chiefs informed his old school- 
fellow and friend, Santa Cruz, of 
the fact, and requested him to watch 
as diligently as possible over their 
safe keeping. The spot where they 
were concealed and the person in 
charge of them were soon denounced 
to the Alcalde of the village, the 
informer being, as was alleged, the 
young woman who was not long 
afterwards shot by the Cure 1 . Orders 
were given for his immediate arrest, 
and a party of soldiers with an 
officer despatched to execute them. 
How he succeeded in escaping from 
them has just been mentioned. 
For the next twelve months and 



42 



The Care Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



[July 



more Santa Cruz wandered among 
the mountains, hiding by day in a 
peasant's hut, travelling by night 
knee-deep in snow, crossing and re- 
crossing the frontier whenever he 
had occasion to do so, holding fre- 
quent interviews with Carlist chiefs 
near Ainhoa, Sarre, and other vil- 
lages on the French side of the 
Pyrenees, rousing the apathetic, de- 
ciding the hesitating, fanning the 
flame of the enthusiastic, collect- 
ing money, providing resources, and 
otherwise labouring for the triumph 
of the cause with which he was now 
bound up, body and soul. He was 
denounced to the Madrid Govern- 
ment as the most active and the most 
dangerous agent of the Pretender, 
and one whose name had even then 
great weight with the party. 

Representations of the most 
pressing kind were repeatedly made 
to the French Government. It 
was complained that the Prefect of 
the Lower Pyrenees showed great 
apathy in carrying out the orders 
of his superiors for the arrest of 
these agents, which amounted to 
connivance. The Prefect and Sub- 
Prefects of the department were re- 
monstrated with, and became more 
vigilant. The police were sent 
about in all directions : but it was 
by x mere accident that he was at 
last captured, after many hair- 
breadth escapes. He had been for 
a few days in Socoa, a little marine 
town situated at the entrance of the 
bay of St Jean de Luz, near the 
group of rocks against which the 
waves of the Cantabrian ocean are 
broken. He was waiting a favour- 
able moment to visit the environs 
of Bayonne, where he had appointed 
to meet a personage of some import- 
ance with whom he had been in 
communication. As he was crossing 
the bridge of the Mvelle which con- 
nects the suburban village of Ciboure 
with St Jean de Luz, he encoun- 
tered two gendarmes who evidently 
did not know him, and who at first 



seemed disposed to let him pass 
without asking questions. They, 
however, turned back the moment 
he was about to clear the bridge, 
and called upon him to produce his 
" papers." " My papers ! " he said 
readily ; " with pleasure here they 
are," putting his hand into his 
pockets, one after the other. Again 
and again they were searched and 
turned inside out, but no papers 
were there, as Santa Cruz of course 
well knew. "With a look of the 
deepest vexation, he had, he said, 
through forgetfulness, left them be- 
hind at Ciboure or Socoa ; and his 
manner was so earnest that the 
gendarmes, though not easily de- 
ceived in such matters, were thrown 
off their guard, and had little doubt 
that the stranger was really in pos- 
session of the necessary documents, 
and was a bond fide traveller. "While 
they were parleying, the attention of 
one of the gendarmes was attracted 
to an empty canoe floating down 
the stream, and his comrade was ex- 
changing a few words with an ac- 
quaintance who happened to come 
up at the moment. Santa Cruz 
dashed by them, and began to run 
with the utmost speed towards St 
Jean de Luz. The idlers who were 
lounging about clapped their hands 
and laughed heartily on seeing a 
Spanish priest running as if for his 
life, and followed hard, after a few in- 
stants' surprise, by two gendarmes, 
whose heavy jack-boots and loose ac- 
coutrements were not favourable for 
this sort of exercise. The lower or- 
ders of the French are seldom ready 
or willing to lend a hand to the guar- 
dians of the peace in capturing an 
offender: he continued to give 
chase for half an hour, amid the 
cheers of men and boys; and 
but for the intervention of two 
peasants who were coming in an 
opposite direction with a cart and 
oxen, and who probably thought 
that the runaway was a thief, or 
it may be something worse, dis- 



1873.] 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carltst War. 



guised in clerical habiliments, the 
gendarmes would have "been baffled, 
as was the officer at Hernialde. He 
was overtaken and lodged that night 
in the guard-house; the next day 
he was conducted to the citadel of 
Bayonne, and thence sent on under 
escort to Nantes. 

At Nantes Santa Cruz was not 
destined to remain long. Scarcely 
had Don Carlos made his second 
appeal to the Spanish people in 
1872 which was responded to by 
some thousands of partisans, though 
still scantily supplied with arms 
when Santa Cruz once more appear- 
ed in the mountains. He crossed the 
frontier, and when on Spanish soil 
offered his services as chaplain to a 
band of about four hundred Gui- 
puzcoans, commanded by one Re- 
cindo. The vicissitudes during this 
attempt, the disastrous combats of 
Onate and Maiiaria, and the defeat 
and dispersion of Orosquieta, are of 
too recent occurrence to be forgot- 
ten. They were followed by the ne- 
gotiations between Serrano and some 
of the leading Carlists of Biscay, 
and the Convention of Amorovieta, 
by which, as was believed, the 
cause of Don Carlos was ruined 
for ever. The main body of the 
partisans dispersed in all directions; 
many of them hid their arms in 
places only known to themselves, 
and returned to their homes, sad and 
sorrowful enough, but by no means 
despairing. Of the chiefs, several 
who refused to submit made their 
way to France, and were at once 
removed to the interior ; others re- 
mained in concealment close to the 
frontier, but still on Spanish soil ; 
and as for Don Carlos, none except a 
very few of his intimates could tell 
what had become of him. For some 
time it was rumoured that he had 
died of his wounds, aggravated by 
a fall from a horse. Others reported 
that he had left Spain, and that the 
danger he had gone through in that 
combat disgusted him with the 



part of Pretender; and, in fact, 
that he had resigned in favour of 
his younger and more energetic 
brother, Don Alfonso. Persons 
who had been or who professed to 
be devoted to his cause, seemed now 
disposed to abandon it, and spoke 
in bitter terms of the Prince 
whose pusillanimity had ruined and 
disgraced it. There was, perhaps, 
great exaggeration in what was 
said about him ; probably they 
who censured him most severely 
after that defeat, did so to justify 
their own too ready assent to the 
Convention of Amorovieta ; and we 
all know how rarely people are just 
or tolerant towards the unfortunate. 
The main body of the Carlists of 
Guipuzcoa was indeed driven from 
its position and broken up, but 
parties of a hundred, or half that 
number, persisted in carrying on the 
guerilla in the fastnesses of Navarre. 
Santa Cruz was one of those who 
escaped afterthe defeatof Orosquieta, 
and we soon find him again in France. 
In France he remained but a short 
time ; for, knowing that the struggle 
was still carried on in spite of all 
difficulties, he returned to Spain, and, 
as before, proffered his services as 
chaplain. This time the cause of 
the Pretender was manifestly gain- 
ing ground ; the bands were in- 
creasing in number, and spreading 
throughout Biscay, and had actually 
hemmed in a column of troops, 
among whom the disaffection which 
was rapidly dissolving the Spanish 
army had not yet reached, in the 
Amescoas. It happened that in 
one of the forays Santa Cruz was 
cut off from the party to which he 
was attached, and taken prison- 
er. On being brought into the 
presence of the commanding officer 
he made no attempt at concealment. 
" I am," he said, " Santa Cruz, Cure 
of Hernialde. I am in your power 
through my own rashness do with 
me as you please ; my life is in your 
hands." " Then, my good friend," 



44 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carllst War. 



answered the other, " there is no- 
thing more to be said but to recom- 
mend you to make your peace with 
heaven, for in a few hours you shall 
be shot." "So be it : it is a conso- 
lation to know that I die in a right- 
eous cause." His arms were bound 
with cords, he was thrown upon 
a mule, conducted under a strong 
escort to a neighbouring village, 
and locked up in a room in the 
upper storey of a house, next to a 
loft where maize was stored, and 
then his bonds were loosened. From 
this room, which was to serve as a 
capilla or chapel, where the con- 
demned criminal spends his last 
night, he was to be taken next 
morning for execution. The house 
was ill guarded, for the detachment, 
tired arid worn out by marching 
and countermarching in pursuit of 
an enemy they could never come up 
with, had moreover to guard against 
surprise in the village church, and 
could spare but few men for the 
prisoner. It was rumoured, too, 
that some of the soldiers were not 
over solicitous as to his safe custody. 
It spread like wildfire through the 
village and the country round that 
the priest of Hernialde was in the 
hands of his enemies, and already 
in capilla. All the inhabitants, 
women as well as men, were Car- 
lists, and of course friends to the 
prisoner, whom they had known 
from childhood. He saw a group 
of them as he was led to his prison, 
and threw out a signal which they 
well understood, and which escaped 
the notice of his guards. He entered 
his room, and after partaking of 
refreshment for it is considered a 
sacred duty to give a prisoner under 
such circumstances whatever he 
may have a fancy for he desired 
to be left alone, to prepare for 
death. On inspecting the bed on 
which he was to sleep his last, he 
saw it was furnished with the usual 
allowance of sheets of strong coarse 
linen. No time was to be lost, 



[July 

as the officer of the guard would 
soon make his visit. He set to 
work, and made a rope of the 
sheets, which he cut into pro- 
per lengths. "While his guards 
were eating their rations at the door 
below, Santa Cruz quietly opened 
the small window, the only one 
in the room, which was at 
the back, looking into a garden 
planted with fruit-trees, made fast 
the rope to an iron bar which ran 
across over the window-frame, slid 
down, and, when within three or 
four feet of the ground, found him- 
self in the arms of his friends, who 
had understood his signal, and were 
waiting for him. In half an hour the 
sergeant of the guard made his visit, 
and, to his consternation (at least 
apparently), found that his prisoner 
was gone. The open window and 
the improvised rope told which way 
he had passed. The officer sent out 
as many men as he could spare in 
pursuit of the fugitive, and spent the 
greater part of the night searching 
every house in the village but in 
vain. Santa Cruz's hiding-place was 
indeed not far off : it was a marsh or 
swamp covered over with reeds and 
bulrushes, and in this he remained for 
eight or ten hours, up to the neck in 
water. When he saw that the coast 
was clear he emerged from this un- 
pleasant bath, and made his way to 
the hut of a woodcutter, which had 
already been more than once searched 
by the soldiers, so that it was pro- 
bable it would not again be visited. 
The woodcutter, who, by the way, 
was more Carlist than Don 3 Carlos 
himself, gave him a few dollars. 

The next people heard of him was 
that he was again across the fron- 
tier, living quietly in some obscure 
village not far from Cambo, in the 
Basque country. Those narrow es- 
capes from certain death, his indo- 
mitable courage, pushed to rashness, 
and the ingenuity of his plans, soon 
gave him a certain celebrity among 
the Royalists. 



1873.] 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



45 



The moment soon came for him to 
exercise a weighty influence among 
the champions of the cause which he 
had from conviction embraced, and 
to which he was devoting his whole 
energies. In spite of the occasional 
dispersion of petty bands in divers 
parts, the Convention of Amorovieta, 
which in truth chiefly concerned 
Biscay, the discouragement of many 
friends of the cause, and the equivo- 
cal conduct of the Prince himself, 
for whom they had taken the field, 
or more than half ruined themselves 
and their families by large gifts of 
money Saballs, with the desperate 
tenacity characteristic of the Cata- 
lan, would not admit, however 
appearances might be, that the cause 
was hopeless. It is true that in 
Biscay and a portion of Guipuzcoa 
and Alava order seemed to be 
restored;'; but Saballs continued 
to hold his ground against all 
the force the Madrid Government 
could send against him. And whilst 
the official journal told, according to 
its wont, lie after lie that he was 
driven ignominiously, and with great 
loss, across the frontier that the 
remnant of his band and himself 
were, on touching the French soil, 
disarmed, and arrested by the French 
authorities, and sent on as prisoners 
to Perpignan and that the struggle 
was now really at an end in the 
north-east as well as in the Basque 
provinces, Saballs was not only 
holding his own with far inferior 
resources, but was actually beating, 
one after the other, the dunces who 
dared to face him. Santa Cruz, too, 
never despaired indeed, he seemed 
not to know what despair was. Even 
in the worst days he had never fal- 
tered for an instant in his belief of 
final success, and he now saw that 
he must rouse once more the old 
spirit of Guipuzcoa. "Had I but 
fifty men," he wrote to his friends 
" but fifty resolute fellows to follow 
me, I should not hesitate to cross 
the frontier, and try the game again." 



His wish was satisfied. He dis- 
appeared on the 1st of December 
1872 ; and while the police agents 
of the Spanish Government were 
confining their vigilance to Bayonne 
and St Jean de Luz, in the neigh- 
bourhood of which he was supposed 
to be, the first news the public 
had of him was, that he was preach- 
ing the "Holy War" in every vil- 
lage of Guipuzcoa, levying contri- 
butions, and stopping trains almost 
within sight of San Sebastian ; and 
the Government found, to their deep 
mortification, that Serrano's diplo- 
macy had gone for nothing, and that 
the civil war had broken out with 
more vigour than ever in the north- 
west. This last audacious act of 
Santa Cruz was a death-blow to the 
dynasty of Savoy. The excitement 
was intense on both sides ; the 
Radicals were furious, the hopes of 
the Carlists stronger than ever, and 
their enthusiasm more ardent. It 
spread from village to village, and 
the cry "To arms ! to arms !" sent 
out by Goiriena from Biscay, and 
by Olio from Navarre, was respond- 
ed to from the mountains. It 
was on this occasion that Santa 
Cruz put forth all his powers of 
persuasion, and all his zeal. He 
went from town to town, from val- 
ley to valley, from house to house, 
exhorting, encouraging, remonstrat- 
ing, and threatening. He harangued 
congregations in the old Basque 
tongue, so full of imagery, as they 
left the church after mass : he called 
upon the young men who could be 
spared from the labours of the field, 
to defend, with arms in their hands, 
"the cause of God, religion, their 
king, and the ancient indepen- 
dence of their native province." 
He did more than preach. He laid 
aside the cassock, and put himself as 
a chief at the head of some 500 men ; 
and by him these hasty levies 
were soon made soldiers well fitted 
for the warfare in which the 
Spaniards of the mountain excel. 



46 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



[July 



JN'ot half the number were armed or 
equipped when he first mustered 
them. Before long all had excel- 
lent muskets, and a plentiful sup- 
ply of ammunition ; and the uni- 
forms of the mobilised nationals of 
France, laid aside after the peace 
with Germany, were bought up by 
liis agents. The compact band was 
organised, armed, and equipped out 
of resources raised by Santa Cruz 
himself in France and Spain. 

The partisans who acknowledged 
the Guipuzcoan priest as their 
leader go by the name of the Black 
Legion Legion negra. It is com- 
posed of vigorous young men, 
all natives of the province, many of 
whom have rarely passed the night 
in a town. Their absolute devotion 
to their chief is proved by the 
fact that not one was tempted by 
the reward of 50,000 reals (.500) 
offered for the capture of Santa 
Cruz, dead or alive ; and 50,000 
reals are a fortune to a Basque 
peasant. The most complete order 
and discipline are enforced in his 
little army. In the evening, when 
the day's work is over, the enemy 
distant, the hour for repose at 
hand, and the rations eaten, at 
a given signal those rough men 
assemble round their chief, once 
more their priest, to hear prayers 
read, in which they all join. Their 
prayer is for " King Charles VII. ; 
for Spain, now delivered over to the 
demon of anarchy ; for those who 
have died in battle, and for those 
who may yet fall in the cause of the 
king." And then, wrapped up in 
their manias, which serve as cloak 
or blanket, they lay themselves down 
to sleep, each with his loaded mus- 
ket by his side, ready to start up 
at the slightest notice; while men 
are stationed as sentries at regular 
intervals, to give warning of ap- 
proaching danger. Of the famous 
Cure Merino, it used to be said that 
he slept as soundly on horseback as 
in a bed of down. Santa Cruz has 



acquired the power of sleeping 
standing, his back to a rock, and 
his head and hands resting on a 
thick knotted stick which he seldom 
lays aside. But even this he does not 
enjoy until he Jias made his rounds, 
visited his sentries, and sees that 
everything is in perfect order for 
the night, and in security. After 
two or three hours' sleep, he is again 
on foot, gives the signal, when every 
man starts up ready to go whither- 
soever their chief orders with- 
out asking questions. He is never 
tired, and yet no one gets over 
more ground than he, or in less 
time. No one can say exactly 
where he is. He has been known 
to spend part of a night in a village 
on the extreme frontier, and when 
his pursuers reach it, knocked up 
with fatigue, they learn that he is 
twenty or thirty miles in the interior. 
Every officer sent out after him 
comes back as he went, after a wild- 
goose chase for many a league. He 
seems to know by instinct when 
and where an ambuscade is laid ; 
and not only does he baffle his 
pursuers, but often turns their own 
ambuscade against them. 

Before the guerilla warfare com- 
menced, while Santa Cruz was lead- 
ing a quiet life in his parish of 
Hernialde, he was of a slight deli- 
cate frame, and looked like an in- 
valid. Since then he has grown 
stout and strong : exercise, constant 
living in the open air, and ever-re- 
curring danger, he seems to thrive on. 
The abstemiousness he had always 
practised he has never departed 
from. In person he is under the 
middle stature ; his features dark 
and irregular, and rather common- 
place; but his small black eyes, 
deep set, glow from out thick eye- 
brows, and indicate the fiery energy 
that burns within. When he took 
the field as a chief of partisans, he, 
as has been observed, quite laid 
aside the clerical costume; for the 
long black cassock, the black cloak, 



1873.] 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



47 



and the enormous hat of the Spanish 
priest, would be inconvenient in 
campaigning, and dangerous. He 
assumed the dress worn by the 
peasants the low vest of strong 
brown cloth, the \ red sash round 
the waist, the loose-fitting breeches 
of the mountaineer of Navarre, 
reaching to the knee, the legs en- 
veloped in black gaiters, and the 
feet protected by the sandals or 
alpargatas of the country. Before 
close-shaven, like all Spanish priests 
not missionaries, or of the monastic 
orders, he has let his beard and 
moustache grow, the restless life he 
leads compelling him to forego the 
luxury of the razor. He carries in 
his belt a pair of loaded revolvers, 
and in his hand the thick stick 
which is as necessary a part of the 
equipment of a Basque peasant as 
the shillelah to an Irishman. His 
head-dress is the boina or flat cloth 
cap, white in colour, with a blue 
tassel in the centre, which, accord- 
ing to the fancy of the wearer, may 
be of woollen, silk, or silver fringe. 
His body-guard is composed of ten 
or twelve stalwart youths from 
his native village, who accompany 
him in all his expeditions, armed 
and equipped like himself, and pre- 
pared to execute any orders he may 
give them. They are true to him 
heart and soul ; and it would be a 
dangerous experiment for any one 
to tamper with their fidelity, or 
to even remotely suggest the ad- 
vantage of betraying him. He 
has unbounded confidence in them. 
They have known each other from 
infancy, and they regard him 
not only as their chief and their 
friend, but, in spite of the irregular 
life he leads, as their pastor. His 
partisans say that since the time of 
the Navarrese hero Mina there has 
been no captain of guerillas who, in 
so short a space of time, and with 
such small means at his disposal, 
has done so much for the national 
cause. Apart from the excesses 



which are the accompaniment of 
civil war everywhere, and particu- 
larly in Spain, it is affirmed that 
his private conduct is without 
reproach. There is, however, one 
act of his which many friends of 
the cause he is engaged in have 
justly denounced in the strongest 
terms the shooting of a young 
woman who, he alleges, was caught 
conveying despatches from the 
officer commanding the troops, 
was known to be a spy, and who 
had received a sum of money to 
betray him to his enemy, as well as 
the alcalde of a village after the 
combat of Aya. This deed pro- 
duced such sensation that Santa 
Cruz addressed the following let- 
ter to the Carlist paper that pub- 
lished a well-deserved censure on 
his conduct : 

"March IB, 1873. 

" In a late number of your jour- 
nal I read a letter from a Guipuz- 
coan correspondent which you seem 
to approve, since you stigmatise my 
mode of acting (during this rude 
campaign, opened by me in the 
month of December last. You say 
that the Carlists of Guipuzcoa are 
painfully affected by certain bar- 
barous acts committed by one of 
the chiefs of the party in this pro- 
vince; alluding, no doubt, to the 
execution of a woman of the high 
lands. That chief is the person 
who writes these lines ; and he has 
a right to ask, who are the men of 
the Carlist party ? who is the author 
of the letter 1 who is the writer who 
composes diatribes by his fireside 
at the moment when, pursued by 
the enemy's columns through the 
snow, I am hunted to the death 1 
Does your correspondent imagine 
that, from a caprice of indescribable 
barbarity, it is a pleasure to me to 
take the life of one of God's crea- 
tures? Do you know why I or- 
dered the woman and other guilty 
persons to be executed 1 Is it then 
so precious, the life of a wretch 



48 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



[July 



who, availing herself of her title of 
Carlist, betrays the volunteers of 
God and of the king, and carries 
despatches from the enemy sewn 
up in her dress 1 Are these Carlists 
aware how much suffering and peril 
we endure for the final triumph of our 
cause 1 If they know nothing about 
it, let them hold their tongues, 
and not sow division amongst 
us; let them hold their tongues, 
and not excite the volunteers 
against the chiefs who hourly ex- 
pose their lives for the success of 
the cause and the defeat of the 
Revolution ; let them keep silent, 
and leave dishonest manoeuvres to 
those who have not the courage to 
put their names to what they write. 
It is not true that our friends in 
this province blame me. Those 
friends desire to finish with the an- 
archists, with the deputies who 
offer large rewards for our heads, 
with our despots and our tyrants ; 
and they ought to know that if I 
acted as I did, it was because I could 
not do otherwise. All my young 
volunteers approve me. Those 
brave young men are disposed to 
shed the last drop of their blood 
by my side; on one condition, 
however that I relieve them from 
the spies who plot our ruin'; the spies 
of the enemy, of whom some are spies 
through fear, and others for money : 
it is the Basques who pay for both. 
" It is said that the Carlist party, 
who have nobly carried on the war 
up to the present day, despite a 
thousand calumnies, have a right 
to require that the cause shall not 
be dishonoured. You know how in 
May last certain volunteers gave up 
thousands of muskets and this 
was one of the most shameful 
pages of Carlism. We must have 
no second Amorovieta. I am justi- 
fied by the laws of war in punish- 
ing spies, and still more in punish- 
ing those who push their treason 
so far as to surrender their flag. 
My volunteers are convinced that 



we must act with seventy, and 
eradicate the evil ; but the punish- 
ment is only inflicted for offences of 
the most heinous character. 

" MANUEL SANTA CRUZ." 

Buffon says, "le style c'est 
rhomme," and the preceding justifi- 
cation shows as well as anything else 
the character of the fanatical priest 
of one cruel indeed, but ready to 
endure all that he inflicts on others. 
Those chiefs of partisans are cer- 
tainly guilty of acts of ferocity, and 
it should be borne in mind that 
reckless disregard of life is not 
confined to one party exclusively. 
Both sides have much to answer 
for in this respect. The summary 
executions by drumhead court- 
martial, or by no court-martial at 
all, and simply on identification of 
those who had taken up arms for 
Don Carlos in the seven years' war, 
were commenced by military au- 
thorities commanding, in the name 
of Isabella II. , then a child of four 
years old, under the regency of her 
mother Queen Christina. These 
executions were indeed fearfully 
avenged by Zumalacarreguy, whose 
natural severity kept in submission 
the troops and the inhabitants of 
the revolted districts ; and increased 
to such extent that the English 
Government had to interfere, and 
imposed on both parties a convention 
by which prisoners belonging to 
regular troops on both sides were, 
in the Basque provinces, allowed 
quarter. It must be said, however, 
that when the Carlist commander 
proposed to extend the benefits of 
the convention to the districts south 
of the Ebro, and, in fact, wherever 
Carlist bands were in arms, General 
Cordova (Luis); then at the head of 
the army of the north, refused to 
allow it to have effect outside the 
limits of the Basque provinces and 
Navarre. A Christino General com- 
manding a district in Catalonia, shot 
the aged mother of Cabrera, and 



1873.] 



The Curu Santa Cruz and the Carllst War. 



49 



he, too, terribly retaliated for a crime 
committed precisely on the same 
ground as those alleged by Santa 
Cruz espionage, and conveying de- 
spatches to and from the enemy. 

To those who may feel surprised 
that, after many years' submission to 
the rule of a constitutional sove- 
reign, Basques and Navarrese should 
still be found to combat for the grand- 
son of the Prince whose cause had 
been virtually lost even before the 
great defection of Bergara, we may 
observe that the inhabitants of a 
country like Spain, intersected by 
chains and groups of mountains, are 
the last to accept important changes 
in government, allegiance, or religion. 
The Highlanders of Spain have 
adhered to the cause of Don Carlos, 
as the Highlanders of Scotland ad- 
hered to that of Charles Stuart, long 
after their repudiation by the maj ority 
of the nation, and as the primitive 
Vendeans behind their woods and 
marshes clung to the elder branch 
of the Bourbons. The Basques are 
a brave, hardy, obstinate race, 
as proved in ancient and modern 
times by their resistance to the 
Roman invaders, to the Moors, and 
to the French ; and in protracted 
contest, even when there remains 
slight chance of success, they have 
no superiors, perhaps no equals. The 
constant practice of smuggling ad- 
mirably fits them for guerilla war- 
fare ; they come to the fight already 
veterans; and in power of endur- 
ance and activity, they are not 
surpassed by any others of their 
class in Europe. One of the prin- 
cipal causes of the success of the 
Caiiists in the first year of the war, 
;after the death of Ferdinand VII., 
was to be found in the numerous 
desertions of the troops, and the en- 
forced retirement of officers of merit 
suspected of disaffection to the new 
order of things, and in the volun- 
tary resignation of others, who would 
not swear allegiance to the infant 

VOL. CXIV. NO. DCXCIII. 



Queen, r and who transferred their 
services to her uncle. In the pre- 
sent day, the overthrow and expul- 
sion of Isabella, after thirty-five 
years of acknowledged sovereignty, 
not by Carlists who had accepted the 
Convention of Bergara, but by men 
who had never worn any uniform 
but hers, who never took oaths but to 
her, and who paid with base ingrat- 
itude the favours she had often 
foolishly lavished upon them, re- 
leased men of honour from the ob- 
ligations they had contracted on 
that occasion, and till then ob- 
served. Elio and gentlemen like him 
pledged their allegiance to Isabella 
of Bourbon, but not to the Duke of 
Aosta, and least of all to the Republic, 
which, reasonably or otherwise, they 
abhor. Another powerful cause of 
the spread of Carlism we may discern 
as well in the social decomposition 
prevailing in many parts of Spain, as 
in the demoralisation of the army ; 
and for that demoralisation the heads 
of the army themselves are mainly re- 
sponsible. It took, indeed, many 
years of mismanagement to destroy 
the solidity of organisation, and the 
other admirable qualities which dis- 
tinguished the soldiers of Alva and 
Farnese ; respect for superior rank 
and merit, submission to discipline, 
and patience in suffering, for which 
the armies of Spain were in those 
days famous. By systematically 
fomenting revolts in quarters, giving 
promotion as a premium for mutiny, 
rewarding superior officers for poli- 
tical services or military treason, 
the old traditions have been long 
since forgotten and not only forgot- 
ten, but matters have reached that 
point at which the Spanish army is 
nowbecome little more than a lifeless 
body, which the habit of occasional 
fighting and the presence of in- 
surgents can hardly galvanise. Mili- 
tary sedition promoted by military 
chiefs dates from a period antece- 
dent to the Carlist war. The revolt 



50 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



[July 



of the expeditionary army in the 
Island of Leon in 1820, completed, 
what was before uncertain, the loss 
of the Spanish possessions in South 
America ; as the revolt in Cadiz in 
1868 was the signal for the insur- 
rection and probable loss of the 
only remaining possession, Cuba. 
As was well said by Yergniaud, or 
some other orator of the French 
Convention, the Eevolution, like 
Saturn, devoured its own pro- 
geny. The remark is not less true 
of the men who head insur- 
rections in the Peninsula. Eiego, 
the hero of 1820, the principal 
agent in the revolt of the Isle of 
Leon, rewarded for that service 
with the post of Captain-General 
of Aragon, after being for a space 
the idol of the army and the people, 
his name the talisman of liberty, 
and martial hymns composed in his 
honour, ended by being drawn in a 
hurdle to the scaffold, and dying by 
the hands of the hangman, to the 
applause of the rabble in the corn- 
market of Madrid the same rabble 
who, the year before, hailed him as 
a liberator. His associate Quiroga 
had to fly the country to escape a 
similar fate j took refuge in England, 
and died some few years later ob- 
scure and forgotten. The man who 
in recent times rendered more ser- 
vices to Spain than any of his 
contemporaries was assuredly Es- 
partero; but, in justice, even he 
cannot be pronounced guiltless of 
fomenting revolt in the army under 
his command, which led to the re- 
pulsion of the Eegent Christina 
in 1840, and his own elevation to 
the regency during the minority of 
Queen Isabella. The instruments 
he had employed, or allowed to be 
employed, before long turned against 
himself. Not only the chiefs who 
opposed him, but those who co- 
operated with him in that act, 
jealous of the fame he had acquired 
by putting an end to the Carlist 
war, and overshadowed by his air 



thority, conspired against him repeat- 
edly, and having gained over a con- 
siderable portion of the troops, rose 
upon him, and overthrew him before 
he completed his term of regency. 
And he who for three years was 
the Dictator of Spain, had to take 
refuge on board an English ship 
of war, pursued by his foes to the 
water's edge. O'Donnell, who had 
figured in more than one" revolt 
who owed his marshal's truncheon 
and his place of Prime Minister to 
the insurrection of 1854, and by 
the same means ousted his colleague 
and chief, Espartero, in 1856 died 
a few years ago in exile at Biarritz. 
Prim, a conspirator all his life, and 
proud of his calling, repaid the 
honours heaped upon him by one 
more conspiracy against his too gen- 
erous benefactress, just after he 
had pronounced a gasconading pro- 
fession of loyalty to her crown 
and person, dethroned and drove 
her from the country, put himself 
in her place, and not long after was 
struck down by an unknown hand 
in a street - corner in the capital 
where he had ruled supreme for 
a brief space. And Serrano ! Ser- 
rano, for whom every revolution has 
been in turn a stepping-stone to 
power, liberal or reactionary, the 
Universal Minister of 1843, the 
spoiled child of the Court, to whom 
nothing was refused, and to whom 
there remained nothing more to give 
duke, grandee, Grand Cross of 
every order in the long list of Spanish 
decorations, place, wealth, Serrano 
recognised the prodigal bounties of 
his sovereign, which made him the 
envied among men, in similar 
fashion. Serrano, Eegent of Spain, 
whilst his brother marshal and 
brother duke, Prim, was casting 
about for some one who might be 
coaxed into accepting the inheritance 
of the dethroned and exiled daughter 
of Ferdinand, is indebted for his life 
to the hospitality of the British am- 
bassador, and escapes from a ferocious 



1873.] 



The Cure Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



51 



mob, only to fly in disguise, under 
the same protection, to the first sea- 
port within reach, and seek a refuge 
at Biarritz. 

After such things, who can won- 
der at the state to which the army 
is reduced? We look in vain for 
the man, or the party, capable 
of arresting the evil to which all 
alike have contributed. The so- 
called Moderation as well as the 
Liberals, have so helped in un- 
dermining discipline for their own 
selfish ends, that they have not the 
authority which would reform it. 
Since the Convention of Bergara to 
the present time, they have repeat- 
edly used their military position 
for political purposes. We can least 
of all expect reorganisation from the 
professional revolutionists who have 
long dinned into the ears of the 
soldiers the duty of insurrection, and 
held out as a bait the abolition of 
compulsory service when they them- 
selves should have the upper hand ; 
and they now preach up a Federal Re- 
public in other words, the dismem- 
berment of the country as they 
have effected the dissolution of 
the army. The army, corrupted by 
a long system of favouritism its 
chiefs recompensed, not for distin- 
guished acts against a foreign or 
domestic enemy, but for the worst 
party services on the one hand, 
and, on the other, by the doctrines 
of Puerta del Sol demagogues, 
has, after upsetting ministry after 
ministry, dethroning one sovereign, 
giving her crown to another to be 
overthrown in his turn, at last come 
to that point that its total disap- 
pearance is but a question of time. 
The Madrid Government, if the 
men in whose hands the affairs of 
the country are at the date at 
which we write can really be called 
a Government, are probably aware 
of its condition, and they must 
know that they are powerless, even 
if they were willing, to remedy it. 
They are afraid to accept the aid of 



any general suspected of Conserva- 
tive views, and endowed with en- 
ergy sufficient if such a man could 
be found j and they are driven to 
the perilous alternative of substitut- 
ing an armed mob for regular troops. 
Whilst the Carlists are increasing 
in number and improving in or- 
ganisation, the force opposed to 
them will soon consist of little more 
than undisciplined and ignorant 
" volunteers," the sweepings of the 
large towns, attracted more by high 
pay, or the promise of it, and the 
freedom from military restraint, 
than by any other feeling. The 
right of electing their officers, as 
ignorant as themselves, is the 
sanction and incentive to dis- 
obedience; and as they are as 
ungovernable in quarters as in the 
field, they must end by becoming 
formidable to those whom they 
are charged to defend, rather than 
to those whom they are sent to fight. 
To this complete demoralisation of 
the army, and the social dissolution 
which is gaining ground in the 
southern provinces, the frequent 
changes of commanders, and the 
growing popularity of the Car- 
list cause, are, in the main, to 
be attributed. Colonels of regi- 
ments cannot always get their men 
to follow them when they are really 
determined to lead ; and in Cata- 
lonia particularly, thousands refuse 
to march, on the ground that their 
term of service expires in a month 
or two, and it is not just to expose 
them to the perils of active warfare. 
Others clamour for the fulfilment of 
the promise, so often made, of im- 
mediate and absolute discharge from 
military duty a reward which they 
deem they have fully earned by 
turning their arms against their 
Queen, and again, by the equally 
glorious service they rendered in 
not maintaining King Amadeus. 
Moreover, an angry and jealous feel- 
ing exists on their part against the 
volunteers, w r ho receive at least four 



52 



The Care Santa Cruz and the Carlist War. 



[July 



times the pay of the regular sol- 
diers. 

The prospect is gloomy enough ; 
an army approaching complete disso- 
lution; whole populations set wild by 
socialist doctrines, and occasionally 
carryingthem into practice ; the total 
absence, at least so far as we yet see, 
of men of honesty, energy, and 
experience at the head of affairs ; 
national bankruptcy impending ; the 
fear on one side of the Carlists on 
the other, the terror inspired by the 
Vandals of the Revolution ; and the 
continued flight of all who can quit 
the scenes of these disorders, with 
scarcely a desire left to return to a 
country on the brink of ruin. 

A few words respecting the Prince 
who must feel grateful to Radicals, 
Republicans, Federal or non-Fed- 
eral, to Socialists and Revolution- 
ists of every class, for his cause 
owes much to all of them. His 
grandfather was the Prince who 
stood his ground for seven long 
years in the Northern Provinces 
against the armies of Queen Isabella. 
He was the brother of Ferdinand, 
and consequently uncle of Isabella. 
Carlos V., as his partisans called him, 
was married to Francisca of Bragan- 
za, and by her had three sons, Carlos, 
Juan, and Fernando. He died in 
1855, and his rights devolved on 
his eldest son Carlos, called Carlos 
VI., more generally known as 
Count de Montemolin. The Count 
de Montemolin died childless, and 
his rights passed to his next bro- 
ther, Don Juan, who five years 
ago ceded them to his son Carlos, 
the present Pretender, called Carlos 
VII. by his partisans, but known to 
the outer world by the title of Duke 
of Madrid. He was born at Lay- 
bach, in the Austrian States, in the 
early part of 1848. His mother 
was the Princess Beatrice, daughter 
of Francis IV., Grand Duke of 
Modena, who gave birth to a second 
son in 1850, Don Alfonso, who 
has been for some months nomin- 



ally Commander-in-Chief of the Car- 
list forces in Catalonia, and Governor- 
General of the Principality. The 
Duke of Madrid (Carlos VII.) is 
in his twenty-sixth year. He was 
married in 1867, atFrohsdorf, to the 
Princess Margaret of Bourbon, eldest 
daughter of the late Duke of Parma, 
and, by her mother, niece to the 
Count of Chambord. They have 
three children, two daughters and 
a son. Immediately after the de- 
thronement, by the rebellion of 
Serrano, Prim, Torpete, and other 
favoured and grateful subjects of 
his cousin Isabella, in 1868, the 
Duke of Madrid addressed a circular 
despatch to the principal men of his 
party. "The recent insurrection," 
he said, "and the political and 
financial crisis through which Spain 
is now passing, force on me the 
belief that grave events are impend- 
ing. It is the conviction of my 
friends, and it is the conviction of 
my enemies. With a view to these 
events, and in order to be prepared 
for them, I shall hold a Council in 
London on the 20th of this month 
(September), at which I expect my 
friends to be present. The proofs 
of devotedness and affection which 
you have repeatedly given me are 
such as to make me count upon 
your personal aid and intelligence in 
this important period of my politi- 
cal life." The Council soon after met 
and deliberated as to the best line 
of conduct to follow. It was at one 
of these sittings that the manifesto 
which Don Carlos subsequently 
issued in the form of a letter to his 
brother Alfonso was adopted. And 
he, at the same time, notified to the 
Cabinets of Europe the fact of the 
renunciation by his father Don Juan 
of his rights to the crown of Spain 
in favour of himself. 

The Carlist rising which took 
place last year terminated in the 
defeat of Orisquieta and the Con- 
vention of Amorovieta. How the 
present will end, who can say 1 



1873.] 



Newfoundland. 



53 



NEWFOUNDLAND. 



IT is a remarkable circumstance 
that there is no one of our colonies 
about which greater misconception 
and ignorance prevail, on the part 
of the British public, than about the 
most ancient colonial possession of 
the empire, and the one which lies 
nearest to the shores of England. It 
takes about as long to go from Lon- 
don to Newfoundland now, as it did 
in the last century to go from Lon- 
don to York. It is no uncommon 
thing to run from Queenstown to 
St John's in five days ; and we may 
safely predict that the time is not 
far distant when the average -length 
of the passage, from land to land, 
will not exceed four days. But it 
is not merely the proximity, but the 
antiquity of Newfoundland, as a 
colony, that gives it a claim to our 
attention. We have the graphic 
narrative of Captain Richard Whit- 
bourne still extant to enlighten us 
upon this point, in which he tells 
us how "in 1622 I had command 
of a worthy ship of 220 tuns, set 
foorth by one Master Crooke of 
Southampton. At that time Sir 
Humphry Gilbert, a Devonshire 
knight, came to Newfoundland, 
with two good ships and a pin- 
nace, and brought with him a pa- 
tent from the late most renowned 
Queene Elizabeth, and in her name 
tooke possession of that country in 
the harbour of St John's, whereof I 
was an eyewitness." -According to 
his own account, this gallant old 
sailor was an eyewitness in the 
same harbour of something much 
more extraordinary, for he gives us 
at great length an account of a 
mermaid " which very swiftly 
came swimming towards mee, look- 
ing cheerfully on my face, as it had 
been a woman. By the face, eyes, 
nose, mouth, chin, ears, necke, and 



forehead, it seemed to me to bee so 
beautifull, and in those parts so well 
proportioned, having round about 
the head many blue streakes re- 
sembling haire but certainly it was 
no haire ; yet I beheld it long, and 
another of my company, also yet 
living that was not then farre from 
mee, saw the same coming so swiftly 
towards mee, at which I stepped 
backe, for it was come within the 
length of a long pike, supposing 
it would have sprung aland to niee, 
because I had often seene huge 
whales to spring a great height 
above the water, as divers other 
great fishes doe ; and so might this 
great creature doe to mee if I had 
stood still where I was, as I verily 
believe it had such a purpose. But 
when it saw that I went from it, it 
did thereupon dive a little under the 
water, and swam towards the place 
where a little before I landed ; and 
it did often looke backe towards 
mee, whereby I beheld the shoulders 
and backe downe to the middle to 
bee so square and white and smoothe 
as the backe of a man, and from the 
middle to the hinder part it was 
poynting in proportion, something 
like a broad hooked arrow ; how it 
was in the fore part from the necke 
and shoulders, I could not well dis- 
cerne. This (I suppose) was a mare- 
maid or mareman. Now, because 
divers others have writ much of 
maremaids, I have presumed to re- 
late what is most certayne of such a 
strange creature that was thus then 
seene at Newfoundland. Whether 
it were a maremaid or no I leave 
others to judge." The judgment 
to which the old mariner appeals 
would, I am afraid, pronounce his 
discovery to partake more of the 
nature of a mare's-nest than a 
maremaid; for it is evident that 



Newfoundland. 



[July 



the phenomenon so carefully de- 
scribed by him was simply a 
" white coat," or young six-weeks- 
old seal, whose smooth white fur 
and languishing eyes might fairly 
have produced the impression to 
which the superstition of mermaids 
possibly owes its origin. Captain 
Whitburne little thought as he 
gazed in wonder on his maremaid 
that the future prosperity of the 
colony he was helping to found 
was to be mainly due to these 
white-backed creatures. Consider- 
ing that 250 years have elapsed 
since then, and how little our 
knowledge has kept pace with the 
years, I think it is high time that 
we should inform ourselves as to 
the present condition of a portion 
of the British empire which the 
appliances of modern civilisation 
have brought into such close con- 
tact with it, and consider the effect 
which is likely to result from the 
altered relations which Newfound- 
land now bears to the rest of the 
world. 

There is a sort of confusion in 
people's minds in England between 
the Banks of Newfoundland and 
the island, which has operated 
very much to the prejudice of the 
latter. The impression is not un- 
common that the island itself is 
nothing but a huge sand-bank, 
inhabited during part of the year 
by a sort of floating population, 
who are principally employed in 
hauling nets full of cod upon the 
shore ; and that when it is not 
covered with ice and snow, it is 
shrouded in fog a dismal dreary 
spot in the Atlantic, peopled with 
fishermen and smelling of fish. 

Those who have made a passage 
from Europe to the United States 
or Canada have, for the most part, 
crossed the Banks, without, in all 
probability, ever sighting the is- 
land; and have inferred, from the 
fogs which are so common there, 



that the island is similarly afflicted. 
The story has become historical of 
the Cockney who, crossing these 
banks for the first time, asked the 
surly old captain of a Cunarder 
whether there was always a fog 
there: "How should I know?" 
was the grim response; "I don't 
live here ! " 

One can, indeed, scarcely imagine 
a more dreary existence than that 
which thousands of English and 
French fishermen pass during three 
or four months of the year, at 
anchor in small vessels on these 
banks, two or three days' sail from 
land, and liable to be driven from 
their anchors by gales of wind, or 
enveloped for days together in 
mists so thick that one end of the 
ship is not visible from the other. 
These men lead a life of such priva- 
tion and hardship during the spring 
and summer months, that one can 
scarcely begrudge them the repose 
and idleness of the long winter 
months, which they spend on shore 
with their wives and families in 
some of the remote coves in which 
their little settlements are dotted 
all round the island. 

The contrast, in point of climate, 
between England and Newfound- 
land is the more striking because the 
change is so rapidly effected. Leav- 
ing England in the beginning of the 
second week of May, we have had 
all the early indications of summer, 
and we turn our backs upon green 
trees and budding or blossoming 
flowers, while we have already made 
a change in our attire. But in three 
days from leaving Queenstown we 
are already sensible of a change, 
and in two days more we have 
plunged into mid-winter. It was 
on the morning of the 14th of 
May last that a heavy fog con- 
cealed the bold outline of the island 
from our view, and we only knew 
how near we were to the coast by 
the loud roar of the breakers on the 



1873.] 



Newfoundland. 



55 



shore, which were rather startingly 
audible, especially when listened 
to with the story of the Atlan- 
tic disaster still ringing in our 
ears. Presently the fog lifted 
a little, and we could see the 
rugged beetling crags against which 
the surf was dashing no very 
reassuring sight ! their summits 
veiled in mist, in which the feather- 
ing spray seemed to lose itself. The 
entrance to the harbour of St John's 
is so narrow that a chain may be 
stretched across it; and to hit that 
point after a run of six days, during 
the last two of which no observa- 
tion was possible, requires good 
navigation even in clear weather : in 
.a fog it seemed hopeless. But there 
was just a chance that we had made 
it, so we fired a gun. For a couple 
of hours we remained within ear- 
shot of the breakers, and catching 
occasional glimpses of the cliffs, 
firing guns and blowing our fog- 
whistle from time to time, when 
about mid-day, to our relief, we 
heard a booming response from the 
shore, and shortly after a pilot's boat 
groped its way out to us, and the 
pilot told us that, so far as naviga- 
tion went, we had made in the 
language of riflemen "a bull's 
eye ; " but this information was 
coupled with the startling announce- 
ment that the harbour was nearly 
full of ice a piece of intelligence 
which was confirmed as the fog 
lifted a little more and disclosed 
one large iceberg aground at the 
mouth of the harbour, right ahead, 
while numerous smaller and fantas- 
tically-shaped fragments covered the 
sea in all directions. So in the 
middle of May, Newfoundland gave 
us a wild arctic reception. From each 
side of the narrow channel the tow- 
ering crags rose precipitously to a 
height of 500 feet, but their summits 
were hidden from us. All we could 
see was the narrow channel be- 
tween perpendicular rocks guarded 



by icebergs, shrouded in mists, and 
leading to a white expanse of ice, 
in which we could dimly discern 
the forms of the ships that seemed 
wedged in it. After forcing our 
way in as far as was practicable, we 
emerged from the fog, and could 
then appreciate the picturesque 
scene by which we were surrounded, 
the marvellously-shaped harbour, 
formed something like a hatchet, 
with a short handle for the entrance; 
the town clambering up the steep 
hill that descended to the water's 
edge ; the ridge crowned with the 
imposing Catholic cathedral ; the 
Colonial buildings, Government 
House, and other public edifices; 
and the wharves crowded with 
small shipping, while one side of the 
harbour was entirely devoted to the 
results of the seal-fishery, and some 
fifteen or twenty steamers which 
had just arrived from the hunting- 
grounds were in the act of discharg- 
ing their oily and odoriferous cargo. 
The harbour of St John's is so 
deep that it would be possible to 
walk ashore from the deck of the 
Great Eastern; but the ice proved 
an effectual barrier to our approach- 
ing, except in a small steamer, which 
took us up to the end of the har- 
bour to a wharf which was com- 
paratively unencumbered. Here, 
as we had been unable to reach the 
regular Custom-house, we under- 
went our examination in a store be- 
tween huge piles of cod-fish, so that 
from first to last our introduction to 
the island partook in an eminent 
degree of its most characteristic 
features ; and yet had we left the 
same day, and ca-rried away the 
impression which that one day was 
calculated to leave upon our minds, 
we should have contributed our 
item to the general stock of incor- 
rectness in regard to Newfoundland. 
The first aspect of St John's on that 
cold slushy May day was not invit- 
ing. Along the margin of the har- 



56 



Newfoundland. 



[July 



"hour nearly two miles runs a broad 
street destitute of side walks, except- 
ing here and there, where some 
caprice of public spirit has laid 
down a patch of wood. After the 
fire of 1846 had burnt down this 
street from one end to the other, a 
law was passed compelling the erec- 
tion of nothing but stone or brick 
houses. Thus an opportunity was 
afforded the inhabitants of substan- 
tially improving the appearance of 
the town. Unfortunately every 
man has been allowed to follow his 
own devices, and as architectural 
taste does not seem to have culmi- 
nated in Newfoundland to any high 
point at that epoch, there is seldom 
any higher flight of imagination 
than is represented by a door and a 
window on the ground-floor, and a 
couple of windows above. More- 
over, as no obligation seems to have 
been laid on the builders to place 
their tenements in line, there is a 
pleasing irregularity and a constant 
projecting of unexpected angles 
which gives Water Street a degage 
character of its own. Nevertheless 
there are some good shops, with 
large plate-glass windows displaying 
the gay contents, and a tolerably 
lively crowd circulating past them. 
With a resident population of 
nearly 30,000, the inhabitants are 
doubled at certain seasons, when 
fishing-fleets are arriving or depart- 
ing; and the streets are filled 
with brawny, stalwart men, roughly 
dressed but respectable looking, 
who are taking advantage of the 
opportunity to flaner in this fa- 
shionable centre, before retiring to 
the sealing-grounds of Labrador, or 
the cod-fishery on the Banks. Hence, 
as may be expected, there are signs 
and tokens of the popular pursuits 
everywhere. Outfitting stores for 
sailors and fishermen are more com- 
mon than millinery shops ; while I 
saw no less than three boats, during 
the first half -hour I was in the 



place, being hauled about the streets- 
in carts. Most of the merchants 
combine a wholesale with a retail 
business : their front windows are 
stocked with miscellaneous goods, 
while their back premises open on 
storehouses full of cod, and private 
wharves, alongside of which their 
own ships and steamers are moored, 
It is not to be wondered at under 
these circumstances that there is- 
an amount of life and bustle in St 
John's, notwithstanding its some- 
what rough and almost impoverished 
aspect, which is not to be found in 
larger and handsomer towns; nor 
is this simplicity of exterior any in- 
dication of its real character, so far 
as the wealth of its inhabitants is 
concerned. Large fortunes are being 
constantly made here, but the 
makers of them rarely remain to 
spend them in the scenes in which 
they have been accumulated. At 
right angles to Water Street broad 
streets run straight up the hillside, 
but these, together with the two- 
parallel streets that intersect them, 
are of wood, and are by no means 
imposing ; indeed they are strongly 
suggestive of an Irish population, 
and one's ear is so constantly saluted 
with the accent, that it requires 
no stretch of imagination to fancy 
one's self in the west of Ireland, 
more especially as the climate and 
scenery both have many points in 
common with Galway or Conne- 
mara. The signs and tokens, more- 
over, of Roman Catholicism being the 
prevailing religion in the town, are 
apparent. The historical records of 
the island show that the resemblance 
is still further completed by the os- 
casional occurrence of Catholic riots, 
and by feuds more or less sustained 
during the last two hundred years be- 
tween Catholics and Protestants. At 
present there is a lull, and the parti- 
sans of these rival theologies are not 
indulging in those feelings of bitter 
hatred for each other by which 



1873.] 



Newfoundland. 



57 



Christians generally endeavour to 
recommend their religion to pagans 
in search of a creed. Out of a pop- 
ulation of 146,000, there are about 
80,000 Protestants to 60,000 Cath- 
olics, the remainder being Wes- 
leyans and Presbyterians. Owing to 
some peculiar dispensation of Pro- 
vidence, no Baptists seem to have 
found their way here. I know of 
no other Christian community of 
150,000 souls which does not con- 
tain a Baptist congregation. 

The original settlers having been, 
in a large proportion, Irish who left 
at the time of the Commonwealth, 
have stamped the island with their 
own especial "mark. Unlike their 
countrymen in the United States, 
who, in the course of two or three 
generations, lose their accent, reli- 
gion, improvidence, and all other 
national traits, and get assimilated 
by the predominant population into 
Americans, the Irish here, having 
been long almost a majority of the 
entire population, perpetuate all their 
peculiar characteristics, and even to 
some extent impregnate the rest of 
the population with them. Thus the 
Newfoundland accent is a distinctly 
Irish one, though those who betray 
it may have no Irish blood in their 
veins, and never have been in Ireland 
in their lives. All along the coast 
the little huts erected near the fishing 
stages for the fishermen to live in, in 
summer time, have a strong family 
resemblance to those of the poorer 
peasantry in the " ould country ;" 
and there is a sort of general air of 
slovenliness which the Celtic race 
seems to have a specialty for im- 
parting to any community in which 
they preponderate. Nor have the 
Irish population, though settled here 
for so many years, lost those patriotic 
traditions which render them so in- 
teresting from a political point of 
view, and which have found their 
latest development in Fenianism. 
There is a curious blending of loyalty 



with rebellion amongst them, of 
subservience to the representative 
of the Crown, with a readiness, if 
occasion arose, to join any plot 
which they could invest with a dis- 
tinctive national character. But the 
gradual tendency to attenuate the 
tie which binds the colonies to the 
mother country, is reducing the 
possibility of giving expression to- 
this sentiment; and the habit of 
responsible government, which is in 
fact the Home Rule for which they 
clamour in Ireland, satisfies the 
aspirations of Newfoundland. 

Here, as elsewhere, it is the pecu- 
liarity of Catholicism, that while its 
adherents seem poverty-stricken, the 
Church is rolling in wealth. The Ro- 
man Catholic cathedral is far the most 
imposing and costly structure in St 
John's, and is the first object that 
strikes the eye on entering the har- 
bour. Besides the cathedral and 
college, there are upwards of fifty 
churches and chapels, and no fewer 
than twelve convents, in the town ; 
and one of my fellow-passengers 
was a pretty young Irish girl coming 
out here to enter a nunnery, though 
I failed to discover why she should 
prefer to become a nun in St John's, 
Newfoundland, to taking the veil 
in some more genial part of the 
world. The Protestants seem not 
to have been able to resist so strong 
a Catholic influence, and I was sur- 
prised to find that Friday was re- 
garded with almost as much obser- 
vance by the Episcopalians as by the 
Catholics, while the one cathedral 
vied with the other in the frequency 
of its services, and the multiplicity 
of its fast and feast days. The 
Sundays, on the other hand, are 
kept with the strictness rather of 
a Presbyterian than a Catholic 
town, and altogether there seemed 
a decided tendency on the part of 
the Christians of all the denom- 
inations to run into an amount 
of religious formalism sufficiently 



Neivfoundland. 



[July 



marked to strike even a stranger. 
It must not be supposed, however, 
that while Newfoundland has this 
peculiar Irish colouring, the whole 
community consists only of fisher- 
men, and the class from which they 
are drawn. The society of St 
John's is not only thoroughly 
British, but is as refined and agree- 
able as that of any other colony. If 
it is not large, the special commer- 
cial resources of the island render 
it unusually healthy. The Bar is 
well represented ; and perhaps the 
absence of any hotel worthy the 
name is to be attributed to the hos- 
pitality of the inhabitants, which, 
so far as the stranger is concerned, 
renders such establishments unne- 
cessary. The example set by the 
present governor, Colonel Hill, in 
this respect, is worthily followed by 
the leading members of the com- 
munity; and in winter, the skat- 
ing, the curling -rinks, and the as- 
semblies, at which dancing takes 
place once a-week, and other amuse- 
ments, serve to make the sea- 
son which one would suppose to 
be the most dreaded, perhaps the 
most agreeable time of the year. 
The withdrawal of the troops has 
been rather a severe blow to the 
gaiety of St John's, and the deserted 
barracks are a melancholy souvenir 
of this social element. The protec- 
tion of the colony has now been in- 
trusted to a force ludicrously inade- 
quate to meet danger either from 
within or without. It speaks ' well 
for a community numbering nearly 
150,000 souls, of whom so large a 
proportion are Irish Catholics, that 
they require only sixty policemen to 
keep them in order ; but it is a 
question whether such a temptation 
to disturb the peace ought to be put 
before any population, however well 
disposed. Only twelve years ago a 
Catholic and Protestant riot occurred 
on the occasion of the elections : 
the troops of the garrison were called 



out, and fired on the mob, killing 
three and wounding twenty, before 
order was restored. Were such an 
episode to occur again, and to spread 
to the other communities in the is- 
land, it would be manifestly absurd 
to expect these sixty policemen to 
maintain order ; while, as the forts 
which rendered the harbour of St 
John's unassailable from without 
have been dismantled, and the guns, 
which certainly were of a somewhat 
antique construction, have been 
carefully sent back to England, at 
considerable expense to the British 
taxpayer, there is nothing to pre- 
vent the town from falling an easy 
prey to a foreign enemy, and there is 
money enough in its banks to make 
it worth having. It was rather 
humiliating 011 the Queen's birth- 
day to be indebted for a salute to 
an American gunboat which hap- 
pened to be in harbour, waiting to 
convey away the wrecked crew of 
the Polaris. 

It may be remembered that in 
our wars with the French about the 
middle of last century, they made a 
sudden raid upon St John's, which 
they took and held until it was re- 
captured by a British force of 800 
men, which landed under Colonel 
Amherst in a bay about seven miles 
distant, while the French fleet in 
the harbour escaped our cruisers at 
its mouth, under cover of a fog. 
The episode is interesting from the 
fact that Captain Cook took part in 
the exploit, not long before he 
started on his voyage round the 
world. Considering the present con- 
dition of France, we have not much 
reason to fear a repetition of this 
event, but we have never ceased 
having differences of opinion in re- 
gard to her rights on the shores of 
the island and its fisheries. It may 
not be generally known in fact, one 
might ask the British public, in the 
words of the Attorney- General, whe- 
ther it would not be surprised to 



1873.] 



Newfoundland. 



59 



learn, "that about 12,000 British 
subjects are at this moment living 
on territory which, being neither 
British nor French, cannot be pro- 
tected nor legislated for by either 
power. More than half the shores of 
the island, from Cape Eay, its south- 
west extremity, to Cape St John's on 
the north-eastern coast, are in this 
anomalous condition. In the nume- 
rous bays and coves by which the 
seaboard of the island is liberally in- 
dented, are haunts of British fisher- 
men, in little groups varying from 
single families to collections of thirty 
and forty and even as many as three 
hundred in one spot. These people 
marry and are given in marriage, pro- 
pagate and die, quarrel and make it 
up again, thieve and make restitu- 
tion, burn or wreck, or thrive by 
honest industry, according to the 
dictates of their own free fancy, and 
unmolested by any one. They are 
under the jurisdiction of no magis- 
trate, amenable to no laws, and de- 
pendent for their spiritual and se- 
cular instruction on the chances 
which may send them itinerant 
clergy or schoolmasters. The French 
deny on principle that these squat- 
ters have any right to be there at 
all, but they permit it on sufferance, 
because their fishermen derive more 
benefit than injury from the protec- 
tion which these inhabited spots 
afford a coast upon which they main- 
tain that they have the exclusive 
right of fishing, though they are ex- 
pressly prohibited from settling in 
fixed establishments. It is from our 
fishermen that the cod-fishers of the 
little French islands of St Pierre 
and Miquelon purchase all the her- 
ring for bait, which are caught in 
the winter through holes in the ice. 
If this supply were stopped, as the 
French have no. herring in their 
own waters, their fishery would be 
paralysed, and it is therefore for 
their interest to keep on good terms 
with our fishermen. There is a 



more potent reason, however, even 
than that, for keeping up amicable 
relations. By the terms of the treaty 
of 1713 and subsequent treaties, 
French fishermen have the right of 
erecting stages for drying fish, and 
rooms for salting them, &c. ; but 
these they are compelled to abandon 
during the winter, while our fisher- 
men, who have squatted upon what 
is called the French shore, remain. 
So long as a good understanding 
subsists between them, arrange- 
ments are naturally made between 
those who leave and those who 
stay, to insure the safety of the 
property left ; but in case of a con- 
flict arising, it is probable that the 
English fishermen would take ad- 
vantage of the absence of the French 
owners during the winter when no 
man-of-war could approach to wreak 
their vengeance by destroying their 
enemies' property. The danger of 
this does not arise from the fisher- 
men of the two countries, so much 
as from the constant tendency of 
the French naval officers on the 
coast to push matters to extremity 
in support of their claim that they 
have by treaty an exclusive right 
to the fishery, while we maintain 
that they have only a concurrent 
right with our fishermen, who, how- 
ever, are bound "not to interrupt 
by competition" the operations 
of the French fishermen. The 
point has arisen last summer, and 
if not speedily settled may lead to 
serious consequences. A young 
French officer has made a raid upon 
English nets, taking up some in 
creeks where English fishermen had 
exercised the right for the last thirty 
years without any French fishermen 
attempting even to share it. It 
seemed hard to these men that their 
nets should be confiscated because 
the French claimed the right, which 
they had never exercised, of fishing 
on that particular ground. Hitherto, 
in such cases, the matter in dispute 



GO 



Newfoundland. 



[July 



was amicably settled between the 
English and French officers com- 
manding the men-of-war who are 
here during the fishing season for 
the purpose. Unfortunately, new 
instructions seem to have been 
issued on the subject by the Re- 
public, and if they are persisted in, 
serious collisions are certain to occur 
between the English and Erench 
fishermen on these shores. If this 
leads to a settlement of the utterly 
anomalous condition of affairs there 
now, and to some definition of the 
rights of the British subjects who 
occupy them, it will not be a thing 
to be regretted. In the mean time, 
an unaccountable indifference reigns 
in the Colonial Office on the sub- 
ject. No Englishman knows where 
he may and where he may not 
settle, without the liability of being 
turned out by the Erench. There 
is no limit defined in the salmon 
rivers beyond which the Erench 
may or may not penetrate into the 
interior of the island ; nor anything 
to prevent them from barring the 
mouth of these rivers so as to im- 
pede the salmon from running up. 
The Surveyor-General's Office in St 
John's is afraid to allot land to 
settlers, because no one knows 
where the Erench limits are, or 
what their rights are. At this 
moment some of the finest tracts of 
forest in the country are being de- 
spoiled of timber by a company who 
have erected their saw -mills, and 
are felling the trees on land to 
which they have no shadow of 
right, and for which they have 
never paid a cent because the 
Government is unable to give them 
a title. Considering the general 
lawlessness which prevails, it is a 
wonder that the people behave as 
well as they do. In St George's 
Bay, for instance, there is a resident 
community of upwards of 2500 
people, who are subject to no juris- 
diction of any kind, and are amen- 



able to no laws, excepting what the- 
commanders of the men-of-war who- 
visit them occasionally may think fit 
to enforce. As a matter of course, 
these districts are not represented 
in the colonial legislature, they can- 
not yet be formed into electoral divi- 
sions, no Custom Houses can be esta- 
blished,wharves or docks constructed, 
or fine harbours made available as 
ports, or mines or quarries worked, 
though it is well known that the 
whole of the Erench shore has given 
undoubted evidence of being highly 
metalliferous, while coal, gypsum, 
and marble of the finest quality, 
cannot be mined or quarried, though 
they are situated close to the water's 
edge, for fear of interfering with 
the possibility of some Frenchman, 
who is not allowed to live there, 
wanting to dry his fish on that part 
of the rock in the summer, where 
the ore is most conveniently situ- 
ated. As for a railway terminating 
on the Erench shore, that of course 
is out of the question. The posi- 
tion of affairs, as it at present 
stands, presents a most ingenious 
contrivance forparalysing all colonial 
and private enterprise, and the 
sooner it is forced upon the atten- 
tion of the public by the interna- 
tional difficulties which must arise 
out of it, the better. 

So long as Newfoundland was a 
sort of terra incognita, with quick 
steam communication to England 
only twice a-year, and almost inac- 
cessible, especially during the 
winter months, from the other 
colonies, such a state of matters 
might exist without being forced 
upon public attention ; and indeed 
the population on the Erench shore 
was too sparse to invest the question 
with its present importance. But 
everything is tending to change the 
position which this spot occupies 
in regard to the rest of the world. 
The island, tired of its seclusion, 
has recently voted 27,000 a-year 



1873.] 



Newfoundland. 



61 



for steam communication. With 
an average annual surplus revenue 
of ,30,000, it could well afford this 
luxury, and the result is, that the 
Montreal Ocean Steamship Company 
touch here on their way to and from 
England and Canada once a fort- 
night. On the arrival of these 
boats from England, two small 
colonial steamboats, carrying mails 
and passengers, start from St John's 
one to the northward, touching at 
all the little ports and inhabited 
bays on the north-east shore ; and 
the other taking an opposite direc- 
tion, and going round on a similar 
mission to the south and west. 
All this intercourse tends to in- 
crease the population on the French 
shore, and bring it within the pale 
of civilisation, and the influence of 
some kind of government. And this 
steamer leaves St John's in the sum- 
mer for the coast of Labrador, where 
there is also a large fishing popu- 
lation, cut off during a great part of 
the year from the rest of the world. 
But electricity is doing even more 
than steam to unite Newfoundland 
with Europe and America. The 
peculiar position which it occupies 
in the Atlantic with reference to 
the two hemispheres is destined 
before long to make it one of the 
most important telegraphic centres 
in the world. Hitherto the island 
has been unable to derive any advan- 
tage from this source. When the 
original New York, Newfoundland, 
and London Telegraph Company was 
created, the novelty of the enter- 
prise dazzled the colony, as it did the 
world at large, and they accorded 
terms to the Company which could 
only be justified on the score of ignor- 
ance of the possible results. Not 
only did they grant the Company a 
hundred square miles of the mineral 
lands of the island, which are now 
turning out to be most valuable, 
and which the Company are at this 
moment selecting, but they granted 



them an exclusive monopoly for 
fifty years, during which no other 
Company was to have the right of 
landing cables on the shores of the 
island. The Newfoundland Govern- 
ment fortunately inserted a clause 
by which this monopoly might be ex- 
tinguished at the end of twenty years, 
upon the purchase by the island 
of the wires, apparatus, and general 
plant, at a valuation to be fixed by 
arbitration. Since this arrangement 
was entered into, the original Com- 
pany has amalgamated with the An- 
glo-American and the French Cable 
Companies, and in April next year 
the term of the monopoly enjoyed 
by these Companies ceases. The 
colony, alive to the enormous ad- 
vantages which it will derive from 
the extinction of the monopoly, has 
already expressed its intention of 
putting an end to it, though the 
terms upon which it will be abol- 
ished are not yet determined. 

Meantime, in order to give the 
amalgamated Companies as much 
notice of their policy as possible, 
the Government has announced to 
them that in the event of their aban- 
doning their monopoly of landing 
cables, Newfoundland will waive its 
privilege of pre-emption; but that if 
the Companies decline this offer, the 
local Government will exercise its 
pre-emptive privilege, and allow all 
Companies to come here, charging a 
tariff upon the land lines, and plac- 
ing the original Companies on the 
same footing with any that may 
succeed them. If the colony offers 
its shores to free trade in Transat- 
lantic telegraphy, it is evident that 
no cable which crosses to America 
will land at any other spot, and a 
large and increasing revenue might 
be derived by the colony by a tariff 
on the land lines. It is not likely 
that they will succeed in carrying 
out this liberal policy, however, 
excepting after a severe struggle 
with the Companies, who are deter- 



62 



Newfoundland. 



[July 



mined to cling to their monopoly as 
long as possible, and who maintain, 
in the first place, that the act of 
amalgamation extinguished the origi- 
nal privilege of pre-emption ; second- 
ly, that in equity the colony, if it 
exercised its privilege, would have 
to buy not merely the plant of the 
Companies, but the goodwill of the 
business, which the colony is not 
rich enough to do ; and lastly, as a 
general election is to take place in 
the autumn, they hope, by the exer- 
cise of a powerful influence upon the 
electors, to put in a Government 
which may reverse the policy of its 
predecessor. This, however, is by 
no means a probable contingency. 
The determination to abolish the 
monopoly is general throughout the 
island, and no candidate could ven- 
ture to stand upon an opposite 
ticket. Again, the wealth and 
credit of the island are sufficient, 
if they are forced to it, to buy out 
the Company as a " going concern," 
to use an Americanism which our 
lawyers seem to have adopted; and 
considering the difficulties which 
the colonists find in investing their 
money in safe local security, the 
creation of good colonial stock would 
be rather an advantage to the com- 
munity than otherwise. Moreover, 
they would be fully compensated 
by the wealth and importance which 
would indirectly accrue to them 
from the concentration of cables on 
their shores. The cost of construct- 
ing a cable direct from England 
to the United States amounts to 
some .200,000 more than one to 
Newfoundland, and each word is 
three times as long in transmis- 
sion, to say nothing of the increas- 
ed difficulties in laying so long a 
cable, and the greater risks of its 
breaking after it is laid ; while 
even the French island of St Pierre, 
to which the French have laid their 
cable, is a most unfavourable spot, 
owing to the Newfoundland fishing- 



banks, which have to be avoided by 
a long and costly detour to the 
southward. At the moment I am 
writing there is only one cable in 
working order across the Atlantic, 
while two are disabled one hope- 
lessly so. It is probable that before 
this article appears the Company 
will have laid another cable, but in 
the mean time a rupture of the re- 
maining wire would cause dire con- 
fusion in the commercial world, 
which is at present charged the 
enormous tariff of six shillings a 
word. It is calculated that the 
improvements in telegraphy which 
already exist will enable any new 
Company laying down a cable to 
give its shareholders a remunerative 
return at one shilling and three- 
pence a word. The Newfoundland 
public is at present subject to the sin- 
gular indignity of not receiving the 
public telegrams from Europe on their 
arrival in the island. These have 
first to go to New York, and then 
are retelegraphed back to St John's, 
thus causing a delay of two days, 
and involving increased chances, of 
which the operators largely avail 
themselves, of making such non- 
sense of the messages that one has 
to guess at their meaning. The 
existing Company has managed to 
alienate, by its treatment of it, not 
merely the Newfoundland but the 
American press, some of the lead- 
ing New York journals having late- 
ly indulged in violent philippics 
on the subject. All these are so 
many signs of the times, showing 
that the days of monopoly, so far 
as Transatlantic telegraphy is con- 
cerned, are drawing to a close, and 
that before long telegraphic in- 
tercourse between the two conti- 
nents will be largely increased. But 
there is another event in prospect 
more remote, possibly, than the ex- 
tinction of the cable monopoly, and 
which, in the opinion of a large num- 
ber of Newfoundland politicians, is 



1873.] 



Newfoundland. 



63 



fraught with even more important 
consequences to the prosperity of 
the island and to the increase of its 
resources and population. This is 
the fulfilment of what appears to 
"be its manifest destiny confedera- 
tion with the Dominion of Canada. 
Now that the fate of Prince Ed- 
ward's Island in this respect is 
sealed, the only one of the North 
American colonies which remains 
" out in the cold " is Newfoundland. 
Public opinion here is still di- 
vided as to the expediency of this 
measure, the present Government 
having won the last elections on 
the anti-confederation ticket. The 
motto of this party is to let well 
alone : they maintain that the island 
is wealthy and prosperous, and that 
the influence of those who control 
its destinies can be more powerfully 
exercised in advocating what they 
deem to be its best interests than if 
they were hampered by the central 
Canadian Government, who would 
thus share in its resources without 
contributing what would be an 
equivalent to its prosperity. This 
is, on the other hand, vehemently 
denied by those in favour of the 
scheme, who maintain, I think 
with reason, that if they were in- 
cluded in one Customs law, and 
united by a solidarity of commer- 
cial and political interest with the 
Dominion, they would derive im- 
mense advantages from the inter- 
course which must then of necessity 
spring up between the island and 
the mainland, and from the capital 
which would inevitably find its way 
to the former. This has proved to 
be the case with the other colonies, 
and there is no reason why New- 
foundland should be an exception. 
Even now the Canadian Parliament 
has appointed a committee to in- 
quire into the best means of in- 
creasing the facilities of communica- 
tion with England, and its attention 
is to be especially directed to the 



desirability of re-establishing the line 
which has once before broken down 
through mismanagement between 
Ireland and Newfoundland, with 
the view of shortening the Atlantic 
passage as much as possible. It is 
calculated that this may be reduced 
to a hundred hours. A railway 
across the island would carry mails 
and passengers to its western shores 
in eight hours, from which they 
might either be conveyed across to 
the nearest point of Cape Breton in 
six or seven hours, or to Shippigan, 
in New Brunswick, in sixteen. In 
the former case, the Gut of Canso 
would have to be tunnelled for a 
railway, and until that is accom- 
plished it is probable that the Ship- 
pigan route would be most available, 
as from this point railways would 
converge to New York and Quebec. 
The whole length of the journey 
from Ireland to New York would 
thus be reduced to seven days, of 
which only four would be spent on 
the Atlantic, and Newfoundland 
would become a highway for passen- 
gers and commerce. The effect of a 
railway through the centre of the 
island would inevitably be to at- 
tract a population to advantageous 
spots on the line ; and although the 
agricultural capabilities of New- 
foundland are not great, its mineral 
resources seem to be unbounded, 
and there are many regions where 
crops of grain and vegetables may 
be raised with advantage. The 
principal objection made to this 
route is the difficulty of navigation 
at certain seasons of the year. In 
winter, it is true that the harbour 
of St John's is liable to be closed 
with ice; but Trepassey, a fine 
harbour immediately to the west- 
ward of Cape Eace, is always open, 
and the coast at Newfoundland has 
this great advantage over that of 
Nova Scotia, that it is entirely free 
from those sunken rocks and hidden 
dangers which render the approach 



Newfoundland. 



[July 



to Halifax so hazardous, while in 
the matter of fogs one shore has not 
much to boast of over the other. 
The saving of two days' sea voyage 
must always offer great advantages 
in the summer season, and an ex- 
tended experience can alone prove 
whether the objections to the winter 
passage are well founded. On the 
other hand, this route has this 
strong recommendation in its favour, 
that physically the interior of the 
island presents no engineering 
difficulties to the construction of 
a railway. Curiously enough, 
it has not been traversed through 
its centre from shore to shore 
since 1822, when Mr Cormack 
made his adventurous journey from 
Eandom Sound to St George's Bay ; 
but it has been tapped at various 
points by Mr Murray, the Geological 
Surveyor of the colony, both from 
the southern coast and from the 
Exploits River on the north, and 
the character of the country through 
which the railway would pass is 
thus thoroughly known. It con- 
sists of a table-land of undulating 
open steppe country, called here 
" barrens," covered with moss and 
a short sedgy grass, abounding in 
morasses, which are, however, of no 
depth, and with innumerable lakes, 
and lakelets known here as ponds, 
into and out of which flow streams 
of various sizes, the bottoms of the 
shallow valleys through which they 
run being covered with scrub, and 
occasionally with pine woods. A 
ridge of hills, however, traverses 
the island, along the slopes of which 
the line might run, thus avoiding 
the more SAvampy land. There are 
no ranges to tunnel, or large rivers 
to bridge, while wood for sleepers 
is abundant ; and the whole length 
of the line, only 200 miles, is not so 
great as to render the undertaking 
one of appalling magnitude. On 
the other side St George's Bay 
offers a splendid harbour, and here 



the climate is much milder than on 
the east coast. The shores of the 
rivers are heavily timbered, or where 
there is no forest the grazing lands 
are excellent, and abundant signs 
of coal, iron, and other ores, have 
been discovered. At present all 
this is unavailable, because St 
George's Bay is on the French 
shore, and it seems strange that the 
Home Government should be urging 
on confederation, while interna- 
tional questions are pending which 
would make it highly impolitic for 
the Dominion to incorporate the 
island until they are settled. The 
recent treaty which has been made 
with the Americans, under far less 
advantageous circumstances, so far 
as this colony is concerned, would 
suggest a solution of the French 
difficulty. In the Alabama negotia- 
tions, among other baits held out to 
tempt the Americans to allow us 
to lay down international rules 
which we should be the last to wish 
enforced, and to enter upon an ar- 
bitration which has cost us three 
millions sterling, we were kind 
enough to offer their fishermen an 
equal right with our own to fish in 
British North American waters, on 
condition that the colonies should 
have the right to send fish and fish 
oil into the States free of duty. 
This the colonists deemed by no 
means an equivalent for the right 
they were ceding, but, out of com- 
passion for the difficulty in which 
the mother country found herself 
placed in the Alabama question, 
they consented to agree to it. 
What they now think they have 
a right to demand in return for 
this compliance is, that the 
Home Government will take advan- 
tage of the extremely auspicious 
moment which the latest change of 
Government in France affords, to 
open negotiations for the settlement 
of the French shore difficulty. This 
might be done by offering to French 



1873.] 



Newfoundland. 



65 



fishermen the same rights as those 
recently granted to the Americans, 
namely, the right to fish freely in all 
North American waters, and to settle 
freely on the shores of Newfound- 
land subject, of course, to our 
laws. They would thus have the 
whole of the Labrador coast, besides 
the southern and eastern shores of 
Newfoundland, open to them as new 
fishing-grounds, with the power of 
catching their own bait, instead of 
being, as now, dependent upon our 
fishermen for it, while the English 
market as well as their own would 
remain open to their fish. On the 
other hand, we should be able to 
fish without quarrelling in waters 
where we now fish with the con- 
stant risk of dispute ; and to de- 
velop the mineral, agricultural, and 
commercial resources of those shores, 
from the utilisation of which both 
we and the French are at this 
moment debarred. Of course, a 
fundamental condition of any such 
arrangement should be, that the 
French Government ceases the sys- 
tem of bounties by which the French 
cod-fishery is encouraged, and which 
amounts annually to fourteen mil- 
lions of francs. This would seem 
to enter into the free-trade and re- 
trenchment policy of the present 
Government in France. The idea of 
bounties for the protection of such 
an industry as fishing is obsolete ; 
while the saving of so large a sum 
to the French treasury at this 
juncture seems almost a duty which 
patriotism demands at the hands of 
a French statesman. In the event 
of any such arrangement being 
come to, it is to be hoped that the 
language will be more explicit than 
in that of the Alabama Treaty, 
in which, among other "under- 
standings," it was " understood" by 
us that "fish-oil" included "seal- 
oil;" but whatever during the ne- 
gotiations the Americans may be 
supposed to have understood, they 

VOL. CX1V. NO. DCXCIII. 



now deny that seal-oil comes under 
the head of fish-oil, and refuse the 
admission of this most important 
article of Newfoundland commerce 
to their ports. The value of the 
seal-fishery varies from .175,000 to 
275,000 a-year, and the quantity 
of oil exported averages from 5000 
to 6000 tuns. As the process of 
manufacturing this oil is as novel as 
everything else connected with the 
fishery, I was glad of the oppor- 
tunity of investigating and of learn- 
ing some details from those actually 
engaged in the capture of seals, and 
the method in which it is con- 
ducted. When I reached St John's 
the steamers were all dropping in 
from the north laden with oleagin- 
ous spoil, and each with a barrel 
lashed to the masthead as a look- 
out. From this station the man 
spies the game on the ice-floes, and 
gives notice in which direction to 
steer. Formerly the day for the 
departure of the sealing-fleet was 
the 1st of March; but by a re- 
cent Act of the Legislature it has 
been postponed for sailing vessels 
until the 5th, and for steamers 
till the 10th, of that month. This 
is in order to allow the pupping 
season to be a little more ad- 
vanced before the work of slaughter 
of mothers and young commences. 
The steamers are built expressly for 
the service, and are as strong as iron 
and the hardest known woods can 
make them, so as to enable them to 
resist the tremendous pressure of 
the ice to which they are constantly 
subjected. Any Arctic amateurs 
anxious to rival the exploits of the 
Polaris, could not do better than 
come to Newfoundland to look for 
a steamer adapted for the work. 
These steamers are sometimes of 
considerable size, and cost from 
8000 to 10,000 apiece. They 
carry as crew 200 and sometimes 
as many as 250 men each, drawn 
from the hardy population which 



66 



Newjo midland. 



[July 



inhabits the coves and harbours all 
round the island. They flock in 
crowds to St John's during the last 
week of February. As 10,000 men 
are engaged in the fishery, the 
streets swarm at this period with 
perhaps the finest and most power- 
ful specimens of humanity, so far 
as mere physique is concerned, that 
could be seen anywhere. Daring, 
hardy, inured to the severest priva- 
tions, and accustomed from child- 
hood to battle with the elements 
upon the iron-bound coast on which 
they were born and reared, they 
look forward to the six weeks of 
seal-fishing with as much eagerness 
as members of Parliament do to the 
12th of August, not merely from 
the excitement of the chase which 
it entails, but from the chances of 
the large profits connected with a 
successful "take." Since the em- 
ployment of steamers the service 
has become even more popular, 
because the chances are increased, 
and picked captains and crews are 
alone employed upon it. As may 
be imagined, the crowd of hands is 
so great that they are packed in the 
fore part of the ship like herrings 
in a barrel. It is currently reported 
that it is a rare thing for a man to 
change a single article of clothing 
from the moment of his departure 
till his return; and the aspect of the 
crews which I saw on their arrival 
fully justified this assertion. They 
were as black as colliers, and far 
more greasy than I had supposed it 
possible for men to become. Their 
clothes and faces shone like the 
skins of negroes on a hot day, from 
seal-oil; but their smell prevented 
me from approaching them near 
enough to do more than obtain a 
very general impression of their 
aspect. These men, who are as im- 
pervious to cold and privation as 
the icebergs they frequent, sustain 
their gigantic frames on scarcely any- 
thing but biscuits and tea, varied 



by an occasional meal of pork, until 
they get among the seals, when they 
cut out the tit-bits, such as heart, 
liver, and kidneys, stringing the 
latter on their belts, and eating 
them raw as a delicacy in the in- 
tervals of the tremendous exertions 
of their chase. The dangers of this 
add, no doubt, a zest to it. The 
first difficulty, when the seals have 
been spied from the masthead, is to 
bring the steamer in such a position 
as will enable the men to approach 
them, either by landing on the ice 
and jumping from pan to pan if the 
floe is not solid, or by punts, if they 
are not accessible in any other way. 
Each man is armed with a " gaff," 
or club, with a hook in it, a " scalp- 
ing -knife," and a "towing-line;'* 
while a few of the older hands and 
the best shots carry rifles. The 
work of destruction then goes on 
apace. The ice is covered with 
"white-coats" young seals not yet 
six weeks old and their mothers, 
whose grey furs in the case of 
" harps " are distinguished by a 
large black mark in the shape of a 
harp ; " dog-hoods " male seals, so 
called from a hood which they can 
inflate so as to protect their heads 
when attacked; " bedlamers," or 
one-year-old males, on whom the 
harp has not yet appeared ; " blue- 
backs," or young " hoods," and 
other variations, each with its special 
appellation. The havoc which a 
couple of hundred men plying their 
clubs mercilessly in the midst of 
these helpless victims work in a 
few hours may easily be imagined. 
A blow 011 the nose is followed by a 
cut doAVii the centre of the seal from 
the throat to the tail with the scalp- 
ing knife, which detaches the car- 
case from the " pelt." Technically 
speaking, the pelt consists of the 
skin and about three inches of fat 
with which it is lined, and to which 
protection of nature in the way of 
covering, the seal owes his power of 



1873.] 



Newfoundland. 



keeping himself warm in the peculiar 
temperature which he affects. The 
pelt is rapidly stripped from the quiv- 
ering carcase, and laid flat upon the 
ice; and when five or six are thus 
collected, they are laced together in 
a, bundle and drawn by the towing- 
line to the ship. To one not har- 
dened to it, the whole process is 
said to be a most painful one to 
witness. The inoans of the young 
seals the agonies of the mothers at 
seeing them slaughtered the fierce 
battles sometimes waged by the old 
" dog-hoods," who often make such 
sturdy resistance that they require 
two men striking them alternately 
with their gaffs to kill them the 
whole ice strewn with the skinned 
carcases, still preserving their origi- 
nal shape, and almost quivering with 
life, present a scene which nothing 
but the hope of large profits and 
quick returns could harden men to. 
Seal - hunters, however, have no 
bowels of compassion. The pelts 
on an average are worth about ten 
shillings apiece, and a third of the 
profits go to the crew, so that every 
man has a most special interest in 
the result. Then the risks and 
chances attending the pursuits are 
so great that the pleadings of mercy 
are easily stifled. It is in many 
cases a battle not merely with the 
seals, but with the elements. A 
gale of wind may spring up and 
split up the ice, or drive it away 
from the ship, rendering the drag- 
ging of their spoil to her decks a 
most laborious and hazardous opera- 
tion ; or perhaps they have sought 
in vain for a " seal-path," and had 
almost given up hope of finding one, 
when, near the close of the season, 
they stumble unexpectedly upon 
their prey, and the hope so long de- 
ferred imparts a new and merciless 
vigour to their arms when they do 
find it. At last the ship is loaded. 
Reeking with pelts, she turns her 
back upon the sealing-grounds, and 



makes with all speed for St John's, 
where her owners are waiting an- 
xiously to know whether she has 
drawn a prize in the lottery or not. 
While I was at St John's one ship 
brought in nearly 40,000 pelts as 
her " bag " for the season. In 
other words, she earned during six 
weeks about 20,000, of which 
1000 went to the captain, and 40 
apiece to each of her crew. This 
is more profitable than privateering 
in war times, and almost as danger- 
ous and exciting. In sailing vessels 
the crew are entitled to half the 
profits, but even they do not equal 
the third earned in the steamers. 
The entire catch, however, has not 
very much increased since the intro- 
duction of steamers, ranging from 
250,000 to 600,000 seals a season. 
The season of 1873 has been a pecu- 
liarly good one : five of the leading 
houses in St John's have taken 
309,440 seals. A correspondence 
appeared not long ago in the ' Times,' 
warning the Newfoundlanders that 
by so persistent an extermination, 
of this valuable animal they were 
killing the goose that lays the gold- 
en egg. I find, however, no such 
fear prevailing here. In order to 
avoid killing the mothers, while 
still pregnant, or before the young 
are old enough to live without 
them, the date of departure for the 
fishing has been put off ten days ; 
and it is maintained here that in 
a very few days after they are 
born, the young, even though pre- 
maturely weaned, are still able ta 
take care of themselves. Moreover, 
it would appear that the proportion 
of males to females is unusually 
large; how great it is, cannot of 
course be accurately ascertained, but 
the general opinion is that it is at 
least three to one, and I have heard 
it put as high as five. Again, the 
supply of seals from the northward 
seems never to have been affected 
by the seal - fishery, which has 



68 



Newfoundland. 



[Juljr 



already existed for so many years. 
They are bred in Arctic solitudes, 
beyond the reach of the hunter, and 
come regularly south to meet his 
wants, without the supply showing 
any signs of diminution. As an 
industry, the most painful feature 
is the cruelty which is inherent to 
it ; but the remedy for this lies with 
the consumer, and not with those 
who supply the demand. As long as 
people burn seal-oil, and wear "kid" 
boots made of sealskin, will the 
slaughter of the innocents continue. 
The next phase through which this 
commerce passes, if it be not so 
barbarous as the first, is eminently 
coarse and unpleasant, especially to 
the olfactories. The whole of the 
left side of the harbour is devoted 
to the manufacture of seal-oil and 
the preparing of skins. The town 
is thus spared the odours insepar- 
able from the process, though the 
harbour is often scummed over with 
the quantity of grease that finds 
its way into it. The space between 
the edge of the shore and the steep 
mountain-side is so narrow, that the 
rocks have been blasted to make 
room for the vats and storehouses, 
and there is sufficient depth of 
water for steamers to lie alongside 
and unload their cargoes The mo- 
ment the pelts are landed they are 
received by the " skinners," each of 
whom, armed with a gigantic knife 
like a small sword, stands behind a 
board or dresser which shelves away 
from him. Upon this he draws a 
pelt. These are generally about three 
feet long, from two to two and a 
half feet wide, and weigh from 
thirty to forty pounds. Passing 
the knife between the skin and the 
fat, with three or at most four 
sweeps of it, the skinner divides 
with a marvellous dexterity the 
blubber from the skin ; the former 
falls in rich white-looking rolls into 
the tub that is waiting for it, while 
the skin is thrown on one side to be 



salted. The skinners receive at the 
rate of three-halfpence a skin, and 
such is their dexterity from long 
practice, that some of them make as 
much as 3 a-day. There are two. 
processes by which the oil is ex- 
tracted. According to the old one, 
the fat is hoisted with grappling- 
hooks to the top of a huge wooden 
vat about 20 feet square, built of 
pine -poles, through the inter- 
stices of which the oil percolates, 
and which is divided into com- 
partments to prevent the lateral 
pressure from bursting the sides. On 
the top of this open vat stand 
fifteen or twenty men with large 
knives or choppers fastened to the 
end of long stout sticks. As the 
fat is hoisted to them, they chop it 
into minute portions, and it slowly 
disintegrates under the pressure of 
its weight. At a distance, these 
men, wielding their quaint-shaped 
weapons, look like people on an 
elevated threshing-floor using iron 
flails. All round the vat at the 
bottom is a trough, and from this 
oil is drawn off by a cock, running 
with a clear limpid stream, except- 
ing where, in the inferior qualities, a 
slight yellow tinge maybe detected. 
To extract this colour, it is exposed 
to the rays of the sun in open vats 
under glass. The steam process is 
far more expeditious; but instead 
of being chopped by hand, the fat 
is passed between sharp rollers, and 
then ground in a species of sausage- 
machine. After this it is strained 
in a tank, and then loaded in stout 
casks on board the ships waiting to 
receive it. The coarser portions of 
the fat attaching to the rougher 
parts of the skin are made into- 
an inferior oil, chiefly used for the 
manufacture of soap. The finer 
qualities are used for mines, machin- 
ery, and lubricating purposes gene- 
rally. The value of a tun ranges 
from 30 to 40. The skins are 
split laterally into three thinnesses,. 



4873." 



Newfoundland. 



69 



,-and used for the same purposes as 
coarse kid. They are worth on an 
.average about ten shillings apiece. 
Huge piles of them neatly stacked 
.and salted fill the warehouses at this 
time of year. The refuse of the 
whole manufacturing makes an 
admirable manure, of which the 
land in the vicinity of St John's 
is poor enough to stand much in 
need. The casks in which the oil 
is stowed are made in winter by the 
islanders, and the manufacture of 
them is one of the few occupations 
by which they diversify the utter 
idleness of their winter existence. 
The ships that convey the oil and 
skins to Europe come back from 
Spain with cargoes of salt for the 
preparation of cod-fish and sealskins, 
cork bark for the making of floats 
for nets, &c., and sometimes port 
wine. Newfoundland still main- 
tains its character for possessing 
better port wine than any other spot 
in the globe, Portugal not excepted. 
There is something in the climate 
which seems to mature it more 
perfectly than elsewhere, while the 
quality of the wine that is sent here 
is purer than that which is doctored 
for the London market. It has 
thus become a depot for the article, 
which is still annually exported from 
here in small quantities. Scarcely 
is the seal-fishing at an end than the 
cod-fishing begins. The crews which 
have returned from the Arctic hunt- 
ing-grounds transfer themselves into 
the small brigs and schooners used 
for fishing on the banks, while 
others return to the coves and creeks 
to which they belong, and fish from 
the shore. In June, the fleet leaves 
St John's, and remains away three 
or four months, as the case may be. 
Cod-fishing does not possess any of 
the excitements of seal - hunting. 
It must, on the contrary, be a most 
dreary and tedious occupation. Be- 
fore daylight the crews leave the 
vessels in small boats, and lay down 



the long lines to which snoods 
baited with herring are attached, 
returning in the afternoon to haul 
them in. The fish are cleaned on 
board, and the insides thrown over- 
board, so that it has been suggested 
that the enormous quantity of fish's 
entrails annually thrown into the 
sea at the banks might damage the 
fishing, but it does not seem to 
have had this effect. The total 
value of the fishery amounts to 
about .800,000, while upwards of 
4000 tuns of cod-oil and cod-liver 
oil are annually exported. The 
men fish on what is called the 
" credit system," the owner of the 
vessel furnishing them with the 
materials for the fishing, and shar- 
ing the profits with them. To the 
attractions of the coast, however, 
this fishery lends an especial charm, 
for it contributes its most pictur- 
esque feature to the scenery. The 
bays and coves within easy drives 
of St John's are all worth a visit, if 
it be only to see the way in which 
the cod-flakes, as they are called, 
and stages, are perched about the 
rocks. The roads are numerous and 
excellent, though they are for the 
most part very short, which lead in 
all directions from the capital. The 
country is a wild, open, undulating 
expanse, rising in rounded hills to 
an elevation in its highest parts 
of 600 or 700 feet. And all round 
St John's, abundantly dotted with 
small farms, innumerable clear trout- 
streams unite the lakelets that lie 
embosomed here and there in woods 
of rather dwarfed spruce and fir trees ; 
while marshy spots of peat and 
coarse grass afford a home to abun- 
dant snipe ; and plains covered with 
stunted juniper, tamarack, and berry- 
bearing shrubs, complete the land- 
scape. It is across this country 
that one drives to Portugal Cove a 
large fishing village nine miles from 
St John's where one may take 
steamer and cross Conception Bay 



70 



Newfoundland. 



[July 



to Harbour Grace, the Havre de 
Ghace of the French nomenclature. 
The road crosses a table-land up- 
wards of 500 feet above the sea- 
level, on the summit of which a 
lake called Twenty-mile Pond is 
surrounded by low hills, and several 
farms are dotted along its shores ; 
but, as a general rule, these are only 
accessory to fishing, the land being 
rarely sufficiently productive to af- 
ford a return unaided by any other 
industry. The approach to Portu- 
gal Cove down a wooded glen, which 
almost narrows to a gorge as it de- 
scends between steep rocky hills to 
the sea, is most picturesque, though 
its beauty has been marred by the 
devastating fire which, a few years 
ago, swept the forest from this part 
of the country, inflicting a terrible 
loss on the settlers, to whom the 
timber had helped to furnish a live- 
lihood, and exposing the naked 
sides of the hills, strewn so thickly 
with rocks and boulders, that one 
wonders how the trees found hold- 
ing ground. 

The village itself is a cluster of 200 
or 300 cabins, perched in the most 
impossible niches amongst the rocks 
on the side of the steep cliffs. Gene- 
rally the ground is too uneven to af- 
ford foundations, and these are sup- 
plied by posts, which are fixed into 
the rocks so as to support the sills. 
Each cottage has its own rough 
approach, sometimes over crags, 
sometimes up wooden ladders, or 
stairs rudely cut out of the rock so 
that the process of circulating from 
one house to the other is a matter 
of considerable difficulty. Add to 
these quaintly - constructed habita- 
tions, beetling cliffs, rocks pro- 
jecting into the sea covered with 
fishing - stages, a brawling stream 
and waterfall; clumps of pine-trees, 
which have escaped the fire, nestling 
among the rocks ; a magnificent 
sheet of water twenty miles across, 
glittering golden in the setting sun, 



surrounded with high land that 
ends in rugged promontories and 
deep bays, except to the northward, 
where the Atlantic forms the water 
horizon, and you have Portugal 
Cove as we saw it on the last day 
of May. The front is the island 
of Belle Isle, remarkable from the 
fact of being a good farming 
locality, entirely free from the rocks 
and stones of the mainland, and 
with an altogether different soil. 
It is thickly populated Concep- 
tion Bay itself, across which w& 
are now looking, supports on its 
shores a population of about 40,000 
souls. At the towns of Harbour 
Grace arid Carbonear, only three 
miles apart, the population amounts 
to about 12,000; but one need 
not go farther than Middle Cove, 
Logie Bay, or Quidi Vidi, to have 
samples of coast scenery and fish- 
ing villages, which are repeated 
in endless variety all round the 
island. Wherever ^the Atlantic 
waves rest or eddy for a moment 
in the clefts or crevices of the rocky 
precipitous cliffs which overhang 
the water, and wherever in the 
neighbourhood of such a smooth 
spot there is a shelf or ledge of 
rock favourable for the purpose, 
the settlement of the cod -fisher 
may be seen. Here he erects his 
"stage" and cod "flakes." The 
former, a rough shanty made of the 
boughs of pine-trees, and roofed 
with bark, is generally perched on 
stakes firmly wedged into the rocks. 
They are placed as near the water 
as possible, for in these little rooms 
the fish are received from the boats, 
and cleaned preparatory to being 
laid out on the flakes. They some- 
times seem perched like gigantic 
nests over the waves, one advantage 
of proximity to which is, that all 
the refuse falls directly into them. 
Another requisite to a favourable 
location is a convenient approach 
to the flakes : these are erected on 



1873.] 



Newfoundland. 



71 



poles in the immediate vicinity. 
In Quidi Vidi there must be at 
least an acre of these singular 
looking drying-grounds. At this 
time of the year the women and 
children are engaged in the woods 
cutting small pine -boughs and 
making them up into bundles, to 
be spread upon these erections; 
and then as soon as they are 
split, and salted and soaked, the 
cod are spread out in the sun 
to dry, being carried from the 
stages in hand-barrows, up steps 
often ingeniously contrived on the 
face of the rocks. Under these flakes 
one may walk in some of the fish- 
ing stations for hundreds of yards, 
completely roofed in by cod-fish, 
which exclude the rays of the sun 
from the alleys beneath, so as 
almost to remind one of the shaded 
streets of some Eastern town. As 
may be imagined, the smell does 
not induce one to linger long in 
these shady but fishy purlieus. 
Wherever there is building room, the 
rude shanties of the fishermen, who 
in many instances only use them 
during the summer, are put up 
each containing a couple of bunks, 
roughly constructed, a backing of 
stones against which the fire is made, 
no chimney, much less windows. The 
smoke finds its way out through a 
hole in the roof, through which and 
the doorway the inmates receive 
light and air. A wooden bench, and 
a barrel-head on a single leg for a 
table, complete the furniture. Al- 
together, if there is a great absence 
of comfort, combined with a power- 
fully odoriferous atmosphere per- 
vading the whole establishment, it 
is scarcely possible to imagine any- 
thing more picturesque: the up- 
turned boats stowed away in con- 
venient corners ; the labyrinths of 
stages and flakes, perched like 
Malay villages over the water, or 
sticking against the rock wherever 
there is holding ground; the fishers' 



cottages glued to the rocks liko 
birds' nests ; the beetling cliifs over- 
hanging all ; and in spring the huge 
blocks of blue transparent ice grind- 
ing themselves to pieces in these 
iron-bound bays on their way from 
the Arctic regions. 

In the early part of June the 
scene changes : at this time shoals 
of a small fish, called caplin (Salmo 
Arcticus), swarm in the harbours, and 
in their attempts to escape from their 
enemies, the cod, are washed up in 
myriads upon the beach, where the 
women and children collect and scoop 
them up in bucketfuls. They are a 
delicate, tender little fish, not unlike 
sardines; not fleshy enough, it would 
seem, to make it possible to pre- 
serve them in oil : but they are salt- 
ed and sent to Catholic countries as 
an article of diet ; while they form, 
as long as they last, the best bait for 
cod. They appear in such quan- 
tities, however, that the country 
people take them by the cartload, 
and use them as manure for their 
land. One wonders why it is that 
the Newfoundlanders have neglect- 
ed to turn to account as a source of 
revenue the quantity of fish-manure 
which their industry produces. The 
cod-offal which is now allowed to 
fall into the sea might be converted 
into fish-guano, and made a most 
profitable article of commerce. In- 
deed the French have had one of 
these factories at Quirpou, near the 
Straits of Belle Isle, which is said to 
furnish from 8000 to 10,000 tuns 
of fish-manure annually. 

Newfoundland gives indications of 
possessing a source of wealth moreex- 
haustless and prolific, however, even 
than its fisheries. The careful and ela- 
borate examination of Mr Alexander 
Murray, the director of the Geological 
Survey of the island, has opened up 
a prospect which has already tempt- 
ed speculators to take up land for 
mining purposes. The mineralogi- 
cal and metalliferous character of a 



72 



Newfoundland. 



[July 



large portion of the strata is now 
put beyond question. Mr Burnett, 
the present Premier of Newfound- 
land, has been working a mine for 
some years past with great success at 
a place called Tilt Cove, on the north- 
eastern coast, not far from Cape St 
John's. Between the month of Oc- 
tober 1872 and the 1st of April last, 
4600 tons of copper ore have been 
extracted, and are ready for ship- 
ment; and an average of 600 tons 
per month is expected to be pro- 
duced throughout the present sum- 
mer. Latterly this mine has turned 
out highly productive of nickel ore. 
This was found at one time in a vein 
where the " prill," or solid ore, varied 
from 12 to 18 inches in thickness, 
and this exclusive of the dissemin- 
ated, or, as it is usually called, the 
" stamp" ore. For two years this 
vein and the accompanying ore was 
lost; but during last winter a small 
vein of nickel ore was observed, 
which was found on trial to increase 
in width, descending. The " prill," 
in this case, varies from 2 to 6 
inches in thickness, and there is, be- 
sides, a fair yield of " stamps." The 
lode is opened, as yet, only about 38 
feet linear. This ore is of the qual- 
ity usually called yellow, or copper 
nickel. The value at the time I 
write is 16s. per metallic pound. 
The ore averages 20 Ib. per cwt. of 
metal, or 448 Ib. to the ton that is, 
in value at present rates, .358, 8s. 
a ton. Within the last two months 
about 7 tons of this ore has been 
extracted, and is now ready for 
shipment, representing a value of 
X2508, 16s.; but I see that, in con- 
sequence of the demand for nickel 
from Germany for the manufacture 
of the new currency, the price of 
nickel is likely to double. It is 
therefore easy to estimate the value 
of the prize which the Premier has 
drawn in the mineral lottery of the 
island. 

At La Manche, on the Bay of Pla- 



centia, is a remunerative lead-mine, 
which, however, has been a good 
deal mismanaged ; and in the same 
neighbourhood some sanguine specu- 
lators have been so much attracted 
by the auriferous-looking character 
of the quartz, that they have taken 
out a licence for mining gold at the 
south-west corner of the island, on 
the Cod Roy rivers. Mr Murray 
describes " a vast exposure of gyp- 
sum, where it may be quarried to 
any extent." I have myself seen 
rich specimens of galena brought 
from Port-au-Port, on the same shore; 
while marbles of almost every shade 
of colour have been produced from 
various parts of the coast on both 
the eastern and western shores. 
Space does not allow me to enter at 
length into this most interesting 
subject ; but those anxious to gain 
information in regard to it will find, 
in the very able reports of Mr Mur- 
ray, which are published by the 
colony, the geological structure and 
mineral resources of the island care- 
fully examined ; while the interest- 
ing articles of the Rev. Mr Harvey 
upon all matters connected with 
Newfoundland will be found of great 
value by the intending emigrant or 
mining speculator. This year Mr 
Murray intends to make a thorough 
examination of the coal-fields on St 
George's Bay, where he has also dis- 
covered magnetic iron ; and the re- 
sult of his exploration will be of the 
highest importance to the future 
prospects of the colony. I cannot 
leave Newfoundland without calling 
attention to the inducements which, 
owing to the increased facilities of 
access, it offers to the sportsman. 
In less than a week after leaving 
home he may find himself in un- 
explored wilds, dependent upon 
his gun and rod for subsistence; 
and it is his own fault if he does 
not live royally on their spoil. 
Carriboo, a species of reindeer 
larger than those of Lapland, range 



1873.] 



Newfoundland. 



73 



the savannahs of the interior in 
great abundance, herding in the 
months of November and May, in 
flocks of thousands, when they are 
killed by the Micmac Indians and 
white hunters while crossing the 
lakes. In summer they afford ex- 
cellent sport, and are more or less 
solitary; an ordinary shot should 
kill two or three a-day. Besides 
the carriboo, the lover of more 
savage game may chance upon 
bears or wolves. The remaining 
animals are foxes, beavers, otters, 
Arctic hares, weasels, and musk-rats. 
It is a singular fact, that although 
the Straits of Belle Isle are frozen 
in winter, and might easily be 
crossed by moose-deer, wolverines, 
and many other animals peculiar 
to the American continent, none 
beyond those I have enumerated 
are found there, while the island is 
altogether free from reptiles of any 
kind; snakes, lizards, frogs, toads, 
$t hoc genus omne, are unknown 
here ; and there is no fear, when 
camping out and sleeping on the 
ground, of one's night's rest being 
disturbed by any creeping thing 
more formidable than a beetle or a 
spider. In the way of feathered 
fowl the sport is also excellent. 
Ptarmigan are the grouse of the 
country, but they are a larger and 
heavier bird than the European 
ptarmigan. It is no uncommon 
thing for thirty brace of these fine 
birds to fall to a single guii in a 
day. Then there are snipe in 
abundance, but, curiously enough, 
no woodcock. "Wild geese arrive 
here to breed in the spring in 
immense flocks ; while the black 
duck, a variety said to be superior 
to the " canvas back," and the 
blue-winged teal, complete the list 
of birds fit for a bag. In the way 
of fishing the choice is small but 
select. The rivers contain nothing 
but salmon, trout, eels, and min- 
nows. The salmon sadly need pro- 



tection : the net-fishing and traps 
set for them at the mouths of the 
rivers spoil sport for the angler; and 
though they are numerous enough 
up the stream, they seldom attain 
any great size. Still a goodly show 
of seven and eight pound fish may 
be killed in a day, to say nothing 
of the delicious red sea-trout, which 
swarm in the brooks and ponds 
that are accessible to the sea; be- 
sides which, the fresh- water trout, 
both in the lakes and rivers, average 
from two to five pounds, and are to 
be caught in any quantities. In 
addition to the attractions which 
are thus held out to the sportsman, 
he may further be tempted by the 
magnificent scenery which is to be 
found in some parts of the island 
especially on the rivers Exploits, 
Gander, and Huniber, recently ex- 
amined by Mr Murray, which drain 
the finest region in the country. Here 
the large lakes, some of them from 
thirty to fifty miles long, dotted 
with islands, are fringed with fine 
forests or hemmed in by precipitous 
walls of rock, while the rivers, by 
which they are connected, tumble 
in picturesque cascades from one to 
the other. But all this scenery 
waits to be explored. There are 
rivers still untraced ; glorious lakes 
upon which the eye of a white man 
has never rested; and vast savan- 
nahs, peopled with deer, upon which 
gun has never yet been fired; and 
waters swarming with fish, upon- 
which line has never yet been cast. 
The centre of the island is now 
a vast solitude, for the aboriginal 
Indians disappeared some thirty 
years ago. The last intercourse which 
we had with them forms a strange 
and mysterious episode. The corpse 
of an Indian woman, taken captive, 
and who died in captivity, was 
taken and placed on the spot in 
which the native Indians had last 
been seen. "When the same spot 
was visited shortly after, the body 



of the woman had been removed, 
and there were numerous traces of 
the presence of the tribe ; but from 
that day to this, not one of them 
has ever been seen, and it is sup- 
posed either that they have died 
out, or crossed the Straits of Belle 
Isle to Labrador. They had many 
distinguishing characteristics from 
the Indians of the mainland. Their 
language, of which a vocabulary 
was obtained, possesses no resem- 
blance to that of the continental 
tribes. Their manner of encamping, 
of constructing their wigwams of 
which traces may be seen in the 
interior and many of their habits 
were different; from an ethnological 
point, it is therefore to be regretted 
that we have now lost all trace of 
them. The only Indians in the 
island are two or three hundred 
Micmacs, who came over, since our 
occupation of Newfoundland, from 
Nova Scotia, and who are no doubt 
to a large extent responsible for the 
extermination of the aborigines, 
with whom they waged incessant 
war though, I am sorry to say, our 
own white settlers regarded them 
as their natural enemies, and seem 
to have slaughtered them merci- 
lessly. These lonely plains and 
valleys are only waiting to be once 
more inhabited by man ; and in 
spite of the prejudice and ignorance 
that has prevailed in regard to 
the climate and resources of New- 
foundland, there can be no doubt 
that the day is not far distant when 
the most fertile tracts of country 
in various parts of the island, but 
especially on the west coast, will 
be taken up by the emigrant. Mr 
Murray calculates that on the Cod 



Eoy and Humber rivers, and in St 
George's Bay alone, there are about 
726 square miles available for set- 
tlement for farming purposes. This 
region, besides being well timbered, 
possesses great advantages of water 
power, and the Humber is navi- 
gable for upwards of thirty miles. 
The range of the thermometer is 
very much less than in any part of 
the Canadas, the heat in summer 
seldom exceeding from 70 to 75 
Fahrenheit, while in winter the 
mercury rarely falls below zero. 
The price of land, unencumbered by 
conditions of settlement, is only two 
shillings an acre j the amount to 
be taken up by one individual not 
to exceed a hundred acres. Some 
years since, for the encouragement 
of agriculture and the relief of the 
poor, the Legislature passed an Act, 
the provisions of which secure to all 
poor settlers on Crown lands eight 
dollars gratuity for the first acre 
cleared, and six dollars for each suc- 
ceeding acre, until six acres are 
cleared, when the settler is entitled 
to a free grant of the portion he has 
thus reclaimed. When we remember 
that these districts are a thousand 
miles nearer to England than the 
farming regions of Canada that 
they must, before long, be on the 
highroad from the mother country 
to the Dominion that they show 
promise of abundant resources of 
coal, iron, and other ores, we can 
scarcely resist the conviction which 
one of the colonists has recently ex- 
pressed in an able article on her 
resources, that " Newfoundland has 
a great future before her, and is 
destined to rise into a populous and 
prosperous country." 



1873.] 



The Four Ages. 



75 



THE FOUR AGES. 



ALL the thought that gets hold 
of the world's ear and imprints it- 
self on the memory, all sententious 
wisdom and all sentimental poetry, 
agree in disparaging the later half of 
man's life. Life naturally divides 
itself into four ages childhood, 
youth, middle life, and old age. The 
poet, the man of the world, and the 
moralist, are of one mind to centre 
all the charm, beauty, and joy of 
life upon the two first of these con- 
ditions, and to treat the remaining 
half, or it may well be three-fourths 
of existence, as at best a flat, dull 
level of unromantic occupations, 
pleasures, and pains ; more com- 
monly a period of disappointment, 
failure, flagging hopes, discontent, 
and bodily suffering, of losses 
which find no compensation ; where 
we are daily losing what we desire 
to keep : a period in which it is 
ignoble to feel satisfaction, and 
truest philosophy to make short 
work of, and confound at once 
with old age. And so much are 
people the prey to popular impres- 
sions, and so apt to be guided by the 
prevailing tone so prone, we will 
add, to ingratitude for blessings 
which come as a matter of course 
that they raise no remonstrance, 
and affect to acquiesce in sentiments 
which their life and aspect alike 
contradict. Who dares stand up 
for that mental prime forty or 
forty-five 1 ? with some it is fifty; 
who ventures to set at its true 
worth as an element of happiness, 
liberty of action 1 What man has 
the courage to set his gains through 
thought and experience against his 
losses in youthful ardour 1 He is 
ready enough to estimate time's 
maturing benefits in his case, above 
the rising aspirant's flash and fire 
of youth ; but it is a mark of genius 



to hate had unutterable commun- 
ings in the spring of existence, 
whisperings which the inevitable 
discords of life have silenced ; few 
can forego a claim to such elevating 
regrets. 

As nothing is morally salutary but 
the truth, we take exception to this 
tone as a general experience. It fits 
certain temperaments of passionate 
sensibility, it follows naturally upon 
a youth of brilliant promise; but it 
is not real with the majority, and 
it leads to two opposite mischiefs. 
This excessive exaltation of youth 
leads the vain and frivolous on to 
greater frivolity and vanity ; and 
some, who are neither the one nor 
the other, it almost excuses and jus- 
tifies in their recoil from the inevit- 
able yoke of years and their melan- 
choly clinging to habits and com- 
panionship which no longer become 
them, and where they are not wel- 
come. Those, 011 the other hand, 
who alike disdain fraud or self-de- 
ception, or to linger where they are 
not wanted, officiously anticipate 
the world's judgment, resolving to 
be beforehand with the insolence of 
youth, or gossip's cold scrutiny ; and 
so do injustice to their manhood 
the period of performance, the week- 
day of labour, wherein is done the 
work of the world and call them- 
selves old before their time : an act 
of treachery towards self which is 
generally accompanied by similar 
treachery towards contemporaries ; 
for no one affects age prematurely 
who does not, as far as he can, drag- 
all his youth's intimates down hill 
along with him. " When people 
grow old, as you and I do," says a 
man of this temper to some friend, 
on whose unaccustomed ear the epi- 
thet falls chill and strange, " others 
do not care for us, but wo seem 



7G 



The Four Ayes. 



[July 



wiser to one another by finding 
fault with them. I daresay that 
monks never find out that they grow 
old fools when age gives them 
authority and nobody contradicts 
them." 

If the pleasures and dignities of 
middle life were acknowledged as 
frankly as they are in reality appre- 
ciated and enjoyed, we should see 
less fantastic aping of youth (though 
this is an aspect of human folly un- 
duly enlarged on by satire), and less 
of the contrary affectation. The 
true view of life, to put it in trite 
phrase, is that every stage has its 
pleasures as well as its duties, and 
in each the pleasures are real, not 
ghosts of pleasures. But to make 
life this harmonious whole, neither 
pleasures nor duties must be antici- 
pated : not taken out of course, nor 
hurried forward. Keep the child a 
child its full time, let not youth 
propel itself into manhood, and let 
manhood hold its own manfully, 
and not weakly, sheepishly, grum- 
blingly, ungraciously, unthankfully 
shelve itself even in words empty 
as they generally are, and not in- 
tended to carry weight upon the 
period of passive experience and the 
borders of oblivion. "When age 
really overtakes men, then, and 
often not till then, they value at its 
true worth the period answering to 
the summer and autumn of nature, 
the strength of maturity, " Tdge 
viril que nous n'estimons pas assez" 
says La Bruyere, which they dis- 
paraged and miscalled while it 
lasted, because it was not the sea- 
son of blossom and hope. Not that 
age is without its pleasures, which 
a thankful heart makes much of, 
and which recommend themselves 
to the observer as he sees 

" Age steal to his allotted nook 
Contented and serene j " 

for nothing cheers the whole prospect 
of life to the young like a picture of 



calm, bright, intelligent old age. And 
examples of such are not rarer to be 
met with than ideal examples of 
every age. 

Very true all people have not 
those accompaniments and privileges 
of middle age we have assigned to 
it : it sometimes suffers the loss of 
all things, while hope is left with 
a barren prospect scarcely to be 
gilded by any charm ; but if they 
have, it makes very little difference 
in the strain we speak of, which 
comes so naturally to -the hand that 
holds the pen ; for men are more 
themselves in speech and action 
than in silent weaving of sentences. 
It is the happy men of middle age, 
happy in their circumstances, men 
sleek and well nourished, who think 
it high-minded and poetical to be 
querulous towards the tract of life 
they are passing through. The 
truth is, most people go by looks : 
that part of their life when they 
were at their comeliest, when every- 
thing became them, when even 
follies were graceful, fascinates the 
memory. It is not the mind of 
youth but its body that is mainly 
sighed over ; that charm of grace, 
strength, and bloom ; and a certain 
subtle sense of immortality that 
goes along with it. So long as most 
of the people we encounter are 
our seniors, death is regarded 
practically as a thing that does not 
concern us. It is so many older 
folks' turn first, so many must enter- 
tain the thought before it becomes 
necessarily our business. If young 
people die it is a sort of accident it 
is not natural ; so that even the death 
of the young scarcely disturbs this 
sense of immortality as the attribute 
of youth; for to the imagination they 
remain, wherever they are, the same. 
We cannot so easily accommodate 
the leanness, the massiveness, the 
stoop, the heightened or fading 
colouring of middle life, or the de- 
crepitude of old age, to our ideas of 



1873.] 



The Four Ages. 



another state of being. To feel im- 
mortal, then, on whatever grounds, 
is no doubt a sensation which passes 
off. It has no share in the serener 
pleasures we assert to be the atten- 
dants of fairly prosperous middle 
life. But if we kept our good looks 
we should miss the warnings and 
trouble ourselves much less about 
the other losses which time brings. 

" youth ! for years so many and sweet 
'Tis known that thou and I were one, 
I'll think it but a fond conceit 
It cannot be that thou art gone ! 
Thy vesper bell hath not yet tolled. 
And thou wert aye a masker bold !. 
What strange disguise hast thou put on 
To make believe that thou art gone ? 
I see these locks in silvery slips, 
This drooping gait, this altered size : 
But springtide blossoms on thy lips, 
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes." 

Our subject naturally opens with 
childhood. Upon how it is passed de- 
pends emphatically the due progress 
of life through its successive stages; 
and perhaps we realise most forcibly 
the value of nature's silent method 
of operation by noting the effect 
of early deviation from it, whether 
deliberate or due to circumstances. 
It is a notable compensation for a 
life without marked successes, show 
or glory of any kind, that to such a 
condition the pleasures and satisfac- 
tions of life are meted out most equal- 
ly. All greatness, every distinction 
that lifts men above their fellows at 
one period of their life, spoils the har- 
mony of parts. An undue brilliancy 
of childhood or youth is apt to tell 
upon the stage that follows to its 
disadvantage. Each period should 
keep to nature's programme ; hence 
the life of most solid and lasting 
happiness is unquestionably that 
which starts with a secret unforced 
growth : whatever substitutes in 
infancy exhibition and achievement 
for the state of preparation, borrows 
some of the strength which man- 
hood cannot lend with impunity, 
and tends to a weak, ineffectual 



middle life. For the most fla- 
grant outrages upon nature's plan, 
for examples of childhood forced 
into action and publicity, tampered 
with and victimised, and denied the 
all-essential privilege of obscurity, we 
must look to the records of royal 
children, and follow their course in 
history \ or it may be enough to take 
up the narratives of their tutors and 
governesses, elate with the dignity of 
the material on which to try their 
educational experiences. In the case 
of absolute monarchies, circum- 
stances are too exacting to allow of 
privacy and secret growth. Unless 
there is some political reason for 
neglect, the children of the dynasty 
have a part to play as soon as they 
chip the shell, evidently in many 
cases to the lasting injury of physi- 
cal, intellectual, or moral strength. 
And they can be taught to play it 
with propriety. A charming manner 
and a sense of importance can be 
instilled into a sucking child, sepa- 
rating it for ever from childhood's 
more fortunate conditions, in which 

"Children are blest and powerful ; their 
world lies 

More justly balanced ; partly at their 
feet, 

And part far from them : sweetest melo- 
dies 

Are those that are by distance made more 
sweet." 

In the secret correspondence of 
Madame de Maintenon with her 
agent at the Spanish Court, we 
read of the Prince of Asturias, the 
first Bourbon born in Spain, receiv- 
ing the homage of the Spanish 
nobility when a baby of nineteen 
months. " Never," writes the Prin- 
cess des Ursins, "was a ceremony 
performed with more pomp, order, 
and magnificence. The Prince him- 
self gave his hand to kiss to those 
who kneeled before him, and as that 
lasted more than three hours, and 
he was attacked with hunger and 
sleep at the same moment, he began. 



78 



The F.our Ayes. 



[July 



to cry, being quite exhausted with 
the exercise ; but his nurse being 
sent for she relieved him, and he 
continued to hold out his little 
hand in the most charming man- 
ner." This Prince was equally pre- 
maturely set on the throne by the 
abdication of his father, when the 
small-pox put an end to a life which 
had run through all its natural 
share of action and events in child- 
hood. Equally instructive is the 
account of the early years of that 
Duke of Burgundy, the boast of 
.Fe"nelon, and father of Louis XV. 
The forcing process had, at the age of 
seven, turned this precocious child 
into a monster ; only the language 
ordinarily applied to adult wicked- 
ness sufficed to describe the strength 
and vehemence of his passions. "He 
was the prey of every passion, and 
the slave of every pleasure ! He was 
often ferocious and cruel. Inordi- 
nately proud, he looked upon men 
only as atoms with whom he had no 
sort of similarity whatever. But the 
brilliancy of his mind, and his 
penetration, were evident, even in 
his moments of greatest violence. 
His replies created astonishment in 
all who heard them," &c. &c. A 
formidable pupil certainly to tackle 
with, especially as he must always 
be addressed " Sir." " I know not, 
Sir, whether you recollect what you 
said to me yesterday, That you knew 
who you were and who I am. It is 
my duty to inform you that you are 
ignorant of both the one and the 
other." The good bishop brings the 
young prince to reason and virtue, 
and, in his case, we may say he had 
the good fortune to die young a 
model prince : but evidently he had 
outlived all this brilliancy : his short 
man's career was a failure. Not the 
least misfortune of these royal in- 
fants is the weight of learning in 
their tutors. Condillac, chosen pre- 
ceptor to the Prince of Parma, com- 
posed a course of metaphysical les- 



sons for his pupil of seven years, in 
which he made such progress that the 
complacent philosopher writes, that 
" his Highness " of that tender age 
" was perfectly acquainted with the 
system of intellectual operations, 
and was in a condition to substitute 
just ideas for the false ones which 
had been given him." "Your High- 
ness knows what is meant by a sys- 
tem " deriving an analogy on this 
abstruse subject from his Highness' s 
little chair as compared to his own 
big one. 

And infant princes were turned 
into fine gentlemen by as rapid a 
process as they were made philo- 
sophers. These unfortunates were 
the subjects of journals carefully 
kept by their attendants. " I find," 
writes Madame deGenlis, to her little 
pupils of the Orleans family, "by 
the Journal of M. le Bran, that it 
was the Duke of Montpensier who 
thought this morning of writing to 
inquire how I did after a slight in- 
disposition. You left me yesterday 
in a calm state, and there was no 
reason for anxiety ; but consistently 
with the strict duties of friendship 
you ought to have given orders before 
you went to bed for inquiries to be 
made at eight o'clock in the morn- 
ing to know whether I had had any 
return of my complaint during the 
night; and you should again have 
sent at ten to learn from myself, the 
instant I awoke, the exact state of 
my health. Such are the benevo- 
lent and tender cares which a lively 
and sincere friendship dictates. " 
Who can wonder at the dissimulation 
of the kings and princes of history, 
when make-believe and seeming were 
their earliest lessons ! It is certainly 
necessary to filling a great part well 
to be pretty early initiated into a 
sense of distinction; but we may 
remark by the way that premature 
lessons in self-assertion especially 
as they tamper with the simplicity of 
infancy, very naturally defeat their 



1873.] 



The Four A>jet 



70 



own end. We are told of the Prin- 
cess Louise, eighth daughter of Louis 
XV., that when only three years old 
she was served in state. It was the 
custom when royal personages drank 
during their meals, for everybody to 
stand up. The governess observing 
her supercilious demeanour towards 
her attendants, requested them to 
forego this ceremony, upon which the 
little Princess immediately stopped 
drinking, and issued the stately order, 
"Debout, s'il vous plait! Madame 
Louise boit." To judge from this 
example of premature dignity, it 
may be taught too soon for its pur- 
pose. Louise early got tired of 
grandeur and went into a convent ; 
but of the demeanour of her sister 
princesses in later life, we have 
some record. Horace Walpole writes 
of his visit to the French Court in 
1765. After King and Queen he is 
introduced to the four Mesdames, 
the King's daughters, whom he de- 
scribes in easy terms as " clumsy, 
plump old wenches, with a bad 
likeness of their father. They stand 
in a bedchamber in a row, with black 
cloaks and knotting-bags, looking 
good-humoured, and not knowing 
what to say." They could not be 
so very old, for their father at this 
time was only fifty-five ; but youth 
so treated is soon run through. 
The insight into the training 
of princes given us by these com- 
placent records of processes and 
triumphant results, goes far to ex- 
cuse all the errors and failures of 
after-life. Life is made a conscious 
piece of acting from the first. Their 
part is given them too soon, nor is 
there an alternative of wholesome 
neglect. Neglect can only be whole- 
some where it is in a manner inevi- 
table and surrounded by natural 
protections. Happily for modern 
princes, their tutors have left off 
writing about them, and illustrating 
their theories by appeals and refer- 
ences to their immature judgment. 



As far as obscurity is possible to 
lofty station, royal infancy in our 
days enjoys it. We have to borrow 
our examples from a past age. 

As short-lived and not less pre- 
cocious is infancy in the social 
opposite of existence. The litera- 
ture of destitution is full of the 
premature sagacity of its childhood. 
The gamin of Paris or London is a 
match in all the arts of dissimula- 
tion with the scion of a hundred 
tyrants ; and the small rustic knave 
follows not far behind, masking 
his designs under an aspect of im- 
pervious stolidity. Nor are these 
evidences of a corrupt civilisation. 
Misery and bad company are the 
same forcing agents in the Far West, 
wherever the child is driven to its own 
guardianship. Witness Bret Harte's 
pictures of childhood : little Johnny 
more than the intellectual equal 
of " the old man " his father, and of 
the diggers, whose pet he is, and 
whose language he copies. " The 
child, whose face could have been 
pretty, but that it was darkened by 
knowledge of evil, and whose weak 
treble was broken by the hoarseness 
which vagabondage and premature 
self-assertion can give." It is a pathe- 
tic sketch the child thrown entire- 
ly on his own sense and resources, 
at once so knowing and so ignorant, 
with his sad experience of sickness, 
and old-fashioned views of regimen. 
"Thar's dried appils," he says to his 
father's guests, " but I don't admire 
'em appils is swellin' : " his long 
catalogue of diseases, of which he en- 
joys the repetition to his strong burly 
friends, who ask, " You ain't agoin* 
to turn in agin, are ye ? ' ; " Yes, I 
are," responded Johnny, decidedly. 
"Why, what's up, old fellow?" 
"I'm sick." "How sick?" "I've got 
a fevier and chilblains, and roomatiz," 
and, as he retreated into darkness 
and under his bed-clothes "and 
biles !" The time is Christmas Eve. 
"What's Chrismiss?" he asks his fa- 



80 



The Four Ages. 



[July 



ther. " What's Chrismiss any way 1 
Wot's it all about 1 " " 0, it's a day," 
is all Ms father can answer. 

The child bom under, happily, 
more ordinary circumstances, not sub- 
ject to either of these extremes, has 
neither a part to play nor any sense 
of responsibility as to material 
wants. It trusts the guardianship 
of its wellbeing to its parents im- 
plicitly and without a thought, and 
pursues its speculations on the life 
before it quite apart from its own 
share in it. Nor are these specula- 
tions too curiously inquired into. 
It works out the problems of life at 
its leisure, no wise tutor forestalling 
every difficulty, and watching for 
every opportunity for instilling a 
maxim or opening out a field of 
inquiry. It is only by chance and 
some naive revelation that we learn 
anything of the puzzles and comical 
bewilderments the mind passes 
through in the way from partial 
knowledge to a clear understanding, 
and how it slowly disentangles them 
for itself, as when the little girl 
gravely remarked to her mother 
on the birth of a litter of kittens, 
"Mamma, I was not aware that 
ours was a married cat." The child 
may have a philosophic father to 
whom nothing is more interesting 
than to trace the course of thought 
and the steps of inquiry ; but he 
has something else to do, which the 
tutor has not, than to urge his in- 
fant to crack hard metaphysic nuts 
with his first teeth. So when he 
hears of baby watching the horse 
he is used to stroke in the stable 
as he is being harnessed to the 
carriage, and still with a perplexed 
air turning his head to the empty 
stall to satisfy himself that he is 
not there also, he only pronounces 
it an interesting observation. "Baby 
was testing an identical proposition 
by experience," and leaves him to 
discover, by degrees, that a thing 
can't be in two places at once. 



That great stimulator of the 
faculties, a good downright passion, 
visits small and great alike ; but on 
isolated royalty it is allowed to be- 
come gigantic, generating a morbid 
self - consuming intelligence. The 
child of ordinary life has his tempers 
quickening the intellect in the same 
way, and prompting the inexperi- 
enced tongue to very apt language. 
Duly provoked, he will rattle off a 
string of motives and reveal his 
inner mind with a clearness which 
leaves nothing to be desired. A 
little fellow of three, irritated first 
by the refusal of his brother's toys, 
and then when Freddy is carried off 
by a somewhat ostentatious per- 
mission to play with them, lays bare 
the whole principle of contradiction 
without a pause to take breath : 
" I don't want it, nowFreddyis gone, 
and I shall want it when he comes 
back again ; and Freddy shall have 
it when he is naughty, and he 
shan't have it when he is good ; 
and when he wants it he shan't 
have it, and when he doesn't want 
it he shall have it." Where there is 
no easy natural check, such a tan- 
trum might set a formal long-worded 
machinery of admonition at work, 
or, if left to itself, possibly issue in 
a temper really formidable. The 
child, among a crowd of equals, finds 
his level, learns to give and take, 
subdued to reason and forbearance 
by the friendly force and pressure 
of circumstances. Admonition in 
its place is excellent, but the most 
telling teaching of all is that which 
the child acquires for himself from 
the favouring influences about him r 
and this teaching is most effectual 
is, we may say, the prerogative 
of middle station. 

But if childhood finds its most 
congenial home in middle station, 
it may be granted that Youth 
shows in greatest splendour when 
set off by rank and wealth and 
fashion. * It is the period the one 



01873.] 



The Four Ages. 



81 



a g e -which may be said to need 
room, a broad, well-lighted theatre, 
for its more brilliant display. If 
people could be always young and 
-sustain unchecked their powers of 
receiving and imparting pleasurable 
excitement, they would choose well 
(for this world at least) in choosing 
to be lords and ladies. Society is 
a theatre planned for their interest 
-and to show them to the highest 
advantage. The heir of fame and 
name and fortune, every grace of per- 
son and manner sedulously cultivated , 
all the world indulgent, deferential, 
solicitous to admire, has only to be 
willing to please to out-top all 
rivals ; and if the heir what of the 
heiress? all art, all fancy, is in- 
spired by high-born beauty in its 
-early prime of imperial loveliness. 
Earth has not anything to show 
more fair to the painter or the poet 
than the brilliant glorified youth of 
the great ; of youth and maiden, 
trained in the school of gracious 
manners, in all the traditions of 
sentiment and home of a cultivat- 
ed, far-descended aristocracy ; with 
broad manors and marble halls in 
ample conformity to their high de- 
serts. But the pity is that this reign 
is shortlived. The vista to this 
golden glory is too brilliant not to 
tempt to undue hurry into it ; and 
Childhood shortened does not im- 
ply youth prolonged. The pace of 
life is too quick for even the 
feeling of youth to remain in un- 
disturbed quiet possession. The 
young man has no pleasures to wait 
for. The only possibility of man 
forgetting the flight of time is 
to have something to do more en- 
grossing than what is called pleas- 
ure. Business work of some kind 
is absolutely necessary to sustain 
the feeling of youth ; for work keeps 
up the idea of learning and incom- 
pleteness. The distinctions of youth, 
what it excels in, are not accom- 
plishments that improve ; the only 

VOL. CXIV. NO. DCXCIII. 



hope and endeavour is to maintain 
them at their present level. The 
beauty of a season or two has 
too many observers counting them 
up not to be aware of the passage 
of time ; it becomes a haunting idea 
when it interferes so conspicuously 
with the prestige and hopes of life. 
There is a trepidation, a watching for 
signs when the first exultant pride 
of beauty in its freshness is over. 
Georges Sand makes one of her 
heroines scream at the first faint 
suspicion of a wrinkle. And while 
its glory lasts there is naturally an. 
eager craving for its appreciation, a 
conscious sense of a prize to be caught 
ere it passes which disturbs that 
poetic idea of careless, gay, dazzling 
youth so dear to the fancy. The 
celebrated Lady Townsend fortu- 
nate in another string to her bow 
wit succeeding to beauty expressed 
herself anxious to see George the 
Third's coronation, as she had never 
seen one. "Why, Madam, you walked 
at the last." " Yes, child," was her 
answer, " but I saw nothing of it ; 
I only looked to see who looked at 
me." 

And there is a premature pru- 
dence engendered by this exag- 
gerated sense of the fleetingness of 
youth as well as a self-absorbed 
vanity in conscious possession. 
Nature makes the blossoming sea- 
son short ; but, precipitating, hasten- 
ing on the time of bloom, makes it 
shorter still. The girl ceases to 
feel a girl in high rank much 
sooner than in a middle condition ; 
high and low alike, through different 
causes, entering early upon the dry 
experience of life. It is those who 
rank neither with rich nor poor, who 
have to recognise waiting as a con- 
dition of youth, and to be patient 
under it, who, by the holding out of 
expectation, feel young the longest. 
Society by no means arranges itself 
for the especial convenience of the 
youth of the middle classes. They 



82 



The Four Ayes. 



[July 



have to bide their time and to live 
upon hope. Horace Walpole com- 
mends to his friend the good sense 
of his niece Charlotte on occasion of 
her receiving proposals from Lord 
Dysart, whom she did not know 
"by sight, and who wanted to 
marry her within a week. She 
said to her sister Waldegrave "very 
sensibly," " If I was but nineteen I 
would refuse him point blank. I 
do not like to be married in a week 
to a man I never saw. But I am 
two-and-twenty j some people say I 
am handsome, some say I am not ; 
I believe the truth is 1 am likely to 
~be large and to go off soon it is 
dangerous to refuse so great a 
match." " She came and saw this 
imperious lover, and I believe was 
glad she had not refused him 
point blank, for they were married 
last Thursday that is, in a week." 
It is not nature here that makes 
youth short-lived ; a girl unhack- 
neyed is still a girl at twenty-two, 
fresh, full of hope and expectation, 
with her life before her, no airs 
of stale worldly wisdom tainting 
the sense of spring and hope. It 
is not nature that hurries life out 
of its spring ; it is the work of 
men and women, a plot against 
reason which possesses a frivolous 
society from first to last, making 
youth everything till all the rest of 
life is mourned over as a falling-off, 
a weary task, the day after the fair. 
Youth catches the tone, shortening 
its own span, chattering about broken 
illusions, and asking 

" Ah, what shall I be at fifty, 

Should nature keep me alive, 
If I find the world so bitter, 
When I am but twenty-five ? " 

Horace Walpole in his own per- 
son is a representative example of 
this tone, as his early life is an ex- 
ample of the brilliant spring which 
belongs to youth among the high- 
born who are fitted by manner, 



wit, and wealth to illustrate and 
enjoy it. Age is his bete noire; he 
cannot forget it; whether he jests 
or is serious we see it a prevailing 
dread. He adores the young, they 
constitute the charm of society, yet 
he hopes for no tenderness or sym- 
pathy from them, and is afraid of 
their contempt. He worships the 
memory of his own youth, its 
sparkling wit and social successes ; 
he recognises no gains from thought 
and experience, no compensations, 
and describes life about him or before 
him as only a repetition of old joys 
from which the spirit has fled, but 
which he yet prefers to all maturity 
of thought -or graver interests can 
offer. In society of ladies, address- 
ing them in graceful persiflage,. 
the thought is still uppermost. To- 
Lady Hervey he describes the old 
life as the only one in which he 
can hope to be acceptable, and yet 
which he feels slipping out of, with 
a banter which is only yearning 
in disguise. " My resolutions for 
growing old and staid are admirable. 
I wake with a sober plan and in- 
tend to pass the day with my 
friends, then comes the Duke of 
Richmond and hurries me down to 
Whitehall to dinner; then the Duch- 
ess of Grafton sends for me to loo 
in Upper Grosvenor Street ; before 
I can get thither I am begged to 
step to Kensington to give Mrs 
Anne Pitt my opinion about a bow 
window ; after that I am to walk 
with Miss Pelhani in the terrace till 
two in the morning, because it is 
moonlight and her chair is not come. 
All this does not help my morning 
laziness, and by the time I have 
breakfasted, fed my birds and my 
squirrels, and dressed, there is an 
auction ready ; in short, Madam, 
this was my life last week, and is, 
I think, every week, with the addi- 
tion of forty episodes ; so pray for- 
give me ; I really will begin to be 
between forty and fifty by the time 



1873.] 



r llie Four Ayes. 



83 



I am fourscore." The age between 
forty and fifty is a capital working 
age, but when more than half these 
years have been spent in precisely the 
same round, the pleasure may well 
be dashed with forebodings, for it 
is a late age to take to being serious. 
What his real feelings are we learn 
from a letter to his friend George 
Montagu written two days later. 
" The less one is disposed, if one 
has any sense, to talk of one's self 
to people that inquire only out of 
compliment, the more satisfaction 
one feels in indulging a self-com- 
placency, by sighing to those that 
really sympathise with our griefs. 
Do not think it is pain that makes 
me give this low-spirited air to my 
letter. JSTo, it is the prospect of 
what is to come, and the sensation 
of what is passing that affects me. 
The loss of youth is melancholy 
enough, but to enter into old age 
through the gate of infirmity, most 
disheartening." He suffered, it will 
be remembered, from gout. " I have 
not the conscience to trouble young 
people when I can no longer be 
juvenile as they are, and I am tired 
of the world, its politics, its pur- 
suits, and its pleasures, but it will 
cost me some struggles before I 
submit to be tender and careful. 
Christ ! Can I ever stoop to the 
regimen of old age? I do not wish 
to dress up a withered person, nor 
drag it about to public places, but 
to sit in one's room clothed warmly, 
expecting visits from folks I don't 
wish to see, and tendered and flat- 
tered by relations impatient for 
one's death. Let the gout do its 
worst. . . . Nobody can have truly 
enjoyed the advantages of youth, 
health, and spirits, who is content 
to exist without the two last, which 
alone bear any resemblance to the 
first." It is the success, prominence, 
and brilliancy of his youth that is 
answerable for this tone. The busy 
worker has a succession of springs. 



Walpole can only look back. " Un- 
like most people that are growing 
old, I am convinced that nothing 
is charming but what appeared im- 
portant to one's youth, which after- 
wards passes for follies. Oh ! but 
those follies were sincere; if the 
pursuits of age are so they are sin- 
cere alone to self-interest. This I 
think, and have no other care than 
not to think aloud. I would not have 
respectable youth think me an old 
fool." And the gloom increases as 
years advance. At sixty-six he de- 
scribes himself as a ruin. " Dulness 
in the form of indolence grows upon 
me. I am inactive, lifeless, so indif- 
ferent to most things that I neither 
inquire after nor remember any top- 
ics that might enliven my letters. 
It would be folly in me to concern 
myself about new generations. How 
little a way can I see of their pro- 
gress." And yet he lived fourteen 
years after this, feeling older and 
older, though in the full possession 
of his faculties and even of his style. 
Can any one suppose that under 
different circumstances, under the 
stimulus of wholesome, because 
necessary occupation, no careless, 
insolent triumph of youth to look 
back to, no peerage revealing how 
long that youth was past, no con- 
sciousness of being an object of 
curiosity or observation when no 
longer worth looking at, Horace 
Walpole would not have been a 
younger man at forty-seven and 
sixty-seven respectively, than these 
revelations show him 1 

Youth, which is graceful in its 
golden prime, too often develops 
or collapses into awkward unsightly 
proportions. Sensitiveness as well 
as vanity suffers under the con- 
trast. Who would not rather be 
one of the crowd of lookers-on 
than the observed of all observers 
on the occasion of the visit to 
Stowe he celebrates, where he was 
invited to meet the Princess Amelia, 



84 



The Four Ages. 



[July 



and an al fresco entertainment was 
arranged in the stately gardens 
and lamp-lit grotto ? " The evening 
being, as will happen, more than 
cool, and the destined spot any- 
thing but dry, as our procession 
descended the vast flight of steps 
into the garden, in which was as- 
sembled a crowd of people from 
Buckingham and the neighbouring 
villages, to see the princess and the 
show, the moon shining very bright, 
I could not help laughing as I sur- 
veyed our troop, which, instead of 
tripping lightly to such an Arcadian 
entertainment, were hobbling down 
by the balustrades, wrapped up in 
cloaks and greatcoats for fear of 
catching cold. The earl, you know, 
is bent double, the countess very 
lame ; I am a miserable walker, and 
the princess, though as strong as the 
Brunswick lion, makes no figure in 
going down fifty stone stairs. Ex- 
cept Lady Anne, and by courtesy 
Lady Mary, we were none of us 
young enough for a pastoral. These 
jaunts are too juvenile. I am 
ashamed to look back and remem- 
ber in what year of Methuselah I 
was here first." It is a very for- 
midable penalty of rank and great- 
ness never to be allowed to sink 
into personal insignificance. Quite 
apart from vanity must come the 
longing, when crowds come to see, 
to be something worth seeing. It 
is enough to account for the mis- 
anthropy of some royal fops ,and 
belles, when self-flattery can no 
longer give the lie to the mirror's 
home truths. 

" Shall I believe him ashamed to be seen? 

, For only once, in the village street 
Last year, I caught a glimpse of his face, 
A grey old wolf, and a lean." 

Industry, in whatever rank, keeps 
off the sense and dread of age. It 
is perhaps some decay of brain 
power in the indolent or idle which 
suggests it. The great leaders of 



parties know better than to put 
such ideas into other people's heads ; 
but also they have no leisure for 
speculation upon the mere progress 
of time. They accept work as the 
proper necessity of middle life, and 
the period of middle life lasts long 
where the faculties are all kept em- 
ployed, and are found equal to the 
demands on them. The busy man, 
whether statesman or shopkeeper, 
has his mind, thoughts, plans all 
fixed on the future. He looks for- 
ward, which is the habit of youth, 
and thus keeps up the sensation 
when the fact is long past. But 
where the prizes of life come with 
youth without pains or care, com- 
paratively few recognise the charm 
of work. It looks like duty only, 
if indeed it is that, to people who 
have already what most men work 
for. It is only the middle and 
lower classes who are driven to it 
on pain of want or loss of self- 
respect ; and perhaps it is in the 
middle class especially that it acts 
as an elixir. The poor age and fade 
under their toil, and can't help feel- 
ing, and saying that they do, when 
strength and agility fail them, and 
back and limbs ache under bur- 
dens that once were easy. Vigour 
of mind outlives vigour of limb. 
The lawyer and keen man of business 
are not reminded from within by 
the loss of power that the descent 
of the hill has begun, till long after 
the cottager and his wife look and 
call themselves old man and woman. 
Of course there are dangers in this 
unconsciousness. Men should al- 
ways bear in mind that they are 
mortal, but the fret and moan of 
dissatisfaction, the murmur that 
youth is gone, leaving nothing else 
worth living for, is no better pre- 
paration for death than the loins 
girded and the lamps burning ; than 
strenuous activity, even in tem- 
poral duties. If the poet, conscious 
that his leaf is sere, as he bids " fall, 



1873.] 



The FJUT Ages. 



85 



rosy garland, from my head," can 
look forward 

'' Yet will I temperately rejoice ; " 

so may the middle life of the great 
middle class, so long as the world 
keeps it busy. 

It is not the poetical view of 
youth that we are combating, but 
the cynical view of all the rest of 
life, which with so many is either 
an affectation or a needless gloom. 
Experience rarely fits in with the 
ideal we scarcely think it does 
with the following tender monody 
which we find in Dr Newman's 
sermon entitled the Second Spring ; 
but unquestionably youth under its 
more charming aspect is the most 
lovely spectacle granted to mortal 
eyes, and as such should be pictured 
and sung. 

" How beautiful is the human heart 
when it puts forth its first leaves, and 
opens and rejoices in its spring- tide. 
Fair as may be the bodily form, fairer 
far, in its green foliage and bright blos- 
soms, is natural virtue. It blooms in 
the young, like some rich flower, so 
delicate, so fragrant, and so dazzling, 
generosity, lightness of heart and ami- 
ableness, the confiding spirit, the gentle 
temper, the elastic cheerfulness, the 
open hand, the pure affection, the noble 
aspiration, the heroic resolve, the ro- 
mantic pursuit, the love in which self 
has no part are not these beautiful ? 
and are they not dressed up and set 
forth for admiration in their best 
shapes, in tales and in poems ? and ah ! 
what a prospect of good is there ! 
Who could believe that it is to fade ! 
and yet as night follows upon day, as 
decrepitude follows upon health, so 
surely are failure, and overthrow, and 
annihilation, the issue of this natural 
virtue, if tune only be allowed to it to 
run its course. There are those who 
are cut off in the first opening of this 
excellence, and then if we may trust 
their epitaphs, they have lived like an- 
gels ; but wait awhile, let them live on, 
let the course of life proceed, let the 
bright soul go through the fire and 
water of the world's temptations, and 



seductions, and corruptions, and trans- 
formations, and alas for the insuffici- 
ency of nature ! alas for its powerless- 
ness to persevere, its waywardness in 
disappointing its own promise ! Wait 
till youth has become age, and not 
more different is the miniature we have 
of him when a boy, when every feature 
spoke of hope, put side by side with 
the large portrait painted to his honour 
when he is old, when his limbs are 
shrunk, his eye dim, his brow furrowed, 
and his hair grey, than differs the 
moral grace of that boyhood from the 
forbidding and repulsive aspect of his 
soul, now that he has lived to the age 
of man. For moroseness, and misan- 
thropy, and selfishness, is the ordinary 
winter of that spring." 

Exposed to the test by which age 
is tested, surely all these excellen- 
cies of youth which issue in so 
dreary a winter will prove not only 
transient but illusory : seeming 
and no more. Youth is the cun- 
ningest of all disguises, looking 
back, we see the faults of the man 
to have been there all the while ; 
the noble aspiration and generosity, 
judged by this key, vain self-confi- 
dence; the elastic cheerfulness, mere 
animal spirits; just as the misan- 
thropy of later years resolves itself 
into bile. Man is so complex a 
being presents so many sides and 
aspects, that a hundred dissimilar 
portraits may all be living like- 
nesses. If our memory responds 
to this picture with some gracious 
answering image, it cannot deny or 
refuse its tribute in illustration of a 
directly opposite one. There is no 
selfishness so blind, remorseless, and 
merely animal as youthful selfish- 
ness in some terrible instances. 
The preaching of consequences does 
sometimes tell upon such natures; 
they are more tolerable at fifty. 
Some touch of sympathy awakes in 
them. Experience humanises them. 
"Wisdom and experience," says 
Swift, " which are divine qualities, 
are the properties of age, and youth 
in the want of them is contemptible. 



The Four Ayes. 



[July 



But I do not say this to mortify or 
discourage young men. I would 
not by any means have them despise 
themselves, for that is the ready way 
to be despised by others, and the 
consequences of contempt are fatal. 
For my part I take self-conceit and 
opinionativeness," which he assumes 
to be the leading characteristic of 
young men, and their stock-in-trade, 
" to be of all others the most useful 
and profitable qualities of the mind. 
It has to my knowledge made bishops 
and judges and smart writers, and 
pretty fellows and pleasant com- 
panions and good preachers." The 
truth is that youth admits of as 
many interpretations as there are 
interpreters. The genius and tem- 
per of the observer give it its colour, 
and that temper, in all but the satir- 
ist, is indulgent. We are satisfied 
with youth if it only enjoys itself 
and frankly takes the good the gods 
provide, without reflecting that the 
boy is more often father to the 
man than his opposite : only his 
errors have a way of seeming tran- 
sient; things don't look the same. 
What a different impression would 
Froissart's picture of himself make 
if he was describing the tastes of 
his maturity; yet the same easy 
joyous selfishness shows in boy and 
man. " Well I loved to see dances 
and carollings, well to hear min- 
strelsy and tales of glee, well to 
attach myself to those who loved 
hounds and hawks, well to toy 
with my fair companions at school, 
and methought I had the art 
well to win -their grace. My ears 
quickened at the sound of un- 
corking the wine flask, for I took 
great pleasure in drinking and in 
fair array, and in delicate and fresh 
cates. I love to see (as is reason) 
the early violets and the white and 
red roses, and also chambers fairly 
lighted; justs, dances, and late 
vigils, and fair beds for refresh- 
ment; and for my better repose a 



night draught of claret or Eochelle 
wine mingled with spice." Youth, 
which everything becomes, can be 
poetically selfish, which cannot be 
managed in later years when reason 
and calculation come in. Pepys 
had exactly the same tastes as Frois- 
sart. Eut, instead of obeying his 
instincts without question, he ex- 
plains matters to himself. "The 
truth is," he writes at thirty-three, 
when conscious that youth was tak- 
ing wing, "I do indulge myself a 
little the more in pleasure, knowing 
that this is the proper age of my life 
to do it; and out of my observation 
that most men that do thrive in the 
world do forget to take pleasure 
during the time that they are get- 
ting their estate, but reserve that 
till they have got one, then it is 
too late for them to enjoy it." Eut 
though more calculating he is less 
selfish as he gets older. The es- 
pecial virtue of middle life hospi- 
tality, redeems his indulgences from 
being mere personal gratification. 
Instead of feasting at other people's 
expense he entertains at his own. 
He describes an entertainment to 
his friends, beginning with dinner 
at noon, dancing jigs and country 
dances till two o'clock in the morn- 
ing, finally lodging all his guests for 
the night, " and so broke up with 
extraordinary pleasure, as being one 
of the days and nights of my life 
spent with the greatest content, and 
that which I can but hope to repeat 
again a few times in my whole life." 
And a day or two after, counting up 
the cost, " This day my wife made 
it appear to me that my late enter- 
tainment this week cost me above 
12, an expense which I am almost 
ashamed of ; though it is but once in 
a great while, and is the end for 
which, in the most part, we live, to 
have such a merry day once or twice 
in a man's life." 

Worldliness is assumed to be the 
one vice needing time for its de- 



1873.] 



The Four Ages. 



87 



velopment. Youth, conventionally 
speaking, is generous; middle age 
calculating and worldly. How often 
experience antedates the exhibition 
of this quality, each observer of life 
must determine for himself. Some 
whose business has been the study 
and delineation of human nature, 
affirm with confidence that selfish- 
ness shows itself equally betimes 
with the darker plague-spots of hu- 
manity. Lord Lytton has lately 
set men speculating on the age of 
murderers. Murderers, he says, are 
generally young men, and for the 
reason that it belongs to youth to 
begin the habit of miscalculating its 
own power in relation to the society 
in which you live. We learn from 
the newspapers that the fellows 
who murder their sweethearts are 
from two to six-and-twenty ; and 
persons who murder from other 
motives than love, that is, from 
revenge, avarice, or ambition, are gen- 
erally about twenty- eight. Twenty- 
eight is the usual close of the active 
season for getting rid of one's, fellow- 
creatures. No man, he tells us, 
ever commits "a first crime of a 
violent nature, such as murder, after 
thirty." It is something for the 
middle-aged man to feel himself out 
of the range of the more violent 
excesses ; but in fact, as men mostly 
feel young long after they cease to 
be so, the immunity is not realised. 
We say that most men feel younger 
than they are, and this is perhaps 
because most men have not fulfilled 
in any degree their vague expecta- 
tions for themselves, because they 
have as yet no sense of performance. 
Their shyness and reserve keep up 
a feeling of youth, while the faculty 
of effective, vehement expression, 
of compelling notice or a hearing, 
makes people feel old. We have al- 
ready said that premature distinction, 
any circumstance disorganising life's 
machinery, a rush into publicity from 
whatever cause, separates from child- 



hood, and induces a sense of youth 
long left behind. The author, whose 
first book, written in youthful en- 
thusiasm, succeeds, but whose mind 
" bears but one skimming," feels 
old. So long as people have, or be- 
lieve they have, the best part of 
themselves still unrevealed, some 
choice faculty hidden from daylight, 
they feel young. The poet Cowper, 
victim as he was of low spirits, and 
an inner life of brooding despon- 
dency, yet betrays no premature 
sense of age ; if he notes his grey 
hair^ it is to say the difference 
is more outside than in. Writ- 
ing at the age of fifty -five, he 
says to Lady Hesketh, " I have, 
what perhaps you little suspect me 
of, in my nature an infinite share of 
ambition, but with it, I have at the 
same time, as you well know, an 
equal share of diffidence. To this 
combination of opposite qualities it 
has been owing, that till lately I 
stole through life without under- 
taking anything, yet always wishing 
to distinguish myself." The works 
that made his fame were composed 
in the ten years from fifty to sixty; 
his industry during this period, the 
exceeding quiet of his life, the sim- 
plicity of his tastes, and the con- 
stancy of his affections, held him all 
this time aloof as it were from the 
course of time. It is an effort for 
him to realise it. " It costs me not 
much difficulty," he writes to the 
same lady, whom he had not seen 
for years, " to suppose that my 
friends, who were already old when 
I saw them last, are old still, but 
it costs me a good deal sometimes 
to think of those who were at that 
time young as being older than 
they were. I know not what im- 
pression Time may have made upon 
your person, for while his claws (as 
our grannams called them) strike 
deep furrows in some faces, he 
seems to sheathe them with much 
tenderness, as if fearful of doing 



88 



The Four Ages 



[July 



injury, to ochers ; but though an 
enemy to the person, he is a friend 
to the mind, and you have found 
him so." To Cowper, his lady 
friends were always young and al- 
ways attractive. We do not won- 
der at their tender devotion to him. 
Again, a full fruitful mind can never 
feel the saddening sense of ageing 
and slipping out of the race, because 
the finer temper is never satisfied 
with the work done, and hopes to 
do better to be daily self-surpassed. 
So Dryden, felicitating the young 
poet, reserves one excellence as- un- 
attainable, short of mellow maturity : 

"What could advancing age have given 

more? 
It might (what Nature never gives the 

young) 
Have taught the numbers of thy native 

tongue ; 
Bat satire needs not these, and wit will 

shine 
Through the harsh cadence of a rugged 

line." 

Everybody desires to live long, but 
nobody wants to be old, says Swift. 
In one sense this is not an un- 
reasonable wish, for age simply 
counted by years is a very arbitrary 
mode of reckoning. If it could be 
foreseen how long the bodily and 
mental constitution would maintain 
their vigour, then the period of age 
setting in might be calculated with 
some accuracy. As it is, many 
men of fifty are older than others 
a score years their senior. De- 
crepitude and deadened faculties 
are old age whenever they come. 
We of necessity use the term whe- 
ther speaking of decay, or length 
of days ; but people may be excused 
from appropriating the epithet old 
to themselves when the spring of 
life still lasts in them. All vigorous 
septuagenarians resent the civilities 
of forward politeness, officious in its 
offer of assistance. Even those re- 
verential marks of deference which 
have got the Spartan youth so much 
credit with posterity, would cer- 



tainly not suit the taste of our more 
advanced civilisation. The astute 
man of the world, however many 
years he counts, prefers to meet men 
as equals while he meets them at 
all. It is only when a certain 
point is reached and retirement i& 
courted, when age is alike felt and 
acknowledged a distinction by the 
bearer of a weight of years, and 
those who admire how worthily and 
reverently they are borne, that open 
demonstrations of respect are ap- 
propriate. While M. Thiers gov- 
erned France, to obtrude his age 
upon him by any paraded act of 
reverence, would have been an im- 
pertinence. So long indeed as he- 
takes an active part in public affairs 
it must still be such ; but it was a 
graceful mark of respect when Lord 
St Leonards came into court at 
Kingston the other day, for all the 
bar to rise, and by standing show 
their reverence for the venerable 
peer, the "ISTestor of the pro- 
fession." 

No house, said Sydney Smith, is- 
well fitted up in the country with- 
out people of all ages in it. There 
must be an old man or woman to 
pet, he says : to respect, we add ; 
for a child's first impressions of old 
age, such as influence the sentiment 
of a life, are caught from the tone 
around it. John Kemble's widow 
used to tell how her husband on a. 
visit at some great house had the ill 
luck to throw down and break some- 
little Lady Mary's favourite doll. 
The child stood in speechless indig- 
nation till her anger found vent in 
an epithet, the most disparaging she 
knew, " You are an old man." In 
a simpler household, where age was- 
held in veneration, a child of some 
three or four years old was reading 
in Genesis to an ancient lady. " Are 
you as old as Methuselah 1 " he 
asked, in all innocence, looking up. 
into the kindly wrinkled face. The 
old lady, tickled by the question, 



1873.' 



The Four Ages. 



89* 



repeated it a year after in the pre- 
sence of the boy's younger brother, 
who seeing people laugh felt an 
apology incumbent upon him. " I 
daresay," said he, " he only said it 
out of compliment." 

The . question of age to ordinary 
men does not become a personal one 
so long as the majority of the 
people he meets, either in domestic 
life, society, or the street are his 
seniors. A man of sixty living ex- 
clusively with people of seventy or 
eighty would always feel young. 
We see this where an elderly 
daughter has the charge of parents, 
who engross her thoughts ; until 
they die she scarcely realises her 
own standing; it adds perhaps a 
gloom to her life to find herself 
suddenly in another class a gene- 
ration older, a subject for that 
" powerful distemper old age/' as 
Montaigne calls it. 

It is one of the proper functions 
of Old Age to set off human life at 
its best, to reconcile men to its 
troublous course. If no man can be 
called happy till his death, they who 
are nearest the final goal and still 
cheerful and contented best deserve 
the epithet. Their serenity illumi- 
nates the whole backward path. 
The griefs, cares, and perplexities 
of life lose some of their bitterness 
when we see the bitterness out- 
lived. There are pleasures which 
years cannot extinguish. As the 
active business of life recedes from 
the failing hand we see these 
pleasures assume a larger and more 
satisfying aspect. The beneficent ha- 
bit of industry, the activity which 
leads up to and accompanies most 
extreme old age, finds new work for 
itself, and often assumes a poetical 
form. A man of ninety-two, whose 
life had been passed in an incredible 
round of toil of mind and body, 
when labour was no longer possible, 
made it a business to survey the 
stars every night. His tottering steps' 



last office was duly to lead him to the 
open air, where he could " examine 
the heavens ;" his last words, " How 
clear the moon shines to-night." One 
great lesson of old age to us all is, 
that if we would live long and keep 
our powers, we must use them. All 
noted examples of old age are as- 
sociated with exercise of some kind, 
either of body or of brain, and as 
being noted chiefly of brain. Indo- 
lence seems never to live long. To 
be sure, the old Cumberland beg- 
gar's exercise he who fulfils the 
test of real old age, that to the cur- 
rent memory he always seemed old 

" Him from my childhood have I known, 

and then 
He was so old, lie seems not older now," 

does not constitute him an example 
of sustained mental effort, but he 
11 travels on," and has travelled 
as long as the poet can remem- 
ber him ; and it was this cease- 
less course which kept him alive. 
Old Elspeth in the ' Antiquary ' 
is an unprofitable instance of 
brain work, but what an image of 
ceaseless busy memory she presents, 
of a mind for ever in pursuit. All 
experience and observation present 
examples to the point. Looking 
upon the leaders in political life, it 
sometimes seems that mankind has 
gained ten years of working power 
since the Psalmist numbered the 
days of our age. And what work 
is harder ! "What taxes the powers- 
with stronger tension ! It is not 
this taxing of the faculties which 
tries men : where the power exists 
it demands exercise, and frets the 
system if left unemployed. What 
does wear out the brain and shortens- 
life is harass, which torments the 
mind much more through our private 
interests and affections than through 
great public responsibilities. We 
doubt if a distressed life is ever 
a very long one. Either the lot 
is free from such conflicts, or the 



90 



The Four Ages. 



[July 



temperament is too calm and equa- 
ble to be violently tossed by them. 

As the average age of woman ex- 
ceeds that of man, our examples of 
clever distinguished old ladies would 
probably outnumber our list of law- 
yers and statesmen, though the eyes 
of all the world are not upon them 
in the same way. What a bevy of 
witty, learned, charming old ladies 
depart this scene together at the close 
of Miss Berry's Memoirs. She in 
her ninetieth year, her sister Agnes a 
year younger, Joanna Baillie eighty- 
nine, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, a con- 
temporary of the set, all maintain- 
ing their powers to the last j their 
interests, letters, and conversation, 
constituting them cherished mem- 
bers of a brilliant society. 

Mary Somerville is a still later 
and more signal example of the life- 
sustaining power of brain work. 
An acquaintance has recorded his 
impressions of her on her ninetieth 
birthday,* when he visited her at 
Naples in 1870: "In the spacious 
drawing-room of a great palazzo he 
found her with two ladies ; herself 
sitting watchful and dignified in a 
low arm-chair. Her ninety years 
had withered her frame and impaired 
her hearing, but her interest in cur- 
rent events was still keen. 'She 
had foreseen the war fifty years be- 
fore at the Restoration.' She was 
military and commiserating, critic 
and woman by turns. You had 
but to close your eyes and to fancy 
a clever modern Englishwoman talk- 
ing ; the words and thoughts were 
as fresh and current as those of the 
clever young wife of a clever young 
Member of Parliament. But of 
course she was most interesting 
when she came to talk of herself. 

" ' I do not apologise for talking of 
myself,' she said, ' for it is always good 
for the young to hear that old age is 
not so terrible as they fear. My life 



is a very placid one. I have my 
coffee early ; from eight to twelve I 
write or read in bed ; then I rise and 
paint in my studio for an hour that 
is all I can manage now ! The after- 
noon is my time of rest, then comes 
dinner time, and after that I sit here 
and am glad to see any kind friends 
who may like to visit me.' Then she 
would explain what was the reading 
and writing she was engaged upon. 
She was correcting and adding to the 
first edition of * Molecular and Micro- 
scopic Science,' ' only putting it in 
order for my daughter to publish when 
a second edition is called for after my 
death. Oh, they are quite competent 
to do it/ she would say with a smile ; 
' I took care they should be much bet- 
ter educated than I was. And I am 
reading a good deal now reading 
Herodotus. I took him down from 
my shelves the other day it was the 
first time I had tried to read Greek 
for fifty years to see if I had forgotten 
the character. To my delight I found 
I could read and understand him quite 
easily. What a charming writer Her- 
odotus is ! J All this was without the 
slightest pedantry the utterance of a 
perfectly natural, simple mind, that 
dwelt upon subjects which interested 
it when they saw that they interested 
its neighbour." 

We have dwelt upon the bright 
side of the picture not often seen, 
perhaps, but, where temper, intellect, 
and health combine, to be found 
within each reader's experience. 
Rarely among the poor does extreme 
old age descend with so indulgent 
an aspect. The very old can 
scarcely be other than objects of 
unmingled pity when the material 
necessities of life need labour for 
their supply. The loss of authority, 
the dread of dependence, the spectre 
of the workhouse ! natural cheerful- 
ness is not strong enough to en- 
counter these terrors, unaided by 
numbed faculties on the one hand, 
or deep religious faith on the other. 
Acting upon a proud nature, accus- 
tomed to domineer in the days of 



* People's Magazine, February 1873. 



1873.] 



TJie Four Ages. 



91 



its strength, and, in fact, intel- 
lectually superior, they sometimes 
produce very tragical effects. Old 
age and helplessness, in such a 
case, will harden into misanthropy, 
and deliberately die of want and 
starvation rather than accept pro- 
longed life on intolerable terms. 
Swift says that dignity, high sta- 
tion, or great riches are in some 
sort necessary to old men, in order 
to keep the younger at a distance, 
who are otherwise apt to insult 
them on the score of age. Certainly 
independence is desirable in a very 
particular sense; but the happiest old 
age seems to be found where compe- 
tence is enjoyed apart from rank and 
state. And what a deep pathos at- 
^ tends the death of the very old 
what a link with the past is snapped 
how much knowledge is irre- 
coverably lost to the world ! 

To lament over human life as a 
failure, to sum up its transient 
pleasures, sorrows, losses, as the 
whole that is worth dwelling upon, 
is so general a tone that it seems 
taking a low line to give weight to 
compensations ; but surely the 
blessings of Providence which 
spread over the whole of existence 
are designed to dignify every part. 
Youth has many friends and all the 
world for admirers, and responds so 



well to ideal treatment that the 
artist may well lavish his fairest 
colours upon it. But if a man will 
appeal to his own experience, and 
ask himself from whom he has de- 
rived the greatest benefits, we be- 
lieve he will find that he owes 
his snuggest comfort, his most 
genial companionship, his highest 
converse, his warmest sympathy, to 
that age which is set down as hard 
and worldly because it is necessarily 
busy with the world's material 
things, but which in fact is naturally 
more accessible than youth from the 
knowledge that the more passionate 
and exciting passages of life are 
over, and that a stage of life is 
reached in which its romance and 
many of its most lively interests can 
only be tasted through sympathies. 
We let our years slip through our 
fingers like water. Of young and 
old alike this is too often true. It 
is no part of our aim to intrude on 
the preacher's office ; we have con- 
fined ourselves to the social aspect 
of the question age as viewed by 
a man's self and those about him. 
There are deep and solemn thoughts 
peculiar to every stage. Surely the 
way to let no period slip by us un- 
heeded is to study the duties and 
privileges of each with an impartial 
judgment and a thankful heart. 



92 



The Rate of Discount. 



[July 



THE RATE OF DISCOUNT. 



THE rate of discount is an element 
of great importance in the commer- 
cial life of modern England. It is 
a fact of banking, and it derives its 
extreme significance from the services 
which banking renders to trade. A 
bank transfers the use of capital 
from those who are not able to em- 
ploy it to those that are : and the 
means thus acquired by traders are 
so vast that all trade of any mag- 
nitude rests on a foundation of dis- 
count. By its help the trader is 
relieved from being compelled to 
limit his operations to the extent of 
his own resources ; he obtains from 
discount the power of conducting 
an enormous business out of all pro- 
portion to his own means. A 
manufacturer, for instance, is a man 
who makes goods in advance before 
the ultimate consumer comes in to 
buy them. He must provide wages, 
tools, and materials for the process, 
and an interval of time, more or less 
long, must intervene before the 
final buyer, who is prepared to pay 
for them, makes his purchases and 
restores the outlay. A large busi- 
ness could scarcely be constructed 
out of such a system even were 
great fortunes invested in it. 
Banking here brings its help, and 
it is nothing less than gigantic. 
By the simple but effective con- 
trivance of a bill acknowledging a 
debt and pledging repayment at a 
deferred day the trader goes to 
work with means which are not his 
own. The large manufacturer buys 
his cotton or wool with bills, and 
when they are due, he meets them 
by the help of another set of bills, 
for which he has in turn sold his 
merchandise. These, the bills he 
has received on the sale of his goods, 
he gets discounted at a bank, and 
a new round of operations com- 



mences. So it is with the mer- 
chant. He sells a cargo at Calcutta, 
and is paid with bills. Without 
the assistance of a bank he must 
have waited till the bills were paid 
before he could have gone on with 
his trade. A bank takes, that is, 
buys, his bills, and furnishes him 
with the means of continuing his 
business. 

We see, then, that the intermediate 
agency of banks lies at the very core 
of the gigantic commerce of modem 
times. Traders use funds supplied 
to them by banks instead of pro- 
viding them for themselves. They 
reckon, as the foundation of their 
business, on advances to be obtained 
from banks on discount. They sell 
for bills, in absolute reliance on the 
purchase of these bills by banks; 
and if the banks decline to buy, 
that is, to discount, these bills, or 
exact very high terms for the accom- 
modation, disastrous mischief, it is 
obvious, may easily occur. Ventures 
commenced with promising prospects 
may be converted by the diffi- 
culties of the banking market into 
ruinous losses, and at last the whole 
trading community may be seized 
with the paralysis and the agonies 
of a crisis. And, unhappily for the 
merchant, he has to deal with a very 
fluctuating market. The terms on 
which banks purchase bills vary ex- 
cessively at different times. Sud- 
den gusts assail Threadneedle Street, 
whilst the unfortunate trader is 
pressed to meet the payment of 
bills due at the very time when 
those he has received from India or 
Australia, in payment of his mer- 
chandise, cannot be discounted at 
all, or only on oppressive terms. 
He may have calculated on discount 
at 4 per cent with apparent reason ; 
he may easily, through unforeseen 



1873.] 



The Rate of Discount. 



93 



causes, encounter a rate of 10, if 
-even on such terms he can get dis- 
count at all for his paper. Loss 
-certainly, possibly ruin, may be his 
fate. It thus becomes a matter of 
anxious concern for all the traders 
to forecast, if possible, the probable 
course of the rate of discount, and 
to estimate beforehand the nature 
and the force of those influences 
which govern the amount of means 
at the disposal of bankers. It is 
the effect produced on the collective 
trading interest of the country, in- 
finitely more than its action on com- 
panies and shares and other invest- 
ments of the money market, which 
confers such an overwhelming im- 
portance on the rate of discount. 

Discount, then, is an act of bank- 
ing ; to discover its nature and its 
laws, we must know clearly what a 
bank is. Unfortunately this is an 
inquiry which is commonly neglect- 
ed by those who think themselves 
entitled to pronounce, as authori- 
ties, on the occurrences of the 
money market. Yet how can any 
advice be regarded as sound, or any 
prognostication of the coming com- 
mercial weather be trustworthy, un- 
less it be founded on an accurate 
conception of what a bank does and 
does not do 1 What easier, we shall 
be told, than to define a bank 1 It 
is an institution which receives 
money from one set of persons and 
lends it out to another. But is that 
really so? Is it the essence of a 
bank to receive money ? We fear 
that we are plunging into inaccuracy 
at our very starting, and nothing is, 
philosophically, so mischievous. To 
go wrong in the statement of the 
first elements of a subject insures a 
crop of errors at every point of the 
subsequent discussion. " Trace a 
lie to its source," says Carlyle, " and 
it is refuted." Trace back logically 
an absurdity to its origin, and the 
ravages it causes become explained. 
This definition makes money, the 



thing handled by banks, their staple 
commodity, as tea and sugar are of 
grocers. Banking is a manipula- 
tion of money, cries the City : afi the 
good it does comes from the manage- 
ment of money : all the difficulties it 
falls into have their root in some 
condition of money. Again we 
ask, Is that so ? and the question 
is vital. Do those who describe 
bankers as dealers in money know 
clearly the meaning which they at- 
tach to the word, money? Coin 
is indisputably money ; bank-notes 
we are willing to call money, seeing 
that they pass from hand to hand 
like coin, performing the same func- 
tions as coin, and, so long as they 
are issued by a solvent bank and are 
payable on demand, possessing the 
same value as true money. Both to- 
gether, coin and notes, in banking 
language, are called cash ; and the 
inquiry becomes, Does a bank deal 
in cash ? The substitution of the 
word cash for money will bring at 
once the conviction home to many 
a man, who speaks of bankers as 
dealers in money, that he could not 
call them dealers in cash ; the un- 
truth of the assertion then becomes 
too glaring. Decisive evidence is 
at hand, which brings out the real 
answer to the question. Sir John 
Lubbock has analysed nineteen mil- 
lions of the receipts of the banking 
house of Messrs Robartes & Co., 
and has discovered that it received 
money or cash? nothing of the kind, 
but this that only 3 parts in 100 
of these receipts are cash, that is, 
coin and bank-notes, and that the 
remaining 97 are something else. 
General reasoning had established 
the same fact before Sir John's fig- 
ures were born into the world. 

This fact is full of instruction. 
First, it establishes, negatively, that 
banks are not institutions Avhich 
deal in money. How can that be 
their staple commodity which they 
touch but in insignificant quanti- 



94 



Tlie Rate of Discount. 



[July 



ties ? Money is manifestly only 
their small change, and of that they 
require less than multitudes of other 
traders. A railway which sells its 
goods or services for cash only 
might be called a dealer in money 
with far greater truth than a 
bank. 

In the second place, it is clear 
that what a bank receives and lends 
are those 97 things which are not 
money. The mystery of banking, 
if there is a mystery, will be un- 
ravelled by discovering what these 
97 things are. What, then, are 
they 1 Cheques, bills, dividend- 
warrants, pieces of paper, which 
have debts inscribed on them, and 
empower a bank, if it chooses, to 
demand and receive the several 
sums of money mentioned on those 
papers. Palpably, then, on its re- 
ceiving side, a bank is a collector of 
debts. These debts which it has to 
collect are its resources. These are 
what it has to pass on and lend to 
traders. These debts are paid to 
the bank beyond doubt ; but in 
what form 1 ? In money, the cash 
which the bank indisputably can 
demand ? By no means. The bank 
does not ask for money, nor, as to 
these 97 things, touch it. The 
mode of settling these debts is quite 
a different process. The banker, 
whose aim is profit, finding that he 
has so many debts to collect, at 
once authorises some borrowers on 
discount to sign fresh pieces of 
paper with sums of money inscribed 
on them, fresh cheques, and to buy 
goods with them, and he, the 
banker, undertakes to pay these 
cheques when presented. These two 
sets of paper the cheques which 
the banker received to collect, and 
the cheques which he empowered 
his borrowers to draw upon him 
meet at the clearing-house, and 
there cancel each other. The settle- 
ment of one set of debts is thus 
effected by the creation of a second. 



The final result at the bank, nay, 
the sole action of the bank, is a 
registry in its ledger of a debt 
which it owes to its depositor, and 
of a second or counter debt which 
its borrower owes it in turn. The 
resources have passed through the 
bank, have travelled from one set 
of men to another, and all that they 
have actually done at the bank in 
their passage through it is to cause 
entries to be made under various 
names. These entries, this action 
of the bank, required no cash 
whatever. They were merely items 
of accounts, lines in the bank's 
books, recording indeed relations of 
debtor and creditor still in them- 
selves only figures. The cheques 
were not cash, and were not paid 
in cash. All these paper orders 
to pay or receive money are nothing 
but title-deeds to money legal 
evidence of debt, valid and posses- 
sing worth only because, as evi- 
dence, they are able to persuade a 
court of law to send the sheriff to 
collect the specified money from 
the debtor ; but a title-deed and 
legal evidence able to obtain pos- 
session are not the property itself. 
Beyond doubt they can procure 
money, if the banker asks for it ; 
but he does not, and that is a fact, 
a positive, real fact, of the utmost 
significance for understanding the 
nature of banking. Money de- 
manded and retained would bring 
the banker no profit, whilst per- 
mission given to a borrower to 
draw a new cheque on him, enriches 
him with a charge for interest. 
Thus he collects the debt which 
the depositor gave him to receive 
through the agency of a third per- 
son, a borrower. Something clearly 
passes through the bank by means 
of these two entries, and that some- 
thing is a power of buying goods 
in the shops and markets. This 
purchasing power is what the 
banker transfers on to the bor- 



1873.] 



The Rate of Discount. 



rower : its nature and action we 
must now proceed to investigate. 

We must return to the debts 
sent in for collection, the cheques 
and other paper orders to receive 
money paid into the bank. How 
do they originate ? They are all at 
their origin, omitting subsequent 
transfers after they have reached 
the bank, the children of the sales 
of goods. Let us appeal to the 
actual events of commercial life, 
to the buying and selling effected 
by means of banking. A farmer 
sells to a miller ricks of wheat of 
the value of 1000. He is paid 
with a cheque which he deposits 
with his banker ; but of the pro- 
ceeds of the sale he needs only 
4:00 for immediate purchases and 
payments ; the remaining 600 he 
will not require, say for three 
months. These facts we must sup- 
pose the banker to know ; so he at 
once infers that of the .1000 he 
has to collect, 400 will be needed 
to face the cheques drawn by the 
farmer ; the other 600 are at his 
disposal for three months. He may, 
if he pleases, collect the whole sum 
in coin and store up the unneeded 
portion in his vaults ; but he does 
not, for what profit would he then 
get out of banking 1 That would be 
to convert himself into a mere ware- 
houseman. He seeks a borrower; 
he finds an iron-merchant in search 
of means, and he lends him 600 
for three months, on the discounting 
of a bill. The merchant buys iron, 
pays for it with a cheque, and all 
the three cheques meet at the clear- 
ing-house the first for 1000, the 
second for 400, and the third for 
600 and there clear each other. 
The transaction is completed. The 
banker on the settlement at the 
clearing-house has to pay as much 
as he receives, and no money 
passes. The farmer has parted 
with his wheat, which has been 
exchanged, partly for some goods 



which he has bought for his own 
use, partly for iron. He has be- 
come a creditor of the bank for 
600, and the merchant a debtor 
for the same sum. The grand final 
result is, that goods have been ex- 
changed for goods ; and that is the 
whole of the matter. The banking 
has been mere agency absolutely 
nothing more. The banker, mani- 
festly, in all this has been simply a 
broker, an intermediate agent, and 
nothing more a man who brings 
two other men together, a farmer 
who wants to lend wheat and an 
iron-merchant who wants to bor- 
row iron. 

Banking in its essence now lies 
before us. What does this analysis 
teach us ? 

1. The banker is a broker in 
substance, nothing more. He is a 
peculiar kind of broker, no doubt ; 
for ordinary brokers merely act 
for principals, charging a commis- 
sion. The banker, on the contrary, 
takes on himself the risk of lending 
the farmer's funds ; if the merchant 
does not repay the farmer, the 
banker will have to make good the 
deficiency. But this is only a differ- 
ence of detail. The banker still 
remains a broker, who finds a bor- 
rower for the farmer. The essential 
character of banking is brokerage. 

2. We learn the nature of this 
power of purchasing which the 
banker transfers. It springs entirely 
from the sale of goods. The farmer, 
by parting with his wheat, has ac- 
quired the means of procuring other 
commodities in exchange. All sell- 
ing is an exchange of goods money 
being employed only to enable the 
seller to select what goods he may 
choose in exchange for those he has 
parted with. The farmer selects 
400 worth of such articles; he 
leaves another man, chosen by the 
banker, to take up other goods, to 
the value of 600, from the shops 
and warehouses. The iron-merchant 



'96 



The Rate of Discount. 



[July 



is the type of the traders of Eng- 
land. They carry on their trade 
by means of ricks sold by farmers. 
Their capital in trade consists of 
goods which they acquired by means 
of the sale of previous goods not 
their own, but those of the farmer 
and other similar sellers, obtained 
through the bankers. They that 
trade upon discounts have, for their 
-capital, commodities which formed 
the other side of the exchange 
when the farmers sold their wheat, 
but which they (the farmers) failed 
to buy themselves, but bought indi- 
rectly through the bankers and their 
borrowers. This is the great and 
central truth about banking ; would 
that all who talk about the Money- 
Market would take it as the ever- 
present basis of their language. It 
would turn their thoughts from 
gold and its movements, from the 
miserable 3 parts which are the 
small change of the banking com- 
munity, and direct them to the 97 
which are not money in any form, 
but consist of commodities, of 
ricks, and of all kinds of wealth 
which their owners sell, whilst at the 
ame time they do not wish, on their 
own account, to acquire the other 
goods to be given back on the sale. 
The stock of the nation's wealth 
would then come to the foreground 
- the state of the harvest, the 
profits of business, composed, as 
they really are, of the surplus 
^quantities of goods gained, whether 
-at home or abroad, and not of the 
money in which their value is 
calculated profits existing as com- 
modities, in the shape of real, 
tangible wealth, of which the men 
whose names figure in banking 
ledgers or lists of shareholders and 
who are called capitalists are the true 
owners, but who have transferred 
them, through bankers, to the 
hands of others for employment 
and productive consumption. 

3. We gain further a glimpse 



into the rate of discount 
of the influences which raise or 
reduce the charge made for banking 
loans. "VVe meet here with the 
universal law of supply and demand : 
it is a solid foundation, and con- 
clusions built upon it are not likely 
to betray us. When the farmers 
have many ricks to sell, without 
any corresponding increase of ex- 
penses, they give much to banks to 
lend : when the harvest is bad they 
give little to bankers, indeed they 
may be borrowers themselves. They 
use up all the proceeds of the sale 
of their reduced ricks in purchases 
for themselves. Again, when trade 
is brisk and profitable, producers 
are eager to enlarge their oper- 
ations, and the competition of 
borrowers swells the profits of the 
banks : discount tends to rise. It 
is not money that they seek : if 
they got their loans in cash they 
would restore it to the banks and 
still buy with cheques, to be settled 
at the clearing-house. If they 
understand the real nature of bank- 
ing, they will see that this per- 
mission to draw on the bank flows 
from a previous cheque deposited 
at the bank by a farmer or some 
seller of commodities. When its 
depositors are spending less than 
their incomes, the bank will acquire 
larger powers of lending lending, 
we repeat, not money, but literally 
and really goods belonging to 
another set of men. When spend- 
ing outstrips income, ' whether by 
individuals or the whole nation, 
the means of bankers dwindle 
down : the charge for loans ad- 
vances. 

The grand law which governs the 
rate of discount thus comes out 
transparently; it is the relation 
which exists between men who have 
sold more goods than they wish to 
buy ; and another set of men who 
seek to buy fresh goods by the 
help of those which the first set 



1873.] 



The Rate of Discount. 



97 



sold. The first sale generates the 
second purchase. If the excess of 
goods which were sold is large 
beyond what the sellers desire to 
buy in return, the supply for dis- 
count is large also ; and if, from 
the activity of trade or any other 
cause, the desire to borrow means 
for purchasing is strong, a high 
rate of discount rules the market. 
The opposite condition of facts 
will send down the charge for dis- 
counting. 

4. We thus obtain the forces 
which act on the rate of discount. 
They are not composed of money 
or of currency. Merchants may 
encounter terms cruelly exceeding 
those which they had anticipated ; 
the necessity for meeting their en- 
gagements may bring on a panic, 
with the compulsory sale of their 
property at ruinous prices in a 
word, every disastrous incident 
of the money-market may assert 
itself and come into being, and yet 
not a single sovereign shall have 
been disturbed. This is theo- 
retically possible, and is not far 
from actual fact, in even the worst 
crises. Mr Mill has noticed how 
small is the increase of the circula- 
tion produced by panics ; and if we 
deduct from that increase the notes 
which country bankers add to their 
reserves by way of precaution, the 
result will probably be strictly true 
that crises generate no demand for 
augmented coin or bank-notes. 

5. Fifthly, we see what is meant 
by a bank's deposits. They are 
debts due by the bank, and nothing 
else. In exchange for these debts 
due to its customers, the bank has 
made loans and become creditor to 
a numerous body of borrowers : and 
the banker becomes simply a mid- 
dleman between depositors and 
borrowers on bills or other securities. 
The deposits are not capital, but 
money due and the real debtors 
are the persons to whom the banker 

VOL. CXIV. NO. DCXCIII. 



has made advances, the banker 
guaranteeing their solvency. 

Such are some of the lessons 
yielded by an analysis of banking. 
It is important here to correct a wide- 
spread delusion. Bankers are com- 
monly said to possess much capital ; 
in sober truth they possess no capi- 
tal but their reserves. The farmer 
and the merchant possess capital, 
for corn and iron are capital ; but 
the cheques which move these 
substances from one man's hand to 
another's are not capital, nor is the 
banker a capitalist. It is most vital 
to have clear ideas on this point. 
Abundance or scarcity of loanable 
capital and capital means goods, 
commodities lies at the root of the 
rate of discount; and these things are 
to be studied by those to whom it is 
important to forecast the rate of in- 
terest ; but they will not find their 
field of study in the ledgers of 
bankers. The destruction of the 
potato crop in Ireland, the abolition 
of slavery in America, the excessive 
construction of railways over the 
world, produced enormous effects on 
the rate of discount; but they were 
not occurrences of banking. The 
banker established in Threadneedle 
Street, though he guides the move- 
ment of capital, and, sovereign-like, 
dispenses vast powers of creating 
wealth, never sees, and never 
touches, the capital that he distri- 
butes. His function and how 
little is it understood ! is to say 
to one man that he may have the 
goods, the cotton, wool, and teas, to 
which another is entitled, because 
he has sold other goods, but which 
he does not wish to purchase for 
himself. The power and action of 
the banker lies, not in the currency 
or paper machinery which he wields, 
but in the wealth which fills the 
warehouses and factories, and which, 
as the agent of those who have sold, 
he assigns to other people. 

We have said that a banker is a 



98 



The Rate of Discount. 



[July 



broker of a special kind, who guar- 
antees to his depositors their de- 
posits against the risks of lending 
them out to others. Further, he 
undertakes, in mqst cases, to re- 
turn their deposits on demand, 
whilst there are many uncertainties 
"besetting the return of the loans 
which it is the essence of his busi- 
ness to make. The uncertainties as 
to the time when his customers may 
withdraw the sums standing in 
their accounts is a source of much 
perplexity, and often of great danger, 
to a banker. The means he dis- 
poses of are subject to the wants 
and caprices, the fluctuations of for- 
tune, of some thousands, perhaps, of 
persons. On the other hand, the 
sums advanced on discount will not 
be repaid till the bills are due. If 
his deposits are suddenly drawn 
out, the risk of even stoppage for 
the bank may be imminent, even 
though its loans have been made to 
solvent persons. One of the greatest 
banks in England was thus threat- 
ened in 1866 not that its mode of 
banking was unsound, or its real 
solvency open to challenge, but be- 
cause the minds of City people 
were agonised with fright ; and 
a general rush to get back deposits 
might have sprung up at any mo- 
ment. To guard against this peril 
a banker is compelled to keep a 
portion of his deposits in his own 
hands to have what is called a 
reserve. This reserve will neces- 
sarily consist of cash, of money ; it 
is the difference between the sum 
which the banker collects from his 
customers, and the smaller sum he 
advances on loans. The reserve is 
the fly-wheel of a bank ; it balances 
the movements of depositors and 
borrowers. It enables the banker 
to meet unforeseen and fluctuating 
demands for repayment, before his 
advances come back into his hands. 
The reserve is one of the most 
important features of a bank; it 



calls for the closest study, for it has 
become the pivot on which most of 
the modern theories of the City on 
the rate of discount are made to 
revolve. 

1. In the first place, the amount 
of reserve required is not the same 
for all banks ; it depends on the 
peculiar character of each bank's 
business. The agricultural bank, 
for instance, fed by steady incomes, 
and making its advances to the 
local trade, may go on with perfect 
safety, even amidst the tempests 
of the money-market, with a very 
trifling reserve. We know a con- 
siderable provincial bank which 
passed through the terrible crisis of 
1866 with never more than 2000 
of reserve. The reverse will hold 
good of a great Liverpool bank, sup- 
ported by speculative merchants, 
subject to all the casualties of a 
trade spread over the whole world, 
swollen at times by enormous profits, 
and suddenly impoverished by 
equally gigantic losses. It cannot 
lend so much proportionately as its 
agricultural brother, for it has to 
deal with depositors of most varying 
fortunes, the diminutions of whose 
accounts might be as sudden as 
overwhelming. Each bank must 
determine for itself the size of its 
own reserve. 

2. Secondly, a reserve is a charge 
on a bank, a part of the cost of pro- 
duction of banking. It is capital, so 
far as it is strictly needed, because 
banking without it could scarcely 
exist. The purchase of gold from 
the miners with the wealth of Eng- 
land is, to the extent of reserves 
actually wanted and at work, a 
beneficial expense, because the 
advantages of banking furnish ade- 
quate compensation; the gold stored 
up is not wasted, because banking 
is eminently useful. It is capital 
in the same sense that the food and 
clothing of labourers are capital; the 
services rendered repay the con- 



1873.] 



The Hate of Discount. 



99 



sumption. But it must never be 
forgotten that a reserve forms no 
part of the resources of a bank for 
lending. It is not lent : it is kept 
against sudden repayment of de- 
posits. Its business is to lie idle, 
precisely as soldiers in time of peace : 
its purpose is to face great emergen- 
cies. A reserve exists for no other 
function ; it is bought to fulfil no 
other purpose. A reserve of 10 
millions means 10 millions' worth 
of commodities taken away from 
the wealth-producing resources of 
the country, simply to guard against 
possible danger. They might have 
served as capital, purchasing from 
abroad food for labourers, draining 
land, setting up new engines and 
factories, in a word, swelling the 
wealth of the people. As gold in 
the vaults of the bank, they pro- 
duce no other effect than safety for 
banking acting like an insurance, 
a pure loss in itself, but worth in- 
curring for the sake of the still 
greater benefits reaped from bank- 
ing. 

3. Hence, thirdly, the aim of 
every bank ought to be to keep its 
reserve at a minimum. No sane man 
would insure his house at double its 
value. The gold of the reserve gives 
safety, but not a pound to discount. 
All excess of bullion in the Bank 
let not City men shriek distinctly 
tends to raise its rate, because it is 
so much wealth, good for lending, 
annihilated for the time. When the 
exchanges are in England's favour 
the City rejoices ; but what does 
that mischievous phrase denote 1 ? 
That England has parted with wealth, 
iron and yarns and cloth, which 
could have been worked as capital at 
home, and been employed by manu- 
facturers and merchants, and has 
placed in exchange a quantity of 
metal in a lumber-room. Let the 
process be continued let England, 
by favourable exchanges, get all the 
gold in the world, and the end will 



be that she will die of starvation. 
The rate of discount would then 
rise with unheard-of fury; for the de- 
sire to get capital, commodities for 
industry, would be intense. In Cali- 
fornia, the region of inexhaustible 
gold, discount rules from 3 to 10 per 
cent a-month, from 36 to 120 per 
cent a-year. When the exchanges 
are at par the balance of trade is at 
equilibrium, and England gets goods 
for goods from abroad ; when the ex- 
changes are in her favour, she loses 
goods and obtains a metal, which she 
does not lend, and cannot lend, be- 
cause no one wants it. The money- 
market is injured by such an ex- 
change. The goods, had they re- 
mained in England, as our analysis 
has shown, would have figured as 
deposits in the Bank's ledger would 
have been lent. The goods, we say, 
through the Bank, would have passed 
from hands that could not use them 
to hands that could would have 
been so many additional resources 
for the money-market. The desire 
for imports of gold, the very expres- , 
sion favourable exchanges, is a re- 
surrection of the mercantile theory. 
Oh, but a large reserve means that 
the Bank is strong. Quite true ; but 
what is the meaning of the Bank be- 
ing strong by a reserve exceeding the 
amount required for safety ? That 
its banking is needlessly diminished, 
that it chooses to lend less than it 
might, that it wilfully diminishes 
the trade of the country ; and, if it 
is bent on seeking the maximum of 
strength, it had better do what the 
Bank of Amsterdam did in former 
days collect all its cheques in coin, 
lend nothing, and convert itself into 
a mere magazine for the storage of 
gold. Liabilities it would have none : 
it would be all reserve ; but then, 
also, it would have nothing to lend 
to traders on discount. So, doubt 
every one sees the absurdity of such 
banking, but most fail to perceive 
that there is no intermediate point 



100 



The Rate of Discount. 



[July 



between this nonsense, more or less 
realised, and such a reserve only as 
is really and practically required for 
imparting safety. 

4. But it is true, beyond question, 
that the movements in the reserve 
are important, infinitely more than 
its actual amount. They are signs 
and effects of causes at work indi- 
cative of disturbances of equilibrium 
between borrowings and lendings, 
between deposits and loans. They 
call for perpetual study, but they 
need intelligent interpretation. Di- 
minution of the reserve implies that 
the bank is lending more than it is 
receiving ; that is a good thing, if 
the bank has too much gold : it ne- 
cessitates reduction of loans, if it 
brings down the reserve below the 
point of safety. The diminution of 
a falling reserve undoubtedly points 
to a rise in the rate of discount, but 
it does not always take place. A 
diminution of deposits may be the 
result of diminished trade ; in that 
case there may be less demand for 
discounts, and no increase in the 
terms of borrowing will occur. War 
may break out in America or France, 
England may lose many customers 
for her merchandise, many mills 
may be closed, and the wonted 
deposits from profits may dwindle 
down ; all this may happen before 
the advances re-enter the bank, and 
consequently whilst the reserve is 
sinking, but the banker will not be 
alarmed : he sees that trade is slack, 
and will require fewer loans, and 
no aggravation of the rate occurs. 
On the opposite side, a large amount 
of Australian gold may have been 
lodged at the bank, and the reserve 
relative to deposits may have in- 
creased, and yet the demand for 
discount may be fiercer, and the 
rate strongly surging upwards. The 
gold lies helpless at the bank, 
asked for and taken out by no one, 
even with a vigorous demand for 
advances, but trade is brisk, and 



merchants are eager for discount. 
The sales and purchases of goods, 
though exceptionally large, may 
balance, and no more gold than pre- 
viously be required for the settle- 
ments ; still up will mount the terms 
of borrowing, the laden coffers of 
the bank notwithstanding, because 
there are many and eager borrowers, 
not of gold, but of goods through 
the medium of cheques drawn on 
the bank cheques which are settled 
at the clearing-house. It is not the 
quantity of the gold, regarded by 
itself alone, which is significant, 
nor even its increase or diminution, 
but the state of the loan -market, 
the supplies furnished by our farmer, 
or sought by our profit-seeking mer- 
chant, the vigour or languor of the 
demand for goods required for pro- 
ductive industry. It is always what 
is happening in the 97 parts of a 
bank's receipts and loans with 
which gold or cash have nothing to 
do which is the grand question 
for bankers, for these contain the 
forces which act on discount. If 
capital and the means of employing 
it rise and fall together, there will 
be no alteration in the rate of dis- 
count \ if one moves faster than the 
other, the rate of discount will be 
affected accordingly, whatever may 
be the quantity of gold in the bank 
and country. 

It is the fashion at the present 
day to assert that regard for pru- 
dence ought to induce the Bank of 
England to adopt, as the ratio of its 
reserve, one-third of its liabilities. 
Whilst we fully admit that the deter- 
mination of the reserve is the office 
of each individual banker, we must 
avow that we are unable to con- 
ceive on what intelligible principle 
such an exorbitant sum is postula- 
ted. In the terrific monetary storm 
of 1866 the Bank observed no such 
rule. In the third week of that 
memorable month of May, the Bank 
had a reserve of 1,200,000 against 



1873.] 



The Rate of Discount. 



101 



liaMitiesamountingto18,620,000, 
a ratio of about 6 per cent instead 
of 33. The reserve was only a 
trifle relatively larger in the follow- 
ing week, yet the safety of the Bank 
was not compromised for an in- 
stant. The rate of discount was ex- 
tremely severe 10 per cent. How 
could it be otherwise, with such 
borrowings as 31 millions? but no 
one whispered during the whole 
period that the Bank was likely to 
stop from a deficiency of reserve, or 
that such a reserve did not suffice for 
insuring safety ; nor had the Bank 
the smallest difficulty in obtaining 
gold. In the presence of so crush- 
ing a fact, what becomes of this fine 
theory, tins doctrine of good form, 
that the reserve should be fixed at 
a third of the liabilities 1 This was 
the exact time to test the value of 
a reserve. The advances made by 
the Bank to traders ran up 10 mil- 
lions in one week. The City was 
in agony ; no institution seemed 
safe ; yet the Bank went on week 
after week with a reserve of less 
than 7 per cent, and its solidity was 
never imperilled for an instant. 
The one object of a reserve is to 
impart safety, and in the very worst 
of times this trifling reserve was 
found to be perfectly sufficient ; yet 
not one of the many writers who dis- 
course so grandly on the doctrine of 
the reserve, neither the ' Economist/ 
nor any City article of any journal, 
so far as we ara aware, has ever 
noticed this petty but triumphantly 
adequate reserve of the Bank of 
England in the worst panic ever 
known. It is much to be doubted 
whether they are even aware of its 
existence. It is known that the 
London bankers maintain no such 
proportion as one-third of their lia- 
bilities : but it is said in reply, that 
they keep large accounts with the 
Bank of England; that these de- 
posits may be suddenly withdrawn ; 
and that the Bank is consequently 



bound to store up colossal masses of 
ingots to guard against such an event. 
We have the evidence of Mr Thom- 
son Hankey that no such mischiev- 
ous practice is needed, for the Bank 
has always abundant resources for 
meeting such a demand from the 
London bankers. The fact is in 
harmony with theory. How would 
such a demand be made on the 
Bank by the bankers ] By cheques, 
which would be sent to the clearing- 
house. But would they be paid in 
gold *? Assuredly not. There never 
is a heavy run for gold on London 
bankers, even in the wildest panics, 
and consequently they would never 
draw such a sum as 5 millions for 
the sake of adding gold to their re- 
sources. If they did withdraw their 
deposits, the only meaning of such 
an act would be, that they chose 
to lend their resources directly 
themselves, which would bring them 
profit, instead of indirectly through 
the Bank. The money-market 
would, as a whole, still possess the 
same means, and the rate of discount 
would be unaffected. 

But the financial world contemp- 
tuously refuses to take the slightest 
notice of general reasoning and 
scientific analysis, or even of the 
actual facts which lie under its 
very eyes. Practical men are always 
resolute in disregarding those facts 
which make against their ideas : 
so was it with the mercantile 
theory, with protection, with reci- 
procity ; so is it now with currency 
and banking. " These grand elabo- 
rate reasonings," they cry, " are all 
very fine, but we know better. "We 
live in the heart of banking, and 
we know that gold rules discount. 
"When it is abundant in the 
Bank cellar, down goes interest; 
when the heap of ingots lessens, 
discount is difficult and dear. "We 
mourn when our traders are buying 
foreign wealth, foreign goods, how- 
ever useful, with English gold ; and 



102 



The Hate of Discount. 



[July 



when English farmers and travel- 
lers in summer are taking out their 
deposits in cash : for gold circulating 
in England is as mischievous for 
the rate of discount, as gold sent to 
the stranger. It is when in the 
Bank cellar, locked up in safe cus- 
tody, but sending up its shadow in 
the figures of the weekly return of 
the Bank, that gold exercises its 
beneficent influence. Gold is not 
made to buy with, but to sleep in 
banking vaults, in order that dis- 
count may be low, and money, as 
we call it, cheap." 

"We would ask those who use 
this language, and counsel traders 
to act upon this view, to put to 
themselves, fairly, a few plain ques- 
tions, and compel themselves to 
answer them honestly. Why is it 
that interest is so high in gold-pro- 
ducing countries'? We have seen 
that in California interest ranges 
from 3 to 10 per cent a-month. 
The rate of discount in Australia 
far exceeds that in England. How 
is it that the over-abundance of 
gold does not make these regions 
the favoured haunts of cheap dis- 
count? Then again, if gold regu- 
lates the rate of discount in England, 
what is the regulator in countries 
which use inconvertible paper cur- 
rencies, and have no reserves of 
gold in their stores 1 The rate of 
discount rises as rapidly and as 
severely in America, in Italy, and in 
Austria, as in England ; yet gold is 
clearly not the power which fixes 
the rate of banking loans there. The 
effects produced in the money-mar- 
kets of these nations are identical 
with those we see in England ; the 
causes which create them must also 
be the same ; yet the cause alleged 
to govern discount in England does 
not exist amongst inconvertible cur- 
rencies, how then can it be the real 
cause here 1 

Again let us appeal to facts to 
those events which the financial 



authorities say that they know, and 
which are the sure guides of their 
practice. In October of the last 
year a very sudden and violent agi- 
tation fell upon the money-market 
of London. The Bank-rate sprang 
up in a fortnight from 4J to 7 per 
cent, without notice, and to the 
great bewilderment of the City. 
The Bank had lost some half -mil- 
lion of gold, and that was explana- 
tion enough for many persons. But 
if this stock of gold in the Bank's 
vaults regulates discount, with what 
astonishment must these believers 
that gold does it all have regard- 
ed the comparison of the Bank re- 
turns for the week ending October 
2, when the rate was raised, with 
that for the corresponding week 
of 1871 ! In 1871 the Bank pos- 
sessed one million less of bullion ; 
the reserve was .100,000 less. By 
the rules of the City the rate of dis- 
count ought to have been higher. 
The fact was exactly the reverse : 
discount stood at 4 per cent in 
1871, and at 5 in 1872. Again, in 
the following week of 1872, an- 
other rise to 6 per cent occurred. 
On October 9, 1871, the Bank had 
1,200,000 less gold, and 700,000 
less reserve ; but, behold, the year 
of swollen treasures? and expanded 
reserve visits traders with a rate of 
7 per cent, and 1871, with reduced 
resources, according to City ideas, 
demands only 6. The fact is crush- 
ing for the doctrine that the inflow 
and outflow of gold govern discount. 
This is not theory, but dry hard fact 
the events of the living world. 
If merchants and manufacturers 
had guided themselves by the rule 
of much gold, cheap discount, what 
losses might they not have brought 
upon themselves by the delusion ! 
Can one feel surprised if this 
doctrine is ever landing the com- 
mercial community in the most 
benighted perplexity 1 Let us look 
at another instance taken at ran- 



1873.] 



The Rate of Discount. 



103 



dom. 'The Times' of January 23 
compares the Bank returns for the 
week ending January 22, 1873, 
with that of the corresponding 
week of 1872. What do we find 1 
That the bullion, the reserve, and 
the notes in circulation are, within 
a few insignificant figures, the same 
in both years. But where is the 
rate of discount in each year 1 At 
the same level 1 By no means. In 

1872 the rate is 3 per cent; in 

1873 it is one-third higher, at 4. 
The fact is utterly inexplicable 
upon the theory that either the 
bullion or the reserve the favourite 
nostrum of our day fixes the rate. 
Yet an event which ought to be so 
astonishing is passed by unheeded 
by all the oracles. Such is the 
state of inductive science in the 
City. 

We can bring up yet more power- 
ful evidence the evidence of the 
last great year of agony, 1866. The 
practical men appeal to facts to 
facts shall they go. Let us com- 
pare 1866 with 1856, and see what 
the contrast will teach us about this 
grand law much gold, cheap dis- 
count. The year 1856 opens its 
first week with ten and a half 
millions of gold, and discount at 7 
per cent; 1866 at the same period 
exhibits the relatively splendid mass 
of thirteen millions two and a half 
millions more than its correlative 
year can show. At what figure 
stands discount 1 At a lower rate, 
in obedience to the laws of the in- 
crease of gold 1 Precisely the con- 
trary 8 per cent is the burden 
imposed on commercial bills. Again, 
on May 9, 1856, the bullion figures 
at nine and three quarter millions, 
with a rate of 7 per cent ; on that 
same day in 1866 the memorable 
Black Friday the Bank possesses 
twelve and three quarter millions ; 
yet marvellous as most City au- 
thorities must have found it. dis- 
count rules at 9 per cent, in the teeth 



of the three additional millions of 
piled-up ingots. Let us move on to 
June 13. In 1856, twelve millions 
of gold march with a rate of 5 per 
cent. What happens in the parallel 
week of 1866 1 The king of bank- 
ing sits on a throne of fourteen and 
a half millions : where is his sub- 
ject? Obedient? Far from it. He 
raises his unruly head to 10 per 
cent double the rate, with two 
and a half more millions of gold in 
the Bank. Is it necessary to pro- 
ceed farther ? For ordinary mortals 
such evidence is conclusive. What- 
ever be the true theory of the rate 
of discount, these overwhelming 
figures demonstrate that the doc- 
trine that the stock of gold rules 
the interest charged on bills is not 
the true one. It is idle to attempt 
to refute this conclusion by point- 
ing to many instances of gold 
and discount rising and falling 
together. The fact is true : but 
it cannot repel the inference estab- 
lished by those that are adverse. 
We show that much gold often ac- 
companies high discount : that is 
our case. We readily accept the 
statement that the opposite fact fre- 
quently occurs, that little gold and 
dear discount are often found toge- 
ther. Our sole conclusion is that 
gold is not the governor of discount ; 
and the proofs we cite from histori- 
cal figures on so many important 
occasions make good our assertion. 
The final results of all the figures 
culminate in the cardinal truth, 
that all sorts of rates of discount 
accompany all kinds of stocks of 
gold, and that there is no necessary 
connection of cause and effect be- 
tween the quantity of gold and 
the charge for discount. 

In truth, this inveterate reference 
to gold as the regulator of banking 
rests on a profound misconception 
of the nature and functions of coin. 
One might suppose that a sovereign 
was a good thing in itself, worth the 



104 



The Rate of Discount. 



[July 



keeping as an article of enjoyment. 
Gold, in a watch or chain, is such 
an article of enjoyment; but as coin, 
gold is a mere tool, and valuable only 
in the same sense as a cart or an 
engine, as a machine for producing 
something else. It is a means, not 
an end ; and so long as it remains 
the machine called coin, it has no 
other value or utility than the ser- 
vice it renders as an instrument of 
transport, as a particular kind of 
cart. A cart is worthless, except so 
far as it draws weights ; so also is 
coin, till it is parted with, for in 
that way only does it perform its 
cartage. It has to be bought like 
a cart. The man or bank that pur- 
chases it has had to give away an 
equal quantity of property in order 
to acquire it ; and he does not re- 
cover his loss till the coin has been 
got rid of in exchange for things 
that he can use and enjoy. Hence 
coin and bullion, beyond the ex- 
changes which they have to perform, 
are pure waste. A farmer who own- 
ed a hundred carts for a single farm 
would be thought insane ; is it less 
insane to buy coin and bullion 
which have nothing to do? The 
great question is, How many are 
wanted? Such a question could 
not be asked of wealth : the desire 
for things to enjoy is practically un- 
limited. But the quantity of gold to 
be desired is quite another matter. 
Every one feels that the wish for 
sovereigns is limited, unless, indeed, 
one could get them for nothing. 
The size and the nature of the farm 
determine the quantity of carts re- 
quired : what determines the quan- 
tity of coin and bullion needed by 
a nation 1 The answer is most im- 
portant the number of transac- 
tions which are carried out by coin 
and bullion. A spare stock there 
must be, of course, as for all other ar- 
ticles. If there was only one gun for 
each soldier, or one hat for each 
head, enormous might be the incon- 



venience. Thus the spare stock of 
a bank called its reserve is gold at 
work but only so far as there is 
work for it to do so far, that is, as 
it is wanted for providing safety. 
Coin, then, is needed solely for ready- 
money payments, and the stock of 
gold required by a country bears no 
direct proportion, as Mr Mill errone- 
ously supposes, to the amount of 
goods on sale or exchanged by bank- 
ers. The 'Economist' makes the 
same mistake when it lays down 
the principle that, "The scale of 
business, even with the most perfect 
system of credit, cannot be increas- 
ed indefinitely, but must always bear 
some proportion to the available 
stock- of cash." Business is the ex- 
change of goods, and its scale is reg- 
ulated solely by the ability of men to 
buy that is, by their having made 
goods which they can give in ex- 
change for those they seek to pur- 
chase. The making and exchanging 
of goods does not depend upon the 
quantity of cash in a country. Goods 
may be made and exchanged to ten 
times the extent that they are now 
without necessarilyrequiring a single 
pound more of cash. Very few 
goods are bought and sold with coin. 
How transparent, then, is the absur- 
dity, that the instrument of ready- 
money payments, a nation's small 
change, can be the cause of the rate 
of discount can be the important 
part of a nation's wealth can have 
any other significance than as a 
machine or can be the riches of a 
people in any other sense than its 
files, its spades, or its ploughs ! 

We are thus brought to that par- 
ticular machinery to which so many 
ascribe such a mystical power over 
the money-market, the circulation 
the quantity of coin and bank-notes 
moving about a country. The authors 
of the Bank Act of 1844 deemed 
the knowledge of the amount of the 
circulation to possess great value for 
merchants and bankers, and so or- 



1873.] 



The Rate of Discount. 



105 



dered weekly accounts of its state 
to be published by the Bank. There 
is good reason for believing that one 
of their main objects was to act on 
banking and the rate of discount 
by controlling the circulation. But 
what is the circulation 1 A number 
of machines for performing a cer- 
tain work. In what respect do 
these machines differ from any other 
machines, such as ploughing ma- 
chines, or any others that might be 
named 1 To have a sufficient supply 
for use is very important, else great 
inconvenience might arise, as, for 
instance, if travellers suddenly found 
that there was no coin to be got 
in a particular town. But what 
have they to do with farming, and 
the rate of discount 1 They are 
bought to serve a useful purpose; so 
are carts and boats : but who ever 
associated the rate of discount with 
the quantity of carts and boats 
which a nation required ? If these 
tools, these circulating notes and 
coins, were the things lent on dis- 
count, then the connection would 
at once become visible ; but they 
are not. Authorities have spoken of 
contraction and inflation ; but these 
words are mere grandiloquent non- 
sense. The circulation follows the 
universal law of supply and demand. 
The Bank Act of 1844 has never 
acted on the circulation, simply be- 
cause it could not. That Act has 
sentenced a needless quantity of 
gold to be locked up in a cellar. 
That deed it has done ; but it has 
not given or taken away a note to 
or from the circulation. It has com- 
pelled the country to buy useless 
gold and lock it up in vaults ; but 
it touches the amount of the circu- 
lation at no point. The number of 
notes and coins that circulates is 
determined, as for all goods, by the 
buyers by the public that wants 
them not by the sellers, the vendors 
of sovereigns and notes. When 
there are more sovereigns and notes 



than can be employed, they stag- 
nate at the bank like excessive stocks 
in shops. Thus they accumulated 
at the Bank of France to the extent 
of 50 millions, and thus they often 
accumulate now at the Bank of 
England. 

Many persons have a notion that 
the amount of the circulation acts 
on prices, and through prices on 
discount. Even were the alleged 
fact true, it would establish no 
relation with discount. Whether 
prices are high or low, as expressed 
in money, the quantity of capital, of 
goods borrowed, remains the same. 
Prices are affected in convertible 
currencies, not by the number of 
coins and notes in circulation, but 
by the intrinsic value of the metal 
of which the coins are composed. 
Gold may become, through the dis- 
covery qf fresh mines, as cheap as 
silver. There would be a terrible 
disturbance amongst creditors and 
owners of fixed incomes, but the 
general lending and borrowing in 
the commercial world would con- 
tinue identically the same. There 
may be a great rise or fall of prices, 
beyond doubt, either in all markets 
by a change in the cost production 
of the precious metals, or in some 
by reason of trade, mistaken ship- 
ments, or over-production of particu- 
lar goods ; but there can be no con- 
traction or inflation of the circula- 
tion, because when the public has 
enough of these tools, it will use 
and take no more. 

Marvellous, then, was the state- 
ment which the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer made not long ago to 
the Scotch bankers, when he told 
them that " a currency partly com- 
posed of coin and partly of paper 
meaning bank-notes should always 
be of the same amount, and conse- 
quently value, as a purely metallic 
currency should be." This doctrine 
was not of Mr Lowe's own inventing ; 
it comes down from earlier writers : 



106 



TJie Rate of Discount. 



[July 



but, surely, it is nothing less than 
astounding that a man of Mr Lowe's 
great intelligence should ever have 
taken up so gross an absurdity. A 
mixed currency of notes and coin, 
made, by any art known to man, for 
the same amount of business, equal 
in quantity to what a purely metal- 
lic currency would have been ! why 
it is dead against a physical law. Mr 
Lowe might as well try to make 
people carry as many penknives in 
their pockets as they do now if 
they weighed a pound apiece. He 
has forgotten all about the law of 
gravity ; it has not occurred to him 
that a sovereign has weight. We 
have seen men carry for days, in 
their breast-pockets, bank-notes 
amounting to 10,000 and 20,000 ; 
does Mr Lowe imagine that if bank- 
notes were suppressed altogether 
they would put as many sovereigns 
upon their persons, and so keep up 
the same " amount of circulation " 1 
A pretty sight it would be to see gen- 
tlemen, fond of high play, bringing 
down in the arms of their servants 
bags of gold to keep the game alive ! 
What a spectacle would the City 
present, on a day of crisis, with 
wheel - barrows full of sovereigns 
thronging the streets at every point, 
and what rare chances for thieves ; 
and what a resurrection would there 
be of the mail-guard, with his blun- 
derbuss to defend the currency as it 
was distributed over the country ! 
One almost feels ashamed to refute 
such ludicrous things, were it not 
that in currency there is no viola- 
tion of common-sense so gross, but 
that hundreds of clever men are 
ready to swallow it. Mr Lowe may 
rest assured that if he extinguished 
bank-notes by Act of Parliament, 
very few additional sovereigns would 
take the places in the purely metal- 
lic currency of the 25 millions of 
notes now existing in the mixed ; 
the gaps would be filled by cheques. 
Mr Lowe has still to learn the very 



obvious fact, that the mixed currency 
of coin and notes which England 
now possesses is enormously larger 
than the currency would be if it 
were " purely metallic." 

Want of space prevents us, on 
the present occasion, from entering 
upon an examination of the nature 
and effects of the Bank Charter Act 
of 1844; but we have shown that 
it has failed to accomplish the de- 
signs of its framers ; for those designs 
were by their very nature impracti- 
cable. It has not regulated the cir- 
culation, because that is a function 
which the public alone, the em- 
ployers and purchasers of bank-notes, 
can perform. It has made the bank- 
notes safe, at any rate, is the re- 
joinder made to our statement; and 
it is true. But the Bank of England 
note was already fully safe before 
the Act was passed. The Bank of 
England note has never suffered the 
slightest discredit never has been 
looked upon by the public as not like- 
ly to be paid. Safety was not the 
object of the promoters of the Act ; 
it was an afterthought, when the de- 
sired effects were not produced, and 
adverse criticism began to appear. 
And at what cost was this extra 
and unneeded safety gained 1 ? At 
the cost of the great blot of the Act, 
the extravagant accumulation of idle 
and unrequired gold. The limit to 
which the storing of gold against 
the issue of notes commences, might 
have been fixed at twenty millions, 
as experience has amply shown. 

Here we may notice an error in 
the Act, which produces some mis- 
chievous confusion. The Act created 
two departments at the Bank of 
England : one the Bank itself, a 
bank in every respect identical with 
any other bank ; the second an 
office of the State, with which the 
Bank and its directors have no more 
to do than any other person in Eng- 
land. But most inconsistently, whilst 
founding two perfectly distinct in- 



1873.] 



The Rate of Discount. 



107 



stitutions, the Act jumbled together 
two elements, of which one belonged 
to the Bank as a bank, the other to 
the State as an issuer of notes. The 
whole bullion of the two depart- 
ments is mixed together into one to- 
tal; and thus, in the weekly returns, 
a part of the gold published is the 
banker's reserve of the Bank, the 
other the Government's fund for the 
payment of notes, which has noth- 
ing to do with banking. The public 
is thus perpetually misled, and the 
value of the Bank returns exceed- 
ingly injured. The gold lodged in 
the vaults against the notes has no 
effect whatever on banking or dis- 
count it forms no part of the 
Bank's reserve ; it is a security of 
the same nature as the millions of 
bullion which the first Napoleon 
kept at Paris against the breaking 
out of fresh wars. Its quantity is 
rigidly determined by the wants 
"which the public has for circulation, 
that is, for ready-money payments ; 
and those wants rise and fall with- 
out any reference whatever to bank- 
ing or discount. When the circula- 
tion is marked in the return at 25 
millions, and the bullion, say, at 18, 
this statement means that the State 
possesses 10 millions of gold for the 
convertibility of the notes, 15 mil- 
lions of paper being allowed by the 
law to be uncovered by gold ; the 
remaining 8 millions is the reserve 
of the private bank called the Bank 
of England. If there is any utility 
in making known every week this 
state of the Bank's reserve, it should 
be published in its true figure, and 
not mixed up with a fund wholly 
unconnected with the Bank and 
banking. 

We often hear it said how much 
the wealth of a country is augmented 
by a great increase of its stock of 
gold. The press of all countries 
abounds with complacent remarks 
about the plentifulness of money, 
of coin, of the precious metals. This 



is pure and glaring absurdity. The 
gold had to be bought with goods, 
which are fully worth the gold, else 
the country never would have got 
it. There has been an exchange of 
goods for gold, but no increase of 
wealth on either side. Does any 
one imagine that Germany is the 
richer for the gigantic indemnity 
paid to it by France in gold, until 
Germany exports that gold abroad 
in the purchase of commodities'? 
Will any one maintain that the 
acquisition of millions' worth of a 
metal, which as coin is in no sense 
a matter of enjoyment, but only 
moves things capable of being 
enjoyed, is any increase of riches 
is anything but pure and unmis- 
takable hoarding ? If Germany 
were deficient in this machinery for 
moving, then clearly an increased 
supply would be an increase of 
wealth, just as an addition to her 
carts and cart-horses would be an 
augmentation of wealth if she had 
need for more. This metal does not 
bestow a single particle of wealth, 
useful or agreeable, on Germany, but 
only machinery of which she already 
had a full supply. 

But though the circulation has no 
effect on discount, foreign loans may 
produce immense commotion there. 
They were mainly guilty for the 
great crisis of 1825. But it is es- 
sential to understand their mode 
of action. It is a great mistake to 
suppose that foreign loans always, 
or even generally, are taken away in 
gold. Often the loan is made to 
pay debts. If they are due to Eng- 
land, it is obvious that no gold 
passes away : one set of Englishmen 
receives what another pays. But by 
far the more general practice is to 
take out the loan in English goods. 
India contracts a loan : it travels to 
Calcutta in the form of locomotives 
and rails and all kinds of English 
wares. Sometimes a third country 
becomes the buyer in the place, but 



108 



The Rate of Discount. 



[July 



also inconsequence, of the borrowing 
State. But whether directly or in- 
directly, the stock of English wealth 
is diminished ; English manufac- 
tures are sent away, and there is no 
return to compensate the loss. It 
is easy to perceive that under these 
circumstances there is diminished 
ability to make deposits at banks, 
and consequently a reduced supply 
for borrowers in the money-market. 

A similar case occurred in the 
sharp rise of interest last autumn. 
The Erench indemnity was here 
again at work. M. Thiers required 
means of payment to Germany, and 
the Germans were willing to receive 
good bills on London. Accord- 
ingly M. Thiers arranged with some 
establishments at Paris that they 
should manufacture bills on London 
firms of undoubted credit, and these 
bills with first-class signatures were 
thrown on the London market for 
discount. The houses received a 
commission from the Erench Govern- 
ment. That Government was able to 
make earlier payments to Germany, 
but the funds obviously came from 
the discount market of London. A 
heavy borrowing was carried out 
through these French bills, to the 
serious diminution of the resources 
available for English traders. A 
strong rise in the rate of discount 
necessarily ensued ; an enormous 
increase of borrowing no addi- 
tional means sent in by English 
sellers of merchandise expanded 
demand no change in the supply 
rise of price, to the profit of bank- 
ers, and all is explained without 
giving a single thought to gold. 

In vivid contrast with the idle 
talk about gold, Mr Brassey's ad- 
mirable book on 'Work and 
Wages ' will furnish us with excel- 
lent instruction as to the way in 
which commercial crises are gene- 
rated, and the rate of discount 
mounts upward to the sky. We 
know that 1847 was a year of 



disastrous panics. The child is the 
offspring of the parent : what hap- 
pened in 1846 1 Mr Mackay, of 
Mr Brassey's staff, writes of that 
year : " Height of the railway 
mania : demand for labour excessive, 
very much in excess of supply : 
beer given to men as well as wages: 
look-outs placed on the roads to 
intercept men tramping and take 
them to the nearest beer-shop to be 
treated and induced to start work : 
very much less work done in the same 
time by the same power : provisions 
dear : excessively high wages, exces- 
sive work, excessive striking, indif- 
ferent lodgings, caused great demora- 
lisation, and gave the death-blow 
to the old navvy already on the 
decline." Here we see English 
wealth being destroyed. Provisions 
consumed in excessive quantities ; 
and how replaced 1 By new wealth ? 
by crops of corn or bales of goods ? 
No ; but by certain changes made 
on the earth's surface; by tunnels 
and embankments, which then, 
and for a long time afterwards, did 
nothing to restore the poverty caused 
by the consumption of food, cloth- 
ing, tools, and materials during the 
construction of the railways, how- 
ever much that magnificent creator 
of wealth, the railway, may replace 
the loss, and far more, in future 
years. Such works consume enor- 
mously in the making, can never be 
constructed without impoverishing, 
unless they are paid out of savings ; 
and savings are not money, or coin, 
or notes, or cash, which vary little in 
quantity, but the surplus of goods 
made over goods consumed. Drain- 
ing is a most enriching operation. 
Get all the labourers of the country 
to drain and the nation starves. 
No wonder, then, that so many 
works were stopped in 1847, and 
that a great reduction of wages was 
caused by the financial embarrass- 
ments of October 1847. Add to this 
excess of railway construction above 



1873.] 



The Rate of Discount. 



109 



savings, the potato disease, and the 
failure of the cotton crop in America, 
and the rate of ten per cent will be 
abundantly explained. Small pro- 
fits, immensely - reduced deposits, 
diminished sales of goods, and eager 
demand for banking assistance to 
avert calamitous forced sales of 
merchandise we see into the very 
inmost depths of the crisis : and 
again gold is not thought of. 

We might proceed in Mr Bras- 
sey's company to 1866, but our 
space is exhausted. The same causes 
are at work still. The French war 
not only destroyed much wealth, but 
acted much as the Lacedaemonians 
did when they cut down the vines 
and olive-trees of Attica : it took 
away the labourers and devoured 
the resources which might have 
sustained their industry. Means 
are demanded for setting their mills 
and looms to work again ; in- 
dustry requires additional capital 
that is, additional food, clothing, and 
materials for the workmen. The 
stock of commodities was severely 
diminished : the world seeks their 
replacement, and so discount has 
been made higher by the ravages of 
a previous destruction of wealth. 

And what shall we say of the rate 
of discount of the future ? It seems 
to us that the tendency is to look 
upwards, to stand generally at a 
higher level. Mr Mill and other 
economists once expected such a 
permanent abundance of capital as 
would keep the terms on which it 
was borrowed low; but facts have 
falsified their predictions. Mr Glad- 
stone's idea of a 2 per cent interest 
on Consols has proved a chimera. 
They failed to perceive the enormous 
power which is at work to create 
an incessant demand for the ex- 
tension of English industry. The 
world is being opened out with a 
rapidity unexampled in all history. 
The most widely separated regions, 
hitherto untilled and undeveloped, 



are suddenly seized upon by the 
energy of labour, and are calling to 
capital to come and gather a most 
plenteous store. The far West and 
the most remote East, California 
and Australia, South America and 
Japan, the inmost parts of Russia 
and the United States, are all being 
brought under cultivation together. 
And what is the cause of this im- 
mense development of the indus- 
trial life of mankind 1 ? Steam 
steam in the locomotive, the iron 
ship, and the factory engine. Steam 
renders regions accessible to com- 
merce. It carries down the produc- 
tions of vast territories to the shore, 
forwards them to England, and 
brings back English wares in ex- 
change. The desire and the ability 
to buy English goods expands in- 
cessantly, and the efforts of England 
rise to meet the call. Food and 
materials are poured into English 
harbours from foreign lands in swel- 
ling floods, and English factories 
toil to send back clothing and iron. 
This simultaneous growth of wealth 
over the whole earth asks for fresh 
capital without ceasing ; asks, not 
for money, for coin and notes, but 
for the means, the substances re- 
quired for maintaining labour. High 
terms are offered for loans, be- 
cause the borrowed instruments of 
labour yield such splendid returns. 
England, we are persuaded, is fast 
coming into the colonial state in- 
dustry very productive of great re- 
sults compared with its cost, cap- 
ital magnificently rewarded, loans 
for supporting labour largely sought, 
wages more ample, and the rate of 
interest high. The colonial farmer 
gives large wages to his labourers, 
because his land yields much at 
little cost, and he can bear a liberal 
division of the produce. He covets 
more ploughs, more steam-reapers, 
and larger supplies of food and 
clothing for his men ; and the abun- 
dance of the returns enables him to 



110 



T lie Rate of Discount. 



[July 



offer a greater share to the lending 
capitalist, without whose aid the 
prize could not be won. Not, how- 
ever, money does he want from 
England, neither gold nor silver, for 
they will not till his fields nor feed 
his people. He may borrow money, 
as it is called, from English bankers, 
on the discount of increasing bills ; 
but it will reach him, whether at 
San Francisco or in New Zealand, 
in the shape of cargoes of English 
goods, in the form of tools, ma- 
chinery, and clothing. He will pay 
highly for loans, he will sustain 
the Bank rate of discount at a more 
elevated level ; but it will be always 
English merchandise that he will 
borrow, the products of the factories 
and workshops, not of the City, 
but of the broad expanse of the 
whole English land. 

To forecast the rate of discount 
is always hard, because it is always 
difficult to prophesy what the har- 
vest will be, or the cotton crop in 
America, or whether civil war or 
famine will prey on our customers 
and sap the prosperity of English 
trade, or what will be the demands 
for opening up new enterprises over 
the whole globe, and what the mag- 
nitude of the prices, which, whether 
for good or evil, will act on English 
trade, and affect the quantity of 
goods made or demanded. But it 
is doubly hard to estimate, even 
within moderate periods, the coming 
rates, now when, as we believe, 
London is becoming more and more 



the international money-market of 
all countries. It is not only, as in 
the past, by direct loans, that foreign 
nations press heavily on English 
means, but also, and in some re- 
spects more mischievously, by their 
constant appearance in the discount 
market of London. The action of 
foreigners here is less visible, and 
consequently more beset with sudden 
and dangerous surprises than direct 
appeals for great loans. Merchants 
and traders find it daily harder to 
learn what influences are at work to 
bring in competitors for the means 
disposable by English bankers. They 
have to inquire not only what causes 
are acting on the domestic markets 
of England, but also what foreign 
money -markets are experiencing, 
and, still worse, likely to experience. 
It is not easy to suggest a remedy 
for such a state of trade so subtle, 
sudden, and incalculable are ths 
many forces in operation. English- 
men must console themselves with 
the reflection that the very pros- 
perity of English commerce is the 
chief parent of this disorder ; they 
must set off the gain against the 
loss ; and in any case must not run 
off into the dangerous jungle of 
thinking about notes and gold as 
currency, but strive to the best of 
their ability to fix their attention 
on wealth, on capital not cash, 
but commodities and watch the 
influences which render them 
scanty or abundant throughout the 
world. 



1873.] 



Alexandre Dumas. 



Ill 



ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 



THERE is, perhaps, no name in 
literature which has been more re- 
pandu in the world during the last 
fifty years, and none which conveys 
more lively recollections of amuse- 
ment and frolic, of breathless story- 
telling and equally breathless inter- 
est, of boundless invention and 
daring defiance of all the laws of 
probability, than the name which 
stands at the head of ihis page. 
Nowhere out of the Arabian Nights 
has such a flood of story poured 
through the world as from the lips 
of the half- African Frenchman, the 
wild, lavish, extravagant, and head- 
long genius, whose very prodigality 
has been made an argument, of the 
strangest kind, against him. Per- 
haps the present generation has so 
far lost the first impression of the 
Mousquetaires' wonderful adventures 
as to associate the name more dis- 
tinctly with those volumes of " del- 
icate " analysis and philosophical 
immorality, beyond the reach of 
decency or shame, by which his 
son has earned something which, 
nowadays, is considered reputation. 
We should be sorry to place the fame 
of our old favourite, bizarre as was 
his life, and multitudinous as is the 
literary scandal current about him, 
upon the same level. Dumas pere 
and Dumas fils are as different as 
are this rude but hopeful earth and 
an obscene hell. The first has 
sinned much, against every stan- 
dard, but has done so by accident, 
by fits and starts, by the impulse of 
high spirits and natural impetuosity. 
So far as we are aware, he has 
never been depraved, only indiffer- 
ent, in a historical way, to moral 
evil But to the other, moral evil 
is all that life contains of interest; 
it is the staple of his thought, the 
inspiration of his fancy. In all the 



round of human existence there is 
nothing which attracts him, nothing 
which he thinks worthy of com- 
ment, and the analysis for which 
he is famous, but the infamous 
varieties of unclean passion, and the 
base intrigues of sensuality. The 
wholesome open-air daylight world, 
which is full of wholesome work 
and human affections, counts for 
nothing with this author. For 
him the world means the chamber of 
a courtesan, and life a succession of 
miserable and sickening excitements 
appropriate to such a tnise en scene. 
Indeed the very worst accusation that 
can be brought against the father is 
that which accuses him of having 
helped to produce the literary de- 
velopment represented by his son. 
This accusation seems to us as un- 
true as it is unjust. We are told 
that the appetite which has become 
jaded by the breathless, but real, 
and mostly innocent, sensationalism 
of the older writer, requires the still 
higher excitement of those elaborate 
details of vice furnished by the 
younger, to content it after the fare 
to which it had been accustomed, 
and that consequently the ' Dame 
aux Camellias ' is the natural result 
of the 'Trois Mousquetaires.' In this 
way, straining the argument a little, 
Miss Braddon arid Mr Wilkie Col- 
lins might be said to be the natural 
outcome of one of the purest and 
soundest of human intelligences 
the great mind of Walter Scott ; a 
sequence which we entirely reject. 
If, then, there should be any youth- 
ful reader to whom, unhappily, the 
name of the old romancer has become 
identified with that of the so-called 
moralist, the historian-in-chief of all 
the detestable nuances of vice, the 
favourite of a public which we in 
our ignorance accept as representing 



112 



Alexandre Dumas. 



France, though it represents noth- 
ing but the weakness, misery, and 
shame of that much-tried country 
let him learn to make acquaintance 
with a spirit infinitely better, 
brighter, and more genial, the old 
Dumas, faultiest of men and authors, 
most extravagant spendthrift of 
brain and purse alike, the brilliant, 
headlong, vain, friendly, and foolish 
man of letters, who was the parable 
of his time to whom, perhaps, we 
can give but little respectful homage, 
but to whom we owe more innocent 
amusement than to almost any other 
writer of his generation. 

We would not, however, have it 
supposed that in saying this we are 
setting up Alexandre Dumas as a 
model writer, or recommending his 
works as a moral regimen for the 
young. Nothing could be further 
from our intention. All that we 
venture to assert is, that he is purity 
itself and good taste itself in com- 
parison with the more recent and 
much more pretentious school of 
fiction which has openly dedicated 
itself to the study and elucidation 
of vice, and which is generally meant 
when the contemptuous phrase 
" French novel " drops from British 
lips. Barring a few pages, or a few 
chapters, the story of the ' Trois 
Mousquetaires,' with its many se- 
quels', conveys as little harm as any 
outspoken male novel, written with 
no moral purpose, can do; and its 
peculiar force and attraction, ' the 
real charm it has for its readers, 
turns upon no equivocal sentiment, 
nor excitement of passion, but on 
the charming sweep of adventure, 
the unfailing flow of incident, the 
incredible valour, the manly enthu- 
siasm of friendship, and the endless 
drolleries of its band of heroes. It 
is a story made up of sensation, 
but of sensations well-nigh as inno- 
cent as those of ' Robinson Crusoe.' 
We confess that it is with diffi- 
culty that we can imagine the char- 



[July 



acter of mind which would be 
harmed by 'the society of Athos, 
Porthos, and Aramis. Messrs 
Pendennis and Warrington would 
scarcely be safe 'company for so 
delicate an intelligence. Neither 
is there anything in the wonderful 
complications of 'Monte Christo' 
which need alarm the moralist. 
The difference of atmosphere be- 
tween these productions of thirty 
years since and those of the Dumas 
of this day is indeed as remarkable 
as anything we know in literature. 
The one all hearty, joyous, and 
outspoken ; the other serious, senti- 
mental, vile : the one with no pur- 
pose in the world but that of amus- 
ing his readers and himself for it 
is evident Dumas enjoyed his own 
headlong career, his own fun and 
endless fancy, as much as any one of 
his audience ; the other solemnly 
seated upon a throne of self-assumed 
wisdom, instructing and reforming 
heaven save the mark ! his un- 
fortunate country, by perpetual il- 
lustration of her vices. But though 
it would be unjust to the elder 
Dumas not to indicate most strong- 
ly this fundamental difference, and 
though we should be rejoiced to 
see the French novel come back 
even so far as to his level, and ac- 
cept it as a sign of returning health 
and amendment, yet we do not take 
upon us the dangerous responsi- 
bility of answering for Dumas as a 
moral teacher. He was not a teach- 
er of any description. He was a 
teller of stories the very laureate 
of action and adventure ; but in 
his choice of a subject, he never, so 
far as we are aware, showed the 
moral perversity of preferring one 
which necessitated discussion of 
vice. When it came in his way 
he recorded it carelessly as he would 
have recorded any other accidental 
circumstance, without protest, but 
without enjoyment. We will not 
undertake to say more. 



1873.] 



Alexandre Dumas. 



113 



It is "but a short time since, in 
one of those pauses of mournfulest 
silence which came after the tempest 
of the roaring guns, in the late dire 
extremity of France, that the news 
of Dumas's death came in curiously 
and strangely like a homely note 
of the old life, in the midst of the 
violent and martial strain of the 
new. Dead ! there were thousands 
dead or dying just then whose lives 
probably were of greater worth, and 
whose end was more noble ; but 
the name of the old story-teller, 
the vieux farceur, ran over all the 
world with a strange and pathetic 
recalling of the past, a return as to 
something ended for ever, in which 
we, too, once had our peaceful part 
like others. He died in a lull of 
the fighting, poor old man, worn 
out with work and commotion. We 
remember the indignant remarks 
made in a distinguished French 
family, one of whose members, a 
man of European fame, had died 
shortly before, touching the meagre 
and brief mention given by the 
'Times' of the death of their 
illustrious kinsman a great states- 
man and orator ; while the same 
journal spent columns upon a 
notice of Dumas the raconteur, 
Dumas the Bohemian, whom his 
generation had ridiculed as much 
as they had applauded, and whose 
books were shut out from all such 
virtuous, noble houses. The sur- 
prise and indignation were natural 
enough, but so was the fact that 
called them forth. Dumas's claim 
upon our notice was not like that of 
a statesman. His name directed us 
altogether away from that hot and 
horrible stream of war, and from 
all the devious channels through 
which it had been fed. Whatever 
our opinion might be on the part 
taken by this man and that in the 
stormy national life, which had at 



last been engulfed in so grand a 
catastrophe, our opinion of Monte 
Christo and D'Artagnan belonged to 
a different category of sentiment. 
We heard of him again with a smile 
his very name was a relief to the 
jaded attention. Was he dead 1 ? 
we gave him a gentle sigh, a passing 
regret ; we could have better spared 
a better man. Great events were 
hurrying upon each other too swift- 
ly to secure much notice, but upon 
this private event our minds dwelt 
with a certain grateful sense of re- 
lief as well as of regret. Thus he 
went out of the world amid blare of 
trumpet and sound of guns, in the 
midst of a commotion more tremen- 
dous than any he had ever rendered 
into story; and the sound of the well- 
known name which had such very 
different associations, and the tran- 
quil sorrow for an old man's death, 
gave us a sort of consolation, as of the 
ordinary tenor of human existence 
still holding on through all, amid 
the tragic horror of the great crisis, 
which seemed to annihilate every- 
thing that belonged to life's com- 
mon strain. 

But if Dumas's death thus called 
forth our sympathy, he has a still 
better right to that sympathy now. 
A thing has happened to him which 
fortunately does not happen to all 
men, as death does. The biography 
of Alexandre Dumas has been writ- 
ten in English ; his life has been 
taken, as it were, feloniously and 
cruelly after his death. The work 
of Mr Percy Fitzgerald* is in two 
large volumes, and issued with all 
the solemnity of size and apparent 
importance. It is about Dumas's 
follies, his fibs, his vapourings, and 
the follies, fibs, and vapourings of 
the French nation in general, than 
which there is at present no more 
fruitful and popular subject for the 
genus penny-a-liner (or guinea-a-liner, 



* Life and Adventures of Alexaudre Dumas. By Percy Fitzgerald. Tinsley : Lon- 
don, 1873. 

VOL. CXIV. NO. DCXCIII. H 



114 



Alexandre Dumas. 



[July 



it does not matter which). We 
confess, for our own parts, that, 
whether in the solemn columns of 
our leading journal, or in the trifling- 
est of broadsheets, this easy and 
universal topic has become intense- 
ly tiresome to us ; and that out of 
pure opposition to the tedious re- 
iteration of the crowd, we are ready 
to protest (as indeed some closer ob- 
servers have already done), that our 
neighbours in France are in reality 
the most serious, steady, and matter- 
of-fact population in the world. 
France may have fallen very low; cer- 
tainly she has descended in material 
fame and prestige ; but to see every 
miserable scribbler exercise his 
small wit upon her national char- 
acteristics, and stick his coward- 
ly little shaft into her in her down- 
fall, is more than our equanimity 
can bear. A few things are said 
of ourselves by other nations, which 
our self-complacency either refuses 
to believe, or comfortably laughs 
at as a specimen of the delusions 
of foreigners; but nothing can 
make the English mind consci- 
ous that it too is human, and may 
possibly partake on its own side 
those delusions so common to the 
superficially informed. It is the 
fashion of the day to abuse France 
and her character, and all her ac- 
tions of every description ; to con- 
clude that she does not know her 
own business in the least ; that we 
are infinitely better informed than 
she is as to her most intimate con- 
cerns ; and that because she has fal- 
len upon that period of national ill- 
luck which comes to all countries 
now and then, therefore we are all 
free to sermonise and to sneer, and 
to assure the whole world that we 
always knew how it would be, that 
" it is just like her," and that so it 
will be to the end of time. Mr 
Percy Fitzgerald is one of the many 
accomplished Englishmen who sees 
through France, and is prepared at 



any moment to point out her imbe- 
cilities ; and besides this general 
fitness for the task of writing a 
Frenchman's life, he has besides a 
thorough contempt for that indi- 
vidual Frenchman, and the live- 
liest satisfaction in " showing up " 
his imperfections to the world. 
Thus prepared for his work he 
carries it out manfully, without 
hesitation or discouragement. It is 
a new way, we confess, of writing 
biography which art, up to this 
time, has perhaps been too apt to 
call forth a warm feeling of par- 
tisanship, a general siding with 
one's hero, and inclination to ex- 
plain away his faults and account 
for his weaknesses when those faults 
and weaknesses could not be alto- 
gether denied. The other mode of 
treatment possesses novelty at least, 
if no other attraction; but it has 
this disadvantage in the present 
case, that the world has heard a 
great deal of Dumas, and but little 
of his biographer; and that, con- 
sequently, Mr Percy Fitzgerald's 
easy superiority and sense that he 
is in a position to pull his subject 
to pieces, is more apt to fill the 
reader with a mixture of indigna- 
tion and amusement than with 
more admiring feelings. Had the 
positions been reversed had any 
chance wind of fame wafted Mr 
Percy Fitzgerald into regions of 
notability, where Alexandre Dumas 
could have caught sight of him, 
and made him into a book, we 
might have accepted the tone of it 
as natural. In the actual circum- 
stances, the book is a simple im- 
pertinence, and unworthy, on its 
own merits, of any literary notice 
whatever. We accept it merely as 
an occasion for recalling the strange, 
wild, energetic, amusing figure of 
the old romancer, before all personal 
recollection of it has vanished from 
the world. 

We cannot pretend to any per- 



1873.] 



Alexandre Dumas. 



115 



sonal knowledge of Dumas. Once, 
and once only, the present writer 
remembers to have assisted at one 
of the " Conferences " with which, 
in his old age, he amused the 
Parisian public. Age had paled his 
swarthy countenance, and made his 
negro shock of hair white a change 
which took away, we presume, much 
of the peculiarity of his appearance. 
We forget what was his subject 
it was, no doubt, a chapter of recol- 
lections from his own eventful and 
stirring life but the chief point in 
his lively talk was an incident in the 
history of his father, the revolutionary 
General Dumas, a story which pro- 
bably would be somewhat gross for 
an English audience, but which in 
Paris everybody laughed at frankly. 
With the broad fun of a school- 
boy, his round face twinkling with 
laughter, the raconteur narrated the 
arrest of a spy, who, as a last re- 
source, to escape the vigilance of the 
Republican soldiers, swallowed his 
despatches! We will not attempt 
to recall any details of a story 
scarcely suitable for these pages, 
but the reader will divine the bold- 
ness yet the lightness with which 
Dumas skirted the borders of per- 
missible licence, and told his laugh- 
able but coarse tale without any 
actual grossierete. His pride in his 
parentage is one of the many faults 
laid to his charge ; but it is one for 
which at least in the case of his 
father most English readers will 
forgive him. He was descended 
from a gentleman whom Louis 
XIV. had made a marquis, and did 
even at one period of his life assume, 
or make a pretence at assuming, the 
title, to which, barring a doubt as to 
his father's legitimacy, never proved 
one way or the other, he would seem 
to have had a perfect right. The 
father himself, however, was more 
interesting than any Marquis de la 
Pailleterie. He was one of the 
boldest and best soldiers of the Re- 



public a hero as daring as any in 
his son's romances, but unfortunate 
and died neglected in the village 
where he had married a woman of 
the people, under the ban of Na- 
poleon's displeasure ; embittered and 
broken-hearted by the scorns of 
office and the desertion of friends, 
as, unhappily, other brave but un- 
friended soldiers of fortune have 
been known to do before him. He 
died while his son was still a child, 
and the boy had to struggle into 
notice unassisted, his mother's fa- 
mily being poor and undistin- 
guished. How he did this may be 
seen in his own memoirs, or, by 
those to whom the memoirs are not 
handy, or, who distrust the roman- 
cist's own account of his successes, in 
the very unflattering and contemp- 
tuous narrative of Mr Percy Fitz- 
gerald. Dumas leaped into noto- 
riety by means of his dramas, the 
first literary vein he struck, which 
brought him much applause and some 
money, and launched him wildly 
into that prodigal and heedless life 
of Paris, which shows in stronger 
colours perhaps in the midst of the 
frugal and thrifty national life of 
France than it would do on our more 
general level of lavish expenditure 
and self-indulgence. All the follies 
Dumas did his shiftiness, his un- 
bounded expenditure, his reckless 
confidence in his public, his feats 
of travel and diplomacy, his vanity, 
his splendour, the palace he built 
and lived in like a true Monte 
Christo, his insatiable thirst for 
money and continual need of it even 
at his climax of wealth, are all to 
be found, set down in malice, in the 
volumes we have referred to. There 
is not much in this meteoric exist- 
ence, perhaps, which the world need 
care to remember. He had some of 
the virtues of the prodigal along with 
all the unsatisfactoriness of that char- 
acter, and came to be a kind of 
literary Jeremy Diddler towards the 



116 



Alexandre Dumas. 



[July 



close of his life, as is unfortunately 
too common. Extreme ease of pro- 
duction (his detractors say the ex- 
tremest ease since it was not he 
who worked hut others for {him) and 
a constant market for all the wares 
he could produce, demoralised the 
fertilest of romancers. His hrain 
"became the true Monte Christo, the 
reservoir of most saleahle jewels, 
which was more inexhaustible than 
any pirate's hoard. That he should 
in his reckless sense of power have 
embroiled himself with competing 
editors, and pledged himself for 
feuilletons innumerable, sometimes 
in the face of other contracts, some- 
times to the injury of personal 
honour, and beyond all hope of 
keeping his word, seems natural 
enough. For nothing can tell more 
strongly against all intellectual eco- 
nomy or thrift of power than this 
sense of the capacity to be always 
doing, along with the certainty of 
ready and immediate pecuniary re- 
compense for all one does. Dumas's 
immense popularity might have 
overcome the restraints of freedom 
even in a mind more sober and 
moderate ; and in one inaccessible 
to all the arguments of prudence, 
moderation, and sobriety, it may be 
understood what a career of intel- 
lectual (to say nothing of external) 
riot, the triumphant writer was 
tempted to plunge into ; and he re- 
sisted no temptation which came to 
him in this form. 

It was not, however, until he 
was over forty, and had reached the 
full force and maturity of middle 
age, that he hit upon that vein of 
fiction which produced for him his 
greatest reputation and reward. 
We can only use words which ex- 
press the utmost caprice of chance 
when we tell the story of Dumas's 
triumphs. There is no ground for 
supposing that it was by solid plan 
or preparation that he began his 
wonderful succession of romances. 



Pure hazard guiding him, as (to 
speak lightly) it guided the first 
man who " struck ile," or he who 
found the first scrap of gold at the 
diggings, he lighted upon the in- 
exhaustible fountain of fiction from 
which such a flood was to come. 
Even in its very first beginnings 
this stream seems to have had the 
force of a torrent. The 'Trois 
Mousquetaires,' we are told, and 
' Monte Christo,' both appeared in 
one year 1844 and took the 
world absolutely by storm, by sur- 
prise, driving the public into wild 
interest and excitement before it 
had time to think or inquire why. 
The chance was in every respect a 
happy one ; for amid all the wealth 
of French fiction, the place of the 
improvisatore, the headlong, breath- 
less story-teller, had never, we think, 
been filled before since the day of 
the jongleurs and wandering trou- 
badours. Nowhere has fiction occu- 
pied a more important place than in 
modern France, or drawn to its 
development so many powerful in- 
tellects. No Englishman that we 
know of has drawn with pencil so 
keen and diamond-pointed the mys- 
teries of human motive and thought, 
the terrible gulf of human weakness, 
as Balzac has done, with a pitiless 
power and clear-sightedness which 
make us hate while we admire ; 
and it would ^be impossible to give 
to the philosophical romance, the 
dramatic representation of senti- 
ment and emotion, a more splendid 
development than it has attained 
in the hands of Victor Hugo and 
Georges Sand. None of these great 
masters of art can be called moral 
writers. The first is, at the best, 
historically impartial, setting forth 
good and evil the two different 
sides of the picture with the calm 
of a spectator as little affected by the 
contrast between vice and virtue as 
by that which exists between black 
hair and blond, blue eyes or brown 



1873.] 



Alexandre Dumas. 



117 



an indifference which is supposed 
by many to be essential to the per- 
fection of art, but which, in our 
opinion, is as little favourable to 
true art as it is to the moral atmos- 
phere of literature. These higher 
places of fiction were, however, 
occupied by writers who as yet 
have had no rivals, and with whom 
the genius of Dumas was quite 
unable to cope. Analysis of char- 
acter, profound reflection upon the 
enigmas of life, studies of human 
passion, and the relations of man 
to man, were subjects altogether 
out of his way. But with a sudden 
inspiration, true as it was spon- 
taneous, he seized upon the primi- 
tive tale which was in his way. 
No moral, no meaning, no thread 
of purpose was necessary to him. 
With the perseverance and longue 
lialeine of Scheherazade herself, but 
with infinitely more levity and joy- 
ousness of intention, he plunged 
into the wide and open infinity of 
invention, feeling the world before 
him, and recognising no moral or 
historical tether, no law of proba- 
bility, to hinder his free march, no 
restraint of law or nature. All such 
limits disappear before him as be- 
fore the improvisatore on the Nea- 
politan shore, or the Arab story-teller, 
the repository of all the traditionary 
lore of the East. It is not from the 
modern inspiration of fiction, but 
from this wild source of boundless 
adventure and incident, that he 
draws his power. He appeals not 
to the deeper principles of nature 
in his hearers, nor to their sym- 
pathy with the struggles of heart 
and soul, the complications of will 
and passion, which are the true sub- 
jects of poetry ; but to that which is 
most universal in us, the intellec- 
tual quality (if it can be justly 
called intellectual at all) which most 
entirely pervades humanity, which 
is common to the child and the 
sage, the simplest and the most edu- 



cated that primitive Curiosity and 
thirst for story without which man 
would scarcely be man. Nothing 
is too low in intelligence, nothing 
too young in years, to share this 
lively and wholesome tendency of 
the mind. It lies at the bottom of 
the highest mental ambition, and 
contributes to the success of the 
loftiest efforts, but is in itself the 
possession of the commonest, the 
lowliest, the foolishest of mankind. 
When we say that Dumas took ad- 
vantage of this quality, we do not 
mean to imply that he availed himself 
by calculation of the most universal 
of human sentiments, or chose among 
other intellectual paths this one wild 
byway which leads by a short cut to 
that pinnacle of the temple of fame 
where the garlands are readiest of ac- 
cess, though quickest to fade. No 
such wise calculation was in the mind 
of the raconteur. He seized upon the 
vacant place by mere instinct, being 
capable to fill it. He sprang upon 
the stage in a lucky moment by 
chance and finding out all at once, 
without warning, what he could 
do, forthwith did it, without once 
pausing to think. 

We say this with full knowledge 
of all the gossip and all the solemn 
literary questions which have been 
raised as to the real authorship of 
Dumas's works. To us the contro- 
versy seems at once trumpery and 
artificial in the highest degree. 
With every inclination to believe 
in the generosity of human nature, 
we confess we are altogether unable 
to understand how Maquet, Bour- 
geois, & Co., who, we are asked to 
believe, were the real authors of his 
books, should have kept silent and 
in the background, allowing Dumas, 
to whom they were bound by no 
special tie, to reap the immense 
profit and the overwhelming glory 
of works which were really theirs. 
This, on the one hand, is incom- 
prehensible and incredible ; while, 



118 



Alexandre Dumas. 



[July 



on the other hand, it is equally im- 
possible to believe that the man who 
under the name of Dumas pro- 
duced the * Trois Mousquetaires/ 
should in his own name, at a very 
brief interval of time, have pro- 
duced only the most mediocre of 
novels books which beyond the 
circle of his immediate friends were 
never heard of, and which the pub- 
lic received with contemptuous 
silence and indifference. With 
these two undeniable facts to con- 
tend against, we know no possi- 
bility of proving, by any ordinary 
human law of evidence, that these 
nameless collaborateurs, dull in 
their own works, and only brilliant 
in his, have a right to share the 
fame of the great story-teller, how- 
ever much they may have helped 
him, or contributed to his success. 
The virtues of self-renunciation, 
and a Christian humility which 
goes beyond the very Gospel rule, 
are not supposed to nourish to a 
pre-eminent extent among French 
litterateurs ; neither can we suppose 
that the fact of being deprived of 
all personal honour or reward should 
inspire or elevate genius which 
slackened its wings at once when 
the question became personal. Such 
wonders are not in human nature, 
and no crude array of facts could 
induce us to believe in them. Not- 
withstanding M. Querard and Mr 
Percy Fitzgerald, we refuse to put 
our faith in Maquet and Bourgeois. 
If they were so pre-eminently Chris- 
tian as we are told they were, it 
would no doubt wound their sus- 
ceptible souls to receive now the 
credit which they did not claim at 
the time. Let such unparalleled 
self-renunciation have at least the 
merit it deserves and be their fame 
swamped for ever in the fame of 
the leader to whom they thus 
devotedly and incredibly sacrificed 
themselves. 

Having thus found his special 



track in the field of literature, the 
empty place which waited for him, 
Dumas rushed into it with all the 
characteristic impetuosity of his na- 
ture, and all the headlong rapidity 
which was congenial to the work. 
He seized the thread of fiction with 
glowing hands, and spun and wove 
and plied the flying loom, with a de- 
light in the exercise which is quite as 
real as the excitement of his hearers. 
The words we use are but feeble 
emblems of the process, and, could 
we think of any other which con- 
veyed the idea of a more rapid pro- 
cess of creation, a longer and more 
unbroken continuity, we should 
employ them. His was not the art 
of reflection, of careful balance, and 
elaborate completeness. He pro- 
duced his effects sur-le-champ, by 
chance, by the inspiration of the 
moment, without pausing to con- 
sider, or making any conscious 
selection of circumstances. He 
began but there never appeared 
to him any necessity to close. The 
story which he told was one long- 
continued tale, such as children 
and simple natures love a story 
without an end. With a wild and 
gay and careless exuberance of 
strength and of material such as 
none of his contemporaries could 
equal, he rushed on from incident 
to incident, each new adventure 
leading to another, like the endless 
peaks of a mountain-range. From 
one day to another, from one year 
to another, what matter how far the 
story led him, he carried his audience 
on with unflagging interest and fre- 
quent excitement. When he paused, 
the whole world drew a long breath. 
What was to happen next? through 
what new series of exploits were his 
heroes to run; into what fresh de- 
velopment of adventure, headlong 
and breathless, were they about to 
be plunged] The charm of dramatic 
suspense, of uncertainty, and eager 
curiosity those universal stimulants 



Alexandre Dumas. 



1873.] 

of the common mind attended 
him wherever he moved ; and their 
charm was as potent upon the 
speaker as upon the listeners. His 
characters were no shadows to him j 
they excited him as much as 
they excited others, and reacted 
upon his mind ; he starting them, so 
to speak, upon their bold career 
while they, on the other hand, com- 
municated to him an always increas- 
ing excitement, and stimulated him 
to renewed and more strenuous 
exertions. He had not the heart to 
give over, or to throw back into 
obscurity, those energetic figures 
through whom he had conquered 
time and space, and history and 
probability. Like the minstrel of 
old, the lazzarone story-teller of the 
present time, his long and endless 
tale became its own raison d'etre, 
and assumed all the attributes of 
an independent power. It carried 
him forward in spite of himself as 
a river carries the boat once launched 
upon it. He let himself go upon 
the swelling irresistible tide, leaving 
helm and anchor alike useless. The 
force which he had brought into 
being carried himself away not 
unwillingly, but yet with a sweep 
and flood that overcame any per- 
sonal volition on his part. 

It was thus that the genius of 
Dumas found its most congenial 
occupation, and seized upon the 
public as it had seized the art which 
made that public its vassal. Nothing 
could more enhance the success which 
was thus secured than the manner 
of publication that fashion still so 
little known among us, the feuille- 
ton which placed one of the most 
exciting of romances in the hands 
of a multitude of readers by instal- 
ments, creating an excitement of its 
own, no doubt almost as great as 
that which changes governments 
and overthrows thrones. The first 
story thus presented to the public, 
and the greatest, in our opinion, of 



119 



Dumas's works, was the 'Trois Mous- 
quetaires.' He poured forth that 
long-continued, brilliant, and varied 
tale with a rapidity and persistency 
which remind us of the Eastern sul- 
tana, without a pause or sign of 
weariness. It is the most spon- 
taneous and dazzling, the most 
joyous, effortless, and endless, of ro- 
mances. We see no reason why it 
should not be going on still, or at 
least until death had sealed the lips 
of the story-teller. What gay vitality 
overflows in it, what bustling scenes 
open around its heroes ! scenes 
which are so real, so crowded, so 
full of incident, that we never dream 
of inquiring into their historical 
accuracy, nor of bringing them to 
that dull standard of fact which is 
alien to romance. Such scenes in- 
deed do not belong to one historical 
period or another, nor can the bold 
and brilliant narrative be bound 
down to formal limits of costume, 
or the still harder bondage of 
actual events. They belong rather 
to that vague period " once upon 
a time," familiar to all primitive 
audiences, in which the action of 
all fairy tales is laid, and which is 
the age proper to the primary poet, 
vague in chronology but dauntless 
in invention, who is always the 
earliest chronicler. In our day it 
is indispensable that some certain 
flavour of history should give a faux 
air of truth to the narrative ; and 
Dumas, we are told, had some amus- 
ing notion of illustrating the history 
of France a notion of which the 
full humour can only be realised 
when we perceive how he deals with 
other history. The action of the 
story accordingly begins, or is sup- 
posed to begin, in the time of Louis 
XIII., when the great Cardinal 
Eichelieu was at the head of affairs, 
and the young and beautiful Anne 
of Austria was the queen. These 
names of themselves suggest a hun- 
dred picturesque scenes, and all the 



120 



Alexandre Dumas. 



[July 



glitter and movement which the 
romancer loves. In the gay yet 
sombre Paris of that moment, which 
our story-teller makes no attempt to 
reproduce, but which is simply the 
ideal Paris, capital of all that is gay 
and bright, and of much that is 
gloomy and revolutionary, which still 
exists and will always exist, the typ- 
ical city of French intelligence 
there lived at that time three gallant 
soldiers, bound by the closest amity, 
mousquetaires du roi, of that chosen 
regiment of gentlemen-soldiers of 
fortune, who occupied in those days 
the position held (according to Scott) 
a century and a half earlier, by the 
Scottish Guard. No position could 
be more favourable for romance, for 
here the poor soldiermight beaprince 
without much harm done, and the 
imagination might permit itself all 
sorts of liberties. Dumas introduces 
to us in the opening of his tale, 
perhaps after the suggestion of 
' Quentin Durward/ whose intro- 
duction is of a similar character, the 
typical adventurer of fiction, a pen- 
niless gentleman of Gascony we 
may venture to say, without being 
unpatriotic, the French representa- 
tive of the poor and proud Scot 
who has come from his ruinous old 
chateau to serve the king and make 
his fortune. Chance throws this 
adventurer, who is brave as a lion 
and considerably more pugnacious, 
in the way of the three musketeers ; 
and, after some characteristic pas- 
sages of arms, he is admitted into 
their intimacy, and becomes himself 
a musketeer, and the fourth in their 
brotherhood. Is it necessary to 
introduce to the reader the well- 
known figures of Athos, Porthos, 
and Aramis, who, if he enters into 
their history, will bear him company 
so long and over so much exciting 
ground ? That they were already the 
wonder and pride of the French 
army it is needless to say ; and the 
addition of D'Artagnan, whose rude 



Gascon valour is even less remark- 
able than the subtlety and finesse 
of his intellect, adds importance to 
all their previous prestige. We are 
obliged to say that D'Artagnan, 
though not by any means so fine a 
character as our beloved Quentin 
Durward, is infinitely cleverer and 
more amusing; and his perpetual 
wealth of resource, and incapacity for 
being beaten or outwitted, reach the 
point of sublimity. The three com- 
panions are set before us all with 
the most distinct individualisation. 
Athos, who is the first and oldest of 
the band, and who, when introduced 
to the reader, has about him the 
languor of a man in trouble, is 
by far the finest conception that 
ever occurred to Dumas. He has 
many secrets, one of which is his 
rank, which he conceals carefully, 
but which betrays itself in every 
look and gesture. Aramis, the 
second, is of still more subtle char- 
acter. He has a leaning towards 
piety and the Church, but is an 
accomplished gallant, full of bonnes 
fortunes, and delicate mystery, 
with all kind of secret correspon- 
dences and diplomatic connections 
among the beautiful intrigantes and 
conspirators of the court. Porthos 
is a giant, simple and good-hearted 
as it is the nature of giants to be, 
led by his more able companions, 
and supplying his want of brain by 
a superabundance of strength, which 
he has the good sense to employ 
after their orders, without pretending 
to judge for himself. 

The feats these four heroes ac- 
complish unaided, the humours of 
their four lackeys, in each of whom 
there appears a reflection of his 
master, and the fame they gradually 
acquire for supernatural daring and 
cleverness in any kind of enter- 
prise, we need not describe ; but 
the unbounded vivacity of the 
narrative, its endless variety, the 
delightful prodigality of movement 



1873.] 

and frolic-wealth, is to the blase 
reader of more reasonable and pro- 
fitable literature like a dip into 
some sunshiny sea with flashing 
waves and currents, with wild puffs 
of wind and dashes of spray, after 
the calm navigation of stately rivers. 
Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are as 
delightfully real as they are impos- 
sible. Does any one ask whether 
we believe in them ? we laugh at the 
question, and at all the gravity and 
conformance to ordinary rule which 
it implies. Believe in them ! we 
know that our four paladins are im- 
possible as impossible as the seven 
champions of Christendom, but 
equally delightful and true to the 
instincts which, once in a way, ask 
something more from imagination 
than sketches of recognisable men 
and comprehensible circumstances. 
They are possible as Puck and Ariel 
are possible, though they are not at 
all ethereal, but most vigorous and 
solid human beings, with swords of 
prodigious temper, and arms of 
iron, giving blows which no man 
would willingly encounter. Their 
combination of ancient knight- 
errantry with the rude and careless 
habits of a modern soldier of for- 
tune, their delicate honour and 
indifferent morals, their mutual 
praise and honest adulation, com- 
bined with the perfect frankness of 
the author as to their faults, give a 
reality to these martial figures which 
no chronological deficiency can de- 
tract from, and which even their 
wonderful and unheard-of successes 
do not abate. 

That these four should undertake 
all kinds of dangerous missions 
which no one else will venture upon, 
with the utmost sang froid and confi- 
dence in their fate and in each other, 
seems as natural to us as it does 
to all the assistants in the story. 
When D'Artagnan assures the Car- 
dinal that, "with these three men and 
me, your eminence may overturn all 



Alexandre Dumas. 



121 



France, and even all Europe if you 
choose," we feel that there is truth 
in his words, notwithstanding the 
gasconade j and never until our 
heroes begin to have political 
opinions, and to split themselves 
into different parties a thing which 
never happened to them in their 
youth is there any failure in their 
bold course of action or weakness in 
their efforts. The successful jour- 
ney of D'Artagnan to England to 
reclaim from Buckingham, before the 
day of a certain ball, a diamond 
ornament which Anne of Austria 
had imprudently given him, is full 
of heroic fire a headlong enter- 
prise, undertaken with the purely 
knightly purpose of saving a lady's 
honour and a queen's throne, yet 
not without a certain prudential 
touch of more worldly motive on 
the part of D'Artagnan, who, 
with all his rashness and impetu- 
osity of youth, keeps an eye upon 
the main chance, and lets no oppor- 
tunity slip of advancing himself 
and his friends. Upon this expedi- 
tion, as upon so many others, the 
four brothers-in-arms start together ; 
but one after another is trapped 
by the wiles of Richelieu, the 
queen's wary and vigilant enemy, 
and only the all-persevering and 
all-daring Gascon, whose resources 
are simply miraculous, gets to the 
end of a journey upon which the 
reader accompanies him breathless 
with all the excitement of a spec- 
tator. Not less delightful is the 
return of the successful envoy, after 
he has delivered the diamond to 
the queen and saved her credit, 
to the route which he had just 
traversed ventre-a-terre, to find out 
and pick up the companions who 
had fallen victims one by one to 
the Cardinal's snares. Each of 
these deceived heroes is found in 
some characteristically humorous 
dilemma. D'Artagnan's discovery 
of the grave and chivalrous Athos 



122 



Alexandre Dumas. 



[July 



(whose weakness it is to love wine) 
in the cellar of the auberge 
barricaded with bottles which he 
has emptied, intrenching himself 
there, and exacting tribute from 
the frightened landlord, like a con- 
queror in an invaded country, is 
one of the most gravely comic 
scenes we remember ; and the 
whole narrative is running over 
with fun and genuine schoolboy 
enjoyment. Indeed, but for a cer- 
tain thread of more tragic story, 
which brings out some objectionable 
scenes, the book altogether is one 
in which schoolboys might be 
permitted to find the absolute de- 
light of breathless adventure, and 
that wild frolic and fun which 
make adventure doubly dear. 
Something of the same character 
an unimaginable feat of daring 
and desperate valour, combined with 
the most light-hearted levity that 
combination of the gay with the 
tragic, which is always captivating 
to the imagination is the exploit 
of the bastion of St Gervais, where 
our Mousquetaires, rising from an 
impromptu dinner, hang out their 
table-cloth as a flag, and hold their 
post against an entire army. Never 
a moment's fear, never a pang of un- 
easiness or hesitation, comes across 
the dauntless confidence of the 
famous four. But notwithstanding 
this heroic likeness, the author never 
forgets the characteristic differences 
of his adventurers. The calm and 
somewhat sad indifferentisni of Athos, 
the sentimentalism of Aramis, the 
sturdy conviviality of Porthos, are 
kept up throughout with unfailing 
consistency ; and nothing can be 
more individual than the character 
of D'Artagnan, who is more dis- 
tinctly a soldier of fortune than any 
of his friends, and who, as we have 
said, in the very heat of adventure 
keeps always a corner of his eye 
upon his own advantage, or rather 
the advantage of the brotherhood, 



which to each of the four is as 
his own. The perpetual contrast 
and variety thus kept up adds im- 
mensely to our interest in the Mous- 
quetaires. It supplies the charm of 
character which is sometimes want- 
ing to the rapid strain of the im- 
pvovisatore, and adds what is in its 
way a distinct intellectual enjoy- 
ment to that pleasure which can 
scarcely be called intellectual the 
delight of simple story, a primitive 
and savage joy. 

The tragic thread which runs 
through this record of warlike ex- 
ploits, and which brings in certain 
chapters which we would gladly 
get rid of, has on the whole but 
little to do with the adventures of 
our Mousquetaires. The portentous 
creation of Milady, the depraved 
and dishonoured woman whom we 
divine at once to have been the 
wife of the proud Athos and cause 
of his misfortunes, has little at- 
traction to the wholesome ima- 
gination, though she has been the 
origin of a whole school of wicked 
heroines. She is the first of the 
fair-haired, blue-eyed, soft-spoken 
demons with whom we have since 
become so familiar, and whom Eng- 
lish sensational literature has taken 
up with such thorough relish. The 
horrible but powerful scene in which 
the Mousquetaires do justice upon 
this villainous creature points the 
author's moral in a most trenchant 
and violent way, and is very diffe- 
rent from the maudlin relentings of 
pity with which our Lady Audleys 
get treated in England. We should, 
however, much prefer the excision 
of the lady (who, by the way, is 
English) to her punishment; and we 
cannot take upon us to say that any 
of the women who figure now and 
then in the story do any credit to 
Dumas. The best that can be said 
for him is, that he brings them in 
only when he cannot help it, and has 
himself no predilection for scenes 



1873.] 



Alexandre Dumas. 



123 



of passion, or any intrigues except 
those which are political. Embarras- 
sing situations and the "delicate" 
suggestions of vice in which some 
other French writers delight, are 
entirely out of the way of the honest 
raconteur. His morals are not ele- 
vated ; he accepts the free-and-easy 
tone of the rough soldier as natural 
and simple enough; but his heart is 
not in the vile subject, and he seeks 
no opportunity of introducing it. 
The bastion of St Gervais the road 
to Calais filled with secret spies and 
open pursuers, through whom with 
dauntless daring, with miraculous 
prudence, with an eye that misses 
nothing, and nerves that never fail 
him, the hero must pursue his 
breathless course are much more 
in our author's way. 

That Dumas should have been 
sorry to relinquish the four bold 
brethren whom he had made so fa- 
mous is not wonderful ; and there is 
a higher faculty, and a glimpse of 
more serious power in the reprise of 
the familiar strain than in its first 
fytte. ' Twenty Years after'! The 
attempt was as daring perhaps as 
the feats performed at the' bastion 
St Gervais. From the gay young 
gallants of twenty to the middle- 
aged heroes, worn with life, dis- 
persed over the country, dropped 
almost into oblivion of their ancient 
friendship, and absorbed in new 
cares of their own, what a won- 
derful difference ! When D'Artag- 
nan sets out in pursuit of his 
separated companions, we feel the 
doubtfulness of the search all the 
more, from the less important but 
yet significant changes that have 
passed upon himself. Still as 
brave, as self-confident and ready 
to assert himself as ever, the Gascon 
is partially saddened and partially 
embittered by his long attendance 
in antechambers, and the dull 
blank of doing nothing and hoping 
nothing which has fallen upon his 



life. The youthful gaiety, levity, 
triumphant certainty of good fortune 
has gone from him, and so has also 
the youthful sentiment which finds 
neglect and mediocrity unendurable. 
Twenty years of waiting have 
calmed and curbed, at least ex- 
ternally, his fiery spirit. They have 
developed his acute perceptions of 
self-interest, and determination to 
seize the first chance which can 
lead to fortune. We are allowed 
to perceive very plainly that whether 
it is the Fronde or the Court which 
offers highest, the Mousquetaire will 
take advantage of the best offer, 
though his characteristic prudence 
may attach him to the royalist side, 
as being in the long-run most sure. 
The other companions are not less 
effectively set before us. Aramis, 
the eloquent and sentimental mous- 
quetaire, transformed into a warlike 
and dissipated priest, of whom 
D'Artagnan says justly "Lorsque 
vous e'tiez mousquetaire vous tour- 
niez sans cesse a 1'abbe", et aujour- 
d'hui quevous etes abbe vous tournez 
fort au mousquetaire" meets his 
ancient companions with cautious 
reticence mingled with levity, which 
veils but imperfectly his absorption 
in all the intrigues of the times. Por- 
thos, the giant, whose mental quali- 
fications are small, is more manage- 
able. He is found in the retirement 
of "ses terres," reposing in his 
chateau among his fields and woods, 
vaunting with a sigh the excellence 
of everything belonging to him, even 
of " mon air," but consumed with 
ennui, and feeling all his wealth 
and grandeur neutralised by the 
want of a title, which he desires 
beyond everything. Of him, in his 
persuadable and weary dulness, 
D'Artignan makes a speedy con- 
quest. Neither Aramis, nor Porthos, 
nor D'Artagnan have, however, im- 
proved since their hot youth ; but 
when we approach the noble mansion 
of the Comte de la Fere, of Athos, 



124 



Alexandre Dumas. 



[July 



the leader of the band, the gentle- 
man par excellence, a different sen- 
timent comes in. Athos no more 
than Aramis will take arms for 
Mazarin. He, too, has thrown 
himself into the Fronde; hut the 
picture of the noble, serious Cointe 
de la Fere, growing out of that of 
the grave yet somewhat debauched 
Athos, with his terrible secret, his 
humiliation and pride, and the lan- 
guor of discouragement which sur- 
rounded him, is very able, and 
shows, as we have said, a better 
and higher talent than any of which 
we had supposed the author to be 
capable. Athos and his son make 
a fine picture ; and his recovery of 
virtue and abandonment of every- 
thing vicious, out of reverential re- 
gard for the childhood of his boy, 
is a touch worthy of a higher hand 
than that of Dumas. We cannot 
do more than indicate this trans- 
formation of our favourite hero, the 
leading spirit of the brotherhood; 
but we are glad to be reminded in 
Mr Percy Fitzgerald's book that 
Thackeray, no indifferent judge, 
shared our love for this magnificent 
gentleman. ; ' Of your heroic heroes," 
he says, " I think our friend Mon- 
seigneur Athos, Count de la Fere, is 
my favourite. I have read about 
him from sunrise to sunset, with the 
utmost contentment of mind. He 
has passed through many volumes 
forty 1 fifty 1 I wish, for my 
part, there were a hundred more, 
and would never tire of him rescu- 
ing prisoners, punishing ruffians, 
and running scoundrels through the 
midriff with his most graceful rapier. 
Ah ! Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, 
you are a magnificent trio ! " And 
indeed such they are going through 
the adventures of a fairy tale, yet 
with a wonderful force and individ- 
uality about them which puts all 
fact to shame. Nor is D'Artagnan 
an inferior figure ; his very rudeness 
and unideal consistency a veritable 



troupier, as his author allows him 
to be impress this small but ener- 
getic personage, a fierce little French 
soldier, all mind and spirit, with his 
enthusiasms and his matter-of-fact 
qualities, deeply upon us. The men 
thrust themselves through the fiery- 
excitement of their adventures, their 
characters are given to us par dessus 
le marche. We bargained only for 
story, and we get these individual 
beings in addition not framed, we 
allow, like ordinary men, but yet 
men full of vitality and force, as 
not many men are in this washed- 
out and feeble world. 

The narrative of ' Vingt Ans 
apres ' keeps up much of the force of 
the first volumes. The second sequel 
with which Dumas was so daring 
as to present his readers, the ( Vi- 
comte de Bragelonne, ou Dix Ans 
plus tard,' finds them, perhaps, a 
little weakened, though the author 
has given with great feeling and 
power qualities, again we say, 
which are par dessus le marche, 
and which nobody expected from 
him the gradual weakening of 
his heroes, the dropping aside into 
the background which, inevitable 
doom of old age in real life, is still 
more inevitable in fiction and ele- 
vation of the new generation to the 
central place in the picture. The 
sentiment, however, with which all 
four regard the ill-fated Vicomte de 
Bragelonne as their joint and several 
charge, the child of the brotherhood, 
is fine and natural. It is mournful 
to assist at the very end of our heroes, 
but perhaps on the whole it is the 
most satisfactory thing to do ; for 
had we not seen them securely 
buried, how could we ever have 
made sure that six volumes more, 
encore x^ us tard, might not have 
been poured upon us 1 Dumas's 
so-called biographer makes heavy 
mirth over the author's pretended 
(as he thinks) grief, and retirement 
into the country, in serio-comic 



1873.] 



Alexandre Dumas. 



125 



affliction, after the death of Porthos. 
We who are less dull fellows, we 
hope, comprehend it better, and feel 
strongly with Dumas. The loss of 
the simple-hearted giant is grievous 
to us. He has never been better 
than in some of the last scenes. 
His matter-of-fact simplicity and 
downrightness his faith in his 
comrades the ease with which 
Porthos " s'est convaingu quoiqu'il 
ne comprend pas " is always delight- 
ful. Athos has a grand end in the 
elevation and sublimity of grief, 
and dies of a broken heart when the 
news of his son's death reaches him. 
D'Artagnan receives his bullet of 
dismissal just as he has been pre- 
sented with his baton as Marshal of 
France. Only Aramis, the wily 
intriguer, sentimentalist, and false 
priest, the least attractive of the 
brotherhood, is allowed to live. 
" Athos, Porthos, aurevoir Aramis, 
adieu pour jamais!" cries D'Artag- 
nan when he is dying. Thus Dumas 
points his robust moral. He has 
a charitable heaven for his rough 
soldier, his erring yet noble gentle- 
man but none for the gallant who 
masquerades in the sacred habit of 
bishop and confessor. This delight- 
ful bit of conventional poetic justice 
is our romancer's tribute to les bons 
mceurs. 

But, alas ! space fails us even to 
touch upon the sublime embarrass- 
ment of those four middle-aged 
mousquetaires, when they find them- 
selves opposed two to two on oppo- 
site sides, in the conflict of the 
Fronde ; or upon their delight when, 
reunited on mutual ground, the two 
disciples of Mazarin join the two 
Frondeurs, and (though this is a 
secret to history) do all but save 
Charles I. from the scaffold. This 
quaint defiance of fact approaches 
the sublime, and we forgive our 
heroes their poor opinion of Eng- 
land in consideration of the splen- 
did coup which they thus all but 



accomplished, though nobody knew 
how near we were to a total change 
of our history. With regret we 
close the lively pages, which are 
never dull, in which the interest 
never flags, and the stream of inci- 
dent never fails. Why should such 
adventures ever come to an end 1 ? 
Why should the bold brotherhood 
ever separate, fail, or grow old 1 We 
leave them with a sigh, to return to 
our dull life, in which the incidents 
come so seldom, and where neither 
superior valour, nor even such un- 
failing wealth of resource as is pos- 
sessed by D'Artagnan, can preserve 
us from the most ordinary evils. 
What a thing it would be to be 
able to vanquish all one's difficul- 
ties by that delightful conscious 
mixture of skill and strength ! how 
consolatory in the severer troubles 
of our existence to be able to throw 
ourselves, as Anne of Austria could, 
upon the unfailing help in every 
emergency of these invincible 
Mousquetaires ! 

We have lingered too long upon 
our favourite heroes, the last of 
knights-errants, the most delightful 
figures which fiction, pure and un- 
mingled, the wild and rapid art which 
has nothing to do with nature, has 
produced in our time. ' Monte 
Christo ' is, we believe, regarded, at 
least in England, much more en- 
tirely as the epitome of Dumas's 
productive power than is the history 
of our Mousquetaires ; but we can- 
not think that, as a whole, this book 
is at all equal to the other. The first 
part of l Monte Christo,' however, is 
finer, purer, and more true to nature 
than anything in the ' Trois Mous- 
quetaires ;' it stands alone among its 
author's productions, and promises 
an altogether higher strain of poetic 
romance than anything else he ever 
reached. Beside the wild and com- 
plicated tale of intrigue and ven- 
geance, the horrible entanglements 
of fate, and still more horrible 



126 



Alexandre Dumas. 



schemes of pitiless vindictive will, 
that opening story, so soft in tone, so 
vigorous in conception, so idyllic, 
pure, and reasonable, strikes the 
reader with a surprise which perhaps 
enhances the very different effect of 
all that follows. Up to the moment 
when Edmond Dantes is thrown into 
the sea, under the semblance of a 
corpse, there is scarcely anything in 
the story to which the most severe 
critic could take exception. That 
fine young sailor himself, his gentle, 
beautiful, and pensive bride, and 
the delightful sketch of the im- 
prisoned Abbe Earia, so learned, so 
benevolent, and so forgiving even in 
his dungeon, have very seldom been 
surpassed. Nothing is forced in the 
tale the despair and agony of the 
young bridegroom, snatched from 
everything he holds dear at the 
very moment when his hopes are 
about to be realised, is neither exag- 
gerated nor unduly lengthened out. 
There is not only fine talent, but 
absolute good taste and perception, 
in the manner of the picture, which 
any girl may read and any man 
enjoy. 

The Count de Monte Christo, 
however, is not so delightful as Ed- 
mond Dantes; and though there is the 
same wild charm of rapid incident 
and sensation, the same breathless 
brilliancy of dialogue and interest 
of situation, the narrative of Monte 
Christo' s vengeance has nothing 
like the delightful novelty and 
wholesome stir and bustle of the 
'Trois Mousquetaires.' Dumas is not 
potent enough to impress upon us, 
as his contemporary Victor Hugo 
can do so well, the solemn gather- 
ing of those clouds of fate round the 
doomed and guilty beings whose 
evil deeds have to be expiated be- 
fore they can escape their author's 
hands. The lurid lights and hor- 
rible creeping shadows which we 
see and feel in ' ISTotre Dame,' have 
no place at all in the slowly develop- 



[July 

ing revenge of Monte Christo. We 
recognise from the beginning the 
transparent tours de force which 
bring all his enemies within reach 
of that revenge ; and we feel 
that Monte Christo himself is very 
poor and petty in many of his ex- 
pedients, cruel without dignity, and 
spiteful rather than terrible. There 
is an abstract character about him 
which detracts greatly from the 
effect of all his operations. He 
loses our sympathy, at first so 
powerfully excited. We find no 
feature in him of the Edmond 
Dantes whose wrongs we felt as if 
they were our own, and to whom 
we could accord the right of punish- 
ing his enemies. On the contrary, 
it is altogether a new being, a 
stranger to us, who steps on to the 
stage like a magician, and whom 
we cannot identify. This is the 
great mistake of the book, a greater 
mistake even than the fact that 
Monte Christo goes much too far, 
that his vengeance is diabolical, and 
his heart unnaturally hard, which was 
no doubt according to the author's 
intentions who meant to show us 
not only the pleasure and satisfactori- 
ness, but at the same time the unsuc- 
cess and evil tendencies of revenge. 
No doubt Dumas meant to transfer 
our sympathies to the other side, 
and to make us at last almost par- 
tisans of the hapless multitude who 
are driven to despair by his trans- 
formed hero ; but he did not, we sup- 
pose, mean to transform that hero 
so that he should be unrecognisable ; 
and in this he shows the weakness 
of his rapid work, and supreme re- 
gard for sensation. But this defect 
in art is more than counterbalanced 
by the skill with which he has 
seized upon two primary instincts 
of nature the prejudice we all 
have in favour of what is called 
poetic justice, and the delight we 
all take in such complete trans- 
formations of fortune as place the 



Alexandre Dumas. 



1873.] 

injured poor on the pinnacle of 
wealth, and make them capable of 
showing their gratitude and their 
hate in the plainest way. Primitive 
story has always loved to tell how 
the poor man "became rich, and how 
the injured confounded all his ad- 
versaries and exalted all his friends. 
There is no child, or simple-minded 
person, however gentle in their own 
impulses, who does not delight in 
retribution, and to whom the idea 
of suddenly enriching and honour- 
ing the poor passer-by who has done 
the hero a service, and crushing 
those who have scorned him, is not 
dear and delightful. It pleases the 
instinct of wild justice which is 
natural to us, and calms the mur- 
mur of unrest and pain which lies 
at the bottom of every heart when 
we contemplate the inequalities of 
life and injustices of fortune. Mon- 
te Christo, with his fabulous island, 
his ship-loads of emeralds and dia- 
monds, and that curiously uncertain 
and fluctuating fortune which we 
feel never could have lasted through 
all his prodigious extravagances, is 
delightfully able to set everything 
right that is wrong. He is a 
kind of Prospero in an enchanted 
world; his former friends, whom 
he pursues with such deadly hate, 
have lost all individuality in his 
eyes, and are no longer Fernand or 
Danglars, but vague and undefined 
criminals whom it is his office 
to bring to justice. He is implaca- 
ble, for he has become abstract he 
is the generalisation of justice, as 
his victims, untried, and without 
any chance for their lives, are the 
impersonation of crime. 

The strength and the weakness 
of the book, its immense popu- 
larity with the common mass of 
readers, and its unsatisfactoriness 
to the critic, are all involved in 
these, its r peculiar characteristics. 
More emphatically than any of 
Dumas's other works it is framed 



127 



on the model of the Arabian Nights. 
The interest is deepened by the fact 
that it is a tale of retribution, and 
that the evil which has to be pun- 
ished was done before our eyes, and 
excited us all to a fierce longing for 
poetic justice; and this interest is 
enough to carry on the primitive 
mind, especially when the new com- 
plications through which the Aven- 
ger moves are so exciting and so var- 
ied. But the abstractness of the story 
disappoints and throws out the closer 
critic. The thread of human sym- 
pathy is broken off short, at the 
moment when all the better laws 
of art are abandoned, and when 
Dantes sinks in the sea, to rise for 
us no more. Henceforward all is 
wild, fantastic, and of a primitive ar- 
tificiality. The crowd applauds, the 
critic is silent. "We look on while 
the story-teller continues with many 
gesticulations and excitement his 
breathless narrative. We look on at 
the panorama of scenes and events 
which pass before us. The tragical 
climax of the good Morel's history, 
so true to fact, so false to nature 
the conventional, honourable sui- 
cide by which the Frenchman of 
romance settles matters with his 
creditors, and goes out of the world 
without a stain on his character 
capped with the sudden miraculous 
interposition, as of an angel from 
heaven, of the mysterious stranger 
and his purse, opens the circle of 
adventure by a good deed, and de- 
lights us, much in the same way as 
the reward of the good boy delights 
us in a child's story. Finer and 
better is the scene in which Monte 
Christo visits his former love the 
always sweet, visionary, and pensive 
Mercedes, who never loses her indi- 
viduality and confuses her languid 
soul by vague recollection, vague 
recognition, a reminiscence of she 
knows not what. The other figures- 
and scenes which succeed each 
other in the panorama, the intrigues, 



128 



Alexandra Dumas. 



[July 



the poisonings, the confusion of 
everybody's life and history with 
everybody else's sweep on in such 
rapid succession that we cannot 
attempt to review or define them ; 
until we come to the perfectly sen- 
sational figure of the old Noirier 
dead all but his eyes, and combating 
his daughter-in-law's murderous in- 
tentions with a determination and 
cool presence of mind which has all 
the effect upon us of a most daring 
and successful trick, along with 
something tragic which elevates the 
sleight-of-hand. It is the false 
sublime, no doubt, but yet the 
situation has a kind of sublimity in 
its way, and is very impressive to 
the imagination. All this passes 
before us with a speed which takes 
away our breath our eyes are daz- 
zled, our mind is exhausted by the 
rapid action. We are dragged on 
by the magician at his chariot- 
wheels, even though by times we 
take breath and laugh at his stage 
expedients, his charlatan tricks, 
and those impossibilities of circum- 
stance which are more striking and 
more ludicrous when presented to 
us as existing in our own century, 
and amid all the modern machinery 
of cheques, and speculations on the 
funds, and credits upon bankers. 
These unlimited letters of credit are 
a blunder of the first water. So 
long as the mysterious Count pro- 
duces a handful of diamonds to pay 
his way, we are at our ease, and be- 
lieve as much in him as is at all 
necessary ; but the name of Roths- 
child brings us back to the nine- 
teenth century, a period singularly at 
variance with handfuls of diamonds. 
We take leave of Monte Christo at 
last, somewhat exhausted with the 
breathless race the romancer has led 
us, but more amused by his daring 
and sleight-of-hand than impressed 
by his masquerade of fate and ven- 
geance. There is a faint snigger 
even in our excitement, when he 



holds us breathless with suspense 
to know what the next page or 
the next chapter will bring forth. 
But yet, amid all our scepticism 
and all our laughter, he does hold 
us breathless; and we defy any 
novel-reader worthy of the name 
(let us say under thirty there are 
many blessed: people who retain the 
faculty much beyond that age, of 
whom we are happy to boast ourself 
one ; but with the vulgar crowd we 
believe it is apt to fail in middle 
age), to read Monte Christo, en 
feuilleton, without thinking a great 
deal more about it than perhaps it 
is worth, and mixing up its wild 
complications of story with his very 
dreams. 

We have dwelt fully upon these 
two stories, because all that is best 
in Dumas is to be found in them ; 
and we do not suppose that many 
English readers are like to dive 
deeper, nowadays at least, into the 
mass of corresponding works which 
bear his name, and are all more or 
less of the same character. The adven- 
tures of the two gallants who perish 
so tragically in l La Reine Margot ' 
are except in their last scene, which 
is really tragic and fine not to* be 
compared with the ' Trois Mousque- 
taires ; ' though indeed in the history 
of these, our oldest friends of the 
race, there is no such serious inci- 
dent as the torture or the death 
which make the reader forget all the 
levities of La Mole and Coconnas. 
These levities, however, are enough 
to deprive their story of the recep- 
tion which that of Athos, Porthos, 
and Aramis has met with in Eng- 
land ; the sublime sentiment which 
makes a virtuous hero on his way to 
the scaffold turn to cast a last look 
of fond recollection upon the house 
which has been his place of rendez- 
vous with his mistress, is not a kind 
of sublimity appreciated on this 
side of the Channel. Space forbids 
us to make anv attempt to follow the 



1873.] 



marvellous intrigues and supernat- 
ural .wonders of Balsamo through 
the numberless scenes (and volumes) 
in which his magic and mesmerism 
and general omnipotence give him 
a part. It was, we believe, the 
purpose of Dumas to make of these 
books a sort of gallery of .illustra- 
tions of the history of France ; and, 
indeed, a great many historical 
events and names are to be found 
in his pages, and a continued suc- 
cession of the most exciting intrigues, 
generally connected, we are bound to 
say, with points little acknowledged 
by history; but were we to trust 
this chronicle, we should find so won- 
derful a resemblance between the 
manners and habits of the Court' of 
Charles IX. and those of Louis XV. 
as somewhat to confuse our histori- 
cal sense, and bewilder us as to the 
passage of time. The suggestion of 
a serious purpose, indeed, in books so 
entirely belonging to that art with- 
out purpose which Dumas posses- 
sed to so marvellous a degree, is one 
of the self-delusions to which all 
artists are more or less subject. 
Possibly he himself believed in it, 
but no one else. The choice of a 
distant period, however, in which 
to place his scene, was almost a 
necessity ; for we have already seen 
in * Monte Christo ' how much more 
difficult it is to employ the marvel- 
lous, and how much more incon- 
gruous is the romancer's delightful 
indifference to possibility, when 
combined with the manners of our 
own time, with which we are fa- 
miliar than when placed amid the 
remote mists of an age in which, 
perhaps, for all we can tell, such 
things might, by some grotesque 
combination of influences, have 
been made practicable. Cagliostro 
is precisely the sort of figure which 
suits Dumas, and in which he de- 
lights ; and the 'Aventures d'un 
Me"decin ' are still more in the strain 
of the Arabian Nights than are the 

VOL. CXIV. NO. DCXCIII. 



Alexandra Dumas. 



129 



adventures of Monte Christo, and 
belong to the division of his works 
of which that wonderful book is the 
head. There are, indeed, but two 
classes into which these works nat- 
urally fall. They are after 'Monte 
Christo ' or after the Monsquetaires ; 
and we believe we have done as 
much for t the ordinary reader who 
does not know Dumas, as he will 
require, when we have presented to 
him the two first works by which 
the great story-teller made himself 
famous, and which he repeated 
and followed with various changes 
of time and costume, and an unceas- 
ing variety of incident, to the end of 
his career. 

We cannot, however, close this 
imperfect record without referring 
to those airy and delightful reminis- 
cences of travel which Mr Percy 
Fitzgerald declares are not Dumas's 
at all, but which the incredible 
generosity of his cottaborateurs have 
permitted to be published in his 
name, and which are as like as two 
peas to the novels which these ines- 
timable persons also produced to the 
honour and glory of their master. 
Would that we could find disciples 
now so able and so generous ! The 
fun, the frolic, the movement and 
gaiety of some of these travel-books, 
dealing with the most worn - out 
and well-known scenes, is inex- 
haustible. To be sure, there is 
perhaps more of the author in them 
than of the country he visits ; 
but what then? the country 
has been described to us by so many 
dull fellows, that we have almost 
grown weary of the snowy moun- 
tain-peaks of Switzerland, and the 
delightful Italian shores. But Dumas 
in the Corricolo or in the Speronare 
is never dull; and if he gives us 
little information, he gives us what 
is far more difficult the atmosphere, 
the sentiment of the scene, the hu- 
mours of the common folk, who 
pass under his eye, and his own 

i 



130 



Alexandre Dumas. 



light-hearted and dramatic appreci- 
ation of every scene he sees. We 
remember at this moment, without 
the books to refer to, certain char- 
acteristic fables, such as that by 
which Padre Eocco (if our recollec- 
tion serves) procures the needful 
illumination of the Strada di San 
Giuseppe at Naples, which in its 
inconceivable mixture of profanity 
and religiousness, and that matter- 
of-fact mingling of the most imagin- 
ative story with the common details 
of existence, which is peculiar to 
Italians of the lower class is more 
true to nature than anything else of 
the kind we know. How many 
such stories relating, for instance, 
how Moses and Aaron consulted 
together upon Hebrew affairs as 
they took their daily walk, like all 
the rest of the world, on Pincio ; 
or how that Pope Clement, who cut 
short the Jesuits' robes, got safe into 
heaven notwithstanding the vigilant 
guard of St Ignatius, because of the 
shortened garment which enabled 
him to make a dash through be- 
tween the saint's legs ! has every 
one heard who has really entered 
into Italian life ! but we know no 
one who has ventured to reproduce 
these most popular and most char- 
teristic tales. 

Durnas's life was a succession of 
triumphs and distresses almost equal 
to those of his own adventurers. He 
was perfectly thriftless, extravagant, 
and foolish in his expenditure ; his 
money was all consumed, sometimes 
twice over, before he had earned it ; 
and he seems to have been some- 
what shifty about his literary en- 



[July 1873. 



gagements, and, in the latter part 
of his life at least, not much to be 
depended upon. But he would 
seem to have possessed that liberality 
to others which is the redeeming 
feature of the prodigal ; and he loved 
magnificence, and spent his money 
splendidly at least which is a re- 
deeming feature, too, in its way 
with the most lavish and princely 
hospitalit} 7 ". And he worked hard, 
though waywardly and by fits 
and starts ; and if he had no 
objection to introduce an equi- 
vocal adventure, or unequivocal 
intrigue, at any moment when it 
might happen to suit him, he is never 
the historian, never the philosopher 
of vice, and the tendency of his 
works is certainly not immoral. He 
loved the grand air and. pie in jour 
words which so well express the 
breadth and exuberance of daylight ; 
he loved movement, and freedom, 
and change too well, to be delicately 
vicious like his successor. Adven- 
ture, sensation, excitement, these 
were his honest objects ; and when 
they are procured by honest means, 
does any one deny them a legitimate 
place among the wholesome pleasures 
of humanity ? Peace be to the mem- 
ory of the old Raconteur ! He might 
not be either great or wise, no model 
for any one to follow ; but yet there 
was a real place for him in the 
world, and he filled it with a cer- 
tain fitness. Many men of his 
generation have moved us more 
deeply, more beneficially ; but few 
have amused us in so primitive a 
way, or so much, or so long, or 
with so little harm. 



Printed ly William BUickwood & Sons, Edinburgh. 



BLACKWOOD'S 
EDINBUBGH MAGAZINE, 



No. DCXC1V. 



AUGUST 1873. 



VOL. CX1V. 



THE PAEISIANS. BOOK NINTH. 



CHAPTER 1. 



ON waking some morning, have 
you ever felt, reader, as if a change 
for the brighter in the world, with- 
out and within you, had suddenly 
come to pass some new glory has 
been given to the sunshine, some 
fresh balm to the air you feel 
younger, and happier, and lighter, 
in the very beat of your heart 
you almost fancy you hear the 
chime of some spiritual music far 
off, as if in the deeps of heaven 1 
You are not at first conscious how, 
or wherefore, this change has been 
brought about. Is it the effect of 
a dream in the gone sleep, that has 
made this morning so different from 
mornings that have dawned be- 
fore? And while vaguely asking 
yourself that question, you become 
aware that the cause is no mere 
illusion, that it has its substance 
in words spoken by living lips, in 
things that belong to the work-day 
world. 

It was thus that Isaura woke the 
morning after the conversation with 
Alain de Rochebriant, and as cer- 

VOL. CXIV. NO. DCXCIV. 



tain words, then spoken, echoed 
back on her ear, she knew why she 
was so happy, why the world was 
so changed. 

In those words she heard the 
voice of Graham Vane no ! she had 
not deceived herself she was loved ! 
she was loved! What mattered 
that long cold interval of absence 1 
She had not forgotten she could 
not believe that absence had brought 
forgetfulness. There are moments 
when we insist on judging another's 
heart by our own. All would be 
explained some day all would come 
right. 

How lovely was the face that re- 
flected itself in the glass as she stood 
before it smoothing back her long 
hair, murmuring sweet snatches of 
Italian love-song, and blushing with 
sweeter love-thoughts as she sang ! 
All that had passed in that year so 
critical to her outer life the author- 
ship, the fame, the public career, 
the popular praise vanished from 
her mind as a vapour that rolls from 
the face of a lake to which the 



132 



The Parisians. Boole IX. 



sunlight restores the smile of a 
brightened heaven. 

She was more the girl now than 
she had ever been since the day on 
which she sat reading Tasso on 
the craggy shore of Sorrento. 

Singing still as she passed from 
her chamber, and entering the sit- 
ting-room, which fronted the east, 
and seemed bathed in the sunbeams 
of deepening May, she took her 
bird from its cage, and stopped her 
song to cover it with kisses, which 
perhaps yearned for vent some- 
where. 

Later in the day she went out to 
visit Valerie. Recalling the altered 
manner of her young friend, her 
sweet nature became troubled. She 
divined that Valerie had conceived 
some jealous pain which she longed 
to heal; she could not bear the 
thought of leaving any one that day 
unhappy. Ignorant before of the 
girl's feelings towards Alain, she 
now partly guessed them one wo- 
man who loves in secret is clairvoy- 
ante as to such secrets in another. 

Vale'rie received her visitor with 
a coldness she did not attempt to 
disguise. Not seeming to notice 
this, Isaura commenced the conver- 
sation with frank mention of Roche- 
briant. " I have to thank you so 
much, dear Valerie, for a pleasure 
you could not anticipate that of 
talking about an absent friend, and 
hearing the praise he deserved from 
one so capable of appreciating ex- 
cellence as M. de Rochebriant ap- 
pears to be." 

" You were talking to M. de 
Rochebriant of an absent friend 
ah ! you seemed indeed very much 
interested in the conversation " 

" Do not wonder at that, Valerie : 
and do not grudge me the happiest 
moments I have known for months." 

"In talking with M. de Roche- 
briant ! No doubt, Mademoiselle 
Cicogna, you found him very charm- 
ing." 



[Aug. 

To her surprise and indignation, 
Valerie here felt the arm of Isaura 
tenderly entwining her waist, and 
her face drawn towards Isaura's 
sisterly kiss. 

" Listen to me, naughty child 
listen and believe. M. de Roche- 
briant can never be charming to me 
never touch a chord in my heart 
or my fancy, except as friend to 
another, or kiss me in your turn, 
Vale'rie as suitor to yourself." 

Valerie here drew back her pretty 
childlike head, gazed keenly a mo- 
ment into Isaura's eyes, felt con- 
vinced by the limpid candour of 
their unmistakable honesty, and 
flinging herself on her friend's 
bosom, kissed her passionately, and 
burst into tears. 

The complete reconciliation be- 
tween the two girls was thus peace- 
fully effected ; and then Isaura had 
to listen, at no small length, to the 
confidences poured into her ears by 
Valerie, who was fortunately too 
engrossed by her own hopes and 
doubts to exact confidences in re- 
turn. Valerie's was one of those 
impulsive eager natures that longs 
for a confidante. Not so Isaura's. 
Only when Valerie had unburthened 
her heart, and been soothed and 
caressed into happy trust in the 
future, did she recall Isaura's ex- 
planatory words, and said, archly : 
"And your absent friend? Tell 
me about him. Is he as handsome 
as Alain ? " 

" Nay," said Isaura, rising to take 
up the mantle and hat she had laid 
aside on entering, " they say that 
the colour of a flower is in our 
vision, not in the leaves." Then 
with a grave melancholy in the look 
she fixed upon Valerie, she added : 
" Rather than distrust of me should 
occasion you pain, I have pained 
myself, in making clear to you the 
reason why I felt interest in M. de 
Rochebriant's conversation. In turn, 
I ask of you a favour do not on 



1873.] 

tins point question me farther. 
There are some things in our past 
which influence the present, but to 
which we dare not assign a future 
on which we cannot talk to an- 



Tlie Parisians. Book IX. 



133 



other. What soothsayer can tell 
us if the dream of a yesterday will 
be renewed on the night of a 
morrow ? All is said we trust on 
another, dearest." 



CHAPTER II. 



That evening the Morleys looked 
in at Isaura's on their way to a 
crowded assembly at the house of 
one of those rich Americans, who 
were then outvying the English re- 
sidents at Paris in the good graces 
of Parisian society. I think the 
Americans get on better with the 
French, than the English do I 
mean the higher class of Americans. 
They spend more money ; their men 
speak Erench better; the women 
are better dressed, and, as a general 
rule, have read more largely, and 
converse more frankly. 

Mrs Morley's affection for Isaura 
had increased during the last few 
months. As so notable an advo- 
cate of the ascendancy of her sex, 
she felt a sort of grateful pride in 
the accomplishments and growing 
renown of so youthful a member 
of the oppressed sisterhood. But, 
apart from that sentiment, she had 
conceived a tender mother-like in- 
terest for the girl who stood in the 
world so utterly devoid of family 
ties, so destitute of that household 
guardianship and protection which, 
with all her assertion of the strength 
and dignity of woman, and all her 
opinions as to woman's right of 
.absolute emancipation from the con- 
ventions fabricated by the selfish- 
ness of man, Mrs Morley was too 
sensible not to value for the indi- 
vidual, though she deemed it not 
needed for the mass. Her great 
desire was that Isaura should marry 
well, and soon. American women 
usually marry so young, that it 
seemed to Mrs Morley an anomaly 
in social life, that one so gifted in 



mind and person as Isaura should 
already have passed the age in which 
the belles of the great Eepublie 
are enthroned as wives and conse- 
crated as mothers. 

We have seen that in the past 
year she had selected from our un- 
worthy but necessary sex, Graham 
Vane as a suitable spouse to her 
young friend. She had divined the 
state of his heart she had more 
than suspicions of the state of 
Isaura's. She was exceedingly per- 
plexed, and exceedingly chafed at 
the Englishman's strange disregard 
to his happiness and her own pro- 
jects. She had counted, all this 
past winter, on his return to Paris ; 
and she became convinced that 
some misunderstanding, possibly 
some lover's quarrel, was the cause 
of his protracted absence, and a 
cause that, if ascertained, could be 
removed. A good opportunity now 
presented itself Colonel Morley 
was going to London the next 
day. He had business there which 
would detain him at least a week. 
He would see Graham ; and as she 
considered her husband the shrewd- 
est and wisest person in the world 
I mean of the male sex she 
had no doubt of his being able to 
turn Graham's mind thoroughly in- 
side out, and ascertain his exact 
feelings, views, and intentions. If 
the Englishman, thus essayed, were 
found of base metal, then, at least, 
Mrs Morley would be free to cast 
him altogether aside, and coin for 
the uses of the matrimonial market 
some nobler effigy in purer gold. 

" My dear child," said Mrs Mor- 



134 



The Parisians. Book IX. 



ley, in low voice, nestling herself 
close to Isaura, while the Colonel, 
duly instructed, drew off the Yen- 
osta, " have you heard anything 
lately of our pleasant friend Mr 
Vane?" 

You can guess with what artful 
design Mrs Morley put that ques- 
tion point-blank, fixing keen eyes on 
Isaura while she put it. She saw 
the heightened colour, the quivering 
lip, of the girl thus abruptly appealed 
to, and she said, inly : " I was right 
she loves him ! " 

" I heard of Mr Yane last night 
accidentally." 

" Is he coming to Paris soon?" 

"Not that I know of. How 
charmingly that wreath becomes 
you ! it suits the earrings so well, 
too." 

"Frank chose it; he has good 
taste for a man.' I trust him with 
my commissions to Hunt and Eos- 
kelTs, but I limit him as to price, 
he is so extravagant men are, 
when they make presents. They 
seem to think we value things 
according to their cost. They 
would gorge us with jewels, and let 
us starve for want of a smile. Not 
that Frank is so bad as the rest of 
them. But a propos of Mr Yane 
Frank will be sure to see him, and 
scold him well for deserting us all. 
I should not be surprised if he 
brought the deserter back with him, 
for I send a little note by Frank, 
inviting him to pay us a visit. , We 
have spare rooms in our apartments." 

Isaura's heart heaved beneath her 
robe, but she replied in a tone of 
astonishing indifference : " I believe 
this is the height of the London 
season, and Mr Yane would proba- 
bly be too engaged to profit even 
by an invitation so tempting." 

" Nous verrons. How pleased he 
will be to hear of your triumphs ! 
He admired you so much before 
you were famous : what will be his 
admiration now ! Men are so vain 



[Aug. 

they care for us so much more 
when people praise us. But, till 
we have put the creatures in their 
proper place, we must take them 
for what they are." 

Here the Yenosta, with whom 
the poor Colonel had exhausted all 
the arts at his command for chain- 
ing her attention, could be no longer 
withheld from approaching Mrs Mor- 
ley, and venting her admiration of 
that lady's wreath, earrings, robes, 
flounces. This dazzling apparition 
had on her the effect which a candle 
has on a moth she fluttered round 
it, and longed to absorb herself in 
its blaze. But the wreath especially 
fascinated her a wreath which no 
prudent lady with colourings less 
pure, and features less exquisitely 
delicate than the pretty champion of 
the rights of woman, could have 
fancied on her own brows without a 
shudder. But the Yenosta in such 
matters was not prudent. " It can't 
be, dear," she cried piteously, ex- 
tending her arms towards Isaura. 
" I must have one exactly like. 
Who made if? Cara signora, give 
me the address." 

" Ask the Colonel, dear Madame; 
he chose and brought it," and Mrs 
Morley glanced significantly at her 
well-tutored Frank. 

" Madame," said the Colonel, 
speaking in English, which he usually 
did with the Yenosta who valued 
herself on knowing "that language, 
and was flattered to be addressed in 
it while he amused himself by in- 
troducing into its forms the dainty 
Americanisms with which he puzzled 
the Britisher he might well puzzle 
the Florentine, " Madame, I am too 
anxious for the appearance of my 
wife to submit to the test of a rival 
screamer like yourself in the same 
apparel. With all the homage due 
to a sex of which I am. enthused 
dreadful, I decline to designate the 
florist from whom I purchased Mrs 
Morley's head fixings." 



1873.] 



TJie Parisians. Book IX. 



135 



" Wicked man ! " cried the Yen- 
osta, shaking her finger at him 
coquettishly. " You are jealous ! 
Fie ! a man should never be jealous 
of a woman's rivalry with woman ; " 
and then, with a cynicism that 
might have become a greybeard, 
she added, "but of his own sex 
every man should be jealous 
though of his dearest friend. Isn't 
it so, Colonello?" 

The Colonel looked puzzled, bowed, 
and made no reply. 

"That only shows," said Mrs 
Morley, rising, "what villains the 
Colonel has the misfortune to call 
friends and fellow-men." 



"I fear it is time to go," said 
Frank, glancing at the clock. 

In theory the most rebellious, in 
practice the most obedient, of wives, 
Mrs Morley here kissed Isaura, re^ 
settled her crinoline, and shaking 
hands with the Yenosta, retreated 
to the door. 

"I shall have the wreath yet," cried 
the Yenosta, impishly. "La spe- 
ranza e femmina " (Hope is female). 

" Alas ! " said Isaura, half mourn- 
fully, half smiling " alas ! do you 
not remember what the poet replied 
when asked what disease was most 
mortal? 'the hectic fever caught 
from the chill of hope.' " 



CHAPTER III. 



Graham Yane was musing very 
gloomily in his solitary apartment 
one morning, when his servant an- 
nounced Colonel Morley. 

He received his visitor with more 
than the cordiality with which 
every English politician receives an 
American citizen. Graham liked 
the Colonel too well for what he 
was in himself, to need any national 
title to his esteem. After some 
preliminary questions and answers 
as to the health of Mrs Morley, the 
length of the Colonel's stay in Lon- 
don, what day he could dine with 
Graham at Richmond or Gravesend, 
the Colonel took up the ball. " We 
have been reckoning to see you at 
Paris, sir, for the last six months." 

"I am very much nattered to 
hear that you have thought of me 
at all ; but I am not aware of having 
warranted the expectation you so 
kindly express." 

"I guess you must have said 
something to my wife which led her 
to do more than expect to reckon 
on your return. And, by the way, 
sir, I am charged to deliver to you 
this note from her, and to back the 



request it contains that you will 
avail yourself of the offer. Without 
summarising the points I do so." 

Graham glanced over the note 
addressed to him : 

" DEAR MR YANE, Do you forget 
how beautiful the environs of Paris 
are in May and June ? how charm- 
ing it was last year at the lake of 
Enghien 1 ? how gay were our little 
dinners out of doors in the garden 
arbours, with the Savarins and the 
fair Italian, and her incomparably 
amusing chaperon 1 Erank has my 
orders to bring you back to renew 
these happy days, while the birds 
are in their first song, and the leaves 
are in their youngest green. I have 
prepared your rooms cJiez nous a 
chamber that looks out on the 
Champs Elysees, and a quiet cabinet 
de travail at the back, in which you 
can read, write, or sulk undisturbed. 
Come, and we will again visit Enghien 
and Montmorency. Don't talk of 
engagements. If man proposes, 
woman disposes. Hesitate not 
obey. Your sincere little friend, 

" LIZZY." 



136 



The Parisians. Boole IX. 



" My dear Morley," said Graham, 
with emotion, " I cannot find words 
to thank your wife sufficiently for 
an invitation so graciously conveyed. 
Alas ! I cannot accept it." 

"Why?" asked the Colonel, 
drily. 

" I have too much to do in Lon- 
don/' 

" Is that the true reason, or am. I 
to suspicion that there is anything, 
sir, which makes you dislike a visit 
to Paris?" 

The Americans enjoy the reputa- 
tion of being the frankest putters 
of questions whom liberty of speech 
has yet educated into les recherches 
de la verite, and certainly Colonel 
Morley in this instance did not 
impair the national reputation. 

Graham Yane's brow slightly con- 
tracted, and he bit his lip as if stung by 
a sudden pang; but after a moment's 
pause, he answered with a good- 
humoured smile 

" No man who has taste enough 
to admire the most beautiful city, 
and appreciate the charms of the 
most brilliant society in the world, 
can dislike Paris." 

" My dear sir, I did not ask if 
you disliked Paris, but if there were 
anything that made you dislike 
coming back to it on a visit." 

" What a notion ! and what a 
cross-examiner you would have made 
if you had been called to the bar ! 
surely, my dear friend, you can 
understand that when a man has 
in one place business which he can- 
not neglect, he may decline going 
to another place, whatever pleasure 
it would give him to do so. By the 
way, there is a great ball at one of 
the Minister's to-night ; you should 
go there, and I will point out to you 
all those English notabilities in 
whom Americans naturally take in- 
terest. I will call for you at eleven 
o'clock. Lord , who is a con- 
nection of mine, would be charmed 
to know you." 



[Aug. 

Morley hesitated ; but when Gra- 
ham said, " How your wife will 
scold you if you lose such an op- 
portunity of telling her whether the 

Duchess of M is as beautiful 

as report says, and whether Glad- 
stone or Disraeli seem to your 
phrenological science to have the 
finer head!" the Colonel gave in, 
and it was settled that Graham 
should call for him at the Langham 
Hotel. 

That matter arranged, Graham 
probably hoped that his inquisitive 
visitor would take leave for the 
present, but the Colonel evinced no- 
such intention. On the contrary, 
settling himself more at ease in his 
arm-chair, he said, " If I remember 
aright, you do not object to the 
odour of tobacco 1 " 

Graham rose and presented to his 
visitor a cigar-box which he took 
from the mantelpiece. 

The Colonel shook his head, and 
withdrew from his breast-pocket a 
leather case from which he extracted 
a gigantic regalia; this he lighted 
from a gold match-box in the shape 
of a locket attached to his watch- 
chain, and took two or three pre- 
liminary puffs with his head thrown 
back and his eyes meditatively in- 
tent upon the ceiling. 

We know already that strange 
whim of the Colonel's (than whom, 
if he so pleased, no man could speak 
purer English as spoken by the 
Britisher) to assert the dignity of 
the American citizen by copious use 
of expressions and phrases familiar 
to the lips of the governing class of 
the great Republic delicacies of 
speech which he would have care- 
fully shunned in the polite circles 
of the Fifth Avenue in New York. 
Now the Colonel was much too ex- 
perienced a man of the world not 
to be aware that the commission 
with which his Lizzy had charged 
him was an exceedingly delicate 
one ; and it occurred to his mother 



1873.] 

wit that the best way to acquit him- 
self of it, so as to avoid the risk of 
giving or of receiving serious affront, 
would be to push that whim of his 
into more than wonted exaggeration. 
Thus he could more decidedly and 
briefly come to the point ; and should 
he, in doing so, appear too meddle- 
some, rather provoke a laugh than 
a frown retiring from the ground 
with the honours due to a humorist. 
Accordingly, in his deepest nasal 
intonation, and withdrawing his eyes 
from the ceiling, he began 

"You have not asked, sir, after 
the Signorina, or, as we popularly 
call her, Mademoiselle Cicogna 1 " 

" Have I not 1 I hope she is 
quite well, and her lively com- 
panion, Signora Venosta."- 

"They are not sick, sir ; or at 
least were not so last night when 
my wife and I had the pleasure to 
see them. Of course you have read 
Mademoiselle Cicogna's book a 
bright performance, sir, age con- 
sidered." 

" Certainly, I have read the book; 
it is full of unquestionable genius. 
Is Mademoiselle writing another 1 
But of course she is." 

" I am not aware of the fact, sir. 
It may be predicated ; such a mind 
cannot remain inactive j and I know 
from M. Savarin and that rising 
young man Gustave Eameau, that 
the publishers bid high for her 
brains considerable. Two transla- 
tions have already appeared in our 
country. Her fame, sir, will be 
world-wide. She may be another 
Georges Sand, or at least another 
Eulalie Grantmesnil." 

Graham's cheek became as white 
as the paper I write on. He in- 
clined his head as in assent, but 
without a word. The Colonel con- 
tinued 

" We ought to be very proud of 
her acquaintance, sir. I think you 
detected her gifts while they were 
yet unconjectured. My wife says 



The Parisians. Bool; IX. 



13T 



so. You must be gratified to re- 
member that, sir clear grit, sir, 
and no mistake." 

" I certainly more than once have 
said to Mrs Morley, that I esteemed 
Mademoiselle's powers so highly that 
I hoped she would never become a 
stage singer and actress. But this 
M. Eameau 1 You say he is a rising 
man. It struck me when at Paris 
that he was one of those charlatans 
with a great deal of conceit and 
very little information, who are al- 
ways found in scores on the ultra- 
Liberal side of politics j possibly I 
was mistaken." 

" He is the responsible editor of 
1 Le Sens CommunJ in which talent- 
ed periodical Mademoiselle Cicogna's 
book was first raised." 

" Of course, I know that ; a jour- 
nal which, so far as I have looked 
into its political or social articles, 
certainly written by a cleverer and 
an older man than M. Eameau, is 
for unsettling all things and settling 
nothing. "We have writers of that 
kind among ourselves I have no 
sympathy with them. To me it 
seems that when a man says, ' Off 
with your head," he ought to let us 
know what other head he would put 
on our shoulders, and by what pro- 
cess the change of heads shall be ef- 
fected. Honestly speaking, if you 
and your charming wife are intimate 
friends and admirers of Mademoi- 
selle Cicogna, I think you could not 
do her a greater service than that of 
detaching her from all connection 
with men like M. Eameau, and jour- 
nals like ' Le Sens Commun. 9 " 

The Colonel here withdrew his 
cigar from his lips, lowered his head 
to a level with Graham's, and re- 
laxing into an arch significant smile, 
said, " Start to Paris, and dissuade 
her yourself. Start go ahead 
don't be shy don't seesaw on the 
beam of speculation. You will have 
more influence with that young fe- 
male than we can boast." 



138 



The Parisians. Book IX. 



[Aug. 



Never was England in greater 
danger of quarrel with America than 
at that moment; but Graham curbed 
his first wrathful impulse, and re- 
plied coldly 

" It seems to me, Colonel, that you, 
though very unconsciously, derogate 
from the respect due to Made- 
moiselle Cicogna. That the counsel 
of a married couple like yourself 
and Mrs Morley should be freely 
given to and duly heeded by a girl 
deprived of her natural advisers in 
parents, is a reasonable and honour- 
able supposition ; but to imply that 
the most influential adviser of a 
young lady so situated is a young 
single man, in no way related to her, 
appears to me a dereliction of that 
regard to the dignity of her sex 
which is the chivalrous character- 
istic of your countrymen and to 
Mademoiselle Cicogna herself, a 
surmise which she would be justi- 
fied in resenting as an imperti- 
nence." 

"I deny both allegations," re- 
plied the Colonel, serenely. "I 
maintain that a single man whips 
all connubial creation when it comes 
to gallantising a single young wo- 
man ; and that no young lady would 
be justified in resenting as imperti- 
nence my friendly suggestion to the 
single man so deserving of her con- 
sideration as I estimate you to be, 
to solicit the right to advise her for 
life. And that's a caution." 

Here the Colonel resumed his re- 
galia, and again gazed intent on the 
ceiling. 

" Advise her for life ! You mean, 
I presume, as a candidate for her 
hand." 

" You don't Turkey now. Well, 
I guess, you are not wide of the 
mark there, sir." 

" You do me infinite honour, but 
I do not presume so far." 

"So, so not as yet. Before a 
man who is not without gumption 
runs himself for Congress, he likes 



to calculate how the votes will run. 
Well, sir, suppose we are in caucus, 
and let us discuss the chances of the 
election with closed doors." 
: Graham could not help smiling at 
the persistent officiousness of his 
visitor, but his smile was a very sad 
one. 

" Pray change the subject, my 
dear Colonel Morley it is not a 
pleasant one to me ; and as regards 
Mademoiselle Cicogna, can you think 
it would not shock her to suppose 
that her name was dragged into the 
discussions you would provoke, even 
with closed doors ? " 

" Sir," replied the Colonel, imper- 
turbably, "since the doors are closed, 
there is no one, unless it be a spirit- 
listener under the table, who can 
wire to Mademoiselle Cicogna the 
substance of debate. And, for my 
part, I do not believe in spiritual 
manifestations. Fact is, that I have 
the most amicable sentiments to- 
wards both parties, and if there is a 
misunderstanding which is opposed 
to the union of the States, I wish to 
remove it while yet in time. Now, 
let us suppose that you decline to 
be a candidate ; there are plenty 
of others who will run ; and as an 
elector must choose one representa- 
tive or other, so a gal must choose 
one husband or other. And then 
you only repent when it is too late. 
It is a great thing to be first in the 
field. Let us approximate to the 
point ; the chances seem good will 
you run 1 Yes or No ? " 

" I repeat, Colonel Morley, that I 
entertain no such presumption." 

The Colonel here, rising, extended 
his hand, which Graham shook with 
constrained cordiality, and then 
leisurely walked to the door ; there 
he paused, as if struck by a new 
thought, and said gravely, in his 
natural tone of voice, "You have 
nothing to say, sir, against the 
young lady's character and hon- 
our?" 



1873.] 



" I ! heavens, no ! Colonel Mor- 
ley, such a question insults me.' ; 

The Colonel resumed his deepest 
nasal bass : " It is only, then, be- 
cause you don't fancy her now so 
much as you did last year fact, 
you are soured on her and fly off the 
handle. Such things do happen. 
The same thing has happened to 
myself, sir. In my days of celibacy, 
there was a gal at Saratoga whom I 
gallantised, and whom, while I was 
at Saratoga, I thought Heaven had 
made to be Mrs Morley. I was on 
the very point of telling her so, 
when I was suddenly called off to 
Philadelphia ; and at Philadelphia, 
sir, I found that Heaven had made 
another Mrs Morley. I state this 
fact, sir, though I seldom talk of my 
own affairs, even when willing to 
tender my advice in the affairs of 
another, in order to prove that I 
do not intend to censure you if 
Heaven has served you in the same 
manner. Sir, a man "may go blind 
for one gal when he is not yet dry 
behind the ears, and then, when his 
eyes are skinned, go in for one bet- 
ter. All things mortal meet with a 
change, as my sister's little boy said 
when, at the age of eight, he quitted 
the Methodys and turned Shaker. 
Threep and argue as we may, you 
and I are both mortals more's the 
pity. Good morning, sir (glancing 
at the clock, which proclaimed the 
hour of 3 P.M.), I err good even- 
ing." 

By the post that day the Colonel 
transmitted a condensed and laconic 
report of his conversation with 
Graham Vane. I can state its sub- 
stance in yet fewer words. He 
wrote word that Graham positively 
declined the invitation to Paris, ; that 
he had then, agreeably to Lizzy's 
instructions, ventilated the English- 
man, in the most delicate terms, as 
to his intentions with regard to 
Isaura, and that no intentions at all 
existed. The sooner all thoughts 



The Parisians. BooJc IX. 



139 



of him were relinquished, and a new 
suitor on the ground, the better it 
would be for the young lady's hap- 
piness in the only state in which 
happiness should be, if not found, 
at least sought, whether by maid or 
man. 

Mrs Morley was extremely put 
out by this untoward result of the 
diplomacy she had intrusted to the 
Colonel ; and when, the next day, 
came a very courteous letter from 
Graham, thanking her gratefully for 
the kindness of her invitation, and 
expressing his regret briefly, though 
cordially, at his inability to profit 
by it, without the most distant al- 
lusion to the subject which the 
Colonel had brought on the tapis, 
or even requesting his compliments 
to the Signoras Venosta and Ci- 
cogna, she was more than put out, 
more than resentful, she was 
deeply grieved. Being, however, 
one of those gallant heroes of 
womankind who do not give in at 
the first defeat, she began to doubt 
whether Frank had not rather 
overstrained the delicacy which he 
said he had put into his " sound- 
ings." He ought to have been more 
explicit. Meanwhile she resolved 
to call on Isaura, and, without men- 
tioning Graham's refusal of her in- 
vitation, endeavour to ascertain 
whether the attachment which she 
felt persuaded the girl secretly 
cherished for this recalcitrant Eng- 
lishman were something more than 
the first romantic fancy whether 
it were sufficiently deep to justify 
farther effort on Mrs Morley's part 
to bring it to a prosperous issue. 

She found Isaura at home and 
alone ; and, to do her justice, she 
exhibited wonderful tact in the 
fulfilment of the task she had set 
herself. Forming her judgment by 
manner and look not words 
she returned home, convinced that 
she ought to seize the opportunity 
afforded to her by Graham's letter. 



uo 



The Parisians. Bool* IX. 



[Aug. 



It was one to which she might very 
naturally reply, and in that reply 
she might convey the object at her 
heart more felicitously than the 
Colonel had done. " The cleverest 
man is," she said to herself, "stupid 
compared to an ordinary woman in 
the real business of life, which does 
not consist of fighting and money- 
making." 

IsTow there was one point she 
had ascertained by words in her 
visit to Isaura a point on which 
all might depend. She had asked 
Isaura when and where she had 
seen Graham last ; and when Isaura 
had given her that information, 
and she learned it was on the 
eventful day on which Isaura gave 
her consent to the publication of 
her MS. if approved by Savarin, 
in the journal to be set up by 
the handsome-faced young author, 
she leapt to the conclusion that 
Graham had been seized with no 
unnatural jealousy, and was still 
under the illusive glamoury of that 
green-eyed fiend. She was con- 
firmed in this notion, not altogether 
an unsound one, when asking with 
apparent carelessness "And in 
that last interview, did you see any 
change in Mr Vane's manner, espe- 
cially when he took leave 1 " 

Isaura turned away pale, and 
involuntarily clasping her hands 
as women do when they Avould 
suppress pain replied, in a 
low manner, " His manner was 
changed." 

Accordingly, Mrs Morley sat 
down and wrote the following 
letter : 

"DEAR MR VANE, I am very 
angry indeed with you for refusing 
my invitation, I had so counted 
on you, and I don't believe a word 
of your excuse. Engagements ! 
To balls and dinners, I suppose, as 
if you were not much too clever to 
care about these silly attempts to 
enjoy solitude in crowds. And as 



to what you men call business, you 
have no right to have any business 
at all. You are not in commerce ; 
you are not in Parliament ; you 
told- me yourself that you had no 
great landed estates to give you 
trouble ; you are rich, without any 
necessity to take pains to remain 
rich, or to become richer j you 
have no business in the world ex- 
cept to please yourself: and when 
you will not come to Paris to see 
one of your truest friends which 
I certainly am it simply means, 
that no matter how such a visit 
would please me, it does not please 
yourself. I call that abominably 
rude and ungrateful. 

" But I am not writing merely to 
scold you. I have something else 
on my mind, and it must come out. 
Certainly, when you were at Paris 
last year you did admire, above all 
other young ladies, Isaura Cicogna. 
And I honoured you for doing so. 
I know no young lady to be called 
her equal. Well, if you admired 
her then, what would you do now 
if you met her 1 Then she was but 
a girl very brilliant, very charm- 
ing, it is true but undeveloped, 
untested. Now she is a woman, a 
princess among women, but retain- 
ing all that is most lovable in a 
girl ; so courted, yet so simple so 
gifted, yet so innocent. Her head 
is not a bit turned by all the flattery 
that surrounds her. Come and 
judge for yourself. I still hold the 
door of the rooms destined to you 
open for repentance. 

" My dear Mr Vane, do not think 
me a silly match-making little wo- 
man when I write to you thus, a 
cmur ouvert. 

" I like you so much that I would 
fain secure to you the rarest prize 
which life is ever likely to offer to 
your ambition. Where can you 
hope to find another Isaura 1 Among 
the stateliest daughters of your 
English dukes, where is there one- 



1873.] 

whom a proud man would be more 
proud to show to the world, say- 
ing, ' She is mine ! ' where one 
more distinguished I will not say 
"by mere beauty, there she might 
be eclipsed but by sweetness 
and dignity combined in aspect, 
manner, every movement, every 
smile ? 

"And you, who are yourself so 
clever, so well read you who would 
be so lonely with a wife who was 
not your companion, with whom 
you could not converse on equal 
terms of intellect, my dear friend, 
where could you find a companion 
in whom you would not miss the 
poet-soul of Isaura "? Of course I 
should not dare to obtrude all these 
questionings on your innermost re- 
flections, if I had not some idea, 
right or wrong, that since the days 
when at Enghien and Montmorency, 
seeing you and Isaura side by side, 
I whispered to Frank, 'So should 



TJie Parisians. Book IX. 



141 



those two be through life,' some 
cloud has passed between your eyes 
and the future on which they gazed. 
Cannot that cloud be dispelled 1 
Were you so unjust to yourself as 
to be jealous of a rival, perhaps of 
a Gustave Eameau ? I write to you 
frankly answer me frankly ; and 
if you answer, 'Mrs Morley, Idoii't 
know what you mean ; I admired 
Mademoiselle Cicogna as I might 
admire any other pretty accom- 
plished girl, but it is really nothing 
to me whether she marries Gustave 
Eameau or any one else,' why, 
then, bum this letter forget that 
it has been written ; and may you 
never know the pang of remorseful 
sigh, if, in the days to come, you 
see her whose name in that case I 
should profane did I repeat it the 
comrade of another man's mind, the 
half of another man's heart, the 
pride and delight of another man's 
blissful home." 



CHAPTER IV. 



There is somewhere in Lord 
Lytton's writings writings so 
numerous that I may be pardoned 
if I cannot remember where a 
critical definition of the difference 
between dramatic and narrative art 
of story, instanced by that marvel- 
lous passage in the loftiest of Sir 
Walter Scott's works, in which all the 
anguish of Eavenswood on the night 
before he has to meet Lucy's brother 
in mortal combat is conveyed with- 
out the spoken words required in 
tragedy. It is only to be conjec- 
tured by the tramp of his heavy 
boots to and fro all the night long 
in his solitary chamber, heard below 
by the faithful Caleb. The drama 
could not have allowed that treat- 
ment ; the drama must have put 
into words as " soliloquy," agonies 
which the non-dramatic narrator 
knows that no soliloquy can de- 



scribe. Humbly do I imitate, then y 
the great master of narrative in 
declining to put into words the con- 
flict between love and reason that 
tortured the heart of Graham Yane 
when dropping noiselessly the letter 
I have just transcribed. He covered 
his face with his hands and remained 
I know not how long in the same 
position, his head bowed, not a 
sound escaping from his lips. 

He did not stir from his rooms 
that day ; and had there been a 
Caleb's faithful ear to listen, his 
tread, too, might have been heard 
all that sleepless night passing to- 
and fro, but pausing oft, along his 
solitary floors. 

Possibly love would have borne 
down all opposing reasonings, 
doubts, and prejudices, but for inci- 
dents that occurred the following 
evening. On that evening Graham 



142 



Tlie Parisians. Book IX. 



dined en famille with his cousins 
the Altons. After dinner, the Duke 
produced the design for a cenotaph 
inscribed to the memory of his aunt, 
Lady Janet King, which he pro- 
posed to place in the family chapel 
at Alton. 

" I know," said the Duke, kindly, 
" you would wish the old house from 
which she sprang to preserve some 
such record of her who loved you 
as her son ; and even putting you 
out of the question, it gratifies me 
to attest the claim of our family 
to a daughter who continues to be 
famous for her goodness, and made 
the goodness so lovable that envy 
forgave it for being famous. It was 
a pang to me when poor Eichard 
King decided on placing her tomb 
among strangers ; but in conceding 
his rights as to her resting-place, I 
retain mine to her name, ' Nostris 
liber is virtutis exemplar. 1 " 

Graham wrung his cousin's hand 
he could not speak, choked by 
suppressed tears. 

The Duchess, who loved and hon- 
oured Lady Janet almost as much 
as did her husband, fairly sobbed 
aloud. She had, indeed, reason for 
grateful memories of the deceased : 
there had been some obstacles to 
her marriage with the man who had 
won her heart, arising from polit- 
ical differences and family feuds 
between their parents, which the 
gentle mediation of Lady Janet had 
smoothed away. And never did 
union founded 011 mutual and ar- 
dent love more belie the assertions 
of the great Bichat (esteemed by 
Dr Buckle the finest intellect which 
practical philosophy has exhibited 
since Aristotle), that "Love is a 
sort of fever which does not last be- 
yond two years," than that between 
these eccentric specimens of a class 
denounced as frivolous and heartless 
by philosophers, English and French, 
who have certainly never heard of 
Bichat. 



[Aug. 

When the emotion the Duke had 
exhibited was calmed down, his 
wife pushed towards Graham a 
sheet of paper, inscribed with the 
epitaph composed by his hand. 
"Is it not beautiful/' she said, 
falteringly " not a word too much 
nor too little ? " 

Graham read the inscription slow- 
ly, and with very dimmed eyes. 
It deserved the praise bestowed on 
it ; for the Duke, though a shy and 
awkward speaker, was an incisive 
and graceful writer. 

Yet, in his innermost self, 
Graham shivered when he read that 
epitaph, it expressed so emphati- 
cally the reverential nature of the 
love which Lady Janet had inspired 
the genial influences which the 
holiness of a character so active in 
doing good had diffused around it- 
It brought vividly before Graham 
that image of perfect spotless wo- 
manhood. And a voice within him 
asked, " Would that cenotaph be 
placed amid the monuments of an 
illustrious lineage if the secret 
known to thee could transpire ? 
What though the lost one were 
really as unsullied by sin as the 
world deems, would the name now 
treasured as an heirloom not be a 
memory of gall and a sound of 
shame 1 " 

He remained so silent after put- 
ting down the inscription, that the 
Duke said modestly, " My dear 
Graham, I see that you do not like 
what I have written. Your pen is 
much more practised than mine. If 
I did not ask you to compose the 
epitaph, it was because I thought 
it would please you more in coming, 
as a spontaneous tribute due to her, 
from the representative of her family. 
But will you correct my sketch, or 
give me another according to your 
own ideas 1 " 

" I see not a word to alter," said 
Graham : " forgive me if my silence 
wronged my emotion; the truest 



1873.] 



2740 Parisians. Book IX. 



143 



eloquence is that which holds us 
too mute for applause." 

" I knew you would like it. 
Leopold is always so disposed to 
underrate himself/' said the Duch- 
ess, whose hand was resting fondly 
on her husband's shoulder. " Epi- 
taphs are so difficult to write 
especially epitaphs on women of 
whom in life the least said the 
better. Janet was the only woman 
I ever knew whom one could praise 
in safety." 

" Well expressed," said the Duke, 
smiling ; " and I wish you would 
make that safety clear to some lady 
friends of yours, to whom it might 
serve as a lesson. Proof against 
every breath of scandal herself, 
Janet King never uttered and never 
encouraged one ill-natured word 
against another. But I am afraid, 
my dear fellow, that I must leave 
you to a tete-a-tete with Eleanor. 
You know that I must be at the 
House this evening I only paired 
till half-past nine." 

" I will walk down to the House 
with you, if you are going on foot." 

"No," said the Duchess; "you 
must resign yourself to me for at 
least half an hour. I was looking 
over your aunt's letters to-day, and 



I found one which I wish to show 
you ; it is all about yourself, and 
written within the last few months 
of her life." Here she put her arm 
into Graham's, and led him. into her 
own private drawing-room, which, 
though others might call it a bou- 
doir, she dignified by the name of 
her study. The Duke remained for 
some minutes thoughtfully leaning 
his arm on the mantelpiece. It 
was no unimportant debate in the 
Lords that night, and on a subject in 
which he took great interest, and the 
details of which he had thoroughly 
mastered. He had been requested 
to speak, if only a few words, for 
his high character and his reputa- 
tion for good sense gave weight to 
the mere utterance of his opinion. 
But though no one had more moral 
courage in action, the Duke had a 
terror at the very thought of ad- 
dressing an audien